Whale Fjord

Twenty-Three

October 1940

Neville Pybus-Smith was worried.

He scanned the typed sheet in front of him. It was a translation by his interpreter Gunnar of the lead article in the latest issue of Thjódviljinn — the small but nasty left-wing newspaper.

The article was encouraging Icelanders who were working for the British to go on strike.

Neville was becoming increasingly worried about the communists. They were trying to turn a war between Britain and Germany — democracy and Fascism — into a class struggle between the workers and the capitalists. The British were the capitalists and the Icelandic labourers were the workers. In this view of the world, British working-class soldiers should side with the Icelandic labourers rather than with their own army.

Neville was certain that it wasn’t just theories of class consciousness that drew Thjódviljinn to this conclusion; the fact that the Soviet Union and Germany had signed the Molotov — Ribbentrop Pact the year before had a lot to do with it. And the money he believed the newspaper received from Russia.

Dockers had just gone on strike and Dagsbrún, a trade union, had been handing out pamphlets to English soldiers urging them in English: Don’t be a scab! Don’t take the job of the Icelandic working man!

The irony was that times had never been better for the Icelandic working man. His labour was needed by the British for unloading at the docks and for the construction of an airfield on the edge of Reykjavík and a naval base at Hvalfjördur. Demand for cod from Icelandic trawlers in Britain had skyrocketed as many of the Hull and Grimsby fishermen had been recruited for the Royal Navy and the merchant marine. There was good money to be made.

Neville was a banker. He understood economics. In such a tight labour market, the power was with the workers. They could ask for high wages and probably get them. He could live with that.

What he couldn’t live with was communist propaganda corrupting the British soldier and turning him against his own country.

Neville needed help. A British officer who spoke, or at least understood, Icelandic.

Lieutenant Marks.

Marks would be ideal. Neville liked what he had seen of the man. As well as his language skills, he had the intelligence for the work and he related well to Icelanders.

One Icelander in particular. Neville’s mind drifted in a direction which had become familiar over the previous couple of weeks. He felt a stiffening in his trousers, also a familiar feeling.

Kristín.

He couldn’t get her out of his mind. He could recall her smile, her flashing eyes, her red hair, so clearly. During their conversation in the Hotel Borg, he had aroused her interest, he was sure of it. And he was pretty certain it wasn’t just because he had power over her brother.

Neville knew he had a way with women. He had good looks, charm, and he was an English gentleman. There were precious few of those in Iceland. Certainly, there were plenty of British officers in the country, but most of those were oiks — lingerie salesmen or bookkeepers who had scraped a commission while the army was desperate.

His erection wouldn’t go away.

Neville had needs like any healthy man in his prime — probably more than most, he suspected. It had been six months since he had had sex. He had ceased having marital relations with his wife years before when Tabby was born, but there were always interesting and interested women to be found in London, mostly married to someone else. Failing that, there were the comforts of a little place he knew in Shepherd’s Market.

There were good-looking women in Iceland, but there were also thousands of British men. Some had been lucky enough to snap up a girlfriend — Shaw from Divisional HQ, for example, had become very friendly with the daughter of the family with whom he was billeted. The family Neville was billeted with had three sons. Thanks partly to Neville’s efforts, the Hotel Borg no longer allowed entry to other ranks, and there was dancing there in the evenings, yet there were still a dozen eager officers for every available woman.

Most of them were not available. ‘Skilekkis’, they were called, after the Icelandic phrase ‘Ég skil ekki’, meaning ‘I don’t understand’. It’s what they claimed whenever soldiers tried to chat them up.

The answer to his problem must lie outside Reykjavík.

Specifically, the answer must lie on a farm on the shores of Hvalfjördur outside Reykjavík.

But Kristín was a skilekki — those were the words she had used when he had tried to talk to her that evening. And Neville had still picked up only a couple of phrases of Icelandic himself. He couldn’t very well bring Marks along to translate for him.

Would it matter? Wouldn’t a girl like Kristín be excited to meet a gentleman like Neville? Surely he must be more interesting to her than whatever oaf lived on the farm next door?

There was only one way to find out.

Tom rode his motorbike back to C Company HQ in Hvammsvík. He had spent the morning with Captain Chappell of the Royal Engineers and two representatives of the Icelanders working on the construction of the naval base.

Tom was impressed by Chappell and his RE colleagues. Hundreds of British soldiers and Icelandic labourers busied themselves around half-built concrete structures, with lorries, cranes and cement mixers clanking and grinding all around them. All those people, all that machinery, all that activity shattered the haunting beauty of the Whale Fjord as the war reached out its tentacles over the North Atlantic to spoil even this isolated corner of the world. Damp hillsides and dark waters brooded their disapproval. Yet the steep mountainsides and the sandy brown fortress of rock that reared up above Hvammsvík seemed to offer the prospect of security and safety to the warships who would shelter here, twenty miles inland from the open sea.

It was the Royal Engineers who worked day and night coordinating everything and everyone. Despite the long hours, Chappell seemed to have bottomless reserves of energy and resourcefulness, and he somehow managed to communicate his enthusiasm to the soldiers and the labourers.

But the labourers wanted more money, and Chappell needed Tom’s help to negotiate with them. The morning’s discussions had gone well: Tom hoped that a strike would be avoided.

He had spotted Kristín’s brother Siggi among a group of labourers having a fag break and had nodded to him, but Siggi had looked the other way. Fair enough. Tom could understand his reluctance to be associated with the occupiers.

As Tom dismounted from his motorcycle, a corporal approached him, saluted, and told him that Major Harris would like to see him in his Nissen hut. Tom noticed a powerful American car, a dark blue Ford, parked just outside. A whiff of sulphur leaking from some nearby crack in the ground tickled his nostrils.

He found his commanding officer finishing lunch with a man he recognized: Captain Pybus-Smith. They were both smoking cigars and a three-quarters-empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label stood between them.

‘Ah, Tom. Pull up a pew, old man. Can I pour you a drop? It’s good stuff.’

‘No, thank you, sir,’ said Tom. Regular army officers liked to emphasize their professionalism when compared to territorials like himself. But he had come to realize that life for officers in the pre-war regular army had consisted of three hours’ work in the morning, then a large alcohol-fuelled lunch and a nap in the afternoon. Some of them, including Major Harris, had found the habit difficult to break.

Tom hadn’t the time. Perhaps he hadn’t mastered the regular officers’ skills in delegating.

Or perhaps he just wasn’t lazy.

‘Pybus-Smith here says he wants to borrow you again on a more formal basis.’ The major was slurring his words. ‘Says you did a damned fine job for him on the Pestmomo.’

‘The Esja, sir. From Petsamo. In Finland.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Harris. ‘Anyway, he’d like your help with the communists in Reykjavík. Stirring up trouble on the docks. I said you were helping out here with them.’

‘I could use a man of your intelligence and language skills,’ said Pybus-Smith with a friendly grin. ‘Are you sure you won’t take a drop?’

‘No, thank you, sir,’ said Tom. ‘I think I’m pretty much fully employed at Tóftir. In fact, I need to get back there now.’

‘Well, think it over, both of you,’ said Pybus-Smith, refilling his glass, and the major’s. ‘But before you go, Marks, can you tell me where that man Marteinn Hálfdánsson lives? You know, that communist we interrogated from the Esja.’

Tom frowned. Did Pybus-Smith really want to see Hálfdánsson? Or did he want to see Hálfdánsdóttir?

He was drunk. And he looked... dangerous.

‘He lives at Laxahóll. It’s just a few miles beyond Tóftir. There’s a turn-off to it just opposite an old farmhouse with a turf roof — it’s signposted, I think. I can show you if you like. As I said, I’m heading back that direction.

‘Don’t worry, old man. I’ll just look in on my way to Reykjavík. I’ve got my car. Laxa-hoddle, you say?’

‘More or less. Is that your Ford outside?’

‘Yes. Rather nice, isn’t she? V-8 DeLuxe Tudor. Requisitioned it from a businessman in Reykjavík, who had imported it from America. Lovely to drive.’

‘You don’t have a driver?’

‘Usually I do, but I thought I’d take her for a spin myself today.’

Pybus-Smith was much too drunk to get behind a wheel. ‘I can drive you if you like,’ Tom said. ‘You’ll need a translator.’

‘I’ll manage. Didn’t you say you had things to do?’

‘Are you sure?’ said Tom.

‘Quite sure,’ said Pybus-Smith. With a grin.

It wasn’t the grin of someone about to interview a communist farm worker in a language he didn’t understand.

Reluctantly, Tom left the two officers to their whisky and rode his motorbike back along the edge of the fjord to his platoon at Tóftir.