Apprehension

 Littlewood and Masterson held the trolley from either end and began wheeling it up the modest hill that lay ahead of them; it took some graft as the ground was severe – rugged and bumpy.

‘Oh, you’ve decided to help out now, have you?’ Geissel taunted Masterson.

‘What do you mean?  I’ve helped out numerous times.’

‘Sadly I have no recollection.’

‘I brushed off a lot of that ice before.’

‘He did,’ agreed Littlewood.

‘Oh, really, did ya?’

‘You’d be dead now if it wasn’t for me, you old coot you.’

‘Well, pardon Father Masterson...’ said Geissel.  ‘...if I have doubted your public spirit.  I must have been elsewhere when you performed these acts of kindness.’

‘You’re always elsewhere.’

Katrine carried one of the shovels; Geissel the other.  And Stinson towed the case of supplies; the same case Grimur presented to Littlewood before leaving Torshavn.  It was very heavy, but surprisingly he found it not a struggle on his once-puny arms.  The angel-faced priest must have grown stronger over the course of this trip.  Always a rather frail being, he now felt muscles tightening in parts of his body that he never knew existed before.  He was so proud of his new strength that he didn’t even stop to check what was in the suitcase.

1 rope

2 towels

1 tin-opener

1 First Aid kit

1 compass

2 boxes of matches

1 flashlight

1 pair of binoculars

4 bread-loaves

6 tins of Campbell’s Cheddar Soup

1 bottle of Redbreast whiskey

1 hammer

1 pocket-knife

1 Kongsberg Colt Semi-Automatic Pistol

Their procession was bushed after only a few minutes but they ambled forward with doggedness; and cresting the hill eventually, there were assorted expressions of exhaustion, accomplishment, and pessimism when the island revealed its wide and listless plains.  A pearl-grey tundra of ashy pebble and patchy mists.  The blue hills were now dark and pale hobbled hillocks, draped in low jagged cliffs; they moped over the island like stuck and useless old sentries.

There was no immediate vegetation to be seen – except for the sunflowers as tall as trees, which they now saw existed in legions.  Some were as tall as the tallest oaks in Ireland.  Some not quite as tall the tallest oaks in Ireland.

Geissel was the first to comment on the full view they now had in front of them: ‘It is God’s work all of this, no doubt, yet I am overrun with apprehension.’