The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [166]
chapter thirty-two
Since childhood I had waved whenever I saw a plane pass overhead, and while I waited at Glasgow airport, I had witnessed half-a-dozen of the huge machines rush down the runway and rise into the sky, but as I sat in my window-seat, and my plane hurtled over the tarmac, it seemed impossible that even the most vigourous engine could lift all these people and seats and suitcases into the air. On and on we bumped. Then, just as it began to seem that we would do nothing more than circle the airport and return for a cup of tea, a giant force was pushing me back in my seat; my arms and legs were suddenly twice as heavy. The buildings and cars grew smaller with astonishing speed. We passed through the clouds, which had looked so solid from the ground, into dazzling sunlight.
The seat beside me was empty, and except when the air hostess brought me a neatly quartered shrimp sandwich and a glass of water, I gazed out of the window. Once or twice the clouds opened and I caught a glimpse of the distant sea but no sign of the Far Islands with their blossoming apple trees. Mr. Sinclair had been right. This kind of flight was not at all like that of a bird; it was too noisy, too purposeful. Sitting there, in my seat paid for with stolen money, looking out at the endless sky, I allowed myself to picture him, just for a moment, standing on the tower of St. Magnus, pointing out the old shoreline to Nell and me.
The skalds had taken months to sail from Iceland to Scotland, but after barely two hours the pilot announced our descent into Reykjavik. I leaned forward to catch my first sight of the country where I had spent three years and about which almost everything I knew came from poems written seven hundred years ago. Grey sea, black rocks, and occasional clumps of reddish weeds or shrubs filled my gaze. Of the city there was no sign.
On the steps of the plane the wind lifted my hair. I breathed in the smell of hot engines and the perfume of the woman in front. Over her shoulder, beyond the airport building, I saw a line of bare, angular mountains. Then I was inside the building and a man in uniform was stamping my new passport. “Welcome to Iceland, Miss Hardy. Enjoy your holiday.” My suitcase too had made the long journey. Again I followed my fellow passengers, this time into the customs area. The two men on duty waved me through without a glance. I found myself in a large hall with windows along one side, a row of desks on another. The travel agent in Edinburgh had advised me to change money at the airport, but looking around I saw nothing that resembled a bank. Behind one of the desks a woman in uniform was knitting something green. “Excuse me,” I said. “Do you speak English?”
“You will tell me,” she said, needles still clicking. “How may I help?”
“I have only Scottish money, pounds. And I don’t know how to get into the city.”
“See behind you—Change—they will change your money. The bus to Reykjavik goes outside. One hundred kronur. You buy ticket on the bus.”
I thanked her and, encouraged by her friendliness, asked if she could recommend a cheap place to stay. I worried she might not understand cheap, but she nodded. “Change money, come back, I will phone.”
When I returned a few minutes later with my kronur carefully tucked into my purse, she held out a piece of paper. “Get off when the bus stops. This is the house of my aunt. One night, seven hundred kronur. Her English is better than mine. She will aid you.”
She had printed the address and drawn a map, beginning with the bus station and ending with a little house. I thanked her profusely.
“I am glad to help,” she said. “My aunt asked why you visit.”
It was absurd to think the first person I met would have the answers, but I got out my notebook and showed her the page on which I had written my father’s name. “I’m looking for this person’s family,” I said.
She set aside her knitting—it was obviously a scarf—and studied the page. “No,” she said. “I do not know Einar Arinbjornsson.”
“Please, say that again.” I had hoped that Icelandic, the language