James Lovegrove - The Age Of Odin (22 page)

In the lounge, two women rose to greet us. Both had a similar look about them to Urd. Same posture, same mannerisms, same colouring. In point of fact, they were exact replicas of her, just older. One by maybe twenty years, the other by a lot. One was Urd as she might be after childbirth, broader in the hips, plumper around the jowls.
Matronly
was the word that sprang to mind. The other was Urd as she'd become once menopause, osteoporosis, and the general withering of age had taken their toll: stooped, hair streaked with silver, lips shrivelled to a dog's bumhole with a sketching of moustache across the top.

"Verdande," Odin said to the mother version of Urd, and "Skuld" to the ancient version. There was a definite tremor in his voice. Oh how he did not want to be in a room with these three.

"All-Father," Verdande and Skuld replied. Usually a term of respect round these parts, but from their lips the title sounded sarcastic, even contemptuous. They were scornful of it, and of Odin.

The Norns gathered together in the centre of the room, and it was like a snapshot of three generations. Grandmother, mother, daughter. Which would have been charming if they weren't so eerily alike in every way. Triplets born across a span of several decades.

"We are busy," said Urd. "There is much work to be done."

"The tides in the affairs of gods and men are in full spate and reaching flood," said Verdande. "We must weave and divine as never before."

"Yet we have made time for your visit," said Skuld. "How could we fail to? We are the Norns. It was foretold."

"We are grateful," said Odin.

But they didn't much seem to care for further niceties. "Be seated," Urd instructed, and Odin and I did as told, finding places for ourselves on a settee between the sticking-up springs and the outbursts of horsehair stuffing. A one-bar electric fire buzzed hear our feet, shedding some warmth but no further up our legs than our ankles. Funnily enough, I couldn't see where the fire was plugged into. It didn't even appear to have a flex.

"What has Odin told you about us?" Urd asked me. "About how we work?"

"Little, I'd imagine," said Verdande.

"The All-Father is loath to acknowledge that we exist at all," said Skuld. "Or that, as we prove, there are things beyond his control."

"We see all."

"While he sees not nearly so much."

"Nor nearly so far ahead."

"One eye only."

"The other sacrificed in return for a drink from the Wellspring of Wisdom in Jotunheim."

"Plucked out and given to Mimir, the only wise jotun that ever lived. A poor exchange."

They were ripping the piss out of Odin, and he just stared at the middle distance and took it. I felt a bit sorry for him.

"For wisdom by itself is never quite enough," said Urd.

"Not when unaccompanied by foresight," said Verdande.

"Oh what it must be to understand all, but be able to predict the outcome of naught," said Skuld.

"How sad."

"How limiting."

"How short-sighted."

"Come on, girls, leave it out," I said. Someone had to stand up for the old bugger. He obviously wasn't going to himself. "So Odin's missing an eye. Never stopped Columbo, did it? Means he can't enjoy a 3D movie, but that's about the only drawback I can think of."

"Don't defend me, Gid," Odin said. "This... teasing is just their way. The Norns must be endured and never - I repeat -
never
antagonised."

"What's the worst they can do? Slag me off to death?"

The three women laughed in unison, a horrible sound, jarring and jangling like a bad guitar chord.

"Gideon has spirit," said Urd.

"Gid does," said Verdande.

"A hero born," said Skuld.

"No, whoa, what?" I said. "Hero? Oh no. That's enough of that."

"Modest?"

"Or ignorant."

"Or in denial."

"Denial of his future path."

"Shall we show him, sisters?"

"Show him the course we have set for him?"

"The thread we have selected?"

"Ought we?"

"He has come. We ought."

"He wants truth."

"We shall give him truth."

They were talking so fast now, I was having trouble keeping up with which of them was saying what. The three-way rota of Urd then Verdande then Skuld had been abandoned. They were all speaking at once, or finishing one another's sentences, or doing alternate words, I wasn't sure which.

"It is the price."

"The price of truth."

"To be shown the truth of himself."

"A truth for a truth."

"Does he wish to see what is to be?"

"As if he has a choice."

"In our house."

"On our terms."

"He cannot refuse."

Then, like that, they were gone, whisking out of the room in a flourish of skirts. I looked at Odin.

"What the hell was all that -"

And suddenly they were back, wheeling a TV set. It was sitting on a rickety hostess trolley, with a VCR on the shelf beneath. The telly was vintage; fake wood veneer, bulbous screen, loads of knobs and buttons. Mid 'eighties at the latest. The VCR was much the same. A top-loader the size of a kitchen sink, with clunky lever switches you had to press hard.

"Once, we spun threads," said Urd. They were back to speaking in turn, thank God. That overlapping dialogue of theirs had been freaking me out.

"One for every mortal," said Verdande.

"But so effortful," said Skuld. "So laborious."

"A grey thread for the common man whose life is never to amount to much."

"Occasionally a colourful thread for the freeman or the farmer, he whose lot is to provide for others and set a good example."

"And rarely, very rarely, a golden thread, for the chieftain, the king, the hero..."

"The uncommon man."

"The exception."

"The great."

"But that was then, and this is now." Urd produced a videocassette. It gleamed brightly. It looked for all the world like an ordinary plastic-cased VHS tape that someone had spray-painted gold. I glimpsed my name scrawled on the stick-on strip on the side.

"This is yours, Gideon," she said. "This is you. Your past..." She handed the tape to Verdande.

"Your present," said Verdande, passing it on to Skuld.

"And your future," said Skuld, slotting it into the VCR.

The telly, like the fire, lacked a plug cable. Still it came on when Urd prodded the main button. Verdande manually selected a channel. Skuld pressed "Play" on the VCR. The machine's drive motor whined and churned.

"Sit back."

"Watch."

"It will be instructive."

Out of the corner of his mouth, Odin said, "I was afraid this might happen. Those who come to the Norns seeking knowledge must pay for it somehow. In your case, the cost is submission to a demonstration of their power. If you weren't a hero, or so unintimidated by them, they wouldn't feel the need to flaunt their superiority. The greater your destiny, the stronger your character, the more they must try to belittle you."

"With a video?" I muttered back. "A Blu-Ray disc, a forty-inch plasma display, now that would impress me. But
this
?"

"They have modernised."

"Hardly."

"Nonetheless, I urge you, don't watch. Or watch for as long as you can bear, but close your eyes and stop your ears when it becomes too much."

"It's pre-digital technology," I said. "There aren't even remote controls. I'm not worried."

The TV screen flickered into life. A wash of static. Then...

Twenty-five

There is a baby.

He gurgles.

He has a teddy. A woollen Rupert the Bear his nan knitted for him. It doesn't look much like the actual Rupert the Bear, but it had the yellow checked scarf and crude red jumper.

He loves that teddy. He sucks one ear so hard, it eventually comes off. Nan sews it back on, and the teddy is never quite the same from then on, but he still loves it.

There is a toddler.

He hates tinned rice pudding.

His mummy is feeding him some. He knows he is going to sick it up. He tries to tell her to stop spooning it into him because it's just going to come straight out again, all over her. He doesn't have the words. She doesn't stop. It does come out.

He never can stand rice pudding after that. Even the smell of it turns his stomach.

There is a little boy.

He has a bike.

It is a BMX, a Mongoose Supergoose with chrome frame and bright red everything else. He rides it over the pavements and through the underpasses and across the railway bridges. His father bought it for him second-hand and it's not in the best of nick, but still, it is the coolest bike ever. Then some neighbours kids steal it. He sees them riding it a few days later, popping wheelies and giving one another backsies. He goes up and challenges them. They punch him and tell him to f-word off. Then they set about smashing up the bike in front of him, in a slow, sadistically methodical manner.

He lies to his parents about his swollen lip, saying he tripped and fell over and did it on a kerb stone. Crying in bed that night, he vows to himself he will never be robbed from or bullied again.

There is a pre-teen at primary school.

He is tall for his age.

But not as tall as Mick McCulloch. Mick McCulloch is bigger than anyone, and knows it, and uses it. Mick picks on everybody in his year, and the year below, and even the year above. One day Mick makes the mistake of picking on the boy. He tries to trip him up in the school dining hall so that he'll drop his tray and people will laugh. He succeeds.

The boy stands straight up and starts whacking Mick in the face with the empty tray. And when the tray breaks, he uses his fists. And he won't stop, no matter how much Mick whimpers and begs. In the end a member of the catering staff pulls him off, and Mick is left sobbing in pain, bleeding, humiliated. But it's the boy who gets the bad reputation there after. No one dares hassle him. Everyone is a little scared of him. Even the teachers.

There is a teenager at secondary school.

He isn't doing well.

His parents are in the throes of getting divorced. It's ugly. The atmosphere at home is sour, like curdled milk. He is failing in his exams. He is having to go and see the headmistress in her office far too often and getting put on report and threatened with exclusion far too often. His teachers are at their wits' end. He is obviously not stupid. He just isn't bothering. And his behaviour is disruptive. The class comedian, he always has a smart answer ready, just not the right kind of smart.

He crashes and burns academically. Further education is not an option. Then the careers advisor suggests the armed forces.

There is a cadet.

He likes being a cadet.

He takes to basic training as though it were made for him. He doesn't mind officers yelling order at him all day long. He doesn't mind having to get out of bed at ridiculous hours, being made to go on full-kit runs for mile after slogging mile, the endless drilling, the live fire exercises, the sleep-depriving night manoeuvres, the petty breaches of conduct or dress code that earn absurdly disproportionate punishments, any of it.

He is away from home. He is being treated like an adult, like a person with value. He feels for the first time that he belongs somewhere.

There is a private.

He experiences his first taste of real combat.

He is in former Yugoslavia, peacekeeping after the NATO bombardments, helping implement the Dayton Accord. His squad comes under fire from a band of Croat guerrillas in Turanj, a suburb of Karlovac. The contact doesn't last more than two minutes - a ferocious storm of being shot at, shooting back, everyone scurrying about yelling their heads off. Two minutes of pure, hellish chaos.

And yet, when it's over, he can't be more exhilarated. His heart is pounding. His entire body tingles as though electrified. He is alive. More than that, he
feels
alive.

There is a young man.

He is on leave.

He is jogging around the perimeter of Clapham Common. A girl comes jogging the other way. She is short, brunette, cocky-cute, with a marvellous bum which he stares at over his shoulder while he runs on, until he collides with a park bench, nearly unmanning himself. He continues on his way - sore, limping - hoping to encounter the girl again on the far side of the common, but she isn't there.

So he plans it like a military operation. He goes jogging at the exact same time the next day, and the day after that, following the same anticlockwise circuit the girl took. At last the strategy pays off. There she is. He pulls up alongside her. He says hi. Several hundred yards and some precision-targeted flirting later, he's acquired two objectives. One: her name, which is fancy and French-sounding, although she was born in Basildon. Two: her telephone number.