The Last Boat Home (12 page)

Once he had led her to the moped she clambered on behind him and locked her arms around his waist, resting her cheek against his coat, snuggling into the down which moulded itself
around her jaw. He turned his key in the ignition and spun the handle grips and Else held fast as the moped carried her onto the road. Lars took them up the mountain and onto a narrow path. As they powered uphill, the town fell away below them. The harbour glittered like a treasure chest afloat on an inky sea. They sped by a handful of houses fenced off from the rock face with withered lawns and bright windows. The wind slapped Else’s cheeks and mussed up her hair and brought tears to her eyes.

When they swerved onto a track trimmed with fir trees, Else recognised Haakon Reiersen’s land. At the end of the path, Lars’s home stood in a reservoir of light that spilled from the eaves of the shingled roof. Else had never been here at night. It had been years since she had been here at all, and when Lars cut the engine at the bottom of the drive, she did not move from the bike’s saddle, but peered at the house as if dazzled by its brilliance. Lars disentangled himself from her arms and slid off the moped.

‘My parents won’t be able to hear us out here,’ he said, ‘but still. It’s better to be careful.’

‘They’re home?’ Else asked.

‘Don’t worry. We’re not going in.’

When she had dismounted from the bike, he wheeled it into the shadows behind the garage. Else crept after him up the drive, her eyes on the house, her nerves raw. Lars fixed the kickstand before examining the garage door. He squatted and twisted its handle. With a tug, the door flipped outwards. It skated back on the ceiling rails as he drew up to his full height, lugging the door with him.

His father’s Cadillac was parked inside. Its tail bumper glinted under its summer-sky body, so that Else had the sense that it was alive, a noble beast hibernating in an unequal pen. Lars ushered her in before pulling down the door, squeezing the driveway light
into a thin line at their heels. There was a jangling, a scrape, then a flame that warmed his smile when he waved it by his chin.

With the lighter raised ahead of him, Lars grasped Else’s hand and circled to the front of the car. The door clicked when he eased it open. He lowered himself into the driver’s seat and shifted on the leather as he reached down to the floor. He sat up with a lantern hooked on his finger, which he placed on the dashboard before lifting its case. The windshield reflected an orange flush when he held his flame to the candle. Once he had replaced the lantern’s cover, he climbed over the centre seat armrest into the back, where at last he opened the door for Else.

‘I’m ready for you now,’ he said. She ducked inside as he inched along the cushion. Lars rummaged in a plastic bag by his shoes and produced a blanket and a bottle of the Wine Monopoly’s six kroner
Rødvin
.

‘Where did you get that?’ Else asked.

‘Pappa’s just been in Kristiansand,’ he said. ‘He bought a few bottles. Mamma doesn’t know.’

‘Won’t he miss it?’

Lars shrugged. ‘I promised we’d be warm, so we’re going to need it.’

He had already uncorked the bottle. Lars spread the blanket over their laps before yanking the stopper out with his teeth. He swigged and passed the wine to Else. Liquid flooded her mouth. It burned all the way down.

‘That tastes awful,’ she said.

‘You think so?’ he said. ‘You should try Rune’s moonshine. I’m not sure his uncle is doing it right. The circus men won’t know what hit them.’

Else giggled. Lars drank.

‘Are you coming tomorrow?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said.

‘You always say that,’ he said, ‘and then you come.’

Else accepted the cigarette he gave her, breathing deeply when he lit it. She felt she was sinking into the stuffing of her seat. She puffed out the smoke and stretched a hand for the bottle. She gulped down a long swallow. ‘I can’t wait to get out of here,’ she said.

‘God,’ said Lars, ‘me too. The sooner the better. As soon as school’s done, I’m moving to Oslo.’

Else thought of onkel Olav’s merchant ship sailing its timber cargo from Canada to Japan. He had been younger than she was now when he signed up as a deckhand on the America Line’s
DS Stavangerfjord
. Her grandmother had collected the telegrams he had sent over the years from New York, Melbourne, Trinidad. Else had found them when she was a child, pressed between the pages of an album of family photographs.

‘I want to travel,’ she said.

‘So do I,’ said Lars.

‘I want to go to America.’

‘Me too,’ he said. ‘We’ll go together.’

A tube of ash fell from his cigarette onto the blanket and he brushed it away while Else brought the bottle to her lips. When Lars next kissed her, her head rushed with nicotine and alcohol. She closed her eyes and saw acrobats spinning and flipping in the Big Top’s ring.

‘Here,’ Lars said and took her cigarette. ‘I’ll put them out.’

He opened the Cadillac’s door and melted from sight. When he returned and shut the door behind him, the candle blew out. He stroked Else’s knee beneath the blanket. His hand glided up her leg.

It was easy in the dark. As Lars rubbed her thigh Else surrendered to the wine, to the plea of his touch. She felt hot and cold, asleep and awake. He kissed her face and neck and was heavy on top of her. He lifted her jumper. The seat’s leather was cool, the blanket rough against her skin. Fingertips skittered over her
stomach. She emptied her head. Her senses swam in the garage smells of smoke and petrol.

Afterwards, Lars drove her to the Longpier on his moped. He dropped her off at the corner of Havneveien and Torggata.

‘So are you coming tomorrow?’

‘I’ll try,’ she said.

‘You should just say yes,’ he said and kissed her goodbye.

On her journey to the public dock, Else stood on the ferry’s deck for as long as she could bear the wind that tore through the layers of her clothing. She thought about what she and Lars had done and her heart tripped in her chest as she sobered up and spread her arms to air herself out. Once ashore, she recovered her father’s bike from behind the oak, but decided not to cycle. She walked it over the frozen mud, her feet uncertain in the dark.

A light was on in the dining room when she arrived home. Else hurried into the farmhouse, her teeth chattering as she hung her coat in the hall. She paused to listen for hints of her mother: the radio’s murmur; the thrum of the sewing machine. The house was as silent as church.

In the dining room, her father sat by the oven with his legs stretched towards the fire. A ribbon of smoke wound heavenwards from his cigarette. He picked threads of tobacco from the tip of his tongue.

‘You’re late,’ he said.

Her mother was not in the kitchen. Through the open curtains of the window between the fridge and the stove, the outhouse’s red paint appeared muddy around the heart that had been carved out of its door. Else blinked at the black hole to avoid looking at her father, whose face was tense, his hands restless.

‘Where have you been?’ he asked.

‘I had to stay after school. For choir practice. For the Christmas concert. Is Mamma at the
bedehus
?’

‘She’s gone to bed,’ her father said.

‘But it’s still early.’

‘She isn’t well.’

‘Perhaps I should go up …’

‘She’s damned well asleep,’ her father said.

Else flinched and he reached for the mug that he had placed on the floor by his chair. He sipped and swallowed and clasped it in his palms. Else’s mouth was sour with Lars’s wine.

‘You missed dinner,’ he said.

‘I’m not hungry,’ she said, but crossed the room to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of milk. She cut into a loaf of bread and spread the slice with her mother’s strawberry jam, thinking all the while that her father knew. Somehow, he knew: he had sniffed it on her, as if her skin had sponged up Lars’s smell. Else scrubbed her hands under the tap, working the soap between her fingers, scraping traces of him from under her nails. She dried them on a dishtowel and brought her plate into the dining room, where she sat at the table and nibbled her bread. Each swallow stuck in her throat. Now and then, her father’s shoulders quaked with a sticky cough.

‘What psalms are you singing?’ he wanted to know. ‘For the Christmas concert. What are the psalms?’

Else was glad her mouth was full. The only students of the Gymnasium who took part in a Christmas concert were those who belonged to the Youth Choir at the
bedehus
, which performed at the Christmas tree party each year on 26th December. While she chewed, she tried to recall the concert organised by the schoolhouse the previous year.

‘“
Deilig er den Himmel Blå
”,’ she said. ‘And “A Child is born in Bethlehem”.’

Her father lifted his mug to his lips. Else crept back to the kitchen, where she washed her plate and glass and replaced the loaf on the pantry’s middle shelf. She took a moment to collect
herself, summoning the words of the first verse of
Deilig er jorden
from her memory in case he asked for a rendition, though she knew her voice would fail. She stared at her feet as they carried her over the floor to stand in front of him.

‘I’m going to bed,’ she said.

Her father drank from his mug. His chin drooped to his chest as he glared at the fire.

Else mounted the staircase to her bedroom and closed the door. In the dark, she began to undress. She pulled off her jumper, her roll-necked shirt; she unhooked the bra whose clasp Lars had struggled to unfasten. The simple embroidery of its twin cups ridged under her fingers like filigree. She unzipped her trousers and let them fall around her ankles. Her bare skin turned to gooseflesh in the cold. Outside her window, the branches of the cherry tree swayed in the breeze and tapped the glass.

Else groped for the nightgown folded under her pillow, but paused before slipping it on. Standing next to her bed in her underpants, she leaned forward at the waist and drew a hand between her thighs. She remembered the shock she had felt earlier when Lars had started to whimper into her ear. She put on the nightgown and buried herself under the covers, where she lay blinking into the emptiness above.

Sleep would not come, no matter how she longed for it. Else listened to the fjord, to the cherry tree’s knock. She closed her eyes and pressed her lips against her hand, thinking of the taste of Lars’s kiss. When a sound filtered through the wall that separated her bedroom from her parents’, she thought for a moment she had drifted into a dream. She sat up in bed when a sob tore off in a gulp.

‘Mamma?’ she whispered.

The tree knocked. The tide washed out to sea.

Else expected her mother to be up when she awoke the next morning and went downstairs to the kitchen. She tidied away her plate and glass from the night before and washed the mug that her father had left in the sink, sniffing it first to confirm her suspicions, then erasing the evidence with soap and water.

In the hallway she buttoned her coat and, bucket in hand, set off across the yard to the milking barn, which looked more forlorn in its neglect with each winter it survived. Through the years whole strips of paint had been scrubbed away by rain, sleet and snow, exposing patches of timber that had been warped by the damp. The wind would take it one day, Else was sure. She would come out for milking and the cow would be pawing a pile of splinters.

The barn door screeched when she shoved it over the concrete floor. Inside, the air was ripe with manure. Else lifted the latch that secured the cow’s pen and carried her stool to its usual spot before sitting down to begin milking. She could feel the animal’s ribs through the scratch of her pelt when she pressed her cheek to her flank. Else’s fingers found a rhythm and, as the milk pounded her bucket, the sound of its spurts beat back thoughts of her father, allowing her to remember what had happened in the Cadillac with a sense of awe at her own recklessness.

Her arm was stiff with the burden of her pail as she retraced her steps over the yard. She had come as far as the swede stalks that were the vegetable plot’s last crop of the year when she spotted her father emerging from under the boathouse, an oar in hand as he guided the skiff free of its moorings.

Else rushed indoors. In the kitchen, she prepared a tray with a slice of bread and honey and a cup of chicory, which she brought upstairs to her parents’ bedroom.

‘Mamma?’ she said. She balanced the tray on her arm as she rapped her knuckles on the door. When she heard no reply, she dipped its handle with her elbow and nudged it open. ‘Aren’t you feeling any better?’

Her mother lay in bed facing the wall. The quilt had settled over her like a snowdrift. A pair of tights showed its ankles over the side of the dresser.

‘I brought you some food,’ Else said. ‘You should try to eat.’

‘I’m fine,’ said her mother. ‘It’s only a headache.’

Else waited for her to roll over, but her mother did not stir. She placed the tray on the mattress and sat down beside it. She had an urge to stroke the hair that hung limp over the pillow and wondered when grey had triumphed over brown. How strange, she thought, that she had not set it in curlers. Her mother always set her hair in curlers before bed.

‘Father’s out fishing,’ Else said.

The quilt rose with her mother’s breath. It sank and rose.

‘Is there something you need?’

‘No,’ her mother said. ‘Go and make a start on the morning’s chores.’

‘The morning’s over, Mamma.’

Else smoothed her palms over her trousers and stood and moved to the window to open the curtains. A faint light did little to brighten the room. She looked for her father on the water, but did not see the skiff. With the rowlock missing, he must have used the Johnson motor to zip into the skerry. Her mother’s housecoat lay in a heap on the floor. Else picked it up and shook it out and folded it over the arm of the chair.

‘Maybe we should fetch Dr Vedvik,’ she said.

‘No,’ said her mother. Then, more calmly, ‘No,’ she said.

With a sigh, she propped herself up so that Else could see the damage her father had done. The lids of her mother’s left eye were swollen, the bruise deepening from purple to black above the cheekbone. Else felt as though someone was holding her head under water. Her throat closed up. Her mother’s face dissolved in salt.