‘Charl said you won a medal.’ George broke an easy silence that stretched far back along the wake.
Jack shrugged. ‘I did something stupid and got away with it.’
‘Something about running up a hill under fire,’ she prompted.
A day before, Jack would have closed down the conversation. Now, he didn’t mind her asking.
‘Tell me about it.’
Refuse, evade or dilute?
‘Please? Take my mind off last night?’
Jack swallowed. He’d give her the short version.
‘My troop were searching a compound. I’d sited a machine-gun on the hill above us to give us cover, but the Taliban crept in and knocked it out with a rocket-propelled grenade.’ Jack paused, assembling his words. Draca danced under his fingertips on a morning to lift the spirits. ‘What I did wasn’t brave, in the truest sense of the word. Brave people consciously put themselves into danger. I just got angry. Bloody angry. I also knew that if the Taliban reached that gun position before I did, they would turn the gun on us and we’d be in deep shit.’
‘So you ran up the hill.’
‘And was halfway up it before I realised how many of them there were. That was scary.’ More than scary. He’d put his head down and screamed one, long, twenty-yard ‘fuuuuck’ until a bullet knocked him over. ‘By then I could only go forwards because the safest place would be behind the gun.’ He’d fallen into that sangar almost gibbering with fear, rolling over, shitshitshitshit, and squeezing off wild bursts at anything that moved.
If George could really read his mind she’d know he didn’t deserve that wide-eyed look. He decided to balance the facts with a little honesty.
‘I learned things about myself that day. Uncomfortable things.’
George waited, watching him. She was a good listener.
‘We so rarely saw the enemy, you see. There’d be an IED by the road, or a suicide bomber in a truck or a burka or an RPG from behind a wall. For once, I saw men with AK-47s who were trying to kill my men. Clear, legitimate targets, in the open.’ Jack paused on the brink of a deep truth. ‘One second I was in a funk, the next I’d grabbed the machine-gun and I felt invincible.’ Rabbit to Rambo in two bursts from a Minimi.
‘So what was the uncomfortable thing you learned?’
‘I hosed them away, and it felt good. It was payback time for every sniper round, every IED, every dead marine. I watched them drop, one after another, and it was exhilarating. Bloody marvellous. So if you like what you see in me, George, you aren’t seeing everything.’
‘And afterwards?’
Oh, she was sharp. Afterwards he’d wished he could hide from the respect, even awe, that followed. He’d walked that slope, later, and stared at the bodies lying humped in the killing ground. One of them was so young that he had just a downy moustache and fine hairs where his beard would have grown. Blue Afghan eyes had stared at the sky, and stayed staring at the sky as flies crawled across them, sucking at the whites.
‘Afterwards I felt like a psychopath.’ And a failure, as he sorted through the effects of his dead marine.
George lifted one foot off the bench and pushed it gently against his knee. ‘I’d say you did your job. Frigging well, by the sounds of it.’
*
Chippy took their lines as they came alongside in the marina, his face tight and disapproving. That irritated Jack. Who did Chippy think he was, her father? And besides, George was a grown woman and nothing had happened, had it? Perhaps that made him a bit cool as George left. She and Chippy moved off towards the marina office together, a gangly old man and a pint-sized woman in tight jeans, and Jack decided he needed to talk to Charlotte again, soon. This marital limbo couldn’t go on.
He grabbed a couple of hours of sleep, crashing in the sleeping cabin where George had started the night. Part of him wanted to prove to himself that there wasn’t a problem there, but there was also a practical reason. The scuttles were easily shaded, so it could be a dark space even in daylight.
He slept deeply, wonderfully, and dreamed of Draca riding the slow, long swell of the open sea. She climbed the side of each wave under the square sail alone, pushed by a following wind, and at the crest she hung there with her bow clear of the water as the wave passed underneath. Then the bow would drop until she smacked the downward slope and sent a flat sheet of foam hissing away over the surface. The dragon stood proud at the bow, rising high above where the bowsprit should have been, and a man that could have been Miller rode the dragon as if it was a horse, with a leg dangling over the sea on each side. One of his arms was wrapped around the dragon’s neck, and the other waved above and behind him for balance, rodeo style. He whooped as they fell off each crest, his long hair lifting from his shoulders, and he laughed at the crash and spray that followed. The laughter rose with them from the trough to the crest until it became another shout of joy.
I V: Diary of Edvard Ahlquist, Volume 39
18 th March. Wind SSE, 3, fair.
A day to lift the spirits. There’s a high pressure system bringing a fool’s summer, and it’s warm enough for shirtsleeves. There’s even a skylark singing over the grassland behind the cottage, so high that he’s just a dot in the sky but making a sound so loud he might be in the garden. It’s all too beautiful to leave.
There may be other evenings, but I taste each one with the thought that this might be the last like this. The last time I see the gorse on Witt Point looking that gaudy yellow, so bright in the sunlight it almost hurts. The last time I see the shine spread across the harbour as the tide turns the salt marsh from flat browns and greens into ribbons of water.
I think the warrior wants the dragon. Maybe the dragon wants the warrior. He was under the trees again last night, aware of us, and we were aware of him. As I get weaker he gets closer. Soon he’ll be in the garden.
I don’t want him to take me. Will he go away if I give him the dragon?
V: GEORGE
George didn’t sleep much that night, which was crazy, when she hadn’t slept the night before in Jack’s cockpit. She crashed out early, then woke when the day was just showing in the east, and it was all Jack-frigging-Ahlquist’s fault.
She knew all the problems. All the reasons why it was a bad idea to let him get close. He was moody. He drank too much. Far too much. And there was the little problem of him being married, to a woman who wanted to be her friend.
Charl was sweet, and she hadn’t tried it on again. It had taken George a while to get her head around the skinny-dip. So much for her ability to read people. She hadn’t seen it. Charl rang the yard soon after George got back from the sail with Jack and, instead of being happy, she thought, ‘Oh feck, what do I say about spending the night in Jack’s boat?’ But all Charl wanted was to see if George was free for a sail that weekend. She even booked a dinghy for a lesson when George told her there were no charter boats available. George didn’t mention the night at anchor. Now it felt like she was hiding stuff.
Which she was.
An hour after Charl, Jack called, just to make sure she was OK. That made her feel all warm inside. Jack said he was worried about her, then lingered on the phone like he didn’t know what to say. Most of the time Jack was hard and cool on the outside, but when he let his guard down he was all vulnerable. When they were sailing his face came alive and George saw the real Jack Ahlquist, someone who laughed and was at one with his boat. Plus he’d stayed up with her when she was freaked out by a ghost, and he hadn’t made fun of her. In the cockpit, in the darkness, his voice had been soft as a pillow and she’d so wanted him to hold her. Just hold her, nothing else, so that his strength was all around her, making her safe.
Most of all, she’d seen the gentleness inside him. On the sail home, George had shut her eyes and the shades of tenderness made her all full and happy and a bit achy where girls didn’t oughta ache. Shit. It was all a frigging nightmare.
It was so early when George let herself into the marina that she could still se
e the riding lights on boats out in the mooring lines. She knew Jack wouldn’t be there. He’d moved Draca round to his own mooring off the cottage the day before. If he and Chippy weren’t working on the boat any more, it was pointless him paying fees to the marina. Still, the place seemed a bit empty.
She thought she’d cycle along the coastal path before work. Clear her mind. If she set a good pace, she could reach Witt Point in half an hour. George didn’t really think they’d meet, but Jack had said he went there most mornings, very early. And if they did meet, it would be good to know if he was as screwed up by this as she was.
Whatever ‘this’ was. After all, Jack hadn’t said anything. But she could ask him if he thought she was an idiot for reacting the way she had in his boat.
She knew the place to sit: in the ruins of the old chapel. The foundations were just humps in the grass, with a few stones poking through, but the stones would save her from getting her bum wet. Draca lay at her buoy in Freshwater Bay, stern-on to Witt Point where there was deep water close under the hill. Draca’s dinghy was tied to the little jetty so Jack couldn’t have been on board.
She sat there, watching, for maybe half an hour. The cottage, over the pine trees, showed no sign of life. She could have walked up there to see if his car was outside, but that would have left footsteps in the dew across his lawn, and it would just be too frigging embarrassing to be found in his garden. Besides, what if he didn’t feel the same way? What if the colours were lying, for once?
Below her, Draca began to swing around her buoy, the way boats do when the tide turns, but George had this uneasy feeling that Draca was aware of her. The boat moved with the slow, steady sweep of an outsized second hand on a clock, and George shivered when the figurehead came into view and it seemed to be looking at her over its shoulder. It stayed at the new angle, pointing towards the sea rather than the land, now swinging just enough to keep her in view.
Stupid idea. It was time to cycle back to work anyway.
She was halfway to the marina before she realised that the tide wouldn’t turn for another half hour.
VI: Diary of Edvard Ahlquist, Volume 39
10 th April. Wind NW force 4-5, rain.
Jack said he’d brought something to show me. He handed over this small, flat box, all coy like a kid with a school prize, and inside was a medal. Jack said he did something stupid and got away with it, but that was a throwaway line and I could see he treasured it, even more than he had that green beret.
I asked him if it was to do with his leg, and he said no, it was the trip before. Afghanistan. He’s kept it quiet ever since, but wanted me to see it before I died. I hugged him and told him I was proud of him and always had been. Even a medal couldn’t make me more proud.
He hasn’t told his parents. I didn’t need to ask why. He couldn’t tell Mary without telling Harry, and Harry would probably make some throwaway comment about all gongs being a lottery, or say that they give them away with cereal packets these days. He’s spent his life wanting his Dad’s praise, and now he’s won something so precious he daren’t risk the pain of Harry trashing it.
* * *
Fey; knowing the ways of the spirits. ↵
Prophetess, seeress, wise woman. ↵
Pagan magic or sorcery, including the shaping or foretelling of future events. ↵
Sacrificial blood. ↵
Warriors who have died valiantly in battle and are chosen for Valhalla. ↵
Literally ‘cairn-dweller’; undead spirit, ghost. ↵
Chapter Seven: Veizlu-fall
(Old Norse: the failure of a feast)
From the Saga of King Guthrum
King Alfred sent word to King Guthrum in this wise; that as the siege could not be resolved except with much blood, King Alfred would pay silver, and grant frith[1] and safe passage to King Guthrum if he gave his oath to sail with all his ships and men and to harry no more in the Westlands. King Alfred would swear this treaty upon the book of his crucified god, and demanded of Guthrum what he held sacred, since Guthrum believed in the old gods.
Now it had been the custom of the folk since the days of the Ynlings to swear oaths upon a sacred ring; such oaths were binding and any man who broke them was declared outlaw and killed. Guthrum held the sacred arm ring of his folk, a ring mightier than all other rings, that had been forged with spells and great sorcery by Yngvi, who ruled after Niord, successor to Odin himself. On this would he swear.
For the giving of the oath Guthrum consecrated a vé,[2] a sacred place, by sacrificing a horse beneath an ash tree and sprinkling its blood on the tree and on the ground, that Alfred and all with him should know no man would do violence in that place. The vé was ringed with the dragonheads of their ships, that they might bear witness. Then Guthrum reddened the dragonheads and the ring of Yngvi with the blood of the sacrifice, and Alfred accepted this troth.
Afterwards Alfred and Guthrum feasted together, but Alfred would not eat the meat of the sacrificial horse, saying it was not the way of the followers of the crucified god. The folk of Guthrum liked this very ill, saying the oath was not yet made.
Guthrum passed the horn over the fire and drank to Odin, Njördthur, and Freyr, but Alfred would not drink until he had made the sign of the cross over it. At this the jarls were wroth, but Guthrum, in order that the siege be lifted, said that Alfred made the sign of the hammer of Thor, and they were quieted.
This treaty was then sealed with the exchange of high-born hostages, and the warriors made ready to depart the Westlands.
I: JACK
Charlotte breezed through the cottage’s door that Friday evening, planted a sisterly kiss on Jack’s cheek and called him ‘chum’. Her weekend commuting was becoming a pattern. She was still in her business suit, the one that turned her backside into a charcoal tulip, and she groaned a little as she stretched away the journey.
‘Bad week?’ Jack realised he sounded a little cold, but Charlotte would only be here to see George, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to go along with that any more.
‘I need a shower. Then Friday wine.’
Here at least was a shared ritual, one of the few structures they’d created in their marriage. Charlotte rarely drank during the week, but she’d let rip on a Friday night. With the first glass, they dumped whatever was stressing them. The second opened up discussions. A third glass could make Charlotte playful, even frisky. If they ever made love, it was likely to be on a Friday. If she went to a fourth, she could be anywhere on a spectrum from belligerent to gloriously uninhibited.
They pulled the cork in the garden, sitting on the lawn in a pair of folding chairs to catch the last of the sunlight, with the wine in a bucket of ice between them. A holidaying family had arrived in the cottage next door, and they tried to ignore the noise of a man kicking a ball with two boys not much older than Tilly’s kids. It was late enough in the day for the shadows to be stretching, but the sun still turned the fair-weather clouds into puffballs of shining white.
Charlotte was on her second glass before Jack told her about the engine failing on the shakedown sail with George.
‘We had to anchor and wait for the tide to turn,’ Jack finished, ‘which meant the middle of the night.’ If George told her, and Jack hadn’t, it would look like he was hiding something.
‘And?’ Charlotte gave him a lowered-eyebrow, suspicious look.
‘And nothing. But if I can’t trust the engine I need to replace it, and I’ve spent the bank loan.’ Jack made the engine the main point of the story.
‘Oh.’ She sounded relieved, as if she’d been fearing a confession. ‘Then borrow some more.’
‘The bank won’t lend me any more. I’ve asked.’
‘Why not ask your father? He helped you fix it before. He might want to be involved.’
‘I don’t know…’
The trainer-on-plastic thump of a hard kick of a football came from next door.
‘We could invite them for Sunday lunch.’
The
ball smashed into the dividing fence, loud enough to be an intrusion. Jack was too surprised by Charlotte’s suggestion to be irritated.
‘You must be joking. After the way they’ve treated you?’
‘You should talk to them more.’
‘Won’t you be sailing with George on Sunday?’
‘No boats available. She’s giving me a lesson in a dinghy tomorrow instead. Late afternoon. And we might go for a drink, Sunday evening, after George finishes work. I doubt if your parents would stay late.’
‘Another lesson?’ Jack tipped the last of his wine into his mouth and reached for the bottle.
‘Sailing lessons, I find, are rather like orgasms.’ Charlotte’s languorous, leg-trailing pose told Jack she was teasing, not flirting. The wine was having an effect.
‘How come?’ It was the best line he could think of on the spur of the moment.
Charlotte licked her lips. ‘One is never enough.’
Laughter was good for them. They’d laughed a lot in the early days, before sex got in the way. Jack refilled her glass.
‘How do you think Sunday lunch will go? If they come.’
‘I hope they’d appreciate the olive branch. You might even get some help with a new engine.’
‘It’ll be a disaster, Lottie.’
‘Just watch me. Charm offensive. I’ll call them myself, later. Happy families, remember?’
Over the fence the cry of ‘No, Freddie, like this…’ preceded another kick. The ball sailed over the fence, bounced off the boat seat and rolled towards them over the lawn. Jack threw it back, waving away the apology.
Draca Page 17