by Karen Swan
‘Sam?’ Aggie looked blank for a moment, as though her mind had momentarily been pulled elsewhere, into another room. ‘Oh, yes. Once my husband had accepted it was over for him, that became his focus; Evert’s waited their entire lives for this moment. In many way, his entire life has led up to this moment – especially as this truly might be the last one we ever see, given all the things they’re saying about global warming. I don’t think he can quite believe the opportunity has come – his son will get to win for him.’
Lee was surprised. ‘He actually thinks Sam can win it?’ That wasn’t what Sam had told her. He was just happy to be in the pack, he’d said.
‘Of course.’
‘But . . . he’s had almost no time to prepare for it.’
‘But that is the case for everyone,’ Aggie shrugged.
Not the pro athletes, Lee thought to herself. Two members of the national skating team, Emil Hoog and Ard Langen, were eligible to race and had confirmed their intentions.
‘There’s never much warning for the Elfstedentocht,’ Aggie went on. ‘You have to go into every winter assuming it will happen – regardless of the fact that it hasn’t for the last twenty-plus – because when it is announced, there’s only ever two days to get prepared. No one can commit to a full-time training schedule for something that has such a low chance of occurring. The winner of ’97 was a Brussels sprout farmer.’ She tutted. ‘Poor Evert, beaten by a sprout farmer.’ She sighed. ‘Besides, Sam has taken care to keep himself fit – he ran the Berlin and London marathons this year. It’s always been in the back of his mind to be ready.’
Lee was confused; this was a very different impression from the one Sam himself had left her with. He’d indicated he was just happy it was on, happy he would be involved. There’d been no mention at any point of trying to actually win it. She recalled the brightness in his eyes when she’d arrived. His tension around his father. His son will get to win for him, Aggie had said.
‘It is not just a matter of stamina, of course. Evert says it will come down to a matter of will on the day. That’s what he’s spent all these years teaching him: mental resilience. Can Sam mentally beat the opposition? Can he find that extra gear to be a winner?’ Aggie sighed as she stared at the photograph, the sound echoing as though it were an ancient, far-travelled wind. ‘Can he finally be the one to make his father proud?’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Lee looked down at Jasper’s perfect little face, his cheeks clasped between her hands so that his mouth squished into a rosy pout. She laughed and kissed him again on the lips. ‘I love you. I just love you too much.’
‘I love you too, mama.’ He blinked back at her, the pillow inflated around his head, the sheets tucked in tightly at the sides to stop him from falling out.
‘I’ll be downstairs, okay? The grown-ups are going to have dinner and then I’ll be climbing straight back into bed for cuddles with you.’
‘Okay.’
‘You’re sure you feel okay?’ Every floorboard in this house creaked.
He nodded. ‘Sam gave me his best bear from when he was little. He said he never had bad dreams when he slept with Tink.’ And he pulled his arms out from the sheets to show her the small but loved teddy bear with a stitched-on smile.
Lee nodded. It was another brick from the wall that was fast coming down. ‘But you’ve still got Ducky though, right?’
‘Of course.’ His tone suggested mild outrage that she could even think otherwise, as he produced his beloved cloth toy above the sheets too.
‘Great.’ She reached down and kissed Ducky’s threadbare head. ‘Well, snuggle up with Tink and Ducky and make the bed all warm for me. I won’t be long.’
‘Night night, mama.’
She crossed the room and closed the door as quietly as she could; it had a latch fastening that tinkled lightly as it dropped.
Downstairs, Sam and his parents were in the kitchen. Evert was sitting in his armchair with a drink in his hand, Sam opposite, as Aggie was moving food in and out of the various ovens.
Sam’s eyes rose to her as she came through – a smile lighting his face – but not before she’d seen the darkness in them first and she sensed she’d walked in on a tense discussion.
He jumped up. ‘Lee, a drink?’
She looked at the glass in his own hand and saw he was drinking . . . milk.
Their eyes met as they both remembered her joke to him when he’d been disguised as Sinter, back on that first evening when they’d thought everything was going to be easy between them. When he’d thought she was the girl next door.
He grinned. ‘It’s prep for tomorrow. I promise, this isn’t my usual pre-dinner drink.’
‘Well, perhaps I’ll have a—’ She looked to see what Evert was drinking. ‘Beerenberg?’
Evert nodded approvingly. Little did he know she could drink spirits the way most people could drink . . . well, milk. The big farmer might be surprised by what this not-tough-looking photographer could do.
‘Did he settle down okay?’ Aggie asked from the stove.
‘Yes, he’s snug as a bug in a rug up there. Thank you.’
Aggie looked pleased. ‘I was listening to his footsteps as he was running around up there. It’s lovely having a child in the house again. I can’t remember the last time we had such a little one here.’
Sam handed her the drink, his fingers brushing hers lightly. ‘Cheers.’
‘Cheers.’ She chuckled as she watched Sam sip the milk. ‘Now go easy on that. It’s pretty powerful.’
Sam grinned, flashing her a private look. ‘I’ll have you know this is a tried and tested recipe for success.’
‘It certainly is,’ Evert said solemnly from his armchair. ‘I drank two pints of milk every day from September in the run-up to the ’97. And the night before, we ate hutspot with hazenpeper.’
‘So that’s what we’ll also be having tonight,’ Sam said, a bemused apology in his voice. ‘I hope that’s okay?’
Hare stew with potato, carrot and onion mash? It wasn’t the most romantic first dinner together, nor the fanciest. It did smell good, though. ‘Wonderful. I’m so ravenous I could eat the chair leg. That journey was so dull, but I didn’t even dare turn off the highway for snacks in case we couldn’t pull out again. The tailbacks were solid for miles.’
‘Lee, take my seat – but don’t eat it,’ Sam joked, gesturing for her to sit in the armchair. ‘I’ll use this.’ And he brought over a low footstool, his legs stretching long in front of him as he sat between her and his father in front of the fire. One of the dogs – Juno, she thought – came over and sank down beside him, his hand absently falling to her coat, stroking it.
Evert was staring at her. ‘So, you have seen a lot of the world, Lee.’
Back to this again. She felt a familiar tension gather in her stomach at the introduction of this topic. People often wanted to know more about what she’d seen, the places she’d been. What that meant they really wanted was to hear the horror stories, the gory details, as though it hadn’t been real people and real lives she had captured falling apart on film. ‘Definitely. Just not the places with ATOL ratings.’
The joke appeared lost on him, even though Sam and Aggie both chuckled.
‘Would you ever go back to it, the war reporting?’
‘No.’
‘Not even when the boy is older?’
She bristled that he hadn’t used Jasper’s name. ‘Well, I’ll still be his mother, even then. No matter his age, he’ll need me. I wouldn’t take those risks now.’
She saw his eyes narrow fractionally at her words. Did he see her maternal love as weakness? Pointless sentiment? Had he ever had a member of the Taliban point a rifle at him?
‘My son said you won the Pulitzer Prize.’
‘. . . Mmm, that’s right.’ She glanced uncomfortably at Sam.
‘Sorry, I was boasting,’ Sam held his hands up in surrender, before reaching over and squeezing her knee apologetically
.
‘I looked up the photographs. There are four images that won the prize? Not one?’
‘Yes, that’s right. For the Breaking News Photography segment. It can be one image or several; and sometimes even multiple photographers can win the same prize if the images are submitted as a single collection.’
‘Who decides whether to submit a photograph? Do you nominate yourself?’
‘No. It’s the choice of the person, or organization, who owns the trademark for the images – so in my case Reuters. I never would have submitted them if it had been down to me.’ She hadn’t even known they’d been submitted until two weeks before the announcement; Dita had wanted it to be a ‘surprise’.
‘Why not? You don’t think they’re good enough?’
She shrugged, trying to keep her body loose, her face impassive, but inside she felt on fire. Burning up. ‘I’ve taken others I thought were better, sure.’
He nodded. ‘I will be honest, I didn’t really understand why they should have won, they seemed . . . quite random.’ He spread his hands. ‘But then, I am just a humble farmer,’ he said, disingenuously.
‘Well, I agree, it’s not immediately obvious what the images are telling you when you see them in isolation. They made more sense when accompanied by the report from my partner, Harry Cunningham.’
Evert’s eyes narrowed to slits. ‘. . . The American?’
‘Yes. The piece he wrote accompanying the images won the Pulitzer for Reporting on International Affairs.’
There was a pause whilst he digested this, as though needing to give it thought. ‘I see. So then, what was it all about? I don’t know what a dog pissing on a wall and a man carrying fruit, what that has to do with war?’
Lee tried to steady her heart. It felt wobbly in her chest, like a domino about to fall. ‘On a macro level, the images bear witness to the insurgence of ISIL in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo. The siege had begun of the nearby city of Kobanî and Cunningham and I were in a rural village in the area, investigating a lead, when ISIL launched a surprise attack.’
‘Goodness,’ Aggie tutted, wiping her hands on her apron, and Lee saw she had stopped cooking and was listening to their conversation with a concerned expression etched on her brow, her hip against the cabinets.
‘So what those images are actually showing is a span of the very moments this small village tipped from a fragile peace into war again. It was seen as a microcosm of the whole.’
‘I see, I see. So the dog, the man walking . . . these were the last moments of peace.’
Lee bit her lip. ‘Mm-hmm.’
‘And then the soldier eating over the corpse, the bullets and blood on the walls, okay I see it. But the man’s eyes . . .?’
‘He was a jihadist.’
Evert’s eyebrows went up, as though impressed at last. ‘You were that close to a jihadist?’
Lee felt her mouth go dry, her heart become a paper moth. ‘. . . No.’
‘But the picture—’
‘I shot it on zoom. Long-range lens.’
‘Oh.’
‘Thank goodness!’ Aggie said, pressing a hand to her heart as if to quieten it. ‘You surely could not get that close to one of those people and survive it. They’re barbarians. The things they’ve done . . .’
‘I know.’ She cleared her throat, forcing herself to talk. To chat. ‘The rules have changed out there. It used to be that press – like medics and aid workers – had a level of protection, but IS have changed all that. Anyone not on their side is on the wrong side. They’re ruthless.’
‘No wonder you wouldn’t want to go back to all that again. It’s behind you. You’ve got your lovely boy – and, it seems, mine too.’ Aggie’s eyes sparkled.
‘Ma, you promised!’ Sam groaned, hiding his face in his hands as his mother laughed mischievously, looking delighted by her indiscretion. Lee gave a small, surprised chuckle for sociability’s sake, hoping no one could see how her hand shook as she went to drink, but only too aware of Evert looking on in silence with a watchful, disapproving gaze.
‘Here.’ Sam draped a heavy blanket over both their shoulders and she pulled it in tightly, shivering in the moonlight. She scooched in closer to him on the bench. The blanched garden, such as it was, shone in silvered shapes – the slender reeds, bosky shrubs, many-fingered trees – and she could glimpse the waterway in bright, dazzling flashes.
‘So why exactly are we sitting outside in the depth of winter at night?’ she asked him.
‘For the Midwinterhoornblazen.’ He grinned. ‘As we speak, my father is positioning himself above the well with a giant horn, just waiting for the call.’
Lee considered this in silence – before they both burst out laughing.
‘And, of course, we all really, really hope he doesn’t fall into the well,’ he joked, dropping his head to her shoulder in a sign of despair.
Lee smacked his arm in weak protest, but she couldn’t help continuing to laugh.
‘Oh God, I really am sorry about him,’ Sam sighed, kissing her shoulder. ‘He’s such a miserable beggar. I didn’t know whether forewarning you would stop you from coming altogether.’
‘Ha, as if. I’ve met far scarier men than your father, believe me.’
She had just made it as an off-the-cuff comment but she saw the smile fade in his eyes as he looked at her.
‘On the plus side, your mother’s wonderful!’ she said quickly.
He beamed again. ‘I know. God knows how she does it, putting up with him.’
‘Oh he’s not that bad. Just a little dour, perhaps.’
‘Hmm, you’re kind,’ he said blandly, looking out to the horizon again and squeezing his jaw.
She wriggled in closer again, linking her arm through his under the blanket, feeling how his leg kept jigging. In spite of his attentions to her, he was still nervous, distracted. ‘So tell me – how are you really feeling about tomorrow?’
He considered for a moment. ‘Nervous, sick, feverish, dizzy – basically all the feelings I get around you.’
‘You make me sound like the norovirus!’
He laughed, squeezing her thigh. ‘No, I’m okay. I feel fine.’
‘Fine, but intensely focused?’ she asked, deliberately leading him for more. ‘Because the whole “milk and hazenpeper diet, going to bed at eight” thing is indicating you’re more invested in this than you first suggested.’ And when he didn’t reply, she added, ‘Your mother told me you ran two marathons this year. Fit boy.’ She arched an eyebrow suggestively, running a hand over his abs under the blanket. He glanced over at her touch, that first flame already in his eyes, and he leaned over and kissed her, both of them feeling the immediate heat ignite between them. The house was at their backs and she hoped Aggie wasn’t watching from a window, ‘attaching a narrative’, as she always scolded Mila for doing. This was just a kiss. A very longed-for kiss. That had been the longest dinner she had sat through in years, Evert dominating the conversation and not so much advising Sam as drilling him on tactics, the opposition, the course . . .
He pulled back, their eyes remaining locked even though their lips weren’t. Frustration tugged. If they were only alone here . . .
A bird flapping its wings in a nearby tree intruded on the moment, breaking the spell. He would probably say he needed to conserve his energy anyway. She settled back down with her head on his shoulder.
‘So come on, be honest with me,’ she pressed. ‘Two marathons in a year. Tomorrow isn’t just a nice little Christmas bonus for you, is it? You’ve grown up seeing your father train for his next race and you’ve done the same. Liam told me how good you were at uni.’ She jabbed him playfully with her finger. ‘Are you actually racing to win?’
He was silent for several moments, staring deep into the evening light and she heard him swallow, gathering courage. ‘I think there’s a chance I could be in with a chance,’ he said finally, as though just saying the words, acknowledging the possibility, was somehow tempt
ing fate. ‘But it would mean a lot of luck – I’d have to get the best start to get in with the lead pack, for one thing. It would be almost impossible to catch them once they broke away. Langen is a legendary starter.’
Ard Langen was the winner of the International Big Rideau Lake speed-skating marathon in Canada and gold medallist for the Team Pursuit in PyeongChang in 2018.
‘Well, there’s definitely no doubt you’ve got the sharpest blades; I saw them in the kitchen. You could cut cheese with those babies,’ she teased.
‘Yeah, I’m hoping to take out some shins behind me,’ he grinned. ‘And if someone could cause a pile-up behind me, that’d help too.’
But she could see the tension in his face, his muscles all slightly too tight, his breathing shallow and rapid. She watched him, feeling like she was soaking him up, her eyes soft upon this man who was rapidly becoming everything to her and her son. ‘If you did win, do you think your father would finally be happy?’
A mocking bark escaped him. ‘Probably not. The fight’s all he knows. His entire life has been built around this. The Elfstedentocht is the classic fight for the underdog – a farmer can beat a king in this race,’ he said, alluding to the ’86 event when the then-prince Willem-Alexander had competed under a pseudonym.
‘But Olympians?’
Sam shrugged. ‘He says when it comes to endurance, the battle is mainly up here,’ he said, tapping the side of his head. He was quiet for a moment, his profile having settled into a hard mask. ‘He’s probably right about that.’
‘And how do you feel about effectively having inherited his dream? It’s a huge amount of pressure on you, surely?’
Sam was quiet again for another moment, as though he had to choose his words carefully. ‘I feel sorry for him, honestly. He always had ambition, but never the luck. He had talent but not the edge; on the day, there was someone just that little bit better. And even though he perfected his game, the weather never played ball.’
‘So you’re going to go out there and try to get his dream for him?’
‘. . . Something like that.’