Chapter 3

In the morning we tackled the washout that had stopped us the previous afternoon. It wasn’t a bad one, and we got through it using just the winches, no timbers at all.

‘We could probably have just driven the trucks straight through really. Just a waste of time using the winches.’

‘Quite likely. But not worth risking it. I’m not looking forward to the day we lose a truck, and I hope to high heaven it’s not the tanker if we do.’

‘Before we go on too far, we ought to think about whether we want to try to meet the people around here, and if we do, how to go about it. Even in the Unimog, we can’t just drive across country and go visiting. We’d probably scare the living daylights out of them anyway, if we could.’

‘For the next few miles, we’re getting closer to one set of tents, and not really any further away from the other. But after that, we’ll be getting further away. So unless this is just the beginning of an area with more people, we’ve got to think what to do pretty soon.’

Granny Persie laughed. ‘You and your miles!’

Grandad stuck his tongue out. ‘I mean for the next slightly-more-than-a-few kilometres. I’m sorry.’

Granny Merly said it seemed she was probably wrong about the Sami.

‘Anyone camping alongside reindeer herds is far more likely to be Sami than anyone else.’

‘And whoever they are, they’re independent survivors, not a fenced-in camp. We really ought to make an effort to meet them. We could learn a lot from people who know how to survive right up here, and maybe we’ve got something to offer them, too.’

‘So how do we get to meet them? I suppose all we can do is get as close as we can in the trucks, and then walk. But it’s not going to be an easy walk, there’s an awful lot of very boggy areas, and they’re a devil of a long way away from the road.’

‘I doubt if they’ll stay in the same place anyway, and they know the place and will move much faster than we can. Even if they’re not deliberately trying to get away from us, we’ll never be able to catch up with them. I think we should just set up camp somewhere visible from a long way off, light a fire in the evenings, and hope that they want to come and see who we are.’

‘A pity we don’t have any tents. A convoy of military trucks isn’t the most inviting kind of camp.’

‘The best we can do is make our fire a little way away from the road, and hope they’re curious enough to come close enough to see that we’re just a family with little children.’

Late that afternoon, they parked the vehicles in a place where the road went through a patch of trees, so they weren’t visible from a distance.

‘They’ve probably seen them already, or heard them, or they saw our headlight beams yesterday, but that can’t be helped.’

Granny Merly and Mum and Aunty Anna got on with cooking the evening meal. Grandad and Uncle Sid chose a couple of the less substantial timbers, that hadn’t been used at the previous day’s washouts and were still dry, and split them into firewood, with some slenderer bits for kindling. Granny Persie made a few torches – not electric torches, wooden rods with rags ready to be soaked in diesel tied round one end – for the grown-ups to carry when we wanted to walk back to the trucks in the dark later on. Then all of us carried everything up a little hill a couple of hundred metres away from the road, and Granny Merly lit the fire.

I remember that evening very clearly. The atmosphere was magic, with all of us sitting on rocks, facing the fire, with sparks flying up into the night, and the shadows dancing behind us. I went to sleep with my head on Granny Merly’s lap, hearing the grown-up’s voices discussing the world, the future, what they thought they might or might not be able to do, and whether they’d move on the next day, or stay put for a couple of days to see if anyone would come and investigate us and our fire.

I remember vaguely waking up as I was being put to bed in the truck, too.

What I absolutely do not remember is hearing all the conversations in faltering Swedish that happened that night. But I’ve heard all about it.

After I’d gone to sleep, Grandad was a little surprised to see a face staring out of the darkness behind the twins. It seemed unreal, too improbable that it would happen so easily. At first he wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, whether he could really see a face at all, it was so dark so far away from the fire. Then he wasn’t sure whether he was just getting used to staring into the night, or whether the face was getting gradually closer, but after a little while he was certain there really was a face there.

He says he hesitated for a moment about whether to say anything to the rest of the family, and then realized that the owner of the face almost certainly wouldn’t understand English, and that the whole family had been chattering away without alarming them.

‘Don’t look round now, but just opposite me there’s someone back there behind the twins, watching us.’

‘I was about to mention the same thing, Pete,’ said Granny Merly, ‘except that the person I can see is behind you. I thought at first that maybe I was imagining them, but I think they’ve moved a bit closer.’

Then Granny Persie said, ‘Welcome, come and join us by the fire,’ in Swedish, and two young women stepped out of the darkness. They were very skinny, and dressed in rough clothing made of reindeer skins.

Their knowledge of Swedish was far from perfect, and the Grannies hadn’t spoken it for thirty-four years. There was no other common language, so conversation was very difficult, but each side recognized the other’s friendly intentions.

It transpired that there were three of them: two women, Lieđđi and Suonjar, and one man, Gealbu – three cousins. Gealbu had stayed with the reindeer while Lieđđi and Suonjar came to investigate us.

The three of them were the only survivors of their community, and apart from two other families of reindeer herders, we were the first people they’d seen in a very long time. They thought there were at least a few others though, because they’d occasionally seen traces of where people had been, in places they were pretty sure the other families they knew didn’t go.

The last of their parents’ generation had died when they were still children. There had originally been two older cousins as well, but they had both died not long after the older people.

Lieđđi and Suonjar didn’t know what everyone had died of, and either they couldn’t describe the symptoms very well, or the Grannies couldn’t understand the descriptions. They didn’t know how old they themselves were, either, but the Grannies guessed they were in their mid-twenties.

Late that evening, Lieđđi and Suonjar had slipped off into the night, after extracting promises that we wouldn’t leave in the morning before they’d come back with Gealbu.

‘I don’t think they can possibly be thirty-four years old, and anyway, their parents obviously survived a good few years after the war. So either the lethal agents, whatever they were, didn’t reach here and their parents’ deaths are coincidental, or the agents were diluted or decayed by the time they reached here, and resulted in much reduced expectation of life rather than fairly rapid death.’

‘Much reduced expectation of life, but no loss of fertility. These two were born long after the war, obviously.’

‘Could be some reduction in fertility, who knows? And how much older were their older cousins? Were they perhaps small children at the time of the war, or even foetuses? Were small children or foetuses particularly vulnerable, perhaps?’

‘If so few people survived around here, it’s pretty certainly only quite isolated pockets where the agent, whatever it was, was so weak it didn’t kill everyone.’

I do remember the following morning, when Lieđđi turned up with Gealbu. Suonjar had stayed with the reindeer.

I thought Gealbu was a very funny little man. He was all curled over, and leant heavily on a stick.

Lieđđi was carrying a large piece of meat. It was evidently a present. She looked up the hill at the remains of our fire, and seemed very puzzled that we’d let it go out. She had a conversation with the Grannies, which I remember being amazed at, because I couldn’t understand a word of it. Gealbu said not a word, but nodded and gestured at intervals.

Granny Merly took Lieđđi into the back of the truck we slept in – and cooked and ate in – and lit the stove. Granny Merly told me later that Lieđđi was visibly astonished at the stove. She’d obviously only ever cooked over a fire.

The meat was reindeer, of course. What none of us knew at that stage was that it had been kept underground for more than a year! It was delicious, anyway. Grandad and the Grannies discussed what present we should give them.

‘We could give them some clothes. We’ve got more than plenty, and can get more easily when we next reach a town, or even a farm or two. We’ve nothing that will fit them well, but some of Jake’s and Dot’s and Belle’s clothes will be a lot better than what they’ve got.’

‘Would they really, though? Their clothes look rough, but I don’t suppose they care what they look like, and I bet they’re warm and hard-wearing. And they obviously know how to repair them as necessary.’

‘I’d happily take them with us, but I have the feeling they’re better off here with their reindeer. They know what they’re doing here.’

‘If we’d really be happy to take them, we ought to ask them what they’d like to do. Maybe they’d really like to move on. At least we should give them the option. I don’t know whether they’ve thought about their old age, but I can imagine them having a pretty bad time.’

‘When I heard they’d got a male cousin their own age, I was a bit surprised they’ve not got any children. They’d have an even bigger problem with inbreeding than we do, all being cousins, but having lost their parents while they were still children I don’t suppose they know about that. But I think I can see now why it’s not an issue anyway. Is Gealbu even fertile? I guess that’s a serious congenital defect he’s got.’

Lieđđi and Gealbu were apparently quite at ease not understanding a word, while our grown-ups discussed all this. The decision to make the offer, not particularly expecting it to be taken up, was easily reached.

Then Granny Persie spoke to them in Swedish. They seemed quite surprised by the offer, but smiled broadly.

‘We’ll have to ask Suonjar, and we’ve got the reindeer to think of. They wouldn’t want to ride in a truck, even if you could take them.’

‘Wouldn’t the reindeer be okay on their own?’

‘I suppose so, although I think they’d miss us a lot. And if once we’ve left them on their own, we can’t change our minds. We’d never find them again. We’re not really expert like our parents were.’

While Granny Persie was talking to Lieđđi, Granny Merly was telling the rest of us what was going on.

Gealbu hadn’t said a word, but it was obvious from his nods and gestures that he was following the Swedish perfectly well. We later found out that he couldn’t talk, although he understood both Sami and Swedish, the latter better than his cousins did. Whatever else might have been wrong with him, there was nothing wrong with his brain.

After a little while, Lieđđi and Gealbu went off to talk with Suonjar. It was more than two hours before Lieđđi and Suonjar reappeared. They’d obviously been having a very serious discussion.

‘We’re not sure. It’s a very difficult decision. We’ve got everything we need here. We know how to live here. We’re not as expert as our parents were, but we’re managing. Our biggest worry is how we’ll manage when we get old.’

‘Won’t your children be grown up by the time you get old?’

‘We don’t have any children, and without husbands we won’t have any.’

‘Aren’t there any men in the other families you know?’

‘They’ve got their own wives, and anyway, they don’t like us. We’re Sami.’

‘I thought they were Sami, too – they’re herding reindeer just like you, aren’t they?’

‘Of course they’re Sami, but they think they’re better than us because we speak Sami, and they speak Swedish.’

‘You can speak Swedish too.’

‘Not very well. It’s not our mother tongue, and we don’t speak it amongst ourselves. Anyway, our parents were proud to be Sami and speak Sami.’

Mostly it was Lieđđi who was talking, but Suonjar joined in, ‘To be honest, there’s another thing. It’s Gealbu. He’s our cousin and we love him and we couldn’t possibly leave him on his own, he’d die. But the other families don’t want to be near him.’

‘That’s true. They’re horrible to him. It’s really unfair. I think they’re jealous of him actually, he’s so good with the reindeer. He’s good with his hands, too – our clothes are much better than theirs, and he does them all.’

‘There’s another things that’s worrying us, actually. You tell them, Lieđđi.’

‘Oh, yes. You were living a long way away from here, is that right?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘What’s the weather been like where you were, these past few winters?’

‘Bad. Much worse than it used to be when we first arrived there.’

‘Hmm. So it’s not just around here, then. As long as we can remember, each winter has been longer and colder than the last. We’re worried that if it gets much worse, we’ll be in trouble.’

‘That’s part of why we’re going south. It’s warmer down south.’

‘But you can only go south so far. You get to the sea in the end.’

‘We’ve come north so we can go further south, round the other side of the sea.’

‘No, you get to the sea again that side.’

‘Not if you go far enough east.’

But Lieđđi and Suonjar didn’t know what east meant at all, and they’d been assuming that ‘south’ – well, söder, since they were talking Swedish – meant downhill. They thought we were planning to go over the tops of the mountains and down the other side. It took a while for the Grannies and Lieđđi and Suonjar to work out what each other were talking about. Lieđđi and Suonjar’s knowledge of geography didn’t extend as far as the south of Norway and Sweden, never mind the sea crossing to Denmark, and the idea that there were places where the ground wasn’t covered in deep snow for months every winter was completely new to them.

Their wits were sharp, though. They’d never seen maps before, but Granny Persie got out the maps to show them, and in no time at all they were working out how all the places they knew fitted onto the map. They could scarcely read, but they kept asking Granny Persie what each bit of writing said, and they excitedly recognized a lot of the place names – more often the names of rivers and hills than the villages. Suonjar thought some of them were wrong, but Lieđđi suggested that it was simply that the Swedish name wasn’t the same as the Sami one. ‘The map seems to use Swedish or Sami names at random – or maybe some of the names are the same in both languages, or nearly the same anyway.’

Lieđđi had even noticed the contour lines on the larger scale maps of the immediate vicinity, and that the smaller scale maps covering larger areas didn’t have them – and worked out that they had something to do with hills and valleys. Granny Persie was impressed, and explained all about contours. Lieđđi seemed to have no problem grasping the principle – and although she could read words only with difficulty, she could read numbers perfectly well. Granny Persie had to show her how big a metre was, though, and she found it hard to relate one metre to the heights of hills in metres, or distances in kilometres. But she caught on very easily to the idea that a thumb joint length on the local map was about a day’s walk, or on the big map about four days’ walk.

‘It’s much quicker in winter, though. We can ski at nearly twice the speed we can walk.’

‘How does Gealbu get on with skis?’

‘Oh, he’s like a different man. On the flat and uphill, he’s almost as quick as us two, but downhill he’s really good. You should see him. He does things we wouldn’t dare to try, and he never makes a mistake. We don’t worry about leaving him behind a bit, because we know he’ll catch up, and overtake, as soon as we get to a down slope.’

‘You’re exaggerating, Lieđđi. Some days at the end of winter we’re going up nearly all day. We have to hang back for him a bit then. We used to have a big bull reindeer – Oaván, we called him – who was happy to have a harness on and pull him, but he died a couple of years ago. He was just servicing one of the cows and suddenly keeled over, with a sort of strangled bellow. He wasn’t even very old.’

You could see in Lieđđi’s face the pain that the memory brought back.

They’d travelled a good deal more widely than Granny Persie had imagined, but they were amazed at how far we’d come in just three weeks.

‘You should be able to get a long way south on the other side of the sea long before the snow comes again!’

‘I don’t know. The roads might be much worse in Finland and Russia and Poland, and the weather is colder there in winter, too. We don’t know how early the snow might come there.’

Granny Persie had to show them where Finland and Russia and Poland were on the maps, and then she had to explain that while in general it was warmer the further south you went, it was more complicated than that.

‘We must go and talk with Gealbu again. How much longer can you stay here before you have to move on? We might take some time to make up our minds. We’ll need to ask you more questions. And you ought to ask us more questions too, before you really agree that we can join you.’

‘Stay to eat with us before going to talk with Gealbu.’

‘No, we must get back to him. He’ll be worrying.’

‘Take some food with you, for him as well.’

‘If you’re sure...’

‘I hope you like it! It’s not what you’re used to, of course. That’s one thing you have to think about before you decide. We won’t have reindeer meat when we go south.’

‘No, we realized that. But you’re fat, you must have plenty of food of some sort! You’ll have to explain to us how, when you don’t have any reindeer. But later – we must get back to Gealbu. But you haven’t told us how long you can stay here.’

Granny Merly was still translating for the rest of us, of course. Granny Persie looked at Grandad, and said, in English, ‘We could stay a few days, at least, couldn’t we?’

‘You’re a better judge than I am, Persie, but surely we could. Seriously, we could surely stay a whole winter and set off south next Spring, if we wanted to. We’ll talk about that when they’ve gone.’

Persie turned back to Lieđđi and Suonjar. ‘A few days at least, maybe longer. We’ll talk about it, and tell you more accurately when you come back.’

‘The reindeer ought to be moving on, really. There’s a road to the left a little way further along this road, that goes near where our next stop will be. Can you move your camp up there? It would be an awful long way for us to walk back to you otherwise.’

‘It’s not marked on our map. I hope it’s in good enough condition to drive the trucks on. What’s it like?’

‘Oh. We don’t know, we only cross it in one place normally.’

‘We don’t know how far we should go along it to meet you, either.’

‘About a thumb joint on the map. We’ll find you, no problem.’

‘We’re probably best to leave the trucks here. We’ll take just the Unimog. We can all cram into that somehow. If the road’s okay, we can come back here at night. A thumb joint isn’t far for a vehicle!’

‘But we won’t get to you until evening.’

‘That’s okay. We can drive in the dark.’

‘Oh, yes, we saw your lights the other evening. They’re amazing. See you tomorrow evening then.’

‘What will you do if we can’t get there?’

‘We’ll come back here – maybe just one of us. It’ll be a couple of days, though, and it’ll be hard going for me to catch up with the reindeer again. But what can’t be helped, can’t be helped.’

Lieđđi and Suonjar disappeared. They moved remarkably fast.

‘Hard going for me to catch up with the reindeer again. No kidding. Her thumb joint is about thirty kilometres, no joke on foot on this terrain. But she knows what she’s committing herself to, she’s no fool. A real toughie.’

‘They were giving us the chance to back out of the offer. No risk of that! If they want to come with us, we’d be honoured to have them.’

‘That’s for sure.’

‘Gealbu could be a bit of a liability.’

‘I don’t think so. If he’s been coping with their way of life, he’s a lot tougher than he looks. Nothing wrong with his brain, and they say he’s good with his hands. He manages to communicate with his cousins somehow, and he’ll learn to communicate with us, too – or we’ll learn to communicate with him. What more do you want?’

‘I got the feeling Lieđđi was positively trying to sell him to us, that’s all.’

‘Oh, I think she was, but only because she was afraid we’d think he’d be a liability, not because she thinks he really would be. I’m sure of that.’

Granny Persie could see the doubt still in Grandad’s eyes.

‘Take my word for it, Pete. He’ll be an asset, just as much as those two girls, you’ll see – if they decide to come with us. I don’t think they will, though, in the end. It’d be a hell of a wrench to leave the reindeer, and a whole way of life. Remember what it felt like for us, to leave the farm? And we had plenty of time to think about it.’

Uncle Jake hadn’t said a word up to this point.

‘Dad said something a little while back, that made me think. We really could stay here over a winter. We’d learn a bit about living off reindeer, we’d get to know these three, and they’d get to know us. Our own future is pretty uncertain. It might be better if we joined them here, rather than them coming south with us. We’d all be in a better position to make up our minds by next spring. I’m not saying we should necessarily do that, but we should think about the possibility.’

Grandad smiled. ‘Yes, that was what was running through my mind. But I know what you’re thinking. Two more women, about your age.’

Granny Persie laughed out loud. ‘Don’t be rotten to him, Pete. You’re a fine one to make a comment like that, anyway. It’s a good thing if he finds someone who’s not his half-sister. Or two someones, like you did. Who knows? We might yet find someone for Belle and Dot who’s not their half-brother, too.’

Dot looked thoughtful. ‘We might have already. Just because Gealbu can’t talk and has something wrong with his back doesn’t necessarily mean there’s anything genetically wrong with him. Even if there is, it’s probably recessive.’

‘But do you fancy him?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe more than I fancy Jake. Much as I love Jake, he’s still my half-brother. I’m not saying anything against Greg and Fi or Sid and Anna, of course! But I’m sure I could get used to Gealbu. What do you think, Belle?’

‘He’s sort of cute. He’s got a very expressive face, and a lovely smile, even if it is a bit crooked. You can just see he means it, and you can see that he’s taking everything in. I’d want to learn to understand his gestures, though, like Lieđđi and Suonjar do.’

Uncle Jake picked up on that point. ‘I’d have to learn Swedish, too, before I’d want to commit myself to Lieđđi and Suonjar. Or they’d have to learn English.’

‘We’d all have to learn Swedish, or they’d have to learn English, or a bit of both. But I think we’ll have to make the commitment first anyway. If we stay the whole winter with them, we surely won’t want to split up again next Spring. Either we’ll all stay, or we’ll all go. And if they come with us straight away, that’s an even firmer commitment.’

‘Here we are, talking like arranging marriages. We don’t know what they’re thinking.’

‘You don’t? Didn’t you see Suonjar eyeing up Jake? And the way they were talking about not having children unless they had husbands?’

‘They were only children when their parents died...’

Granny Merly interrupted, ‘Yes, but they herd reindeer. They know all about the facts of life. They pretty certainly know all about inbreeding, too, if you think about it. They don’t know our history yet, though. Plenty of time. For what it’s worth, I think we should suggest we stay here for the winter. My only worry is whether we’re fit enough to keep up with a reindeer herd on foot. I doubt whether we can follow them with the trucks, even if the road’s good enough to follow them tomorrow. Odds are there are no roads at all most of the way wherever they go.’

‘We’re not unfit, and Gealbu manages.’

‘But none of us can ski. We don’t have any skis, either.’

Most of us had never even heard of skis and skiing.

‘We’ll have to find a sports shop, get some skis, and learn. Fast.’

‘I wonder if Lieđđi knows where there’s a sports shop? I get the impression they don’t do any raiding at all. I wonder why?’

‘We’ll have to talk to them about that. They might not realize that that’s how we’ve survived. They might not like it.’

‘I doubt if it would bother them at all. They seem very down to earth. They’ve pretty much got to be to have survived. If they’ve not been raiding, it’s only because they’ve not seen the need, or not realized that there’s anything useful to be found. Maybe there isn’t anything useful for their way of life.’

‘Is there even any snow up in the mountains still? Or would we have to wait until winter before we could start to learn? And if we go looking for a sports shop, will we be able to find our friends again afterwards?’

‘Do you think they have factory made skis, or do they make them themselves?’

There was so much we didn’t know.

‘There’s another thing. They’re pretty skinny. They called us fat, and by comparison with them, we are, but we’re not fat by pre-war standards. I’m pretty sure that reindeer herders didn’t used to be skinny. If they’re living right on the limits, could their way of life support us all at all? Maybe they don’t really have a big enough reindeer herd to support themselves, never mind fourteen of us as well.’

‘We can ask them about it, but I suspect that’s a very good point.’

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