Someone meets me there with a grin. He’s maybe thirty, handsome, with long dark hair in a bun. His bottom teeth are noticeably crooked. “The lady’s drinks are on us tonight,” he tells the barman, and he’s either a different Australian or the one who called out from the balcony earlier.
“No need—”
“You saved his life.” He smiles again, and I don’t know if he’s taking the piss, or if he actually thinks that’s what happened. I decide it doesn’t matter—a free drink’s a free drink. I order another glass of red and then shake his hand.
“I’m Basil Leese.”
“Franny Lynch.”
“I like the name Franny.”
“I like the name Basil.”
“You feeling all right now, Franny?”
I never like this question. Even if I were dying of plague I would dislike this question. “It’s just cold water, right?”
“Yeah, but there’s cold and there’s cold.”
Basil takes my drink and carries it back to his table without asking, so I follow. He’s with the “drowning man”—who has also managed to change into dry clothes—and a few others. I’m introduced to Samuel, a portly man in his late sixties with a luscious head of red locks, then Anik, a slender Inuit man. Next Basil points out a younger trio playing pool. “Those two idiots are Daeshim and Malachai. Newest and dumbest members of the crew. And the chick is Léa.”
There is a scruffy Korean guy, and a gangly black guy. The woman—Léa—is black, too, and taller than both the men. All three are in the middle of a heated argument about pool rules, so I turn to the drowning man last, expecting to be introduced, but Basil has already launched into a detailed complaint of the dinner he’s been presented with.
“It’s overcooked, heavy-handed on the oregano, and way too buttery. Not to mention the pitiful bloody garnish. And look—look at the piss-poor presentation!”
“You asked for bangers and mash,” Anik reminds him, sounding bored.
Samuel hasn’t taken his merry eyes off me. “Where are you from, Franny? I can’t place your accent.”
In Australia I sound Irish. In Ireland everyone thinks I’m Australian. Since the very beginning I’ve been flickering between, unable to hold fast to either.
I swallow my mouthful of wine and grimace at the sweetness of it. “If you want you can call me Irish Australian.”
“Knew it,” Basil says.
“What brings an Irishwoman to Greenland, Franny?” Samuel presses. “Are you a poet?”
“A poet?”
“Aren’t all the Irish poets?”
I smile. “I suppose we like to think so. I’m studying the last of the Arctic terns. They nest along the coast but they’ll fly south soon, all the way to the Antarctic.”
“Then you are a poet,” Samuel says.
“You’re fishermen?” I ask.
“Herring.”
“Then you must be used to disappointment.”
“Well, now, I suppose that’s true.”
“Dying trade,” I comment. They were warned, time and again. We all were. The fish will run out. The ocean is nearly empty. You have taken and taken and now there is nothing left.
“Not yet,” the drowning man speaks for the first time. He’s been listening quietly and now I turn to him.
“Very few fish left in the wild.”
He inclines his head.
“So why do it?” I ask.
“S’the only thing we know. And life’s no fun without a challenge.”
I smile, but it feels wooden on my face. My insides are churning and I think of what this conversation would do to my husband, who has fought for conservation. His scorn, his disgust, would know no bounds.
“Skipper’s got his heart set on finding the Golden Catch,” Samuel tells me with a wink.
“What’s that?”
“The white whale,” Samuel says. “The Holy Grail, the Fountain of Youth.” He makes such an expansive gesture that some of his beer slops onto his fingers. I think he’s drunk.
Basil gives the older man an impatient glance and then explains, “It’s a huge haul. Like they used to catch. Enough to fill the boat, and make us all rich.”
I consider the drowning man. “Then it’s money you’re hunting.”
“It’s not money,” he says, and I almost believe him.
As an afterthought, I ask, “What’s your boat called?”
And he says, “The Saghani.”
I can’t help laughing.
“I’m Ennis Malone,” he adds, offering me his hand. It’s the largest hand I’ve ever shaken. Weather-bitten, like his cheeks and lips, and there is a lifetime’s worth of dirt tattooed under the fingernails.
“She saves your life and you don’t even tell her your name?” Basil says.
“I didn’t save his life.”
“You meant to,” Ennis says. “Same thing.”
“You shoulda left him in there to drown,” Samuel says. “Serve him right.”
“You could tie stones to his feet—that would drown him quicker,” Anik offers, and I stare at him.
“Don’t mind him,” Samuel says. “Macabre sense of humor.”
Anik’s expression suggests there is no humor about him whatsoever. He excuses himself.
“He also doesn’t like to be on land too long,” Ennis explains as we watch the Inuit man’s elegant passage through the pub.
Malachai, Daeshim, and Léa join us. The men look annoyed, sitting with identical frowns and folded arms. Léa is amused until she sees me, and then something wary chases its way through her brown eyes.
“What now?” Samuel asks the boys.
“Dae likes to pick and choose the rules he obeys,” Malachai says with a broad London accent. “And when he’s feeling really poorly he’ll make up his own.”
“Boring otherwise,” Daeshim says in an American accent.
“Boredom’s for people without imaginations,” Malachai says.
“Nah, boredom’s useful—it makes you innovative.”
They look sideways at each other and I see them both fight not to smile. Their fingers entwine, argument concluded.
“Who’s this then?” Léa asks. Her accent is French, I think.
“This is Franny Lynch,” Basil says.
I shake their hands and the boys seem to brighten.
“The selkie, huh?” Léa asks. Her hand is strong and stained with grease.
I pause, surprised by the reference and all the echoes in a life.
“Seal people who take to the water, only they don’t rescue folk like you did, they drown them.”
“I know what they are,” I murmur. “But I’ve never heard of a selkie drowning anyone.”
Léa shrugs, letting my hand go and sitting back. “That’s ’cause they’re tricksy and subtle, no?”
She’s wrong, but I smile a little, and my own wariness is kindled.
“Enough about that,” Daeshim says. “A question for you, Franny. Do you obey rules?”
Expectant eyes rest on me.