by Jenny Colgan
Posy fit her phone between her two hats. ‘Not bad.’
‘You sound a bit muffled.’
‘I’m very far away.’
‘Yeah, that’s not really how it works.’
‘Oh, yeah.’
Posy looked around, heading up a deserted, stony cove in the middle of a dark afternoon. London could have vaporised and she would have been none the wiser.
‘So, have you seen anywhere that might be good for a wedding? ’ asked Matt.
‘Uhm, what? Uh, actually. No. Not really. I’m not sure if it’s our wedding . . . uhm, temperature. It’s actually pretty bleak up here.’
‘Well, obviously,’ said Matt patiently, as if explaining things to a child. ‘If it was really great and amazing, loads of people would live there.’
‘So how are you?’ Posy could hear the chinking of glasses and laughter in the background. ‘Are you with Baz in the winebar? At lunchtime?’
‘No, actually,’ said Matt. He sounded a little distracted. ‘One of my clients was having a party and I thought it would be good business for me to attend.’
‘What, so they can see a personal trainer get drunk in the middle of the day?’
‘It’s just a little reception,’ said Matt. ‘Nothing fancy.’
‘Same here,’ said Posy.
‘Right,’ said Matt, and then there was a silence. Posy wondered if he was cosying up to his clients to see if they would back him. That wasn’t really Matt’s style, though, he was pretty straightforward. Sometimes too straightforward.
‘OK then,’ said Posy. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow night.’
‘OK, love,’ said Matt. And he hung up.
‘Was that the great lover?’ said Chris. ‘Telling you you were his one and only darling and not to run off and do anything silly in the braes?’
‘Just checking in,’ mumbled Posy. Where was Matt? It wasn’t like him to socialise at work.
‘Well, that sounds lovely,’ said Chris.
‘Shut up,’ said Posy. ‘Thanks for the lovely freezing walk in the dark. Can we go back now? Hey, Shetland doesn’t have a cinema, does it? Because I am just in the mood for . . .’
But just as she said this, they crested the hill. Posy suddenly became aware of lots of noise she hadn’t noticed before - drumming, and chanting. And as they walked over the grass-ridden dunes, she saw suddenly the peak of an almighty fire growing higher and higher in the air. Next to the fire was a beautiful carved longship, its dragon head prow held up straight and strong, and along its length, round shields painted red and green. Standing over it and hauling it on ropes were two lines of men, all bearded, dressed in furs and wearing horned helmets.
For a mad instant, Posy thought that she had fallen out of time; that she was witnessing the arrival of the Vikings, en route to America, or here to plunder what they could. Then she blinked rapidly and realised that it couldn’t possibly be. She glanced round, to see Chris and Elspeth killing themselves laughing at her horrified reaction.
‘Welcome,’ said Chris grandly, sweeping out his long arms, ‘to Up Helly Aa!’
Along the grey stone beach, with the clear, silver water reflecting the last traces of light in the sky, were hundreds of people, all rendered oddly genderless and shapeless by the heavy clothes they were wearing. Toddlers in Fair Isle jumpers and hats stumbled drunkenly up and down the stones, pointing at the fire with delight, as the Vikings pulled their furs closely around themselves and poured copious amounts of mead down their throats to keep warm.
Chris and Elspeth were immediately greeted by people they knew; they attempted to introduce Posy, but there were just too many of them, and Posy found their accents - Scottish mixed with Scandinavian, all cascading in a rapid sing-song - beautiful to listen to but, often, difficult to make out.
Instead she sat back and enjoyed the scene, as more and more people came to watch the spectacle - an annual festival celebrating the Vikings, Chris had told her, rather redundantly. Chris had produced a bottle from his voluminous pockets and passed it to her. She was surprised to find it contained Bacardi and Coke, very much her favourite from uni when they were feeling flush. She hadn’t drunk it in years and was very touched that he remembered.
‘Thank you,’ she said, smiling, then drank deeply and almost immediately felt warmer.
‘Go steady on that stuff,’ said Elspeth.
‘Don’t be daft! It’s Up Helly Aa!’ said Chris. ‘Everyone has to get stonking, otherwise you’ll freeze to death. Just don’t frighten the children.’
Posy took another long swig from the bottle, then offered it to the group that had accumulated around them, who offered her theirs back. She moved as close as she could to the fire, feeling it warming her face and hands, although even the three pairs of socks didn’t seem to be able to do much for her feet.
‘Welcome!’ roared a great Viking, obviously the chief. He had a beard that looked like it had been waiting all its life for this moment - full and bushy and red, with odd bits down the sides in plaits. ‘To Up Helly Aa! Where we remember and celebrate our great ancestors!’
‘Are these the ancestors that came ashore and basically slaughtered everyone and did pillage and stuff?’ said Posy, for whom the rum was beginning to take effect.
‘Ssh,’ said Chris. ‘Hey, listen, there’s a reason the people here are taller than mainland Scots. All the Viking blood.’
‘OK,’ said Posy. But her attention was distracted as a large group of Vikings commenced hauling the wooden longship along its runners. Lying on top of the boat, dressed in full ceremonial Viking garb, his arms crossed on his chest, his shield on top of it, was a man. Posy’s eyes went wide.
‘That’s not . . .’
‘A real man. No. It’s an effigy. They don’t burn real men,’ said Chris.
‘That Wicker Man film was not helpful,’ added Elspeth.
‘Think of it as symbolic,’ said Chris. ‘It can be anyone you like. This year it’s the EU Head of Fisheries Policy and Management.’
Posy watched. Her eyes stinging a little from a lot of alcohol, smoke from the fire and the howling wind, she looked at the figure on the boat and suddenly felt sadness and pity for it. Even though she knew it was ludicrous.
‘Burning the image of a man,’ mused Chris, who had been liberally applying himself to the whisky bottle. ‘Have you ever done that, Posy?’
Posy looked at him. ‘No,’ she said.
‘But that’s what you’re doing now, isn’t it? Burning your past? Burning the memory of the other guys so you can marry this one?’
There wasn’t a trace of bitterness in his voice, but even so, Posy realised he was right. As the chief Viking held up a flaming torch lit from the huge bonfire, and the other Vikings prepared to push the boat out to sea, she felt, suddenly, a strange lightness, as the boat erupted and the effigy itself took flame. The crowd cheered and the sight itself felt ancient and atavistic, as the men braved the freezing waves to let the boat catch the current and bear itself away.
‘That’s how I want to be buried,’ said Posy fervently.
‘You’re not allowed,’ said Chris. ‘I know, it’s not fair.’
‘Well, promise you’ll do it to me secretly in the middle of the night then.’
Chris laughed. ‘OK. Yes. Me too. We’ll have to secretly build the longships in the dead of night. What about you, Elspeth?’
Elspeth looked at him, the firelight reflected in her eyes. ‘I’ll throw myself on yours, silly.’
Chris kissed her, suddenly, just as the effigy flamed up sharply as it caught light, and the boat sailed further and further away, an outline of bright, flaring light against the all-encompassing darkness.
Posy smiled to herself. Finally. This was what she was doing: burning and celebrating the memories of other men who have been, and leaving the life she was going to clean and new again. She stood apart, as Chris and Elspeth embraced, no longer bickering, but a solid, happy unit with its face pointed north.
Po
sy sneakily blew a kiss to the boat, now drifting towards the north-east, as if finding its way back to its Scandinavian home.
It was Chris, she knew, on that boat. And he, as she could see, already was home. And it was time she went home, too; back to home, back to love. Matt.
‘Are you ready,’ said Chris finally, turning to her, when the boat was just a flicker of light on the distant horizon, ‘for a bit of a hooley?’
Posy thought about it for five seconds. She was casting off her old skin, too; she’d said farewell to the old her, just as Up Helly Aa celebrated the end of the old year. She should celebrate.
‘Yes, I am!’
The local pub was basically just a shed in the middle of nowhere. But it had a fire blazing in the grate, local beer and much whisky behind a makeshift bar, as well as a full army of fiddle players and accordionists. It was also absolutely heaving, and so warm that everyone tore off their jackets and coats as quickly as they could.
‘Do you all write your name in your things?’ asked Posy, looking for a corner to dump her stuff, only to find it already completely overflowing with North Face jackets and oilskins.
‘No,’ said Elspeth reprovingly. ‘We share.’ Then she took off the last of her jumpers to reveal, underneath, the most sensational red Viking dress - there was criss-cross embroidery all the way down the full bodice, before the velvet turned into a skirt. Let loose of her woollen tammy, her long, strawberry blonde hair cascaded in braids, and her make-up free face, which Posy had registered as so pale and plain, suddenly formed the perfect accompaniment to her colourful hair and dress.
‘Elspeth!’ Posy exclaimed before she could help herself. ‘You look beautiful!’
For the first time, Elspeth smiled at her in a way that was neither nervous nor sarcastic. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘I agree,’ said Chris, and whirled her off romantically, her braids whizzing, on to the makeshift dance floor. Posy fought her way to the bar and, after checking to see what everyone else was doing, put down a more or less random amount of money and picked up three whiskies.
When Chris and Elspeth failed to reappear, she decided on balance to drink them all, and before she knew it, she, too, was being twirled around the dance floor, by a very hairy and muscular Viking. She gave herself up to the incredibly loud sound of the fiddles and pipes, stamping and turning as close to everyone else as she could. The Viking knew what he was doing so she let herself follow him and, before she knew it, found herself red-faced and full of laughter.
‘What’s your name?’ she gasped.
‘Erik,’ he said, and she had no idea if this were true or simply his Viking name, but thought it was too funny to ask any more so kept on dancing nonetheless. The fiddles grew wilder and stranger - the music seemed no longer Scottish, but something older and more foreign, as if it came from the rocks themselves - and Posy found she needed to cool down.
Outside, the cold sobered her up immediately: it was heart-stopping. Erik the Viking immediately put his fur wrap around her.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘Not at all,’ he said, then, without warning, for the second time in two days, someone leant in to kiss her. Maybe if you lived in a place where the weather was unpredictable, you learnt to grab your chances while you could, wondered Posy, while she could still think. Or maybe it was just the Viking way. Yes, that was it - the Viking way.
‘Hey!’ she said, as his bearded head descended towards hers. She’d never fended off an attempted kiss from someone with a large beard before. Not to mention the horned helmet. ‘Hang on!’
‘I can’t hang on!’ said the Viking unapologetically. ‘I’m a Viking!’
‘Oh, I see your point,’ said Posy, frantically pushing him away. ‘But still. I’m not up for rape and pillage. I’m meant to be on a voyage of discovery.’
‘Well,’ said the Viking, ‘you might discover that you like kissing Vikings.’
‘I’m sure they’re very nice,’ said Posy. ‘Thank you very much. But I think actually that I’ve had enough discovery for today and I should probably go home.’
‘Nei!’ said the Viking. ‘Nei! Ikke gå!’
Posy sized up the situation quickly, and, as he bent in again, grabbed his horned hat and threw it as far away as she could.
‘Swina bqllr,’ said the Viking, and charged after it. Posy dashed back into the bar, put on five layers of completely random clothing - thus rendering her, as she had hoped, completely unrecognisable - and found Chris and Elspeth to take her home.
Posy is hungover.
Catching a flight the next morning felt both horrible, courtesy of a dramatic whisky headache - in the end, the three of them had sat up very late, she and Chris telling Elspeth hoary old university tales of derring-do - and an odd sensation Posy had of being trapped between two worlds, as if catching a flight shouldn’t be possible in this tiny, old-fashioned corner of the country. Elspeth had softened up entirely, especially when she heard about the amorous Viking. It looked like the message had finally got through that she wasn’t there to cart Elspeth’s man back to London. That and all the whisky, of course.
‘I can’t believe I never got to see the Morrisons,’ she said to Chris, as he gave her one of his characteristic bear hugs at Departures.
‘Next time,’ he promised. And as she grinned reluctantly, he said, ‘Or we’ll see you at your wedding.’
‘Oh yes!’ said Posy. ‘You know, we have something called Waitrose.’
‘Waitrose? Really? Will I like it?’
‘I think so.’
She hugged Elspeth. ‘Thanks for putting me up.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Elspeth, graciously. ‘It’s still funny to think of Chris going out with you for all that time.’
‘I know,’ said Posy. ‘But I think he was probably always just waiting for someone like you.’
Elspeth smiled and looked embarrassed, and shuffled closer to Chris.
‘OK, go, city girl,’ said Chris. ‘You can put your heels back on on the plane.’
‘I will do that,’ said Posy. Then she slept heartily all the long long long way down the British Isles.
Chapter Ten
‘You have a rosy look to you,’ said Fleur, suspiciously.
They were sitting in Tiger Tiger, close to Posy’s office. She couldn’t believe how busy and crammed London was, even though she’d only been away for the weekend.
‘You do,’ said Leah, who was wearing a tunic that made her look really pregnant, even though she was incredibly slim. Posy reckoned it would be a good thing if it meant no men bothered to approach them, in case they were talking about breast pumps or something. She needed some girl talk.
‘No, I don’t,’ said Posy. ‘No one tried to, like, snog me or anything. Honestly.’
Leah and Fleur swapped looks.
‘I mean, it was just a bit of fresh air . . . in the open air . . . countryside et cetera.’
‘Can we buy Posy some more wine?’ asked Fleur hopefully.
‘I don’t want any more wine. I drank too much wine. And whisky. Mostly whisky.’
‘And?’ said Leah.
‘And nothing. It was nice actually.’
‘Nice?’
‘Nice. For a small rock in the middle of the ocean.’
‘And what about El Stinko?’
‘Stop calling him El Stinko, Fleur! It’s not funny and is actually quite offensive.’
‘It’s not,’ said Fleur. ‘It’s useful and descriptive. And it means when you’re in a room with him you don’t need to check to see if it’s him because you’ll already know it’s El Stinko. So it’s more of a timesaver than anything else.’
Posy took another small sip. She was still suffering, two days on, from her whisky hangover. Matt had been out working when she’d returned the day before, and she’d hardly seen him. She was glad. She didn’t like the idea of lying to him, plus she wanted time for the red bristle marks to fade from her cheeks.
‘So?’
prompted Leah. ‘Was he living ferally and desperate for a glimpse of civilisation?’
‘Did he need you to save him from his freezing, bear-like existence?’
‘Chris is fine,’ said Posy. ‘He lives on a boat.’
Leah squinted. ‘You mean, he has a boat to live on?’
‘Yes.’
‘But he doesn’t live in, e.g., the Caribbean or the Mediterranean or western Australia . . .’
‘No.’
‘Or the Bahamas or Hawaii or . . .’
‘OK, you’ve made your point. The boat was quite cosy, actually.’
‘Once you got used to the—’
‘FLEUR! Shut up now!’
Fleur pouted. ‘I was only saying.’ She gave a big sigh. ‘Why am I sitting here with you two killjoys when I could be getting in touch with my inner guardian angel?’
‘That’s a good question,’ said Posy. ‘Why aren’t you?’
Fleur pouted.
‘And he’s got a nice girl in the Shetlands,’ Posy went on.
‘Aha!’ said Leah. ‘What’s she like? Does she look like you?’
‘Or does she not look like you but he’s made her have lots of plastic surgery to look like you?’ said Fleur.
Leah and Posy stared at Fleur until, finally, she got up and left, muttering something about a party they weren’t invited to.
‘What has got into her?’ said Posy. ‘She’s being unconscionable. Just so rude all the time!’
Leah shrugged. ‘I know, it’s strange. She’s taken this idea of you talking to your exes really weirdly.’
‘Well, it wasn’t her place to decide if she liked them or not.’
‘I know. Maybe she’s jealous.’
‘Of me? Fleur is never jealous of me. In fact, she never misses an opportunity to rub in exactly how much better than me she is in every single way.’
‘Well, she wouldn’t bother doing that if she wasn’t jealous, would she?’
Posy thought about it. ‘Hmm. Maybe not. But she’s always been the pretty, popular one.’
‘Yes, and look. There you are, taking a measured, mature look at the main relationships in your life, prior to settling down with a lovely man.’