Michael Ridpath
Death in Dalvik
for Sophie
Part One
— 2017 —
One
It was a gorgeous, crisp, clear November evening in the valley just outside Dalvík when Dísa came home from school to learn that her family would have to sell the farm.
Dísa’s ancestors had tended the gentle slopes of Blábrekka for centuries. Five centuries: her grandfather could proudly and plausibly trace his descent to one Brandur Kolgrímsson who had purchased the farm in 1613. But the farm was much older than that — the ancient Book of Settlements reported its settlement early in the tenth century by one Ulf Blue Cheeks. Blábrekka stood a few kilometres outside the modern fishing village of Dalvík, at the base of a mountain overlooking the deep, dark waters of Eyjafjördur and the low island of Hrísey. The fjord pointed northwards to the Arctic Circle, which hovered invisibly thirty kilometres out to sea.
The sun had just slipped behind the mountain to the west; its rays painted the undersides of the clouds and the snow on the upper slopes of the surrounding hills a soft pink, with odd bruises of purple.
As Dísa walked up the snow-ploughed track to the farmhouse, Bonnie and Clyde looked up and snorted over their fence, cocking their ears towards her while their breath misted in the cold. She waved, and it seemed to her that Bonnie nodded back. Bonnie was Dísa’s horse and Clyde belonged to her younger sister, Anna Rós.
Who came tumbling out of the front door, coat flapping, tears streaming down her cheeks.
‘Anna? What’s up?’
‘I’m going to see Clyde,’ Anna Rós sobbed as she pushed past Dísa.
Dísa had thrown the odd tantrum in her time, but it was unlike Anna Rós to get upset over nothing. It must be something.
‘Hi!’ Dísa called out as she dumped her bag in the hallway and took off her hat, boots and coat. She entered the kitchen, which had been the warm heart of the farmhouse for centuries. Her mother looked up from the table with a strained face, and her grandmother clattered dishes in the sink.
Definitely something. ‘What’s up with Anna Rós?’
Grandma didn’t answer, didn’t even turn around. Mum looked into her coffee cup.
Dísa waited.
Mum glanced at the bent back of her own mother. ‘Come with me. I’ve got something to tell you.’
‘Is it Dad?’ Dísa asked, her imagination leaping to her father hundreds of kilometres away in Reykjavík.
‘No,’ said Mum with a tight smile. ‘And Grandpa’s OK too. Nobody’s ill. But I do have bad news.’
She led Dísa through to the living room. She sat on the sofa, and Dísa perched on the edge of her grandfather’s armchair, eyeing her mother nervously.
‘So what is it? What’s Anna Rós freaked out about?’
‘We’re going to have to sell the horses,’ Mum said. ‘We can’t keep them up any more.’
‘Oh.’
Dísa wasn’t exactly surprised. She had been aware of her family’s money issues since she was a little girl. She dimly remembered a nice house in Reykjavík, and holidays to Spain and Greece, back when her parents were still married, before the kreppa, the financial crash that had ruined their lives as well as those of so many other Icelanders.
Her father had worked for one of the banks, where he had been seriously successful, until he wasn’t. But he had broken some law that even now Dísa didn’t understand, and had spent a couple of years in jail for whatever crime he had committed. There had also been a girlfriend in those heady days, an admin assistant at the bank, who had been uncovered along with the fraud. And a foreign-currency mortgage that had devoured the family’s nice house in Fossvogur.
Mum had taken Dísa and Anna Rós, and run away back to Dalvík and her own parents’ farm at Blábrekka.
Mum’s family were rich — big people about town. Brandur’s descendants had always been important landowners in the area. Mum’s own grandfather had made plenty of money from Dalvík’s fishing boom, as well as from the farm. The farmhouse itself was big by Icelandic standards, with a barn, built in the 1980s, large enough to house several hundred sheep.
But as she had got older, Dísa had realized that her grandparents were not as rich as everyone thought. Machinery wasn’t fixed, a couple of outbuildings had been left to fall down, there was a leak in the roof of the garage, and paint peeled from the ceiling of the living room above her.
In the last couple of years, she had asked questions and divined some answers. Encouraged by Dad, Grandpa had sold his fishing quota and half of the farm’s land to the big fishing company that now dominated Dalvík. With the proceeds, he had bought shares. Shares that had briefly gone up and then come crashing down. Also, Grandpa wasn’t that great a farmer. He was a lovely man, but he just wasn’t practical — Dísa could see that. Two outbreaks of scrapie in the valley in the last twenty years had taken their toll on the flock and the farm finances. If it wasn’t for the labourer who came in most days to help, she doubted the sheep would make it through the winter.
Mum was a doctor, though, an anaesthetist at the hospital in Akureyri, and she made a decent salary, Dísa supposed. Enough to keep the farm above water. Dísa supposed.
‘No wonder Anna’s upset.’ Dísa was spending less time on Bonnie these days, and she would miss her, but Clyde was everything to Anna Rós. And actually Mum loved riding as well. ‘I’m sorry,’ Dísa said.
Mum bit her lip, brushing a strand of her red hair out of her eyes. ‘It’s not just the horses,’ she said. She swallowed. ‘I haven’t told Anna Rós this yet, but it’s the farm as well.’
‘What! Does Grandpa know?’
Mum shook her head. ‘He should do. It’s staring him in the face, but he refuses to see it. He hopes that if he ignores things, they will just get better of their own accord. Thetta reddast is his motto.’ It was a phrase often heard on the lips of Icelanders: things will sort themselves out. A tear ran down her mother’s cheek. ‘There’s a massive mortgage on Blábrekka. I’ve done my best to keep everything under control with my salary, but it’s just not enough. We have to face facts. We’re going to have to sell.’
‘Can Dad help?’
‘What do you think?’ Mum said, her voice bitter. ‘Dad has no money, you know that. The man’s useless.’
Dísa flinched. Mum noticed, and Dísa could see she was considering apologizing, but decided not to.
A host of questions flooded Dísa’s brain. Where would they live? Could they even afford a smaller place in Dalvík? What would happen to the animals? To the horses?
How would Grandpa take it?
Badly. Very badly.
‘I’m sorry, Dísa.’ Mum sniffed and a tear wriggled down her cheek. ‘I’ve tried everything. I really have. You must believe me.’
‘I know you have, Mum.’ Dísa slipped next to her mother on the sofa and held her tight; Mum buried her head in her daughter’s chest. Grandma drifted to the doorway from the kitchen, her face a mixture of anger and concern, and then she withdrew. She did as much work as Grandpa around the farm, probably more. She had put most of her life into the place. But Dísa knew it would be Grandpa whose distress would take precedence.
Dísa ran her fingers through her mother’s hair. ‘Maybe I can help,’ she said.
The sobs turned into a chuckle. ‘You’re going to have to work for a hundred years at the petrol station,’ Mum said, sitting up. Dísa did a few hours behind the counter there to earn some pocket money, in addition to the time she put in helping out on the farm. And her homework.