Old Eddie had dropped a branch or two over the years. That sounded kinder than saying he’d lost his marbles. The wife always called him Old Eddie, usually in a tight-lipped, I-could-say-more-but-won’t tone of voice. Never ‘Dad’ or ‘Pa’, nothing so chummy, and over time Harry had fallen into the same habit. That note to Jack was typical, going on as if Eddie was some latter-day Viking. There was a whole shelf full of books about Nordic stuff over the desk. Harry pulled one down that was bristling with bookmarks: a great, fat, leather-bound thing called ‘Heimskringla’. It wasn’t even in English, so he doubted that it was worth much.
It had been a shock to see Jack at the hospice. There was something about the boy that always put Harry on the back foot, so things came out wrong. Two years since he’d seen him, what with the latest deployment, and Jack had aged more than that. You could see it round his eyes. And he was hiding something, too, like he was hunched over a hurt. It reminded Harry of when Jack was a boy, when the other kids were bullying him but he wouldn’t let on. He was bright, always had his nose in a book, like Old Eddie, and it wasn’t the sort of school that tolerated a smart-arse. Jack didn’t say anything, he just bottled it up inside him and asked for boxing lessons for Christmas and birthday, and worked a paper round to pay for more. Harry always thought it was unfair that Jack was the one who got expelled after he beat the crap out of the ringleader. When Harry saw him at the hospice he’d got that same, hunted look. That stupid dive across the carpet was worrying.
Jack should never have joined the marines. He always tried to act the hard man but there was a softness inside him, like he was still weak even if his body was fit. He always had to be different, did Jack. Always had to go one better. Harry had known it would end badly.
Maybe he should have gone down to see the boy after he got back. Would have done, if it weren’t for that stuck-up bitch he married. Harry just wasn’t welcome down there, and Jack obviously wasn’t bothered to come and see them. At least he came back to the cottage after Old Eddie died. Not that he needed much persuading. Had a key, it seemed. And there was some of his stuff in the small bedroom, so he’d slept there before. That should have warned him.
Not that Jack was any help. He just sat in the garden, drinking, and it wasn’t even six o’clock.
*
Tilly came. Said she had to wait for her Darren to get home and look after the kids before she came over. She started work on the dining room and Harry let her take the dinner service that had been her grandmother’s. She’d brought boxes and bubble wrap, and thought she might as well fill up the space in the back of her car with saucepans and anything useful from the kitchen.
She didn’t stay long. Kids to put to bed. Still, it helped. Harry went through the desk and the cupboards in the front room while she packed stuff, and talked to her through the wall. Seems Eddie never threw anything away. There were boxes upon boxes of bills and correspondence. Savings books and investments, too. Harry didn’t know Eddie played the market. It was adding up to a tidy sum, with the cottage. Not enough to retire on, even if he wanted to, but then the money was a bonus because he was only planning on the cottage.
*
Jack was asleep when Harry took him a mug of tea a bit later. He thought the boy might want to go for a walk, and maybe have a chat. Harry used to enjoy their walks, when Jack was a lad. They could talk, back then. But Jack was curled around that carving in the shelter like it was a pet dog, and he was snoring, with one leg stretched out and the other hooked under him. He’d finished the bottle of wine, and he looked quite innocent, like he’d forgotten whatever was worrying him and was a kid again.
Daughters are easier than sons. You can hug daughters.
*
Harry hadn’t realised that Old Eddie kept a diary. The early ones, as Harry leafed through them, were written neatly like he was writing out a report and thinking about every word. In Volume 39, the one in the desk, the writing was all awkward angles like his knuckles. The last two entries must have been just before he went into the hospice.
*
24 th April. Wind Westerly, 3, showers.
He’s coming for me. He wants it, but how can I give it back? I tried. Honest, I tried.
And the whispering. Half the night, it went on, until the tide turned and swallowed the beach.
They always stay on the beach, the whisperers. They strain up the hill towards him, calling him back, like he’s their enemy and they want to drag him away. But he just stands there, under the trees, as if the whisperers are nothing to him.
He’s getting more powerful, feeding off my weakness. When I’m dead he’ll drag us both down, the dragon and me. Sail us off to serve Hel in Niflheim.
Or will it be Rán under the waves?
Jack’s coming tomorrow. He’ll keep the warrior away. And the whisperers. The life force is still strong in Jack.
*
Poor raving bastard. He’d shouted about giving something back in the hospice. But then, as Harry knew, Eddie had lost a branch or two by the end. But one day later his writing made perfect sense, as if sanity had flipped back in.
*
25 th April. Wind WNW Variable 4-5, intermittent rain.
It’s a heavy thing, this cancer. If you added up every revolting bit there’d be just a few ounces of alien meat, but I still can’t sleep for the weight of it.
Last night in the cottage. Over 50 years I’ve been here.
Jack came to help, bless him, and stayed. He sleeps lightly as well. For once I could share the demon hour before dawn with another human, and blow steam off tea as if I could puff away the funk. We sat in the garden in waterproofs and felt rain on our faces and I knew I was still alive.
And it was just me and Jack, thank God.
*
Harry felt a bit guilty when he read that bit. Eddie used a lot of words, sometimes, like Jack. Maybe, Harry thought, he should have been closer to Old Eddie at the end, but then he’d got a business to run. Going well, too, but he needed to keep on top of it. Sometimes, in the security trade, success means making damn sure nothing goes wrong. And the only way to be sure is to be there.
There was a file of correspondence from solicitors in a cupboard. That’s where Harry found a copy of the will. It was recent, dated about the same time as that crazy letter to Jack. It was very short, but Harry had to read it several times while it sunk in, because he couldn’t believe it. Eddie had left enough to Tilly for her to buy a decent, small car. That was fair. Harry didn’t mind that. There were larger bequests to her children, which surprised him a bit, to be held in trust until they were older. After that there was a single, bald sentence.
I give my remaining Residuary Estate after payment of debts funeral and testamentary expenses to my grandson Jack Ahlquist, who has given me the chance to be the father I always should have been.
No other explanation. No mention of Harry or anyone else. That boy had wormed his way in there and persuaded a mad old man to change his will. Robbing his own family, for God’s sake. When Harry went out into the garden he was so angry that if Jack hadn’t been protected by that shelter he might have hit him. As it was, Harry smashed his fist into the side of the upended boat and Jack jolted awake, panic in his eyes until he recognised Harry and then he just looked puzzled.
‘You knew, didn’t you!’ Harry thrust the will into his face, all scrunched up in his hand.
‘Knew what, Dad?’ The boy started to look defiant, the way he always did when he’d done wrong and was going to be punished, but Harry wasn’t going to spell it out.
‘Of all the underhand, conniving tricks!’
Jack blinked, and swallowed in that lip-licking way that told Harry he was still drunk.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
Harry hated it when the boy answered back. ‘You know damn well what I’m talking about.’ He threw the will at him and Jack’s eyes went hard like someone who was ready to fight.
‘I’ll challenge it. Undue influe
nce, or whatever they call it. Exploiting a vulnerable old man.’
‘Let’s see what you’re so upset about.’ Jack spoke so softly that it was dangerous, unnatural, and he kept his eyes on Harry’s as he bent forward to pick up the paper from the ground. He was still staring at Harry as he smoothed it against his leg.
Harry wasn’t going to stay and watch Jack’s little charade. He turned away because if he had to stare at that blazing innocence for one more second he might have done something he’d regret.
He was so bloody angry that he smashed his Jaguar on the way home. Turned out into the path of another car. No one hurt, but it would cost. Big time. Now that was his fault. Well, legally it was.
Chapter Two: Bálför
(Old Norse: funeral pyre)
From the Saga of King Guthrum , c a AD 875
That winter King Guthrum laid down a mighty dragonhead ship for his son Jarl Harald, whom he loved and honoured most of all. Of oak did he build it, cut finely that it might bend with the sea, with benches of pine for twenty oars on the one hand and twenty on the other. The fittings were splendid, as befits a great jarl, and a richly carved strake rose to a wondrous dragonhead at the prow. As was the custom, this could be taken down, like the helm of a warrior, lest it offend the landvættir .[1]
Then Guthrum and Harald made sacrifice in this wise: Harald took a stallion that he loved, and calmed the beast, covering its eyes that it might not see whence the blow would come. Then they took their axes and struck; Harald between the stallion’s eyes, and Guthrum at its neck such that the sound of the blows was one, and none could tell who made the killing wound. So mightily did Guthrum wield his axe that the stallion’s head was wholly struck off, and the wise ones said that the fall of the blood was good, for the dragonhead tasted blood before ever a bowl was brought to its mouth.
Then Harald knew that the gods would sail with them, and would find them even in the furthest reaches of the sea, for the dragonhead was truly consecrated to the Æsir.
I: GEORGE
George Fenton enjoyed early mornings at Furzey Marina. She’d take a start-of-the-day turn around the boatyard, seeing who was around, while she savoured the plinkplinkplink noise of halyards slapping against aluminium masts in the wind. The sound always made her smile inside and think ‘Why the feck aren’t I on the water?’ but she didn’t sail at weekends. Weekends were for rich folk who could afford to keep a boat idle during the week while they made their dosh: the clients who expected her and Chippy Alan the shipwright to work their arses off looking after them. There was always something that needed fixing before they could put to sea, and there was usually someone she wanted to find, like when they hadn’t paid their bill.
It was mainly couples at weekends. A friendly bunch, for the most part. The men would smile at her boobs and forget they had a tide to catch. The women in their wake would roll their eyes in a way that reminded George of a stained-glass window she’d seen in a church: some martyred saint with her eyes on heaven and a big, open ‘O’ of a mouth. She’d looked as if she was only pretending to be suffering, and really having way too much fun under her robes.
George didn’t like strangers wandering around the boatyard. Stuff went missing, and she had to answer to the owners even though she was just the Office Manager. So when she saw some guy put a ladder against Mad Eddie’s boat she swore to herself and wandered over. Draca had been beached for years, propped up on timber legs on an old, tidal hard at the edge of the boatyard. Mad Eddie Ahlquist had paid the yard to unstep her broken mast, take out her ballast and float her in at the top of a ‘spring’ tide. She’d been there ever since, with her ballast put back to hold her down. She wetted her keel every tide and looked sorrier whenever George strolled that way. Green, slimy stains ran down her cheeks from her hawsepipe at the bow and from the cockpit drains under her counter, so that she looked like she was crying at one end and shitting herself at the other.
By the time she reached Draca, the man was leaning over the gunwale like a bum on stilts. When she challenged him he came down the ladder slowly, one rubber-booted step at a time, as if he was unsure of his footing.
‘Jack Ahlquist,’ he introduced himself. That checked her. She’d been about to get all aggressive. Now he’d turned, she could see the likeness. Same shoulders, same Nordic cheekbones. And totally fit enough for a girl to put her shoulders back.
‘George Fenton.’
He blinked at the ‘George’.
‘My mum called me Georgia. George seems to have stuck. I’m also known as Georgie Girl to my more sexist customers, and the Boatyard Bitch to the ones what don’t pay their bills.’ She was talking too much.
He had a nice smile. ‘This is my grandfather’s boat.’ He touched the hull and frowned at the smear his fingers left in the dirt.
‘Then tell him to let us do some work on her. It’s a crying shame to leave her like this.’ The dirt matting the hull would wash off. Other decay might be more fundamental.
‘I would if I could. He’s dead.’ He turned, pretending to move away from the ladder, but probably hiding his face, like he was being brusque to mask his feelings.
George wasn’t surprised about Eddie. She made sympathetic noises at Jack Ahlquist’s back, but she’d known it was coming when she last saw him, around Christmas. They’d had a weird conversation about rigging a jury mast in Draca so that she could carry a square sail again and put to sea like a Viking longship. Just one trip, he said. He never did anything about it, though. That day he’d asked Chippy Alan to unstep the figurehead, and he’d taken it away with him. George thought about Eddie, afterwards, because he reminded her of her mum before she died. Masses older than her, of course, but when George shut her eyes there’d been a greyness about Eddie in her mind. Not the grey of age, which can be quite healthy, but a dark, sick grey turning black at the edges. George knew what that meant. She’d seen it in her mum. The black takes over and then they die.
Now here was his grandson. An outdoorsy type, maybe an Aries.
‘Got the key?’ she asked him. ‘Want to look?’
He hung back, so she went up the ladder first and regretted it halfway up when her shorts and bare legs went past his face. She looked down from the top, half expecting Jack to be staring up at her bum, but he was touching the hull again with his fingers splayed to show his wedding ring. George got the message. Arrogant sod. More of a Taurus, perhaps. She turned away as he began to climb.
Draca was a fair size: at least twelve feet in the beam and perhaps forty in length, plus her bowsprit, and flush-decked, with just the cockpit, a ‘doghouse’ cabin hatch and a skylight to break the sweep of teak. When George had first come to the yard about four years before, Draca’s deck had stretched away like a dance floor. Now it was a lumberyard of spars, draped with ropes. Drifts of leaf pulp had blown into corners, rotted and grown seedlings. Then, she’d had a mast and rigging. Now, she was a hulk.
Jack moved aft unsteadily, at a crouch, keeping well away from the edge. True, it was about twelve feet down to the hard, and there was only a shin-height wooden rail, but he looked nervous, like he was unsure of his footing. When they reached the cockpit, they found it half-full with a dirty scum of water, deep enough to cover the gratings and lap over the top of Jack’s boot as he stepped down into it. He didn’t seem to notice. The drains must have been clogged with leaves or debris, and he had to wade around in a mess of sodden rigging that had probably been there since they took out the broken mast.
‘Shall I lead on?’ Jack fumbled for the key, his boots trailing water as he stepped over the companion ladder coaming. George slipped off her trainers.
‘How old is she?’ She’d never been below deck in Draca. Her mast had sprung the last time Eddie took her out, which was soon after George arrived, and she’d been laid up ever since.
At the bottom of the steps, Jack turned in a space that had a chart-table to starboard and was cramped by a large, cast-iron engine casing just off the centre-line to port
. George had seen similar spaces in other, classic boats, a kind of working ‘wet space’ where the watch on deck could come in oilskins and boots to look at charts or make a brew.
‘Nineteen oh-five. One of the last of the sailing pilot cutters.’
‘What kind of engine is that?’
‘That,’ Jack said, ‘is Scotty.’ He made it sound like a pet dog.
‘As in “Beam me up, Scotty”?’
‘Nah. As in good, Glasgow engineering. Pre-war vintage.’
‘And it still works?’
‘It used to. Bit temperamental. Grandpa wanted to change the ship as little as possible, so he kept it.’
Jack tapped a narrow door, port side, forward of the engine. ‘Heads in there. Bit cramped. Fold-down basin and no shower. Foul-weather gear on the other side.’
He swung open mahogany double doors and went forward into the saloon, leaving a trail of wet footprints. He seemed even taller, now she was barefoot, and broad enough to fill the doorway. She followed, and stepped into an atmosphere.
Classic boats are like old buildings; sometimes you can sense a mood. When George was little, her mum used to drag her round stately homes where she’d gawp at the silver and oil paintings and lawns, and once in a while George would pick up an atmosphere. Happy ones, sad ones, downright creepy ones, maybe all of those in different rooms, and usually stronger in places like the nursery or the servants’ rooms in the attics. Hardly ever in the grand, gilded staterooms. Her mum said it was because she was psychic and born with a caul over her head, but then her mum had some pretty weird ideas. George just knew that people leave something of themselves when they go.
Draca Page 4