Strange Shores Read Online Free Page A

disappearance in the great storm of January 1942, when the British servicemen had famously come to grief.
    There had originally been four sisters, daughters of a couple who had moved to Reydarfjördur in the 1920 s, fleeing a miserable living on a small croft in the northern district of Skagafjördur. Their father, who came of an East Fjords family, had taken over a relative’s smallholding, but according to Bóas he was a heavy drinker who made a mess of running the place and was killed in an accident some years after the move. His wife, left on her own with four daughters to support, had managed to turn around the fortunes of the farm with the help of her neighbours, married a local man and saw her daughters safely into adulthood. The two eldest had left, moving right across the country to Reykjavík, while Matthildur had married a fisherman from Eskifjördur, the neighbouring fjord. At the time she went missing they had been together for a couple of years but had no children. Hrund, the youngest of the sisters, had got hitched to a local and stayed on in Reydarfjördur.
    ‘They’re all dead, my sisters,’ Hrund said. ‘I didn’t have much contact with the two who moved to Reykjavík. It was years between their visits. We did exchange the odd letter but that was it really, though Ingunn’s son moved out here as a young man and still lives in Egilsstadir. He’s in a care home now. We’re not in touch. As for Matthildur, I have nothing but good memories of her, though I was only thirteen when she died. She was considered the prettiest sister – you know how people talk – perhaps because of what happened to her. As you can imagine, her loss was a terrible tragedy for the family.’
    ‘I gather she’d been planning to walk over here to see your mother.’
    ‘That’s what her husband Jakob said. She got caught in the same storm as the British soldiers. Maybe you know the story?’
    Erlendur nodded.
    ‘They had no luck finding Matthildur, though they made a huge effort, both here in Reydarfjördur and over on the Eskifjördur side where she started out.’
    ‘I hear there was torrential rainfall,’ Erlendur said, ‘and the rivers were in spate. They think one of the British soldiers drowned in the Eskifjördur River and got washed down to the sea.’
    ‘Yes, that’s why they combed all the beaches. Maybe she was carried out to sea. It seemed by far the most likely explanation to us.’
    ‘They say it was a miracle that so many of the soldiers survived,’ Erlendur commented. ‘Maybe people thought they’d exhausted the store of good luck. Did anyone else know of her plan to go over to Reydarfjördur? Aside from her husband, that is?’
    ‘I don’t think so; at least, she didn’t warn us she was coming.’
    ‘And no one saw her? She didn’t stop anywhere along the way? There were no witnesses who spotted her heading up to the moor?’
    ‘The last time anyone saw her was when she said goodbye to Jakob. According to him, she was well prepared, and had a packed lunch as she expected the walk to take all day. She left at the crack of dawn because she wanted to get to Reydarfjördur in good time, so there wouldn’t have been many people about when she left. And she wasn’t planning to stop anywhere either.’
    ‘The British claimed not to have seen any sign of her.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Though she was on the same path.’
    ‘Yes, but they would hardly have been able to see a thing in that weather.’
    ‘And your mother didn’t know she was coming, did she?’
    ‘Bóas
has
done a thorough job of filling you in.’
    ‘He told me the whole story, yes.’
    ‘Jakob was . . .’
    Hrund looked out of the window, as she did all day every day, sitting at her post, armed with her cushion and binoculars. When dusk fell, the glow from the construction site lit up the landscape. She gave a wry smile.
    ‘What extraordinary times we’re living through,’ she said, with an abrupt change of subject, and started