Encircling (12 page)

When Mum left school she went to live in Namsos and started training to be a nurse, but within six months she was pregnant with you and had to move back to Otterøya and Erik. There were no benefit schemes for single mothers in those days and even though Erik straightened himself out and cut down on his drinking once there was a baby in the house, he didn’t get his old job with the roadworks department back. He did a bit of odd-jobbing in the town and helped out on his neighbour’s shrimp boat during the season when there was a lot to do, but his income was poor and unstable and even though your mum also did occasional work during those first years it was hard to make ends meet.

The hardest part, though, was all the gossip, the jeers and the sneers that she had to put up with. Single mothers were fair game back then and she had to shake her head and laugh when she told me about the time when she got work as a cleaner for three of the posher families in town. She arranged for one of her girl friends to look after you for a few hours every day and hitched a lift on the milk van when the milkman had finished his rounds and was heading back to the dairy. It went really well for a while, because Mum’s rates were reasonable, she was conscientious and hard-working, and – not least – trustworthy. These posh people used to leave earrings and small amounts of money lying about to test her, but she was
honest, she never stole anything and all three families let her know that they were more than satisfied with her. One man, the manager of one of the town sawmills, even gave her a raise without her having to ask for it – not what one might have expected, since he was known for being tight-fisted where his employees were concerned. But when he and the others learned that Mum was an unmarried mother it didn’t matter how hard-working and honest she was, she was fired on the spot; these grand ladies didn’t want her sort in the house, who knew what temptations she might lay in their husbands’ way? Thirty-five years ago that was, David, only thirty-five years. So times do change, and they change fast.

Right up until you moved out Erik had spells when he drank heavily and was difficult to live with. But according to Mum he was still a lamb compared to the way he had been before you were born, and fortunately living with him didn’t seem to have done you any harm. You had many good memories of your early childhood and you laughed and were proud when you told people how “barmy” your grandfather was. You didn’t know that Erik had been drunk that time when he drove the car straight through the garage door or when he played the accordion for Mum and all the guests at her birthday party clad only in his underpants, and you never noticed how your mum always seemed to have something to do in the kitchen when we had visitors and you started going on about him. You saw everything with the eyes of a child and as far as you were concerned Erik was simply a jolly buffoon.

As for me, I got on okay with Erik, but no more than that. It didn’t matter how hard I tried I could never really like the man who had hurt Mum so much, and his behaviour when he came to visit us could be very annoying. He had worked as a lumberjack, a removal man and a navvy – in other words,
he was a labourer and he looked exactly as you would expect a labourer to look: big, burly and with a way of talking and acting that spoke of a strange innate blend of arrogance and inferiority complex. He was confident and assertive when it came to anything practical. If there was some job to be done in the house or garden that I wasn’t sure about, or needed help with, he would always lend a hand, and since there was no doubt that his skills in this area were far superior to mine his manner when he gave me tips and advice was more modest than condescending. But with things which he didn’t know much about the exact opposite was the case. It was as if he were trying to compensate for his own insecurity and inadequacy by boasting and acting as if he knew it all. When he was running out of arguments and losing a discussion, for instance, he would either grin, shake his head hopelessly and act as if whatever I was saying was so ludicrous that there was no point in continuing the discussion, or he would credit me with a whole range of ridiculous, naive views, against which he would then deliver a fierce tirade, obviously in the hope of making himself and everyone else believe that he was on the offensive. Everyone there could see right through him, of course, even you, young though you were. But so good was he at fooling himself that he was completely impervious to this, and when I eventually got fed up and couldn’t be bothered arguing the toss any longer, he would act as if he had put me soundly in my place. “Oh, aye, I maybe didn’t have as much schooling as you, but that don’t mean I’m stupid!” he would say.

And very often this was exactly what he was trying to convey when he told his stories. He was a brilliant storyteller, I give him that. If I had had even a fraction of his gifts in that area I would have had the church packed to the rafters every single Sunday, that’s how good he was. But here again, as in
discussions, he was hellbent on showing that he wasn’t just anybody – even if he was only an ordinary working man from Otterøya, as he was wont to style himself. He put himself into just about every story he told, even those in which he could not possibly have had any part. He didn’t always have the lead role, I grant you, but he always acquitted himself equally well, remarkably often at the expense of those whom he called “office rats”, an epithet which covered everyone who did not do hard, physical labour. Such people lived sheltered lives, they were weak, cowardly and impractical, and in story after story Erik had to clear up the mess they made, help them or quite simply tell them to bugger off so that he, the man with the necessary muscle, courage or quick-wittedness, could take matters in hand and sort them out. I can almost hear his coarse laugh after he had told one of these yarns, almost hear that booming voice as he delivered his closing line: “That took the wind out of the chairman’s sails, I can tell you!”

Naturally the tacit implication was that I too was an office rat and naturally this was one of the reasons why I found him so annoying. But at any large gathering I could always tell that I was not alone in finding him tiresome. It had something to do with the powerful urge he had to constantly put himself in the spotlight; it was quite wearing to have to sit there, affecting to be speechless with admiration at all that he had experienced, all the things he had done in his life. Although it was worst for your mum, of course. It could be downright painful for her to have to listen to this man who had ruined her childhood boasting about himself all the time. Particularly painful, obviously, when he started angling to be absolved of all the things he had done to her, as he often did, oh yes, just about every time he visited us. I can see us sitting at the round table in the living room, I see the way Erik’s huge frame
fills the chair, see how he twirls his black moustache. “How about that time when we pretended we were stranded on a desert island, Berit,” he said on one such occasion. “On a desert island?” Mum said. “You must remember that.” “No,” Mum said. “That time we camped out on the sheep island,” he said. He eyed her in some surprise. “When we played that we’d been shipwrecked and washed up on that beach, don’t you remember?” “No, I don’t remember,” Mum said. “And how we were going to live off the fish we caught and the berries we picked?” “No, I don’t remember any of that.”

She did remember, though, of course she did. She remembered that and all the other things Erik used to remind her about, but she refused to go along with painting a rosy picture of her childhood, as she put it. Because she knew that was what Erik wanted her to do. Erik knew the sort of father he had been and he deeply and sincerely regretted that. These attempts of his to get your mum to talk about the good times which, in spite of everything, they had had together, were his way of gaining a little peace of mind. There were times when it hurt to look at them, it was such a touchy subject, this, for both of them and more than once I told Mum that she would have to try her best to forgive him, that it would make life easier for both of them if she did. But it was hard for her and I didn’t want to put too much pressure on her, either; demanding of a victim that they forgive their persecutor can feel like another act of abuse, it may seem as though what he or she went through is being belittled, taken lightly, and that was the last thing I wanted.

But I remember how upset your mum was after such episodes. I remember how worried you were once when she fled into the bathroom in tears the minute Erik was out of the door. You couldn’t understand what had got into her and
since I didn’t want to ruin the good relationship you had with your grandfather it was hard for me to explain it to you. I was at my wits’ end and I didn’t manage to say much except that you weren’t to worry about Mum and that you must on no account think that it had anything to do with you.

But you figured it all out eventually, anyway. You would have been about fourteen, maybe fifteen, I don’t remember exactly, but you were mad at Mum and me, at any rate, because we wouldn’t let you go to a rock concert in Trondheim, and you threatened to go and live with your grandfather because he let you do whatever you liked. “And why do you think that is?” your mum asked hotly, slamming her hand down on the table and staring at you. “It’s because he doesn’t care,” she screamed, “it’s because your grandpa’s a drunk who doesn’t give a shit about you, me or anyone else, and he never has.”

Nothing good came of saying that. I don’t blame Mum, it’s not that, it hurt her to hear you say that you’d rather live with the man who had destroyed her childhood than with her, and she couldn’t stop herself from saying what she said. She simply snapped. But in the long run it led to you giving your grandfather a wider berth. You began to reflect on and reassess memories from your early childhood and slowly but surely you formed a new picture of your grandfather and possibly, indeed, of your whole childhood. All of a sudden you were no longer so keen to go to Otterøya and when Erik visited us you always made a point of being busy with your chums. Erik pretended not to notice, joked with you, asked if you were off chasing the girls again, but we could tell that it hurt him to lose you like this and that it rankled him. Mum and I did our best to play along with him, but he knew that we knew and I remember how embarrassed he looked at one
point when our eyes met and it was clear to us both that we were thinking the same thing.

I tried to talk to you about it. You were in the same situation as your mum, you found it impossible to forgive him and it didn’t only bother Erik, it bothered you too, I could tell. “Grandpa loves you and I know you love him, and that’s all that matters,” I said. But you only grunted and said, “Yeah, yeah,” and tried to pretend that this was just soppy minister talk that you had no wish to hear.

You know, there were times when I tormented myself with the thought that Mum had only married me so that you and she could escape from Erik. But this was sheer fancy on my part – if she had been that desperate to get away she would have found herself some other man to move in with long before she met me. And the looks she gave me, the things she said to me, the happiness she radiated, everything about her also told me that this was not the case, it was the brooder in me that came up with this. I loved Berit and I knew that she loved me too, although I probably wasn’t the easiest person to live with, especially those early years. I had lived alone until I was in my forties and had acquired habits and mannerisms which got on your and your mum’s nerves, but which it was hard for me to change. Worse, though, was the fact that I wasn’t used to being contradicted and overruled; that and the discovery – something of a surprise to me – that I was pretty stubborn and found it hard to admit when I made a mistake. I remember when we went fishing down at Gilten, a lake just south of Namsos. The forest down there is a maze of narrow dirt tracks running hither and yon and it’s extremely easy to get lost. I had been there before two or three times, but I didn’t know the area all that well. On the way home you and Mum were sure I had turned right
when we should actually have turned left and that we ought to turn around and drive back, but you had never been there before, so I wouldn’t hear of it. Even when we came to a sign clearly stating that we should have taken the road you and Mum had said we should take I refused to admit that I had made a mistake. Somebody must have been playing around with the signs to mislead people, it was a well-known ruse to keep the best fishing spots to themselves, I claimed, and not even when the next sign and the one after that also told us that we were driving in the wrong direction would I admit defeat. Or at least, I did admit that I ought to have turned left rather than right, as you had both said, but I steadfastly maintained that it was perfectly possible to take this road too, and besides, the scenery was much nicer and we had the whole evening ahead of us.

Worse still was the time when the bishop gave me five kilos of venison that proved to be on the turn. I refused to admit that a gift from the bishop himself could be such a disappointment, I remember, and I forced that meat down, smiling all the while at you and Mum and saying that this certainly was a far cry from dry roast beef. “A little unusual,” Mum said tactfully. “Quite tangy, actually.” “That’s because the deer eat so many rowanberries in the autumn,” I said. “Is that so?” “Did you know that, David?” I asked, smiling and trying to persuade myself and you and Mum that the venison tasted of the Norwegian countryside and that everything was just as it should be. You two weren’t fooled, though, and after a while I noticed that you weren’t touching the meat but were only eating the meatballs, potatoes and gravy and, childish though it may have been, I took umbrage. It was bad enough that you refused to buy my attempted explanation of the way the food tasted, but that you could sit there tucking into
those delicious meatballs while I felt compelled to force down rotten venison was like adding insult to injury, and when, to top it all, Mum began to giggle, I simply lost my temper. “What are you laughing at?” I asked. I tried to keep smiling and pretend I didn’t see what was so funny, but Mum knew that I knew and she giggled more and more and I got madder and madder, and she clearly seemed to think that this made the whole thing even funnier. Finally, she laid her fork down on the plate, put her hand over her mouth and laughed outright.