Whale Fjord

Eight

October 1940

Tom tried to get back to Laxahóll as often as he could, but it wasn’t often enough. He had no one overseeing him, apart from Major Harris at company headquarters five miles away at Hvammsvík, but there was always a lot to be done at Tóftir, and it was hard to get away.

The first time he had returned, it was with his rod. Hálfdán had enthusiastically shown him the river and watched as he cast. To Tom’s delight, he caught three fine salmon.

The farmer invited him back to the farmhouse for coffee and cake, served by Kristín, who seemed pleased to see him, as was Gudni. Hálfdán did most of the talking — he clearly liked to talk — with Kristín helping out, repeating his sentences more slowly and clearly, while he took the opportunity to snort some snuff. Tom had never heard anyone sneeze so loudly.

The next week, Tom arrived with one of the platoon’s many footballs for Gudni, who was ecstatic. Tom explained that the best football team in the entire world was called Spurs, and the best player in the world was called Willie Hall. Gudni absorbed this information earnestly, much to his mother and grandfather’s amusement.

Tom had also brought his camera, a Brownie, and took half a dozen snaps of the farm, of Hálfdán, of Gudni. And of Kristín.

There was no sign of Siggi — he was now working on the construction team at the naval base — earning good money, according to his father.

Tom didn’t miss him.

As he took his leave, Kristín walked out to his motorbike with him.

‘Is there room on your iron stallion for two?’ she asked. ‘It looks fun.’

‘It is,’ Tom said. ‘Jump on.’

‘What, now? I thought you had to get back to your camp?’

Tom did. But bugger it. ‘That’s all right. We’ll go to the mouth of the fjord and back. Won’t take long.’

‘All right.’

Tom started off at a steady pace along the shore road, intensely aware of Kristín’s arms clinging to his waist.

‘Doesn’t this horse gallop any faster?’

He opened the throttle. The fjord whizzed by as the bike juddered and bucked over the gravel road. They overtook a convoy of three British trucks, fortunately not from his company. In no time they had reached the mouth of the fjord; a pair of corvettes was steaming towards them from the west, fresh from escorting a convoy across the Atlantic. Tom continued, and in a few minutes more they had rounded the headland to the next fjord, Kollafjördur.

He pulled over and he and Kristín dismounted. Her face was flushed and excited.

A cloud stepped back from the sun, which streamed across the small fjord. They perched on a rock by the road, low bushes of red and yellow gathered about their feet. There was a faint smell of fish, presumably emanating from the racks drying cod a hundred yards distant. Tom had noticed there was often a faint smell of fish in the most unlikely places in Iceland. And sulphur.

Behind them rose a steep wall of stone, topped by a dusting of snow, a mountain Tom knew well from his maps as Esja. Over the fjord, about five miles distant, a jumble of metal buildings clustered around a hill. Ships large and small buzzed around the harbour.

Reykjavík.

Tom reached into his battledress and pulled out his faithful, much-thumbed dictionary.

Kristín glanced down at it. ‘I do like that book.’

‘Why?’

‘Because whenever you take it out you want to talk to me.’

Tom glanced at her, unsure of what to make of her comment. Her expression didn’t give anything away.

Then she smiled. ‘Does it have a name?’

‘Of course not. Why should it have a name?’

‘We should give it a name.’ She looked out to sea for inspiration. ‘I know! Ari. As in Ari the Learned. Have you heard of him?’

‘Wasn’t he the first chap to write Iceland’s history in Old Norse?’

‘That’s right. Iceland’s first scholar. Here, do you have a pen?’

‘I have a pencil. An officer cannot fight a war without a pencil.’ He handed it to her.

She took the pencil and the dictionary and scribbled something in it. Tom read it and chuckled.

He looked up at the small city. ‘You used to live there, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. With Thorsteinn.’

‘Your father said he died a couple of years ago. I am sorry.’

‘He was run over by a car. He was crossing a road. Stupid driver didn’t know what he was doing.’

The levity had gone. Her expression was a mixture of sadness and bitterness. But Tom didn’t regret bringing up the subject. He knew he couldn’t understand her unless he knew about her husband. And he wanted to understand her.

‘How did you meet him?’

‘In Copenhagen. I went there to study for a year — many Icelanders do. My brother Marteinn is there now, or at least I think he is. Thorsteinn was studying there too. His family comes from Reykjavík; his father is a merchant there. We fell in love, and when we returned to Iceland we got married and moved to the city. Thorsteinn worked for his father importing goods from America: vacuum cleaners especially. We had a nice house; Gudni was born. Times were hard before the war in Reykjavík, but Thorsteinn and his father were good businessmen.’

‘Did you like Reykjavík?’

‘Oh, yes. I go back there when I can. I stay with my aunt, and I often see my sister-in-law — Thorsteinn’s sister — and her husband. And I get my hair done.’

Tom glanced at her red curls under her rather odd-looking hat. It was woollen with ear flaps and an intricate knitted pattern.

She smiled. ‘You like my hat, don’t you?’

‘Very fashionable.’

‘All the ladies in Hvalfjördur wear them. They are very warm. And you need a warm hat to ride an iron stallion.’

‘You do indeed. So, your brother is in Copenhagen? Under the Germans? What’s that like?’

‘He’s trying to get back to Iceland. It’s very difficult, as you can imagine, but in his last letter he said that he and a group of Icelanders are planning to travel through Sweden to Finland.’

‘Finland? Isn’t that the wrong direction?’

‘Apparently they can’t cross the North Sea in case they are attacked and sunk, so they are planning to sail home from the north coast of Finland.’

‘I didn’t know Finland had a north coast.’

‘Well, I hope it does. I’m worried about him.’

‘Good luck to him,’ said Tom. ‘Your other brother doesn’t like me much, does he?’

‘Oh, don’t worry about Siggi. He’s just concerned about Ástandid.’

‘Ástandid?’ Tom looked the word up in his dictionary. ‘“The situation”. What’s that?’

‘It’s what they call “the Situation” that there are twenty thousand unattached young Englishmen and Canadians in Iceland and a much smaller number of unattached young women.’

‘Oh, so the Icelandic men are worried that we’ll steal all their women?’

‘Don’t laugh. I’ve heard that in Reykjavík they’ve started publishing in the newspaper the names of girls who go to dances with British soldiers.’ She shuddered. ‘And God help any women who get pregnant. It’s a bit early for that yet, but it’s going to happen. Bound to.’

‘Is your father concerned?’ Tom asked. ‘I hope not. I like your father.’

‘And he likes you. You entertain him. And me.’ She smiled.

Then she frowned. ‘It was my fault. I told him and Siggi about something that happened in Reykjavík. It was actually the day the British landed.’

‘Did someone bother you?’

‘You could say that. I went to the bar of the Hótel Borg with my sister-in-law and her husband. Just to see what was going on. There was a rather attractive British officer there. I must have looked at him too long or something. I suppose I wouldn’t have minded if he had come over to talk to us, but he didn’t. Then we went home, and suddenly, when I was nearly at my aunt’s house, he appeared out of nowhere.

‘He started talking to me. At first, I told him I didn’t understand, and then I told him to go away. In Icelandic, of course. He ignored it. I realized he was drunk. He held on to my arm.’

That angered Tom. British soldiers had been given stern lectures about not bothering the local women. And this man was an officer! ‘Did he try to kiss you or anything?’

‘He didn’t get the chance. A soldier with three stripes on his shoulder came up and started talking to him. He told me to go home.’ She laughed. ‘And he gave the officer such a look. Like he was scum.’ Tom had to quickly look that word up.

‘Well, I apologize on behalf of my brother officer.’ Tom meant it: he was ashamed. ‘So Siggi thinks I might do the same as him?’

‘What, get drunk and try to kiss me? I don’t know what Siggi thinks.’

Tom didn’t think the kissing bit of Siggi’s idea was a bad one but decided not to say so.

‘Have you ever been outside England?’ Kristín asked. ‘Apart from Iceland?’

‘I’ve been to France and Switzerland. And I spent a summer with some cousins in Frankfurt when I was twenty. That’s when I learned to speak German as well as read it.’

‘Did you like the Germans?’

‘I liked the family I stayed with and some of their friends. But they were Jewish. It was 1934, the Nazis had come to power and the persecution had started. Suddenly, ordinary Germans had permission to be beastly to Jews, and many were.’

‘Are they still there, your cousins?’

‘Yes. They believed it was all a passing fashion, that the Germans were too civilized to do real harm to the Jews. And by the time they realized things were not going to change, they couldn’t leave the country. They’re stuck there now.’

‘Does that mean you’re Jewish?’ Kristín asked, her eyebrows raised.

‘Yes,’ said Tom. ‘I’m not very religious, but I am Jewish. And I am proud to be Jewish.’

‘I have never met a Jewish person before,’ said Kristín. ‘I don’t think there are any in Iceland. There are some in Copenhagen, of course, but I didn’t know any of them.’

‘So what do you think? Of Jewish people?’ Like all Jews in England, Tom had had to put up with occasional low-grade anti-Semitism his whole life. Nothing compared to Germany, of course, but if she didn’t like him because of his religion, he wanted to know.

She smiled. ‘I like the one I have met. So that is a one-hundred-per-cent success rate, isn’t it?’

Tom liked that answer.

‘Is that why you joined the army? Because of what the Germans were doing to the Jews?’

‘Partly. I’m a schoolteacher. I got a job teaching after university, just because I didn’t know what else to do. But actually, I like teaching small boys.’

‘You are good with Gudni.’

‘I realized that another war was coming. And yes, I wanted to fight the Germans. So I joined a territorial regiment. I was a part-time soldier until the war came. And now I’m a full-time soldier.’

‘Defending Iceland.’

‘I hope the Germans don’t come. The generals seem to think they will, but I don’t see how they can dodge the Royal Navy on the way here, or keep themselves supplied if they do land.’

Tom shook his head. ‘It’s ridiculous, really. We are fighting a great air battle over Britain to stop the Germans crossing the English Channel and we have twenty-five thousand men stuck up here a thousand miles away. Sometimes I wonder about our generals.’

‘Generals are overrated. That’s why we don’t have any.’

‘You borrow ours instead.’

‘Not willingly.’ Kristín sighed. ‘I hope the Germans don’t come. It would be strange to think of German soldiers marching here. Attacking Laxahóll.’

‘I have to think about that all the time,’ said Tom. ‘That way, we will be ready. With our fourteen footballs — if you include Gudni’s. Would he lend us his football, do you think?’

‘I’m sure he would. Let’s hope they haven’t landed while you’ve been away,’ said Kristín.

‘Here, before we go. Let me take a photo of you.’

Tom pulled out his Brownie and took a picture of Kristín standing by the bike, her ridiculous hat on her head and Reykjavík in the distance behind.