September 17, 2019
DID YOU EVER ESPY a lonelier signpost, dear reader? North to Festap, east along the Kaldidadur Road, and west to Tingvellir, 23 kilometers. ?rvar, I recall, taught me that “T” is a voiced “th” as in “lathe.” Twenty-three kilometers on British back roads would be a mere twenty-minute drive, but I left the tourist center at Tingvellir an hour and a half ago. The tarmac road degenerated into a dirt track twisting its way up the escarpment and onto this rocky plateau under gunmetal mountains and churning clouds. On a whim, I pull over, kill the engine of my rented Mitsubishi, and climb up the stony hillock to sit on a boulder. Not a telephone pole, not a power line, not a tree, not a shrub, not a sheep, not a crow, not a fly, just a few tufts of coarse grass and a lone novelist. The valley in The Fall of the House of Usher. A terraforming experiment on a lesser moon of Saturn. A perfect opposite of end-of-summer Madrid, and I wonder how Carmen’s doing, then remind myself that how she’s doing is no longer my business. Driving around Iceland for a week before the Reykjavik Festival was her idea: “The Land of the Sagas! It’ll be a blast, Crispin!” Dutifully I did the research, booked the rooms and the car, and was even reading Njal’s Saga that London evening only eight weeks ago. When the phone went, I knew it was trouble: Holly would call it a “Certainty” with a capital C. My separation from Zo? was long forecast, but Carmen’s declaration of independence came from a clear blue sky. Frantic, hurt, above all fearful, I began arguing that it’s the challenges and routines that make a relationship real but I was soon incoherent as the house seemed to collapse and the sky fell in on top.
Enough. I had two years of love from a kind woman.
Cheeseman’s on his third year in hell, and counting.
SOME TIME LATER, a convoy of 4×4s grinds past, coming back from the Kaldidur Road. I’m still here, sitting on my arse. A bit cold. The tourists watch me through grime-plastered windows, tires spitting stones and kicking up dust. The wind cuffs my ears, my stomach welcomes the tea and … Nothing else. Eerie. I treat the microflora to a bladderful of vintage novelist’s urine. By the signpost a cairn of stones has accumulated over the centuries. Feel free to add a stone and make a wish, ?rvar told me, but never remove one, or a spirit could slip out to curse you and your bloodline. The threat isn’t as quaint up here as it sounded down in Reykjavik. The rim of Langj?kull Glacier rises whalebone-white behind nearer mountains to the east. The few glaciers I’ve seen previously were grubby toes unworthy of the name—Langj?kull is vast … The visible skull of an ice planet smooshed onto earth. Back in Hampstead I read about characters in the sagas getting condemned to outlawry, and imagined a jolly enough Robin-Hood-in-furs setup, but in situ I can see that outlawry Iceland-style was a de facto death sentence. Better push on. I put my stone on the cairn and notice, at close range, a few coins have been left here too. Down at sea level I wouldn’t be so daft, but I find myself taking my wallet to retrieve a coin or two …
… and notice that the passport photo of me, Juno, and Ana?s is missing. Impossible. Yet the blank square of leather under the plastic sheath insists the photo is gone.
How? The photo’s been in there years now, since Zo? gave me the wallet, since our last civilized Christmas as a family. We’d taken the photo a few days earlier, at the photo booth in Notting Hill Tube station. It was just to kill a little time while waiting for Zo?, before we went to the Italian place on Moscow Road. Juno said how she’d heard tribes in the rain forest or wherever believe photography can steal a piece from your soul, and Ana?s said, “Then this picture’s got all three of our souls in it.” I’ve had it ever since. It can’t slip out. I used the wallet at the Tingvellir visitor center to buy postcards and water, and I’d have noticed if the photo was missing then. This isn’t a disaster, but it’s upsetting. That photo’s irreplaceable. It’s got our souls in it. Perhaps it’s in the car, fallen down by the handbrake, or …
As I scramble down the slope, my phone rings. CALLER UNKNOWN. I take it. “Hello?”
“Afternoon—Mr. Hershey?”
“Who’s speaking?”
“This is Nikki Barrow, Dominic Fitzsimmons’s PA at the Ministry of Justice. The minister has some news regarding Richard Cheeseman, Mr. Hershey—if now’s a convenient time?”
“Uh—yeah, yes, sure. Please.”
I’m put on hold—sodding Vangelis’s Chariots of Fire—while I sweat hot and cold. The Friends of Richard Cheeseman had thought our Whitehall ally had forgotten us. My heart’s pounding; this will be either the best news—repatriation—or the worst—an “accident” in prison. Sod it, my phone’s down to eight percent power. Hurry. It goes to seven percent. There’s a burst of “Tell him I’ll be there for the vote at five” in Fitzsimmons’s plummy tones; then it’s “Hi, Crispin, how are you?”
“Can’t complain, Dominic. You have news, I gather?”
“I do indeed: Richard’ll be on a flight back to the U.K. on Friday. I had a call from the Colombian ambassador an hour ago—he heard from Bogotá after lunch. And because Richard’s eligible for parole under our system, he ought to be out by Christmas of next year, provided he keeps his nose clean, no tasteless pun intended.”
I feel a lot of things, but I’ll focus on the positives. “Thank Christ for that. And thank you. How definite is all of this?”
“Well, barring a major governmental tiff before Friday, it’s very definite. I’ll try to get Richard D-cat status—his mother and sister live in Bradford, so Hatfield may suit—it’s an open prison in South Yorkshire. Paradise regained compared to his current digs. After three months he’ll be eligible for weekend passes.”
“I can’t tell you how good it is to hear this.”
“Yep, it’s a decent result. The fact that I knew Richard in Cambridge meant that I kept a close eye on his case, but it also meant my hands were tied. By the same token, keep my name out of any social networking you may do, will you? Say an undersecretary got in touch. I spoke to Richard’s sister five minutes ago and made the same request. Look, got to rush—I’m due at Number Ten. My best to your committee—and top job, Crispin. Richard’s lucky to have had you fighting his corner when nobody else gave a monkey’s toss.”
WITH MY IPHONE’S last two percent I text my congratulations to Richard’s sister Maggie, who’ll phone Benedict Finch at The Piccadilly Review; Ben’s been handling the media campaign. This is what we’ve fought, connived, plotted, and prayed for, and yet, and yet, my joy’s melting away even as I touch it. I committed an inexcusable wrong against Richard Cheeseman, and nobody knows. “A perjurer,” I tell the Icelandic interior, “and a coward.” A cold wind scuffs the black dust, same as it ever did, as it ever does, as it ever will do. I was going to beg for a wish from the cairn, but the moment passed. I’ll take what luck I get. It’s all I deserve.
What was I doing when Fitzsimmons called?
Yes, the photograph. That’s a real pity. More than a pity. Losing the photo feels like losing the children again.
Down the slope I trudge to the Mitsubishi.
The photo won’t be there, or anywhere.