On A Small Island

by Grant Nicol

  The look he gave me suggested that as explanations go that was going to have to do for now. I would wait till later until I could get Ólafur alone and then get the rest of the answers I wanted. It seemed odd they had never tracked one another down and yet I could see there was a real bond between the two of them.

  Obviously a phone call would not have sufficed or Ólafur wouldn’t have bothered travelling the length of the country to see Dad. Maybe it was just concern at his wellbeing after what he had read in the papers or seen on the news, as he had said, but I felt there might just be more to this reunion than met the eye. I was sure that with a little patience and a little investigating I would soon know. I would bide my time and wait for their story to unfold.

  ‘It will be nice for Dad to have someone to keep him company when I’m not around, anyway,’ I said to Ólafur. ‘Do any of the horses need a run out while I’m free?’

  ‘The two of us have already taken Farfús and Leppatuska out so you could take Alvari if you like. That way he won’t end up feeling left out.’

  I took my cue to leave them alone and led Alvari out of his stall, much to the stallion’s delight. The fresh air was just what the doctor ordered for both of us. Now that it had finally stopped raining it was actually pleasant to be outdoors even though it was still bitterly cold. The ride would clear my head if nothing else and give me some time to think. Some alone time was just what I needed. Even though we had been sent to Hella to meet Diðrik and hear his story I still felt that Stefán Jón just might have been right all along. A little voice inside me was telling me that Dad held the answer to all this whether he knew it or not.

  When the three of us – Elín, Kristjana and myself, that is – had been little girls I had once asked Dad why he got so very angry at things which seemed to me to be at most slightly annoying. Either I hadn’t been old enough to understand what had been frustrating him or my youthful intuition had been right and he became furious at things that simply weren’t that infuriating.

  He had taken his time answering the question. So long in fact that I thought he had chosen to ignore me. Eventually, he told me it was because of where he had grown up. He had been, in his own words, the best of a very bad bunch. I didn’t really understand what he was getting at at the time and had let the subject of his childhood drop without becoming any wiser.

  Even now in his old age he would become angry at things unnecessarily. His outbursts had never really bothered me very much because I had always felt they were a healthy release for him. What worried me much more, and always had, in fact, were the things he never actually said. There had always been a suspicion between us girls that Dad kept way too much to himself. He used silence as a tool to keep people at bay, his own family most of all.

  I had asked my mother, Margrét, on numerous occasions why he was that way and she patiently told me time and time again that people were the way they were and that was that. She told me I would understand what she meant better when I grew up.

  By the time I had finished letting Alvari lead me in a big circle back to the stables, the hours had slipped away and I had completely lost track of time. I gave him a quick wash and a scrub before heading back to the warmth of the house. My father was nowhere to be seen but Ólafur was standing at the sink washing some dishes. I had to suppress a smile at the sight of him concentrating so hard over the dirty plates; he looked somewhat out of place in the kitchen as some men his age do. He eventually looked up and noticed I had returned.

  ‘Your father’s having a rest in his room so I thought that I’d help out a little with the cleaning up,’ he smiled. ‘Not that it’s much help, of course.’

  I picked up a tea towel to dry the dishes he had just washed.

  ‘Did you two have a good catch up, then?’

  ‘Your father’s not the boy I remember from those long ago days but it was a very long time ago, wasn’t it? It would be silly to expect that nothing’s changed since then.’

  ‘I can’t believe it’s been sixty years since you’ve seen each other. I can’t imagine going that long without seeing someone I knew. Something must have happened for the two of you to lose touch like that. Dad’s never mentioned you before, either. In fact he’s never even mentioned Höfn before. He’s always been a bit mysterious about his past and now I think it’s time I found out why.’

  ‘The last time I saw your father was in 1952. It’s a whole lifetime ago now. We were eleven years old and we behaved the way most children of that age do. It was a difficult time for our families and things could have turned out a lot better than they did, I suppose.’

  He rinsed off another plate and put it onto the drying rack beside the sink before continuing.

  ‘One stupid mistake too many all those years ago and our lives changed. Irreversibly, as it turned out. One thing leads to another and before too long you no longer remember what your life was like before the mistake was made and you’ve lost all control of how it’s going to turn out for you.’

  Ólafur finally looked up at me, having avoided my eyes so far. Now that I looked more closely at his face he looked like a man with a burden of some sort. Maybe that was what he had come to town for. To release himself from something that had been bothering him all this time. He looked back down at the sink again as he fiddled about in the suds, searching under the water for something else to wash.

  ‘Einar told me you saw the programme about the boys’ home. That was the inspiration behind my visit. I, like others, have decided it is time the truth was told about those places. There’s not many of us left now and if we don’t say something then the others will have been lost for nothing.’

  ‘And what does Dad think of all this? If he’s never said anything to his own family in all this time then what makes you think he’ll want to talk about it now?’

  ‘Because we have a duty, Ylfa. Neither of us are young men any more and there are things that need to be said while we are still around to say them. I for one feel a great responsibility. One that, in my opinion, can no longer be ignored.’

  ‘What about in Dad’s opinion? Not everyone will want to relive those times, for some there may be no need.’

  ‘I’m the reason your father wound up in Lönguhólar. It was a terrible place and very few of us who were forced to live there deserved to be there. We were all just children and many had their youth taken from them. Nothing can ever undo the things that were done there.

  It never leaves you and it never lets you forget. We can’t hide forever from what happened even if we might want to.’

  His eyes had filled with tears. Despite his age he looked like a terrified child all over again. He was the second extremely sad old man I’d talked to in a short space of time. I wanted to delve further into what Ólafur had told me but it would have to wait. He was in no shape to continue and I was feeling worn out as well. I put the tea towel down and walked away. Maybe he was right but what if he was wrong. What then?

  CHAPTER 22

  My phone rang early the next morning – too early. It was Stefán Jón letting me know that Diðrik’s niece had called the newspaper and wanted to see me. Diðrik had said she was from Selfoss or had used to live there at any rate, so I told Stefán Jón that I wasn’t sure if I was up for another road trip just yet.

  ‘Don’t worry, she’s in Reykjavík at the moment. Diðrik managed to track her down through some relatives and told her who I worked for. He related our little get-together to her and now she wants to see you.’

  ‘Did she say why?’

  ‘No. All she said was that she wants to talk to you in person and while she has nothing in particular against me, she wants to see you alone.’

  I wrote down the number he gave me and wondered what exactly it was she wanted to talk about. My head was still racing from the conversation I’d had with Ólafur the night before. There were dozens of questions I wanted to ask Dad but I was well aware that if he didn’t want to talk about it, and there was a very good chance that woul
d be the case, then he simply wouldn’t. All communication would simply shut down.

  If he had kept that part of his life quiet all this time it was unlikely to be a simple task to get him to open up about it now. I would probably just have to let him come to me in his own good time. No matter how long that might take. Like it or not, and I didn’t, I was going to have to be patient. Ólafur may well have come to see him with the notion of reliving old times but I knew from experience that my father would not be swayed in his thinking by a journey that he would undoubtedly view as sentimental nonsense.

  I decided to phone Halldóra instead. I couldn’t imagine that she would have anything much to add to the story that Diðrik had told us but it would be rude not to meet up with her if she wanted to talk. As it turned out she was just in town staying with friends while the music festival had been on. The last shows had been the night before and she was due to head home as soon as she could get the energy together to do so.

  She chose one of the city’s older cafés on Hverfisgata and told me to meet her there in an hour for coffee. I agreed and rolled out of bed into the shower. By the time I’d arrived to meet her she was on her second coffee, a necessary pick-me-up after the nocturnal exertions of the five previous nights, apparently.

  Halldóra was somewhere in her thirties, but it was hard to tell exactly where. She was a bit overweight but with a very pleasant smile and beautiful dark brown hair. She looked tired but as though she’d just been enjoying herself too much.

  I ordered myself a double cappuccino and took a seat next to her at the front window, which looked up onto the footpath outside. The café was at basement level and you got a great view of everyone’s ankles as they walked by.

  ‘I was worried that we might have given your uncle a bit of a shock showing up like that out of the blue. We were given a lead suggesting that we look in Hella for clues about what might have happened to my sisters.’

  I pulled out the now rather tatty note and handed it to her to read. She took her time doing so before handing it back.

  ‘He must have thought we were quite mad,’ I continued.

  ‘He still does, I’m afraid. At first he thought it was some sort of practical joke. In very bad taste, I might add. He hasn’t made it to the graveyard as often as he would have liked to and he thought you were winding him up.’

  My coffee arrived and I stirred some sugar into it not knowing what to say next. I felt bad for dragging Diðrik through his past with our visit. He didn’t need reminding of everything he had lost. He had to deal with it every day in his own quiet way without us bouncing into town to make him relive the whole nightmare.

  ‘I can assure you that wasn’t our intention. We were simply curious as to what our stories might have in common.’

  ‘The summer before Erla died I spent a lot of time with her. I would head across from Selfoss and stay with them on the farm. We were best friends as well as cousins. Pretty much inseparable when we were teenagers. Erla was a lovely girl but she had something of a mischievous streak to her. Being an only child, and a very attractive one at that, she used to get away with murder. Figuratively speaking, of course. She had a real soft spot for people she liked but she could also be cruel to those she wasn’t so fond of.’

  ‘Cruel? In what way?’

  ‘The summer before she died she befriended this orphan boy who had just moved to Hella. He didn’t know anybody and was terribly shy about making friends. He just wasn’t very good around other children and they all gave him a bit of a hard time because of it.’

  ‘Who was this boy?’

  ‘He was the only one who wasn’t from Hella or Hvolsvöllur, from out east somewhere. He was just awkward and you know what children are like at that age, they can be mean.

  ‘At first I couldn’t understand why she wanted to befriend him. I thought maybe she felt sorry for him but that wasn’t really her style. All the other boys at school fell over themselves trying to get her attention so when she started hanging out with this other boy, it just made them hate him all the more.

  ‘One day, though, I found out what she was all about. It was my birthday. She told me she had a special present for me and that I was to head out to the old barn on their property and wait for her at a certain time. She wouldn’t tell me why but she said that I had to hide at the back of the barn behind some old machinery that was stored there. I didn’t have a clue what she was up to but I played along with it and hid in the barn and waited for her to show.’

  ‘How old were you then?’ I asked.

  ‘I turned fifteen that day but it almost seems like a lifetime ago. She was way too young to die the way she did.’

  I didn’t think any age would be ideal to be burned alive but I didn’t say so. I didn’t mention anything but I was getting a little impatient for Halldóra to get to the point.

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘The barn stank of sheep and I really didn’t want to be there any longer than was absolutely necessary but she had assured me that it would be worth my while so I held my jumper over my nose and mouth and waited. And waited. When she finally showed she had this boy with her, the odd one with no friends. I could hear them talking but I couldn’t see them very well without giving myself away. That would have ruined everything, she’d said.

  ‘There was lots of giggling and whispering but I couldn’t tell what they were talking about, either. A couple of times I tried to get a look at what was going on but it was too risky so I just stayed hidden like I’d been told. I was so worried they were going to see me and spoil it all.

  ‘Eventually, I heard Erla call out my name, really loud so I knew it was time to come out of hiding. She said my birthday surprise was ready and I should come and get it. When I came out of my hiding place I was a little shocked at first but then just really amused. Erla was good at getting boys to do exactly what she wanted them to. She could wrap them around her finger, as they say. Not like me, I had no luck with the boys. Not then, not now.

  ‘She knew I had never seen a boy naked before so she had lured him into the barn and convinced him to let her tie him to one of the posts. She had tied his hands behind him and then stripped him, right down to his underpants. Probably with promises of what she was going to do for him.

  ‘She had her shirt off and was standing there in her bra so he probably thought he was about to get really lucky. He looked pretty relaxed at first considering his predicament but when he saw me appear out of nowhere he looked a little more tense. He hadn’t been expecting company I don’t think. He got a little annoyed with Erla and told her to untie him. She just laughed and told him not to be silly.

  ‘When he realised she had no intention of letting him off the hook he tried to wriggle free from his bonds but she had done a good job with the knots. She had grown up on a farm so she knew what she was doing. The more he thrashed about trying to get free the more upset he got and the more she laughed.

  ‘She tried to warn him that if he made too much noise someone might come to investigate what all the fuss was about. She told him that if that happened we’d run off and leave him where he was. That calmed him down a bit; he realised that he had got himself into something of a pickle and was just going to have to deal with the consequences. He was pretty annoyed by this point but probably with himself as much as anything else.’

  I had to smile at the image of the poor boy, one minute thinking he was about to pop his cherry and the next trussed up in front of two girls. Boys would do pretty much anything to get laid. Didn’t matter if they were fifteen or fifty.

  ‘Then she pulled out a knife and told him that if he behaved himself she would cut him free and let him get dressed again. He said that was all he wanted to do, his expectations had dropped to the point where he was happy to just go home.

  ‘She walked up to him and kissed him. At first he didn’t know what she was up to but then he started to enjoy himself. She told him he had been a good boy and soon we could all go home.

/>   ‘She told him that I had never seen a boy naked before and that he was going to be my first. She ran the knife gently over the ties that held him to the pole as a tease but then cut off his underpants instead and wished me happy birthday.

  ‘All their kissing had definitely had the desired effect on him and he was really embarrassed, as I’m sure you can imagine. He went bright red and started yelling at her to let him go. Well, she was right about someone hearing all that noise. Diðrik had been wandering the farm as he tended to do all day long and he came to investigate what he thought should have been an empty barn. When he reached the door, he called out to see who was there and we did exactly what she’d said we would. We ran for our lives.

  ‘We disappeared out of a door that had been left half open at the back of the barn and didn’t look back. I know we should have untied him before we escaped but there just wasn’t time.

  ‘Diðrik walked in on this boy standing naked in his barn and screaming his head off in a state of adolescent arousal and freaked out. He took off his belt and whipped him ferociously. He eventually let him go but not before he had given him a real hiding. He probably thought he’d been trying to deflower his little girl and wouldn’t have been too wide of the mark. We shouldn’t have left him there but we were afraid of getting caught too. After that he never talked to anyone again and became silent, like a stone.’

  I still didn’t understand what her story had to do with me, or anything for that matter. I was starting to fear that she was just some kind of crazy lonely person who had found someone to listen to her stories that could quite easily have been completely made up.

  ‘Why are you telling me this story, Halldóra? What does it have to do with me and my family?’

  I tried not to sound too put out but I really couldn’t see what she was getting at. She looked a little exasperated herself but it could have just been the hangover or the look on my face that had done it. I probably shouldn’t have interrupted her and just let her finish.