The House by the Fjord (11 page)

‘
Velkommen
, Anna,' he said, formally shaking her hand. Although the words were welcoming, his gaze was cold. It was also as if he had set a clamp on her, and momentarily she was unnerved.

‘I'm very glad to be in Johan's childhood home,' she managed to say in Norwegian.

He gave an impatient nod and answered her unhesitatingly in English. ‘I judge from what I know of you already from Alex that you are an independent young woman with a mind of your own. You will meet your match in me, for which I'm sure you are prepared.' Then as if bestowing a great favour he added, ‘You may call me
Svigerfar
.'

It was Norwegian for father-in-law, and Anna was thankful that he had made it clear from the start how he wished to be addressed by her. ‘Thank you,
Svigerfar
.'

Gudrun had come forward to help Anna off with her coat and gathered together her woolly hat, gloves and scarf. ‘I'm sure you would like some refreshment now after your long journey.' She glanced up at the staircase where Alex was descending after taking Anna's suitcase upstairs. ‘Shall you stay for coffee, Alex?'

‘Not this time, Froken Eriksen, but I'll call in tomorrow to see how Anna is settling in.'

Anna wished he was staying, but he was already at the door. Steffan raised a hand to him in farewell. ‘I thank you for meeting my daughter-in-law.'

‘It was a pleasure.'

Anna did not think it could have been much of a pleasure wasting time in a waiting room that would have been as crowded as the one in which she and her friends had been confined at Eidsvold, but it was kind of Alex not to have minded about the lengthy wait.

Steffan had turned to lead the way into a large and pleasant room where the coffee table had been spread with a lace cloth, and there was a large plate of waffles and a variety of cakes. In a corner fireplace, logs were burning brightly, the flames dancing. On the table there was also a silver candlestick with the customary lighted candle that symbolized welcome whatever the hour of the day.

Anna had learned long since that to be offered a cup of coffee in Norway always entailed food as well, frequently waffles and often
lefser
, which was a kind of pancake, buttered and sprinkled with sugar, that she liked immensely. The coffee and cakes were being served with the finest china in accordance with an old tradition that guests must always receive the best of everything. The war brides had all taken up the Norwegian custom, so everything was familiar to Anna as she sat down while Gudrun poured coffee into the delicate cups.

Anna's glance was caught by the portrait on the wall of a lovely woman that was clearly painted by a very accomplished artist. She guessed the sitter's identity even before Steffan followed her gaze and told her.

‘That is my late wife, Rosa – Johan's mother. She was younger than me and yet she was the one to leave this world first when it should have been me. Now my son has gone before me too.'

Anna was aware of the underlying depth of sadness in his calmly delivered words. She recalled Johan saying that his parents' marriage had been a love match in spite of the difference in their ages.

‘Your wife was a very beautiful woman,' Anna said.

‘Indeed she was. We have an accomplished artist among our forebears, but he was gone long before this portrait of her was commissioned. There is some of his work in the hall and another in the room you are to occupy.'

‘I'll look forward to studying each one in turn. I caught sight of them out of the corner of my eye as I arrived.'

‘They are not easily overlooked,' he remarked drily. ‘Magnus Harvik had a style that was uniquely his own.' Then, changing the subject, he looked at her under his white brows with some concern. ‘You must have had a very difficult journey to arrive so late.'

She explained the circumstances of the trip as Gudrun offered her a glass bowl of home-made cloudberry preserve from which she took a spoonful for the waffle she had chosen.

‘How delicious!' she said, handing back the bowl. ‘I have only tasted this preserve once before when an English friend's Norwegian mother-in-law gave her a pot to share with the rest of us.'

She knew it was a great delicacy for its rarity, the reason being that these golden berries, much like a raspberry in shape and appearance, although not in colour or taste, grew high in the mountains, sometimes almost inaccessibly.

Although Steffan listened keenly to all Anna told him about the journey, it was not with any lessening of the coldness in his eyes. Gudrun exclaimed over all the setbacks that Anna and her friends had endured before asking what life was like for British women at Gardermoen. It gave Anna the chance to say how she enjoyed the company of the friends she had made and how interesting it would be to hear how they had all spent Christmas when she returned. She thought it fortunate that she had been given the opportunity to make her position clear from the start, and Steffan would now know that her stay was only temporary.

Although earlier she had wished that Alex would be staying with her for the first hour or two, everything seemed to be going along very well, which was quite contrary to her expectations. Yet, apart from her initial mention of being in Johan's home, his name had not come into the conversation again. She longed for Steffan to talk about the man she had loved and still loved, for there was so much more she wanted to know about Johan's childhood, as well as his schooldays and his time at university, before he escaped to England in spite of all the posters warning that anyone attempting to leave Norway would be shot.

She thought there must be photographs of Johan somewhere in the house and she had glanced in vain around the room in the hope of seeing one. She had a framed photograph of him in her suitcase and some snapshots in her purse, but she sensed that the time must be exactly right for when there could be talk of him between the two people who had loved him most.

When the coffee session came to an end, Gudrun suggested that she show Anna to her room. ‘I've prepared Johan's room for you, Anna,' she said as she began to lead the way up the curving staircase. ‘I was sure you would like to sleep there.'

‘Oh, yes! How thoughtful of you!'

‘It was recently redecorated with some other rooms in the house, but it is the same as it was in Johan's time.'

‘Was there some smoke damage from the fire?' Anna asked. ‘Alex told me that the flames almost reached this house.'

‘No, the redecoration was not for that reason,' Gudrun paused with her hand resting on the banister rail to look back over her shoulder at Anna following behind, ‘although Steffan and I did make a dash for safety up the nearby slopes. I grabbed something blindly as we fled, instinctively wanting to save something from what I thought was our doomed home, and it was not until we stopped to draw breath that I saw what I had snatched up. It was an empty birdcage!' She laughed and her amusement made Anna smile too.

‘Do you still have it?'

‘Yes. We had just lost a little canary. Although we never replaced it, I have a flowering plant in the cage now and it hangs outside the kitchen window. It is also a reminder of when we saw the King and Crown Prince Olav that day. It was when they were being pursued up the coast by the German Luftwaffe. They watched the bombing and burning of Molde from where they stood by an old birch tree. They were not far from where we were sitting on the grass and catching our breath. Steffan did not think it was right for us to sit in the royal presence, but we were both so exhausted from running that we couldn't do otherwise.'

‘Were there other people taking refuge there too?'

‘Yes, people were sprawled everywhere. Nearly everyone had grabbed something as they rushed from home. There were dolls and umbrellas and a vase or two – one man had snatched up a wedding top hat. When the fires were under control and it was safe for many of us to return to what was left of Molde, he wore it as he went down the slope. We all saw that as an act of defiance.'

‘Yes, I can see that it was.'

Gudrun continued her way up the stairs. ‘It was the first show of defiance that I witnessed, but during the Nazi occupation there were all sorts of ways in which we showed our unity against the enemy.' She paused to talk again. ‘The paper clip was popular as it was a Norwegian invention, and we wore it on our lapels as a symbolic sign of togetherness. When the Germans realized what it meant, they would snatch them away until some men started putting a razor blade underneath their lapels! That soon deterred the overzealous Nazis!'

Anna made a little grimace. ‘I'm sure that it did! Alex told me about Steffan and the carnation.'

‘Ah, yes. It was a very worrying time afterwards, because it seemed for a while that he would never recover, but thankfully his strong will pulled him through. We were able to get the paint for redecorating the whole house because of the way it had been used during the occupation. The Germans always commandeered the best houses for officers' quarters and this house suffered an even worse fate. They blocked off the small wing for Steffan and me, which included Johan's room, only allowing us to stay here for me to be their house-cleaner. Then they turned the rest of the place into an officers' brothel. There was noise both night and day.'

Anna raised her eyebrows in dismay. ‘That must have been dreadful for you both.'

Gudrun nodded wearily. ‘They had brothel ships too, coming up and down the coast.' Then she smiled. ‘The only amusement we had during that time was when a load of French prostitutes was brought here. They had been gathered up in Paris against their will and put on one of the brothel ships where they were so seasick and so rebellious that eventually they were taken ashore and brought here instead. That did not last long as they were a constant trouble to the Nazis, always singing the Marseillaise and making French flags to wave in their captors' faces. Finally the commanding officer had them sent to the women's section of the concentration camp at Grini.' Gudrun continued leading the way upstairs. ‘I hope no harm came to them, because they had so much spirit and refused to be dominated.'

‘Who came after them?'

‘Some poor Russian women, most of them young and pretty. They were so sad and homesick, not knowing what had happened to their men or their families or their invaded country. Although it was forbidden to have a radio, Steffan and I used to listen secretly to one that we kept hidden in the cellar and we heard the BBC broadcasting the news from London. Yet, for everybody's safety, we could not pass any information on to them, not even when things were going badly for the German invasion force in Russia.' They had reached the landing and she went ahead to open one of the doors. ‘This is Johan's room, Anna. Just as he left it.'

Picking up her suitcase that Alex had left on the landing, Anna entered a simply furnished room with colourful rugs on the pine floor and a view of the garden, with the wide fjord stretching beyond to meet the mountain range filling the horizon. Johan had once described this scene to her, saying that it was possible from Molde to see eighty-seven mountain peaks. She was not at the right viewpoint to see them all now, but it was still a magnificent skyline of which she could never tire.

‘When Johan was growing up,' Gudrun was saying, ‘Steffan and his late wife had a summer home on the island of Ona, which lies off the coast not far from here. Johan loved it there for the fishing and sailing and swimming, often having a pack of school friends there too. So as soon as it was possible after the liberation Steffan rid this house of anything that he felt the Nazis had contaminated by their presence. People who had lost everything in the bombing were thankful to have all that he gave away. At the same time he replaced what was missing with furniture brought from the Ona summer house.'

‘He and his wife must have lived very grandly there,' Anna commented, having thought downstairs what fine furniture there was everywhere.

‘Steffan comes from a well-established family that made its money in shipping and he still has business interests in that line.'

Anna had been drawn to the framed oil painting on the wall. The strong colours and something of the artist's style reminded her a little of Van Gogh. She peered at the signature. ‘Magnus Harvik,' she said aloud. It was a dramatic view in sweeping brush strokes of a wide fjord hemmed in by great mountains, which seared across the canvas. ‘This looks like Geiranger fjord. Am I right?'

‘Yes, you are. Have you been there?'

‘No, but I have seen pictures of it.' Anna drew back a few paces to gaze anew at the painting. There was a blob of orange paint high up on a wandering path that looked as if it might be representing a woman, which seemed to emphasize the drama of this work of art. ‘I think this painting is extraordinarily beautiful. So those paintings in the hall are by the same family artist?'

‘Yes. Steffan gave Johan this particular painting during his last Christmas before he escaped to England. It was one that he had long wanted to own.'

‘I'm glad to know he had pleasure from it all the time that he could,' Anna said quietly.

Gudrun, although moved to sadness by Anna's tone, managed a smile. ‘Naturally the painting belongs to you now.'

Anna caught her breath on a piercing heartache. It was like receiving a gift from Johan himself, one to treasure, although it should have been shared with him. If Gudrun had noticed the anguish in Anna's face, she made no sign.

‘Steffan will tell you all about Magnus Harvik soon, but let him choose his own time. Now I'll leave you to unpack. Come downstairs when you are ready.'

Gundrun closed the door behind her and Anna gazed again at the painting, marvelling once more at the skilful use of colour. Then she turned to her unpacking and took out the framed photo of Johan in his uniform, which she held against her as she looked slowly around the room. Here was a set of shelves crammed with his books. There was a mirror that would have reflected his handsome face, and by the bed a lamp by which he would have read at night. She pondered as to where she should place his photograph. Finally she decided on the top of a chest of drawers, turning the photograph slightly so that she would see it from the bed before she slept and again as soon as she opened her eyes in the morning. It also faced Johan's beloved mountains.