The Fox Read online

  ‘Actually, no. But at a lovely place. It’s a household that needs your help. So it’s work and a place to stay all in one,’ he said, delighted at what he had found for her. ‘It’s a good household, with decent food and well paid. That’s as good as it gets, isn’t it?’

  He unwound another handful of paper and finished wiping up the spilled skyr.

  She struggled to say anything, swallowed and stared at him.

  ‘How many children are there?’ she asked, taking a deep breath.

  ‘No children. Why did you think that?’ he asked. ‘Don’t you like children?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she replied quickly. ‘But they can be difficult, and they can get sick sometimes. I’ve been an au-pair before and it’s really badly paid,’ she said with a stiff, forced smile. ‘But of course I need somewhere to live, and work.’

  There was something charming about the way he laughed and he put an arm around her shoulders.

  ‘There are no children at the farm, just a lonely old lady and her son. They live in an out-of-the-way place, Bröttuskriður, about an hour’s drive from here. The old lady, Selma, needs some company, and the place could do with cleaning up. She can’t cope with it any more now that her hips are bad and I’m sure she’d be grateful if you could massage her feet once in a while, so you’d get to use your skills. And the son… Well, let’s say that while he’s younger than I am, Ísak is no modern man. I can promise you that he can just about fry an egg and load the washing machine. His mother has always looked after him.’

  ‘I’ve met men like that before,’ Sajee said, looking down so that her black hair fell across her face.

  ‘That’s what I thought after what you told me yesterday, so I thought I’d get in touch and see if they could use your help.’

  ‘Are they your friends?’ Sajee asked. She was doubtful about whether or not to accept this offer.

  ‘Yes, we can say so. I help them out with all kinds of stuff.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘What do you say to trying it out for a while? Free food and board, and a decent wage. That’s a good deal, isn’t it?’

  Sajee gave him a thin smile, looked out into the cold outside and rubbed the ring on her finger. The boats had finished landing their catches and the last of the trucks had driven away. She was torn in both directions and her heart hammered. She glanced at him, saw the dark coffee stain on his otherwise pristine shirt, and looked away. This man had treated her well, she decided. He had been polite and agreeable. She would have to take care not to distrust people, even though Liu had cheated her.

  ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Do you have a better offer?’

  ‘No. No better offers,’ she said and straightened her back.

  ‘You’re a proper grafter!’ Sveinn called, a little too loudly considering how close they were to each other. ‘The old lady’s enjoying watching you work.’

  That meant his wife, who was barely forty, and who worked at the local authority’s office. It was as if a softness crept into Sveinn’s voice as he spoke those words.

  ‘I’ve nothing better to do and it’s good exercise,’ Guðgeir said, pushing the shovel deep into a heap of snow so that its handle stood up.

  ‘All that shovelling kills two birds with one stone and guys like you need to keep fit, so I wouldn’t dream of interrupting you,’ Sveinn said, taking a step closer. ‘But what do you reckon happened to me yesterday?’

  ‘What was that?’ Guðgeir asked. He leaned on the shovel to give himself a break. He could sense there was a tale coming, and Sveinn’s stories were usually worth listening to.

  ‘You’d never believe it,’ he said, drawing out the moment.

  ‘Let’s hear it,’ Guðgeir said, and took hold of the shovel again, ready to get back to work. That had the effect he had intended.

  ‘You see, there was this young woman who was sitting in the arrivals lounge just as I was closing down after the flight. Some foreigner who had no idea where she was supposed to be. She was a bit shocked after the flight, because it was an unusually rough ride. By rights, they should have cancelled it. Didn’t you hear about that?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know,’ Guðgeir said, zipping up his coat. After all that exertion it wasn’t good to let yourself get cold.

  ‘Well, this poor girl was just sitting there,’ Sveinn said, the excitement palpable in his voice.

  ‘Really?’ Guðgeir said, trying to show more interest than he felt. ‘What was she doing in Höfn at this time of year?’

  ‘She’d been offered a job at some beauty salon here and all she had was a couple of text messages, pretty badly written to say the least. But it turns out she can’t read or write Icelandic even though she could speak it pretty well.’

  ‘So how had she been able to read the texts?’

  ‘A Chinese woman she rented a place with read them for her. She said she was from Sri Lanka,’ Sveinn said. ‘She showed me the messages and they looked dubious to me, a sort of Google Translate feel about them. She reckoned she’d come all this way to work at a salon, replacing someone nobody knew anything about, someone from China,’ Sveinn laughed. ‘Have you ever heard anything like it?’

  ‘Does this salon have a name?’ Guðgeir asked.

  ‘It just said Höfn Beauty Salon, that’s all, and nobody answered either of those phone numbers. I imagine it was a mistake and she went to the wrong place,’ he said with another burst of laughter. ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘So what was the upshot of all this?’ Guðgeir asked. He was curious, and tried to echo Sveinn’s laughter.

  ‘The poor girl was distraught, so I tried…’

  ‘Was this a teenager?’ Guðgeir broke in.

  ‘No, what makes you think that?’ Sveinn asked in surprise. ‘She must be around thirty or so, I’d say. Said her name began with an S, Saj or Suj, or something, if my memory’s not playing tricks. A pretty enough girl, but a tiny little thing, like these Asians usually are, y’know. Terribly small and bony.’

  ‘Sure,’ Guðgeir said, scraping some snow aside with the shovel. ‘So what did you do with her?’

  ‘Well, I was more or less stuck with her out at the airport, and tried to help her as best I could. She was adamant she was going to work at some big salon, so I thought I’d check a couple of places that might have possibly offered her work, so I took her up to the old people’s home.’

  ‘The old folks’ home?’ Guðgeir said. ‘Why there?’

  ‘Well, the oldies need all sorts of care, but nobody there had any idea, so I tried everything I could think of. Took her up to the hotel, and even called Adda Lísa, but the whole thing’s a mess and nobody knows anything about it. Adda has her own business, and she just shuts up shop when she takes a holiday,’ Sveinn said and clapped his gloved hands together. ‘Finally I took her to the hostel down by the harbour, the new place that opened last year.’

  He looked at Guðgeir, who shrugged.

  ‘You mean those houses out on the end? The one with the romantic name? The Hostel by the Sea?’ he asked, exaggerating the syllables as he spoke the name as he swung the shovel again.

  ‘That’s the place,’ Sveinn said, laughing again. ‘The owner’s name is Thormóður, moved here a year or so ago and fixed up the inside of the old factory, even though the outside isn’t done yet. He’ll have to get it done this summer when it warms up so they can paint it…’

  ‘And she got to stay there?’ Guðgeir asked, trying to keep Sveinn to the subject.

  ‘Yes,’ Sveinn said. ‘I wonder if she’s a bit backward?’

  ‘Why’s that?’ Guðgeir asked.

  ‘You have to wonder, considering everything that happened. Her looks make her stand out, though.’

  ‘Hopefully nothing’s happened to her,’ Guðgeir said, wielding the shovel again to keep himself warm. Sveinn didn’t appear to be feeling the cold.

  ‘No, of course not,’ he muttered. ‘At any rate, she stayed there last night and with luck she’ll stay there a little longer, as th
ere’s a lousy forecast,’ he added.

  ‘She must have been upset when she realised how wrong things had gone,’ Guðgeir said, feeling a deep sympathy for the woman.

  ‘Too right! And the messages on her phone were weird,’ Sveinn said. ‘Downright weird,’ he added with a burst of laughter. ‘It’s like the tourist who thought he was heading to Laugavegur in Reykjavík, chose the wrong option on the satnav and ended in in Siglufjörður instead. Don’t you remember that? There was even a skit about it on TV.’

  ‘I saw it on the news, but don’t remember the jokes. Some English or American tourist who should have taken the trouble to read the instructions, but if this woman is illiterate then it’s no surprise that she found herself in difficulties. They use a completely different script in Sri Lanka,’ Guðgeir said. ‘A sort of flowing script, quite beautiful and complicated, for us, at least. I can’t recall what it’s called…’ he said and paused, searching his memory for the name.

  At one time he had remembered everything. But after months of mental tension, he had found that the answers were no longer always at his fingertips. He knew that a slight loss of memory was one of the effects of the pressure he had been under, and that it would be temporary, but it still irritated him.

  ‘A very beautiful script,’ he said again as he went back to clearing snow.

  ‘I wouldn’t know about Asian letters,’ Sveinn said, looking ready to be on his way now that he had exhausted the subject. ‘See you,’ he said and marched towards his jeep. ‘And thanks for clearing the snow. The weather’s going to break again later.’

  The car door slammed behind him and the wheels spun as he drove off. Guðgeir stuck the shovel into the snow and gazed into the distance to check the weather. A bank of heavy cloud had formed around Vesturhorn. A storm was brewing.

  ‘Shouldn’t we turn round and try again tomorrow?’ Sajee asked, worried as she peered out into the blizzard. Moments ago the car had spun right around on the icy road.

  ‘Not at all. It’s not that bad. This is a good jeep and I’m used to this. There’s nothing to be gained by hanging around in Höfn,’ Thormóður said in his mild voice. ‘We have to go through the tunnel and then drive through the countryside to get to Bröttuskriður.’

  He seemed confident and it didn’t appear to bother him that the wind buffeted the car and they could hardly see the road ahead for falling snow. It was as if he relished getting to grips with the challenges nature put in their way, as there was a smile on his lips.

  It was a relief to enter the tunnel, escaping the blizzard. Here there was shelter and they could see ahead. On the far side of the mountain the weather turned out to be less wild and before long the snow had stopped falling. Sajee found herself relaxing and enjoying the view over the rolling countryside. They drove over a long bridge that spanned a glacier river churning with brown water. On one side black sands glittered between long tongues of snow that stretched towards a long lagoon, and on the other side the crags of mountains loomed over them. The peaks were jagged, as if they had been sketched in a hurry. The magnificence of nature all around them was mesmerising and she was spellbound as she gazed out of the car’s window. This place felt as if it had been plucked out of some fairy tale. To begin with there were a few farms, but these became increasingly fewer. Then they crossed another river and there were no more farms to be seen.

  The farmhouse stood on rising ground beneath the scree of an imposing, steep-sided mountain. They turned off the main road and drove along a rutted track that looped past a deep lagoon. The powerful jeep vibrated and fishtailed in the snow, but Thormóður laughed. He seemed relieved that they had reached their destination without any mishap. Sajee looked around curiously. On the slope lay a large boulder that had fallen from far above, and as far as she could make out, not too long ago. Birds wheeled around the jagged peaks.

  The house itself was an imposing one, with two storeys built on a concrete basement sunk into the ground. The place looked as if it had never seen a paintbrush as it rose from the white of the snow and its walls blended in with the grey basalt of the scree behind it. As she approached, she saw that the steel sheets on the roof looked to be brand new and the black window frames appeared to be freshly painted. There were curtains in a coarse, dark material in the windows. The same material had been used everywhere, except the narrow basement windows which had been covered with black plastic.

  ‘Don’t the people who live here feel the need of a little colour? It’s all so grey,’ she muttered.

  ‘What was that?’ Thormóður asked without looking up. His attention was on adjusting a small lever which appeared stiff. As it moved, the note of the engine changed. She shook her head and smiled politely.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said.

  To the western side of the farmhouse was a long barn and a small animal with a tail as long as its body ran back and forth. Clearly tethered, it ran the same distance again and again.

  ‘What animal is that?’ she asked.

  ‘A fox,’ he replied shortly, without looking. His attention was clearly elsewhere.

  She asked no more questions, but watched the animal’s quick movements with interest. Further to the west was a copse where gnarled trees stood packed together inside iron railings, standing out against the bleak landscape.

  ‘What kind of garden is that over there?’ she asked curiously. This time he didn’t reply, but instead focused on a green car that had been parked beside the house. It seemed to irritate him, and he stopped, taking out his phone to make a call.

  ‘Who the hell’s that and why didn’t you let me know?’ he snarled into the phone, glancing around as he listened to the reply. It clearly wasn’t something that agreed with him, as he scowled.

  ‘No, it’s too late now,’ he said angrily, ended the call and drove around to the eastern side of the house. ‘Nothing but trouble, these people,’ he mumbled to himself.

  ‘Something wrong?’ Sajee asked, wondering what was going on.

  ‘Nothing you need to worry about,’ he replied and got out of the car to open the rear door. He picked up a couple of boxes and carried them down the steps leading to the basement and then picked up two carrier bags from the back seat. A little bottle of nail varnish remover dropped from one of them, and as he opened the bag to put it back, more could be seen in there.

  ‘You’re sure you don’t have a salon after all?’ she suggested, hoping to lighten the atmosphere a little, but he either didn’t hear her or didn’t understand, and disappeared without a word, the two bags in his hands. A moment later he returned and asked for her phone, saying he wanted to add his number to the directory.

  ‘That’s my name,’ he said, showing her the screen. ‘You see? If you need me, call.’

  He seemed to be in a hurry, effortlessly swinging her heavy case from the car and dropping it at her side.

  ‘You can tell Ísak and Selma that I’ve done their shopping,’ he said and patted Sajee’s shoulder. ‘I’m going to be on my way. You can never tell when the weather’s going to close in again.’

  ‘Aren’t you coming inside with me?’ she asked forlornly.

  ‘No, you’ll be fine. I don’t want to meet…’ he nodded towards the green car. ‘Must rush. Don’t worry. I’ll drop by,’ he said, and was gone, his hurry to be away taking her by surprise. She hardly managed to say goodbye or thank him for everything he had done.

  6

  She stood alone by the house under the scree. The mountains surrounded her. She looked up at the needle-sharp peaks, mesmerised by the rags of cloud that swirled around the points that jutted upwards like the teeth of a saw.

  ‘Hello, you must be Sajee. Has Thormóður already gone?’

  Sajee was so taken by surprise at the sound of the voice that she started.

  An upright older woman stood at her side. She was dressed in black trousers made of some fine material, and a grey polo-neck under a grey woollen cardigan with silver buttons. Her skin was clear, although tiny ba
gs had formed under her cheekbones and the skin hung under her neck like a wattle. Her hair was as grey as ash, her forehead low, with dark eyebrows and with an alertness in her deep-set, blue-grey eyes.

  ‘Were you born with a cleft palate, or did you have an accident? She asked, looking Sajee critically over.

  ‘I was born like this.’

  ‘Good,’ the woman said, a hint of friendliness in her voice, holding her cardigan around her in the cold. ‘That’s just better.’

  Sajee nodded politely, as if she knew what the woman was talking about.

  ‘Come indoors. You’re so poorly dressed that you’ll freeze if we stand out here much longer,’ she said, heading for the door.

  They went through a little entrance hall and up wooden stairs to the second floor. Sajee went cautiously as the steps had become so worn that they sloped downwards. Upstairs the ceiling was low and the room the woman showed her into was sparsely furnished with items that showed their age. A picture of a little boy with fair hair hung in a gold frame on the wall under the gable. Next to it hung a second picture, painted in dark shades and difficult to make out.

  ‘My name is Selma, but I suppose Thormóður already told you that,’ she said. ‘I live here with my son, Ísak. You can push that under the bed when you’ve unpacked,’ she added, looking curiously at Sajee’s case. She seemed intrigued to know what it might contain, as if it might tell her tales of travels in distant lands.

  ‘This is fine,’ Sajee said.

  The room had a comfortable feel to it, but had clearly been unused for a long time. A crocheted purple spread covered the bed and a lamp made from a wine bottle stood on a dark wood bureau. Next to the lamp was a photograph of a handsome young woman. The picture was old and the frame looked as if it had not been polished for many years.