father ’ , so Jack used the old man ’ s language. ‘ He ’ s come to see you. ’
Disbelief, then horror, tightened his grandfather ’ s face into a rictus of fear as Harry ’ s shadow fell across them.
‘ How did he find me? ’ Eddie kept his eyes locked on Jack, but shook his head from side to side, denying Jack ’ s words. ‘ He ’ s dead. ’ The grip on Jack ’ s arm tightened as if Jack was a fixed point of safety in the middle of a nightmare. ‘ Harald ’ s dead. ’ Beside them, Harry Ahlquist flinched as if he ’ d been struck on the face. Jack lifted Grandpa Eddie ’ s hand and nodded towards his father.
‘ No, Grandpa. Look. ’
Eddie turned, lifting one hand to shield his eyes as he squinted into the sun. Tubes snagged against the oxygen bottle.
‘ Not here. ’ Louder now, almost shouting. ‘ He ’ s following me. ’ Eddie tried to get up, lurching away from Harry so that the drip almost fell and Jack had to catch him. Sandra began to walk towards them, frowning.
‘ Harald died on the beach. He ’ s DEAD. ’
The shout turned heads all around the garden, and Sandra started to run. Harry squatted, dropping out of the sun ’ s glare, and reached out a hand to touch the old man on the arm. ‘ Pa, please. ’ Eddie squirmed into Jack, whimpering, as Harry tried to turn him, and in a moment of sick pity Jack saw liquid dripping from his grandfather ’ s seat. The tang of fresh urine cut the scent of flowers.
‘ Pa, it ’ s your son, Harry. ’
‘ Shot down like a dog. ’ The shout became a scream. By the time Sandra eased Harry away, Eddie was gripping Jack ’ s shoulder hard enough to hurt. It was incredible that someone so sick could have such strength.
‘ Don ’ t let him take me, Jack. ’ The scream disintegrated into a sob.
Sandra jerked her head towards the building. Time to go. Jack rose and slid his hand along his father ’ s shoulders to turn him away. It was the nearest he ’ d ever come to giving him a hug.
‘ We ’ ll try again tomorrow, Dad. ’
Harry shrugged the arm away, his face working.
*
Jack rang Charlotte afterwards to say he ’ d stay in Grandpa Eddie ’ s cottage for the night. It was two and a half hours ’ drive home, and the end was close. His wife didn ’ t sound too fussed. She might even have been relieved. She had a girlie night out planned, it seemed. Pals from the gym. Harry didn ’ t offer a bed, and it didn ’ t occur to Jack to ask, so he bought a takeaway and a bottle of cheap wine and wandered through Eddie ’ s cottage, wishing that his grandfather could drift away peacefully on a cloud of morphine. There was such fear in the old man ’ s eyes these days. It didn ’ t seem to be fear of death itself, but as the cancer ate into his brain he ’ d started raving as if the Grim Reaper lurked in the shadows. Today, it had been Harry, his own son. Two days earlier, it had been ‘ a Viking warrior in the trees ’ .
But then, Grandpa had always been obsessed with his Viking heritage. He was the kind of guy who taught himself Old Norse so that he could read the old sagas in their original form. The bookshelves in the cottage ’ s front room were packed with volumes of Viking history. Some of them were antiques, printed in Old Norse with Danish translations. Some had paper bookmarks sticking upwards, each with some cryptic reference written in Grandpa ’ s arthritic script.
Jack ran his finger along the books ’ spines, reading his grandfather ’ s life in the shelves above the desk. A small photograph of his parents was wedged on a high shelf between almanacs and magazines, pushed almost end-on so the picture was partly obscured. A middle shelf held framed happy snaps of Jack ’ s sister Tilly and her children. There was a larger one of Jack at his passing-out parade, his face tight with pride beneath the coveted Commando green beret with the globe-and-laurel badge of the Royal Marines. Dominating the bottom shelf, in between Sagas of the Norse Kings and the mighty Old Norse Dictionary and Grammar , was a big, framed photograph of Eddie ’ s beloved sailing boat heeling under a press of sail, with a younger Grandpa at the tiller. The sails were traditional, red- ochre canvas; Grandpa refused to ‘ sully ’ a hundred-year-old boat with modern polyester. There was no other crew in sight, although Draca wasn ’ t a boat to sail single-handed. They were probably hidden behind the sails, but the photo made it look as if Grandpa was on his own, grinning, one leg braced against the lee side of the cockpit, in his element.
A brassbound clock, a barometer and a compass ranged along the mantelpiece, beneath a framed Admiralty chart of local waters. In the recess on the other side of the fire, Eddie ’ s magnificent, wooden model of a Viking longship sat on white-painted cupboards beneath more shelves of books. Grandpa had made that longship ; he ’ d been quite a craftsman before his hands gave out. The smell of French cigarettes still lingered in the room, a year after he ’ d finally kicked the habit.
Jack couldn ’ t stay in the room, not that evening, not on his own. He felt too much of an intruder. He took his wine into the garden, where Grandpa had made a seat by burying an old, wooden dinghy stern first in the ground so that the bows made a protective arch. It stood at the highest point of the garden, near the cottage, where there was a view through the treetops to the water. The bench he ’ d fixed to the thwart had been a perfect size, when Jack was younger, for an old man and a boy to sit side by side and tell stories. Since the previous winter, the boat seat had also been home to Draca ’ s figurehead, a piece of ancient, carved timber that Grandpa had found poking through the mud below the cottage one morning, on a day when extreme low tide and a northerly storm had combined to push the sea away from the land. Eddie had restored it, fitted it to Draca and brought it home after Draca was laid up. He ’ d cut a slot for it at the end of the bench so it would sit upright and stare at the sea beside him.
Ugly great beast. ‘ My pet dragon ’ , Grandpa called it. ‘ A piece of Draca to keep me company . ’ It was about four feet long, carved with a lattice of scales, and curved like a question mark or a bishop ’ s crozier, except that the hook bending down over the shaft formed a snarling mouth that could have been any animal with a long neck and jaws. Once it had probably been much longer, but the neck ended in a scorched stump that Grandpa had trimmed, squared and fitted to Draca ’ s bow, like a figurehead. It had spoiled the lines of the boat, in Jack ’ s view.
It had its own smell, that dragon. In still air it was strong enough to overlay the garden ’ s pine resin and salt with something older : a charcoal and leather, old wood and male sweat kind of smell. Eddie had soaked it for months in the same stuff that they used to restore that Tudor ship, The Mary Rose : a polymer that drives out the salt water and hardens the timber. Somehow the carving still leaked scents trapped deep in its core. Jack had told Eddie it was probably a n historical artefact, and that he should take it to a museum, but Eddie just laughed and said they were meant to be together : a Viking figurehead found by the descendant of Vikings.
Jack forced himself to remember the good times in this spot, not the ravings in the hospice : the stories, the shared confidences. He and Grandpa would come out here even in winter, light a fire in a cast- iron stove by the seat and talk, staring at the flames. This place, this panorama of the great natural harbour, had been part of Jack ’ s childhood and youth. Freshwater Bay curving out to Witt Point; the island-dotted water stretching away until it met the hills rising beyond the sailing resort of Furzey ; this vista had framed his times with Grandpa. Him and Grandpa. Always, in the good memories, just him and Grandpa.
