The Journey Home: A Novel (5 page)

“There’s a spot on my back,” he said.

“The birthmark?” I asked.

“It seems bigger now. And the edges are not regular. Disa, can you please take a look. I hope . . .”

I had no patience for this. Instead of calming him down as I’m used to, I made an offhand remark:

“Maybe you’re right.”

This was not a nice thing to do. He hurried back into the bathroom and twisted and turned in front of the mirror in his attempts to get a glimpse of the spot which was actually nothing but a harmless birthmark.

“Do you think so?” he asked. “Do you really think it’s changed?”

At that point I told him that it hadn’t changed at all. He didn’t believe me, thinking I was just trying to reassure him. But when I explained that I’d just been annoyed, he didn’t know how to react. He was as confused as a child who discovers that its mother has played a trick on it. And can’t understand why she did it. Can’t understand.

I apologized. He smiled awkwardly. As we walked downstairs hand in hand, I could feel the vulnerability flowing from his palm.

My eyes begin involuntarily to follow the telegraph poles that line the road and then curve away to the west over the gently sloping pastures and low rolling hills, before finally vanishing into the distance. The Jaguar is comfortable. The driver has been telling me about his children, a son and a daughter. I close my eyes but can still see the poles. It is as if I am floating down a smooth-flowing river somewhere between sleeping and waking, then suddenly start up to find myself sitting beside my sister Joka in a bus bound for Reykjavik, the capital. We’re on our way to enroll at the Commercial College and haven’t stopped talking for a moment since we left Akureyri, the largest town in north Iceland. But now we lean back in our seats for a while and look out of the window.

On a low knoll ahead of us stand the ruins of a farmhouse. By the door sits an old man chewing a straw, while closer to the road sheep are grazing. They raise their heads one after another as we draw near, but the old man continues to stare out over the calm, autumn gray waters of the bay. To the left rise steep mountains, their scree-strewn slopes interspersed with patches of heather. They are haunted by elves and trolls, as are the glaciers beyond them. At the bottom of the bay, on the other hand, lie my forefathers, my grandfather and uncle who lost their lives shark-fishing in winter. Grandfather used to sell shark liver oil to the Danes and Mother would play with gold coins when she was a child. I’ve already begun to miss her.

The moor rises ahead and it’s relaxing to watch the telegraph poles bounding past, though the jolting on these rough tracks is at times almost unbearable. When the road is at its best the poles remind me of a procession of people, straight-backed and solemn.

An old school friend of Father’s, Vilhjalmur Borg, a lawyer at the Supreme Court, has arranged for us to have food and lodging at a guesthouse at Gardastraeti 9. It’s run by a Danish woman called Mrs. Olsen.

I mean to study hard for the entrance exam and Father has coached us as well as he can. Although there’s a year between us, Jorunn and I will both begin in the first year this autumn. Father and Mother have always sent us to school together. Of course, I wanted to go to the high school but Mother said it wasn’t practical for girls. And that was that.

Jorunn has dropped off and her head is resting on my shoulder. I lean against her and close my eyes.

3

9 Gardast.

September 21, 1934

Dearest Mother,

The letter we wrote you yesterday went with the ship but time was so short
that we didn’t manage to send Kari’s shoes. They cost 19.50 kronur. We
couldn’t find any we liked for less. Unfortunately, it looks as if there won’t be
any sales this autumn, of shoes or anything else. Joka and I played whist yesterday with Ella, who works as a maid for Mrs. Olsen, and Mina, Mrs.
Olsen’s cousin. Mina is tiny and very hard of hearing and always waits at
table and makes a fuss of people while they’re eating. When we’d finished our
game, we all headed to Mrs. Hansen’s—she’s Mrs. Olsen’s sister. She’s a
widow too and lives with her daughter. We really enjoyed our visit, but on the
way home we got caught in a downpour.

Joka forgot to tell you in yesterday’s letter who lives next door to us. A maid
who works for the senior physician. She boards here with the couple’s foster
daughter. On the other side of us are two German women and a little boy.
There are two dentists who take their meals here, two Danish men and a Danishgirl, a German man and an Icelandic girl. Then there are two office girls,
two seamstresses and another man, but I don’t know what he does. Everyone
agrees that we’ve been lucky to get all this for 100 kronur a month.

With love from,

Your daughter Disa

P.S. Mrs. Olsen is a really good cook. I’ve learned a lot from her already in
these few weeks since we came south to Reykjavik. Last Sunday we roasted a
rack of lamb in the oven. We made a good stock and put red-currant jelly in
the sauce. It was absolutely delicious and Mrs. Olsen explained to me that the
trick is not to leave the meat too long in the oven. When we took it out it was
pink in the middle and melted in the mouth.

I know you’ve never approved of this hobby of mine but don’t worry, it won’t
a fect my bookkeeping, I promise. Even though it is boring . . . The meat
tasted of heather.

4

I understand the
Gullfoss
is a splendid ship, the national pride and joy according to the shipping company literature which arrived recently in the post. I’m glad, as I don’t have any other option, because I don’t fly, that’s for certain. Admittedly, I’ve sometimes mentioned lately that I’m not afraid of death. So it’s a mystery to me why I should dislike flying so much.

The brochure I’ve received says that the
Gullfoss
is 330 feet long and 48 feet wide. There are three passenger classes accommodating 210 passengers in all, 104 in first class, 62 in second and 44 in third. The shipping company boasts of the ratio of crew members to passengers. There is apparently one crew member for every three passengers. Along with the steward and assistant steward the staff consists of seven chambermaids, nine waiters, two bartenders and two wine waiters, in addition to cooks and kitchen staff. The ship will call at Leith en route from Copenhagen, docking this evening and setting sail late tomorrow. The voyage to Iceland takes two and a half days but I get the impression things are arranged so that we have to spend three nights on board.

I mean to use the time well during the voyage. For one thing, I want to reread the letters I wrote to Mother and Father while I was at the Commercial College. Gunnar, Jorunn’s husband, sent them to me after she died. He found them in an envelope in her bedside table. I also mean to carry on with this scribbling. I’d like to commit to paper some thoughts on cooking, as I’ve often been asked for recipes and advice but have seldom got round to putting anything on paper except notes as reminders to myself. I suppose it’s because I’ve long resisted any tendency to use formulae or scientific precision in cookery. To me, the food itself is the best way of conveying what I have in mind each time; the feelings can’t be adequately described in words. Moreover, I think there is a certain arrogance in precise recipes and I’m uncomfortable with laying down the law about how people should prepare their food.

The day before yesterday, for instance, I sneaked a few figs into the chicken I was about to roast. I did it at the last moment because I had a sudden intuition that Anthony would appreciate the flavor of figs when he tasted the bird. Somehow I sensed it in his expression when he came trailing back from the tennis court. Sometimes I’m moved to cook snails in honey for the simple reason that I’ve seen bees buzzing in the sunshine; sometimes a bird singing on a branch will give me the idea of putting blackberries or currants in the sauce I’m preparing; sometimes the breeze billows the curtain over the little window in the corner and I think perhaps I’ll serve baked cinnamon pears with the veal I have in my hands. Why? Did the breeze waft me the scent of spices from distant lands? Did it bring me a message from someone who was thinking kind thoughts about me?

How could I possibly put these feelings on paper without running the risk of spoiling the pleasure or revealing what should be discovered in peace.

Admittedly, there are people who can write sensibly about food and cookery. I had no sooner arrived in England than I began to read Eliza Acton and I still enjoy glancing at the articles Elizabeth David writes in the
Spectator.
She is almost never pretentious or overly sentimental and doesn’t use words like
succulent
or
sizzling,
which I so despise. She seems to enjoy more freedom there than she did when she wrote for the
Sunday
Times.
But as with everything else, this may just be my imagination.

5

Commercial College
October 28, 1934

Dear Father,

Winter descended without warning. All at once it began to snow. We were
out in the park and I called, “Joka, it’s starting to snow!” “Where?” asked
Joka absentmindedly. “Look up at the sky,” I said, “can’t you see it’s starting
to snow?” We chased the snowflakes for a while, then dashed across the street
and hurried home beside the lake. A little boy came toward us crying that he
was frightened of the snow. He was all alone. “I’m scared of it,” he said. “It
comes from outer space.”

We’re having a good time here in town. Yesterday we bought coats with
black sealskin collars. They cost nearly 100 kronur. The sealskin was the
cheapest (17.00 kronur a coat) and also the prettiest. Mrs. Olsen and I cooked
trout yesterday, fried whole, and lit candles on the table. Everyone praised the
trout; I could tell by their expressions how much they liked it.

Mother has asked me twice now how I like the boys in my class. I suspect
she’s getting worried that I never go out. You can tell her that I find them a bit
silly. Though Jorunn probably wouldn’t agree.

I bumped into Vilhjalmur Borg in the street the day before yesterday. He
was with a young woman I didn’t recognize. He seemed rather drunk.

Do you think he might have a drink problem, Father? I don’t think he
noticed me, thank goodness.

6

I’m going to spend the night at Windermere where little Marilyn—or rather, Mrs. Marilyn Thomson as she should be called now—runs the Holbeck Ghyll country hotel with her husband. I wrote to her early in March, once it was obvious that I’d be making this trip, asking how things were going with her and hinting that I thought it was time we met up and renewed our friendship. It’s now many years since our relationship cooled but I have tried to forgive her, though perhaps she didn’t deserve it. She answered me by return of post, inviting me by all means to stay with her on my way to Leith. Although her letter was cautiously worded, I could detect the warmth behind it.

The shadows are lengthening and lie like fallen trees across the narrow road leading to Holbeck Ghyll. I won’t mention a word about our quarrel when we meet, at least not unless she brings up the subject herself.

I’ve always called her “little Marilyn” because she was barely twenty when she first came to work for us, a slim, small-boned creature, less developed than girls of her age are usually. Her surname was Stevens, if I remember right. For the first month she worked as a chambermaid, helping out with the washing and gardening. These are back-breaking jobs and the other girls spent their time off amusing themselves, usually by shopping or going into town to have some fun, playing bingo or cards, or attending dances. But Marilyn showed little interest in joining them, becoming instead a frequent visitor to my kitchen whenever she was free from her chores. At first she was unobtrusive but kept a close eye on whatever was happening at the stove. Soon this extended to lending me a hand with this and that. Her help was appreciated, as she was good-natured and genuinely interested.

It is harder to find kitchen helpers than girls to do the cleaning (though I don’t want to detract from the importance of their job) and after a few months little Marilyn was employed full time in my realm. I think it only right that those who cook should be well acquainted with other kitchen tasks, so she spent the first few weeks washing up and tidying. In the following weeks she graduated to helping me prepare the food, washing and chopping vegetables, cleaning the meat, ensuring that the jars were kept stocked with spices and things like that. Each chore, however unexciting it might have seemed to others, was performed by her with meticulous care.

She never complained about the work. I mention this particularly because there have been quite a number of girls who have given up after only a few weeks in my kitchen. Yet, I’m no tyrant, let me tell you. I have sometimes suggested they read
Down and Out in Paris and London
by George Orwell when their self-pity has started to get the better of them. I myself got used to the pressure early on. My patrons, Sivertsen and Boulestin, spared no one, but I never complained. No, I have never been one for that.

For six years little Marilyn was my right hand. I put myself out to teach her and couldn’t have asked for a better pupil. Before I knew it I no longer needed to instruct her. She anticipated my thoughts, reached for a pot before I could even ask for it, removed a basil leaf from a slice of tomato when I thought it unpresentable and replaced it with another one, all without my needing to say a word. We worked as one and I can confidently claim that we felt comfortable in each other’s presence.

But just when everything was going swimmingly the storm broke. It had long been my habit to greet the new day in the conservatory on the eastern side of the main house. The view over the meadows and the fields rolling off into the distance is lovely and I’ve even gotten used to seeing the two shacks on Helmsdale’s property across the brook, with their gray corrugated roofs and half-open doors into darkness. I hadn’t been sitting there for long that morning when Marilyn appeared in the doorway and took a seat beside me. It can’t have been more than quarter past six. The light settled like a thin dusting of snow across the landscape and we sat in silence side by side, enjoying the peace. I poured a cup of tea for her. It was then that she dropped the bombshell: “I’ve decided to get married.”

Naturally, I was completely dumbfounded by this news. It was all I could do not to drop my cup on the floor. I had never seen her with a man and hadn’t thought it odd, since she seemed to stay at home when she wasn’t in the kitchen. She read, went for walks, tended the plants in the greenhouse. But now her voice sounded odd in my ears. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her. In my agitation I blurted out, perhaps more harshly than I had intended: “You can’t be serious? You’re not pregnant, are you?”

She was stunned and speechless, and realizing it would probably be sensible to change my tone, I tried to do so, adding: “Who is the man?”

“William Thomson,” she replied curtly—actually, I think it was: “
Mr.
William Thomson.”

Well, well, my dear, I said to myself. Next you’ll be calling him “sir.” But I bit my tongue and merely asked what he did. She explained that he was a market gardener from Windermere in the Lake District who had earned a good reputation for his produce. Marilyn had read about him in an article by Elizabeth David in the
Spectator
and got in touch with him shortly afterward when we urgently needed green peppers and other vegetables following a mishap in my greenhouse. Apparently they got on well together on the phone and talked regularly after that, until little Marilyn eventually went up north to Cumbria to visit him. For some reason I had been under the impression that she was going to stay with relatives.

“Do you really think it’s a good idea? Do you think it’s sensible to marry a man you hardly know and move away to a place where you’ll be a complete stranger?”

At that point she said she loved him.

I couldn’t prevent myself from rolling my eyes at that and saying, “And you have a lot of experience in that field, do you?”

She stood up. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears and her voice broke when she said, “I thought you would understand me. Of all the people I know, I thought you were the one I’d always be able to rely on.”

Then she turned on her heel and left.

“Marilyn!” I called after her. “Marilyn!” but she didn’t look back.

The newly risen sun was beginning to warm the conservatory, but the tea was cold.

When she took her leave of us a month later, I asked Anthony to give her a necklace which I had inherited from my maternal grandmother. I was in bed with a cold at the time and couldn’t bring myself to go down and see her off.