Майкл Ридпат - The Wanderer

Einar tried to attract the harassed waitress’s attention.

‘Eygló?’

She turned to see one of the group of students standing next to her, a short blonde girl with a friendly smile, who looked more like eighteen than the twenty-one she must have been to be served alcohol. ‘Aren’t you Eygló? The presenter of Viking Queens ?’

‘That’s me,’ said Eygló. She was gratified. People in Iceland recognized her all the time, naturally, but she had never before been identified when travelling abroad.

‘I loved that show,’ the girl said. ‘It was so cool what those women did back then. I thought in the Middle Ages women were just treated as, like, men’s property.’

‘They were, mostly,’ said Eygló. ‘But not necessarily in Scandinavia. I’m glad you liked it. And I’m surprised you recognized me.’

‘Well, I knew you were interviewing my grandmother this afternoon. How did that go?’

‘That was your grandmother? She was great. She could have been one of the Viking queens herself.’

The girl laughed. ‘I’ll tell her that. She is great, isn’t she? And so smart. She pretends to be dotty, but she isn’t.’

‘Can I get you guys a drink?’ Einar said.

Eygló was surprised at Einar’s generosity to random students — most unlike him — until she looked more closely at the group. There were two girls and a boy, and one of the girls was tall and dusky with shoulder-length raven hair and sly dark eyes.

They were a friendly bunch; they all had parents or, in the case of the girl who had recognized Eygló, grandparents who lived or summered on the island, and they were working there for the season in bars and stores. Eygló particularly liked Nancy Fishburn’s granddaughter, whose name was Kelly. She was majoring in history at a college in Ohio, and was pleasingly knowledgeable about the Vikings, an enthusiasm she said she had absorbed from her grandmother.

‘So do you really think there were Vikings in Nantucket a thousand years ago?’ Kelly asked Eygló.

‘Sure,’ said Eygló. ‘We have evidence now — pretty strong evidence — that they were here.’

‘The wampum?’ said Kelly. ‘That was found in Greenland.’

‘That’s part of it,’ said Eygló. Kelly was a little drunk at this stage, but Eygló thought she detected a sceptical edge to her question. She wasn’t sure. She knew the English better than the Americans, but she was an Icelander after all; some nuances passed her by. ‘You heard about that?’

‘Yeah. I remember when it was reported in the Globe. The whole family was here then. Grammy was really interested.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘I asked her if she had ever been to the spot where the wampum was discovered, and she told me she had.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. With Pops. Just before he died. They took a vacation to Greenland and went to see Erik the Red’s farm. That’s where they found the shell beads, right?’

‘Yes. It was actually Einar who found them,’ said Eygló.

They both looked at Einar, who was regaling Kelly’s friends with a story about a trip he had taken to Thailand when he was a student, and the island he had discovered. Eygló had heard it many times before. It seemed to be going down well with his audience; it usually did the first time he told it.

‘Grammy gave this weird little smile and said that she knew exactly where the wampum had been found. On the way back to Pittsburgh after the trip, Dad said he was willing to bet Grammy had planted the wampum herself.’

Kelly giggled and Eygló smiled too. It took a second for the implication of what Kelly was saying to sink in. Was she serious? Because if she was...

‘Why did your dad think that?’

‘Hi, everyone!’ It was Suzy.

‘Hey. What are you drinking?’ Einar asked her.

‘I’m driving. And we had better get going. I made a dinner reservation for eight back in town and we’re going to be late.’

‘She’s the boss,’ said Einar to his new friends, grinning. ‘I guess we have to go. It’s been great talking to you.’ This to the girl with the sly eyes, which were now focused very much on Einar.

Eygló wanted an answer to her last question, but in the jostling of their departure she didn’t get one. She exchanged waves and smiles with Kelly as Suzy bustled them off to their rented van, where Tom and Ajay were waiting.

They were staying in Nantucket town a few miles away, and Suzy had booked a table at a restaurant there. It was dark now.

Buoyed by the margaritas, and the attention, Einar was very chatty. Eygló was listening to him with half an ear and less than half her brain. She was thinking about what Kelly had said.

Was she joking? Could the sweet old lady Eygló had interviewed that afternoon really have planted the wampum in Greenland? Was she really that sweet? ‘Shrewd’ might be a better description.

The immediate problem was should Eygló tell the others? And if so, which others? It would be a disaster all round if the wampum had been planted.

Perhaps she should discuss it with Einar before mentioning it to Suzy? But Einar, she knew, would tell her to stay quiet.

Should she wait? Think about what to do? But once she did that, then she would have created a secret, an awkward secret.

Do the honest, straightforward thing. Tell everyone right away, and let them decide what to do. Because if Nancy Fishburn had planted the wampum, the sooner they knew it, the better.

She waited for Einar to pause for breath and interrupted. ‘That girl Kelly told me something very interesting in the bar...’

They took the ferry off the island the following afternoon, to Hyannis on the mainland. The plan was to drive from there north to Canada to film other locations that Gudrid had probably visited.

Eygló leaned over the railing at the stern, watching the ship’s wake thread its way through the harbour crowded with fishing boats and sleek motor cruisers. The picture-postcard town of Nantucket, with its tall whaling-captain’s houses and its white spires, receded at five knots. She thought of the Icelandic equivalents, fishing villages like Grindavík or Ólafsvík, pretty in their own way, but lacking the reek of wealth that emanated from Nantucket and had done so for centuries. In the nineteenth century this had been generated by whale oil harvested from all over the world’s oceans; now it came from money skimmed from the global financial markets by the prosperous men in baseball caps and red shorts holed up in those magnificent houses picketing the shoreline.

‘That was a good start, Eygló,’ said Suzy. ‘Let’s hope the weather is as sunny in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.’

‘Have you checked the forecast?’ Eygló asked.

‘Tom has. There’s a storm coming through there now, but it might have cleared by the time we film. But we could be OK, even if it hasn’t. A bit of grey moodiness would contrast nicely with the sunshine here. Show how tough the journey must have been for Gudrid and the others.’

‘Have you thought any more about what Nancy Fishburn’s granddaughter told me?’ Eygló wanted to make the most of Einar’s absence to discuss it. In the car the previous evening, and at dinner, he had been adamant that Kelly was wrong, and it seemed that Suzy had been happy to believe him.

‘Yes, I have. I know Einar’s view, but we have to check it out. So I drove out to Siasconset this morning and tracked down Kelly — she is working in the village store.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She was mortified. She said she hadn’t meant you to take her seriously, she was a bit drunk. She said you had got the wrong end of the stick; her father was kidding. He does that all the time. She pleaded with me not to ask her grandmother about it directly; I think Kelly is a little scared of her.’