Out Stealing Horses (21 page)

My father must have expected a reception like that, I am convinced he did. We had not seen him for eight months and had not heard a word until two days before, so we knew he was coming. My sister ran clattering down the stairs and out into the road where she copied every single movement my mother made, much to my embarrassment, and I slowly followed; it was not easy for me to let myself get carried away, that was not who I was. I stopped by the letter box and leaned against it and looked at the two of them standing in the middle of the road clinging to my father. I glimpsed his face over their shoulders; confused at first and helpless, and then his eyes sought mine, and mine sought his. I nodded lightly. He nodded back and smiled faintly, a smile meant for me alone, a secret smile, and I realised that from now on it was all about the two of us, that we had a pact. And no matter how long he had been away he seemed closer that day than before the war started. I was twelve years old, and in the passing of one moment my life shifted from one point to another, from her to him, and took a new course.

But maybe I was too eager.

I puff my way right to the bench covered in snow at the edge of the water, or Swan Lake, as I name it now to myself, as a child would have done, and Swan Lake lies open and black in the torchlight. The ice has not settled yet, it has not been that cold. No swans to be seen either, at this time. Probably they stay in the dense rushes on dry land through the night, with their long necks like feather-clad loops in white bows, and their heads under their wings, I can picture it well, and they do not swim out until light has come to graze along the bank while the water is still open. What they will do when the ice settles is something I have not thought about, why do they not fly south to ice-free lakes, will they stay here until spring? Do swans stay in Norway during wintertime? I must find that out.

Using my arm I shovel snow off the bench, making big circular movements and then with my mittens brush off what is still there and I pull my jacket well down over my behind and sit down. Lyra snorts at the snow and romps about happily, in one spot she throws herself down and rolls over again and again, her legs in the air, twisting and turning her back in the snow with delight at absorbing into her fur the scent of something that has been here before. A fox maybe. If so she will have to be washed when we get home, for it is not the first time this has happened, and I know what the smell will be like when we are inside the kitchen. But now it is still dark, and I can sit here by Swan Lake thinking about whatever I choose.

15

I WALK BACK UP THE HILL TO MY HOUSE.
Daylight breaks in full red and yellow, the temperature rises, I feel it on my face, and no doubt most of the snow will soon melt, maybe already by this evening. No matter what I have said before, that would be a disappointment just now.

There is a car parked in the yard beside mine. I can see it clearly from down the slope, it's a white Mitsubishi Spacewagon, rather like the one I considered buying myself as it looked robust and suited the place I had bought and was going to move to, and that was how I saw my situation then, after I had made my decision; as slightly robust, and I liked that, I felt rather'-robust myself after three years in a hall of glass where the slightest of movements set everything crackling, and the first shirt I fell for after the move was a red-and-black checked, thick flannel one of a kind I had not worn since the Fifties.

Someone is standing in front of the white Mitsubishi, a lady, by the looks of it, in a dark coat, bare-headed, and her hair is fair and curly for natural or more technical reasons, and she has left the engine running, I can see the exhaust rising noiselessly and white against the darker trees behind the yard. She stands, relaxed, waiting with one hand to her forehead or in her hair, looking down the road to where I am walking up, and there is something about that figure I have seen before, and then Lyra catches sight of her and throws herself forward and runs like the wind towards her. I have not heard any car approaching, and neither did I notice any tyre marks in the snow when I came out on the road from the path, but then I was not expecting any car, not at this time of day. It cannot be more than eight o'clock. I look at my watch and it says half past eight. Ah, well.

It is my daughter standing there. The elder of two. Her name is Ellen. She has lit a cigarette and holds it the way she always has, in stretched fingers away from her body as if she is on the point of giving it to someone else, or pretending it is not hers. That alone would have made me recognise her. I swiftly calculate that she must be thirty-nine now. She is still an attractive lady. I do not think it's me she takes after, but her mother was certainly good looking. I have not seen Ellen for six months at least, and have not spoken to her since I moved, or well before, actually. To be honest, I have not given her much thought, nor her sister, for that matter. There has been so much else. I get to the top of the slope and Lyra is standing in front of Ellen, wagging her tail and having her head patted, and the two of them do not know each other, but she is fond of dogs, and they trust her at once. It has been like that since she was little. I seem to recall she had a dog herself when I went to see her last. A brown dog. That is all I can remember. It's quite a while ago now. I stop and smile my most natural smile and she straightens up and looks at me.

'So it's you,' I say.

'Yes, it is. Did I surprise you?'

'Can't be denied,' I say. 'You're out early.'

She smiles a kind of half smile that soon fades, and takes a drag on the cigarette, exhales again slowly and holds it away from her body with her arm almost straight out. She is not smiling any more. That rather worries me. She says:

'Early? Maybe it is. Anyway, I slept so badly I thought I might as well get an early start. I left about seven, as soon as the ones supposed to leave the house had actually left. I've given myself a day off, I decided on that long ago. It didn't take me much more than an hour to drive out here. I had expected it to be longer. It felt good, in fact, that it wasn't any further. I just arrived. About fifteen minutes ago.'

'I didn't hear the car,' I said. 'I was in the woods, down there by the lake. There was plenty of snow.' I turn and point, and before I have turned back she has stubbed out her cigarette in my yard and taken the few steps towards me and put her arms round my neck and given me a hug. She smells good and is still the same height. Which is not so strange, you do not grow much between thirty and forty, but there was a time when I was away travelling most of the year, back and forth, back and forth in every possible direction in Norway, and both girls had grown each time I came home, or that is how it seemed to me, and they sat so quietly side by side on the sofa, and I knew they were staring at the door where I would soon come in, and it made me confused, I recall, and uneasy at times, when finally I did come and saw them sitting there, shy and full of expectation. I feel a bit ill at ease now too, for she hugs me hard and says:

'Hi, my old dad. It's good to see you.'

'Hi, my girl, the same to you,' I say, and she does not let go, but stays in that position and says very softly into my neck:

'I had to call all the town councils for eighty miles around and more to find out where you lived. I've been doing it for weeks. You don't even have a telephone.'

'No, I suppose I haven't.'

'No, you certainly do
not.
Damn you/ she says, and thumps me several times on my back, and not that lightly either. I say:

'Steady on, I'm an old man, remember/ and she may be crying then, but I am not sure. Anyway she is hugging me so hard it's difficult to breathe, and I do not push her away, just go on holding my breath, and I put my arms round her, maybe a bit on the tentative side, and wait like that until she loosens her grip, and then I let my hands sink down and take a step backwards and breathe out.

'You may just as well cut the engine now/ I say, gasping a little and nodding at the Mitsubishi standing there humming faintly. The first rays of sunlight flash on the newly polished white paint and dazzle me. My eyes smart, so I close them for a minute.

'Oh, yes,'  she says, 'so I can. You
do
live here. I didn't even recognise your car, I thought maybe I had come to the wrong place.'

I hear her walking round her car in the snow and move a few steps to the side and open my eyes as she opens the car door, leans in and turns the key and switches the lights off. There's full silence. She did weep a little, I can see.

'Come in for a cup of coffee,'  I say. 'And I really do need to sit down, my legs are giving out after my walk through the snow. As I said, I'm an old man. Have you had breakfast?'

'No,' she says. 'I didn't take the time.'

'Then we'll have something. Come on.'

Lyra brightens up at the word 'Come' and moves up the two steps to stand in front of the door.

'She's lovely/ my daughter says. 'When did you get her? She's no puppy, is she?'

'Over six months ago. I went to the animal sanctuary outside Oslo where they find new homes for animals. Don't remember the name of the place. I took her at once, there was no doubt, she just came up to me and sat down wagging her tail. She almost offered herself,' I say, trying a small chuckle. 'But they didn't know how old she was, or what breed.'

'It's called the A.R.A., the Association for the Rehoming of Animals. I went there once. It looks as if she's a bit of everything. In England it's called British Standard, which is a nice way of saying they are a mixture of everything you could possibly find in the streets. But she really is lovely. What's her name?'

Ellen went to school in England for a couple of years, and got a lot out of it. But she was grown up then. Before that there were several years when she didn't get much out of anything.

'Her name is Lyra. It wasn't me who thought that up. It said so on the collar she was wearing. Anyway I am glad I chose her/ I say. 'I haven't regretted it for a second. We get on really well, and she makes living alone much easier.'

Those last words sound a bit self-pitying, and disloyal to my life here, I do not need to defend it or explain it to anyone, not even to this daughter of mine, whom I do like a lot, I must say, and she has come out here early in the morning on dark roads through several counties in her Mitsubishi Spacewagon from somewhere right on the outskirts of Oslo, from Maridalen actually, to find out where I live, because I probably have not told her that and have not even given it a thought; that I
should
have done. That may seem strange, I see that now, and her eyes turn moist again, and that irritates me a little.

I open the door and Lyra stays on the doorstep until both Ellen and I are in the hall. Then I let her in with a small well-drilled gesture. I take my daughter's coat and hang it on a free peg and follow her into the kitchen. It is still warm in there. I open the small door to the stove and have a look, and, as I hoped, there are still glowing embers in the firebox.

'This can be saved,' I say, and open the lid of the woodbox and sprinkle some kindling and strips of paper over the embers and then arrange three medium-size logs round them. I open the ash-pan cover to make a draught and straightaway there is a crackle.

'It's nice in here,' she says.

I close up the stove and look around. I don't know if she is right. I had hoped it would be nice in time, when most of my planned improvements have been launched, but it is clean, and tidy. Maybe that was what she meant, that she had expected something else from a single elderly man, and what she saw surprised her in a positive way. If it did, she does not remember much from the time we spent together. Untidiness does not suit me and never has. I am actually a meticulous person; I want everything in its place and ready for use. Dust and mess make me nervous. If I once get slack over cleaning, it is easy to let everything slide, especially in this old house. One of my many horrors is to become the man with the frayed jacket and unfastened flies standing at the Co-op counter with egg on his shirt and more too because the mirror in the hall has given up the ghost. A shipwrecked man without an anchor in the world except in his own liquid thoughts where time has lost its sequence.

I ask her to sit at the table and then I fill the kettle with fresh water for coffee and put it on the cooker, and there is a hissing sound at once. I must have forgotten to switch it off when I used it this morning, and that is really quite serious, but I do not think Ellen took any notice, so I just ignore it and cut some bread, which I put in a basket. I suddenly feel angry and slightly sick, and I see my hand is shaking, so I keep myself at an angle to hide it from her when I pass her to fetch sugar and milk and blue napkins and all that is needed to make this into a meal. I really had my fill a couple of hours ago and am not hungry yet, but even so I set out enough for the both of us, as she might feel embarrassed sitting there eating on her own. After all, it is a long time since we saw each other last. But actually I would rather not, and then there is nothing more to do that I can think of and I have to sit down.

She has been gazing out the window at the view of the lake. I look the same way and say:

'I call it Swan Lake.'

'There are swans on it, then?'

'There certainly are. Two or three families, that I've seen.'

Then she turns to me. 'Tell me. How are you really?' she says, as if there were two versions of my life, and now she is not on the verge of tears at all, but sharp-voiced as an interrogator. She is playing a role, I know, and behind it she is the one she has always been, at least I hope she is; that life has not turned her into an old nag, if I may be forgiven the expression. But I take a deep breath and pull myself together, shove my hands under my thighs on the chair and tell her about my days here, about how well I am doing, with carpentry and chopping wood and my long walks with Lyra, that I have a neighbour I can cooperate with at a pinch, his name is Lars, I say, a clever chap with a chainsaw. We have a lot in common, I say, smiling what is intended to be a secretive smile, but I can see she is not with me there, so I do not take it any further, but tell her I was a bit anxious about all the snow I knew would fall now that winter is really coming, but I have sorted that out, as she can see for herself and must have noticed when she drove up to the house, because I have made an arrangement with a farmer called Aslien. He drives a tractor with a snowplough and can do my clearing when it's needed, at a price of course. So I do get on, I say, and manage a smile, then I listen to the radio, I say, all morning when I'm indoors, and I read in the evening, various things, but mostly Dickens.