Draca. Geoffrey Gudgion
must be Harald Guthrumsson ’ s . The saga fits. This is the only deep water inlet in miles.
After I finished translating, I spent a long time looking at the dragon as it soaked in its bath of chemicals. I even took a bottle of elderflower wine with me to help me think. I wasn ’ t sure whether I wanted to keep it. I know what it ’ s done now, what it has seen.
Maybe I should do what Jack says and give it to a museum. I fell asleep sitting on the floor of the shed, thinking, and I dream ed of blood and killing. There was a moment as I woke when I understood, but the wisdom faded like a dream. It was something to do with all deaths being steps towards Ragnarök, when even the gods must die and the world will drown, but I can ’ t explain why that seemed beautiful.
Afterwards I felt strong and young again. I split logs with the axe, sending the pieces spinning over the garden until the sweat ran and my hands ached and told me I was old.
Maybe I ’ ll keep it. A dragonhead for Draca . We were meant to be.
*
Jack rested his hand on the top of the figurehead, wondering what his grandfather had discovered, and why the carving had become so important to him. Jack hadn ’ t sailed in Draca many times since Grandpa fitted it. By the time he came back from his first, long deployment, to Afghanistan, Draca was laid up. But he remembered going out with Grandpa once, just before he deployed, and seeing the dragon ’ s scaly head snarling down and out at the ocean for the first time. Grandpa ’ s hands were already troubling him , and he let Jack do most of the sailing, but he took the helm for a while and sent Jack forward to watch that carved head soar over the sea. ‘ Look at it, ’ Grandpa had said, eyes shining, ‘ it ’ s happy. The dragon ’ s happy! ’ So Jack braced himself against the forestay , with the boat heeling over and the foresails swelling in the wind beside him, and looked down. As if to prove a point, the ship put her shoulder into a trough so that the sea came in green around his legs, and the dragon rose with water streaming from that gaping jaw as if it had just eaten the wave. Yes, he could persuade himself that the dragon was happy, in a brutal, in-your-face kind of way.
He ’ d heard that Grandpa ’ s sailing style grew more aggressive after that. It cost him a few friends.
And on the day that Grandpa died Jack let his fingers trace the scales on the dragon ’ s head while he stared at the view, drowsy with wine, remembering the loving sea dog rather than the mad old man of recent weeks. The garden was in shadow now the sun had dropped behind the hills, though it still turned the yachts and far shore into sharp and dazzling colours. When Jack was a boy, Grandpa had read him stories on this seat. Sea stories. Sagas. Once he ’ d read Jack a saga in Old Norse, just to let him hear the music of the ancient, Viking tongue. He ’ d read poems of the sea with the passion of an orator in his voice, and he ’ d given Jack his love of books. That evening the old hull ticked with minute contractions of the wood as it cooled. It was a friendly, whispering sound that eased Jack into sleep with the memory of companionable silences on this seat.
*
He ’ s standing in Draca ’ s bows, and in the scrambled way of dreams there is no bowsprit, but the dragon rises high above the stem. Impossibly, though naturally, Draca is propelled by great sweeps of oars, a motion he feels through his cheek where it rests against the dragon. It ’ s a slow surge – pause, surge – pause that has water bubbling under the forefoot with each stroke. On the port side, vague in the mist, Freshwater Bay stretches beneath the shelter of Witt Point, and he knows but does not know this harbour that he has sailed since childhood; he only senses that the inlet is a place where deep water comes close to the land. Ahead of him, unseen in the mist, must be Furzey . Furze Oy, in Anglo- Saxon, Fyrsig in the old tongue, the island of gorse.
Surge – pause, and the pause is marked by the sound of water raining from the blades as the oars swing back to bite again. There is a tension, an excitement in the ship as they approach the land; the same, creeping, hunter ’ s bloodlust that he ’ d felt with the troop around him, awaiting his command in the moments before action.
The carving against his cheek jolts to a blow, a sound so loud that they must have struck a rock, and his first thought is of failure; he had not foreseen such dangers in this place of soft mud and winding channels.
Jack grabbed the dragon for support, his eyes flying open and blinking, disoriented. His father stood above him, framed by the arch of the boat seat, with fury tugging his jaw into angles that were sharp as broken porcelain.
IV: HARRY
Harry Ahlquist found it strange that Old Eddie had finally gone. It wasn ’ t like they ’ d been bosom buddies, not like some blokes are with their fathers, but it was still, well, strange. It made Harry think of an apple tree that used to grow in his garden. It was there before the house was built, and it was old and twisted and a bit ugly. Nice blossom, though. Then a branch dropped off in a storm and it was even uglier, all lopsided, until one autumn there was a bit of a blow and the whole thing fell over. Harry hadn ’ t even liked it very much, but then when he ’ d cleared up the mess the place was different. A bit emptier.
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