In the Darkness (14 page)

Sejer eased off and walked slowly towards the diminutive house. He patted the dog, when it came back disappointed, then bent down, took it by the collar
and
walked towards the door. He opened it warily. She was sitting on the floor with her knees drawn up under her chin, next to a laid table. A tiny coffee pot and two china cups graced the white tablecloth. Beside her on the floor lay a discarded doll with her hair cut off.

‘Eva Magnus,’ he said quietly, ‘I think you’d better accompany me to the station.’

Chapter 16

EVA RETURNED TO
reality.

She glanced up at Sejer, amazed that he was still sitting there.

He could have told her to start talking now, but he didn’t. He could take a break, it was worse for her. She was still wearing her coat, now she put her hand in her pocket and fumbled for something.

‘Cigarette?’ he asked, and found the packet in his desk, the packet he never touched.

He lit one for her, still keeping quiet; he could see she was trying to gather herself, find the beginning, a good place to start. The blood had begun to congeal around her mouth, and her lower lip was swollen. She couldn’t go back to the house. So, finally, she began at the beginning. With the day Emma had gone on holiday, and she’d taken the bus into town. She’d been standing in Nedre Storgate feeling cold, with her back to the Glassmagasinet department store and thirty-nine kroner in her pocket. A carrier bag in one hand. With the other, she clasped the top of her coat together under her chin. It was the last day of September, and cold.

She should have been at home working, it was eleven
in
the morning, but she’d fled from the house. Before that she’d phoned her electricity supplier and phone company; she’d asked them for a breathing space, for just a few more days, then she’d pay. And she was allowed to keep her electricity supply as she had a young child, but the telephone would be cut off in the course of the day. If the house burnt down, they’d have to live in the ruins as she hadn’t paid her insurance. Every week a new debt-recovery threat came in the post. Her Arts Council grant was late. The fridge was empty. The thirty-nine kroner was all she had. In her studio she had great piles of paintings, the work of several years which no one wanted to buy. She glanced to her left, across to the square, to where she could make out the illuminated Sparebank sign. A few months before the bank had been robbed. The man in the tracksuit had taken less than two minutes to make off with four hundred thousand kroner. About one hundred seconds, she thought. The case remained unsolved.

She shook her head in despair and looked furtively across at the paint shop, peered down into her bag where the aerosol can of fixative lay. It had cost 102 kroner and was faulty. Something was wrong with the nozzle so that nothing came out, or worse, it would suddenly deliver a great flood of the stuff at her pictures and ruin them. Like the sketch of her father that she’d been so lucky with. She hadn’t the money to buy another one, she’d have to exchange it. The few kroner she had left would buy her milk, bread and coffee and that was all. The problem was that Emma ate like a horse, a loaf didn’t last long. She’d phoned the Arts Council, who’d said that her grant would be sent out ‘any day now’, so it could take another week. She had no idea what she would eat
tomorrow
. It didn’t take her breath away or make her panic, she was used to living from hand to mouth, they’d done it for years. Ever since she and Emma had been left alone, and there was no longer a man bringing in money. Something would turn up, it always did. But the worry was like a barb in her breast, over the years she’d become empty inside. Sometimes reality began to quiver, and rumble quietly as if there were an earthquake in the making. The only thing that held her fast was the overarching task of satisfying Emma’s hunger. While she had Emma she had a sheet anchor. Today she’d gone to her father’s, and Eva searched for something to hold on to. All she had was the carrier bag.

Eva was tall and truculent, pale and frightened all at once, but the years with little money had taught her to use her imagination. Maybe she could demand her money back instead of a new aerosol, she thought, then she’d have another 102 kroner to buy food with. It was just a bit awkward asking. She was an artist, after all, she needed fixative and the man in the paint shop knew it. Perhaps she should sweep into the shop and make a real scene, act the difficult customer and mouth off and complain and threaten them with the Consumer Council; then he’d understand how the land lay, that actually she was broke and upset, and he’d refund her money. He was a nice man. Just as Père Tanguy had been when, for payment, he’d cut a pink prawn out of a van Gogh picture. Provided he could buy a tube of paint, he didn’t care if he ate or not. Nor did Eva for that matter, but she had a child with a ravenous appetite. The Dutchman hadn’t had to contend with that. She psyched herself up, crossed the street and went into the shop. It was warmer inside, quite cosy, and had the same smell as her studio at home. A young girl
was
behind the counter in the perfume section, flicking through a hair-tone chart. The paint man himself was nowhere to be seen.

‘I want to return this,’ Eva said with determination, ‘the spray mechanism doesn’t work. I want my money back.’

The girl assumed a pouting expression and took the bag. ‘You couldn’t have bought that here,’ she said sullenly. ‘We don’t stock that hairspray.’

Eva rolled her eyes. ‘It’s not hairspray, it’s fixative,’ she said wearily. ‘I ruined a rather good sketch on account of that aerosol.’

The girl blushed, lifted the can out and sprayed above Eva’s head. Nothing came out. ‘You can have a replacement,’ she said tersely.

‘The money,’ Eva persisted doggedly. ‘I know the owner, he’d give me my money back.’

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘Because I’m asking for it. It’s called service,’ she said curtly.

The girl sighed, she hadn’t been in the shop long and she was twenty years Eva’s junior. She opened the till and took out a hundred-kroner note and two kroner pieces.

‘Just sign here.’

Eva signed her name, took the money and left. She tried to relax. Now perhaps she could manage for a couple of days more. She did some mental arithmetic and worked out she had 141 kroner, almost enough to treat herself to a cup of coffee at Glassmagasinet’s in-store café. You could get a coffee there without having to eat as well. She crossed the street and went through the double glass doors which parted invitingly. She took a quick look in the book and stationery department and was just about to make
for
the escalator, when she caught sight of a woman standing at one of the shelves. A buxom brunette with closely cropped hair and dark eyebrows. She was leafing through a book. Many years had passed, but it wasn’t a face you could forget. Eva stopped dead, she couldn’t believe her eyes. Suddenly the years fell away and she was transported all the way back to that day when, as a fifteen-year-old, she’d been sitting on the stone steps at home. Everything they possessed had been packed in boxes and put on a lorry. She sat staring at it, unable to believe that everything had really fitted into one small lorry, when the house and garage and cellar had been so full of stuff. They were moving. Just then it was as if they didn’t live anywhere, it was horrible. Eva didn’t want to leave. Her father went about with restless eyes as if afraid they’d forget something. He’d got a job at last. But he couldn’t meet Eva’s gaze.

Then there was a crunch of gravel and a familiar figure rounded the corner.

‘I had to come and say goodbye,’ she said.

Eva nodded.

‘We can write to each other, can’t we? I’ve never had anyone to write letters to before. Will you come back in the summer holidays?’

‘Don’t know,’ Eva mumbled.

She’d never find another friend, she was certain of it. They’d grown up together, they’d shared everything. No one else knew how she felt. The future was a dreary grey landscape, she wanted to cry. There was a quick, shy hug, and then she’d gone. That was almost twenty-five years ago, and since then they’d never set eyes on one another. Not until now.

‘Maja?’ she queried and waited expectantly. The woman
turned
and tried to pinpoint the call, and caught sight of Eva. Her eyes opened wide and grew large, then she rushed towards her.

‘Well, of all things! I can’t believe my eyes. Eva Marie! My God, how tall you’ve grown!’

‘And you’re even smaller than I remember you!’

Then they were silent for a moment, suddenly bashful, as they scrutinised one another to pick out everything, the changes, all the traces left by the intervening years, recognising their own decay in the other’s wrinkles and lines, and after that they searched for everything they knew so well and which still was there. Maja said: ‘We’ll go to the café. Come along, we must talk Eva. So, you’re still living here? You really do still live here?’

She placed an arm around Eva’s waist and shepherded her along, full of amazement, but soon the same person Eva remembered: bright, chatty, determined and always bubbly, in other words the opposite of Eva. They had complemented one another. Oh God, how they’d needed each other!

‘I never got any further,’ Eva replied. ‘This is a bad place to live, I should never have come with that removal lorry.’

‘You’re just like you were when we were girls,’ Maja giggled. ‘Downcast. Come on, let’s grab that window table!’

They rushed over to claim it before anyone else, and plonked themselves down on the chairs. Maja got to her feet again.

‘Sit here and keep our places, I’ll go and get us something. What would you like?’

‘Just coffee.’

‘You need a piece of cake,’ Maja objected, ‘you’re thinner than ever.’

‘I haven’t got the money.’ She’d blurted it out before she’d had time to think.

‘Oh? Well I have.’

She went off, and Eva watched the way she helped herself greedily at the cake counter. It was awful having to say that she couldn’t afford a piece of cake, but she wasn’t used to lying to Maja. The truth popped out all of its own accord. She could hardly believe it was true, that she really was over there pouring out their coffee. It was as if those twenty-five years had just rolled away, and as she looked at Maja from a distance she still seemed like a young girl. You get sleeker if you’re a bit chubby, Eva thought enviously, and pulled off her coat. She didn’t bother much about food. She ate only when hunger became a physical discomfort and ruined her concentration. Apart from that she lived on coffee, cigarettes and wine.

Maja returned. She placed the tray on the table and pushed the plate across to Eva. A Danish pastry and a slice of cake covered in icing.

‘I can’t eat all that,’ she complained.

‘Then you’ll have to make a special effort,’ said Maja emphatically. ‘It’s only a matter of training. The more you eat, the bigger your stomach gets and the more food it needs to fill it. It only takes a couple of days. You’re not twenty any more, you know, and it pays to put on a bit of weight when you’re pushing forty. Oh God, we’ll soon be forty!’

She stuck the fork into her cake so that the cream filling bulged out at the sides. Eva stared at her, watching how Maja took control, so that she herself could rest and relax and merely do as she was told. Just like when they were girls. At the same time she noticed her fingers with all
their
gold rings, and the bracelets that jingled round her wrists. She looked well-heeled.

‘I’ve lived here for eighteen months,’ said Maja. ‘It’s crazy we haven’t bumped into each other before!’

‘I’m hardly ever in town. Haven’t much business here. I live at Engelstad.’

‘Married?’ asked Maja cautiously.

‘Was. I’ve got a small girl, Emma. She’s not actually all that small. She’s at her father’s at the moment.’

‘So, a single mother with a child, then.’

Maja was trying to make sense of things. Eva felt herself dwindling. When she said it like that it sounded so pathetic. And the hard times probably showed. She bought her clothes at charity shops, whereas Maja was really quite smart. Leather jacket and boots and Levi’s. Clothes like that cost a small fortune.

‘Haven’t you got any children?’ Eva asked, holding a hand beneath her Danish pastry as it was shedding so many crumbs.

‘No. What would I want one of them for?’

‘They’ll look after you when you’re old,’ Eva said simply, ‘and be your comfort and joy when you’re nearing your end.’

‘Eva Marie, isn’t that just like you. Deep into old age already. Well, you don’t say, is that why people have kids?’

Eva had to laugh. She felt like a girl again, transported to the time when they were together every single day, every single free moment, for that was how it had been. Apart from the summer holidays, when she was sent to her uncle’s in the country. Those holidays had been unbearable, she thought, unbearable without Maja.

‘You’ll regret it one day. Just wait.’

‘I never regret things.’

‘No, you probably don’t. I regret almost everything in life.’

‘You’ve got to stop doing that, Eva Marie. It’s bad for your health.’

‘But I don’t regret Emma, though.’

‘No, I suppose people don’t regret their kids, do they. Why aren’t you married any more?’

‘He found someone else and left.’

Maja shook her head. ‘And if I know you, you even helped him pack, didn’t you?’

‘Yes I did, actually. He’s so impractical. Anyway, it was better than sitting doing nothing and watching all that furniture disappear.’

‘I’d have gone over to a girlfriend’s and cracked open a bottle.’

‘I haven’t got any girlfriends.’

They ate cake in silence. Now and then they shook their heads gently, as if they still couldn’t believe that fate had really brought them together again. They had so much to talk about they didn’t know where to begin. In her mind, Eva was still sitting on those cold stone steps staring at the green lorry.

‘You never answered my letters,’ said Maja suddenly. She sounded indignant.

‘No. My father went on at me about writing, but I refused. I was bitter and cross about having to leave. I probably wanted to pay him back.’