The Quisling Orchid

by Dominic Ossiah

  Ingrid saluted and cycled away, yelling, ‘Silje is coming! Silje is coming!’ as loudly as she could.

  Silje gave the village enough time to hide whatever it needed to and then approached Fólkvangr, singing loudly. Nevertheless, when she walked through the archway, the villagers were still throwing bunting under tables and arranging themselves into lines to hide posters and signs.

  ‘Ho! Silje!’ Erik slid down a ladder from the roof of The Mottled Goat, and ran over to her, stuffing a hammer into his belt. ‘We were not expecting you.’

  She allowed him to peck her lightly on the cheek. ‘So I see.’

  ‘It’s meant to be a surprise,’ he said, apologetically. ‘If you see anything you shouldn’t then just pretend you didn’t.’

  ‘I can do that.’ She cupped his cheek in the palm of her hand and smiled. ‘This is all so wonderful.’

  The villagers shuffled their feet and swelled with pride.

  ‘You really didn’t have to go to all this trouble.’

  ‘Of course we did!’ said Anna Haud, Ingrid’s mother. ‘You are the lynchpin of this village, Silje Ohnstad. We could do no less.’

  ‘And the sooner you are married,’ added Mrs Fehn, ‘the better for everyone.’

  It occurred to Silje that she didn’t know Mrs Fehn’s first name.

  Rolf Lillegard was pushed in front of her. He removed his cap, pressing it firmly to his chest, and thrust a hastily picked bouquet, consisting mostly of weeds, under Silje’s nose. ‘We wish you good luck on your new journey, Silje Ohnstad!’

  There were tears in his eyes, and in those of the group of men who had urged him to make his presentation. They nodded solemnly, and to her dismay Silje realised that at some point during the last ten years she’d had her way with all of them.

  And now here they are, she thought, to say goodbye to the woman I was. It was quite sweet in a mortifying sort of way. Though seeing them gathered together she wondered if they’d shared stories over the last decade. Perhaps this was some kind of club and she was their mascot. She smiled sheepishly at Erik who rolled his tongue around his mouth but said nothing.

  ‘For you,’ said a thick, flat voice from behind her.

  Silje turned and almost fainted away. Steadfastly looking to her left, Marit Ohnstad held out a wreath made from the most beautiful orchids she had ever seen.

  ‘Marit. I do not know what to say.’

  ‘Then say nothing. Just take it.’

  ‘They are quite beautiful.’

  Marit looked at her, and for the first time since she could remember, Silje did not see loathing in her eyes. ‘Who do you think taught your father to grow orchids?’ she said.

  ‘And I know that he has much to answer for, and perhaps also my own mother.’

  Marit stared in disbelief while she nodded, an almost imperceptible movement of her ancient head.

  ‘But they are still my parents, Marit, and so it is my right to speak ill of them, not yours.’

  The other villagers, almost unable to comprehend what they were witnessing, stayed silent.

  ‘Hmmph,’ Marit said. She gathered her skirts and looked around for a quiet route away from the town square.

  ‘Wreaths are usually for funerals, are they not?’ Silje asked.

  ‘It is all I had spare,’ said Marit. ‘Count yourself fortunate.’ She shuffled away through the gathering, heading west to wherever she lived. Silje did not know.

  ‘I will see you at the wedding then, Marit?’

  ‘Do not push your luck.’

  ‘But I will see you. You will be most welcome.’

  Marit turned and smiled, an act that seemed to cause her some discomfort. ‘If I am welcome then it would be impolite not to attend.’

  ‘And you will wear something other than black?’

  ‘Again, Silje, do not push your luck.’

  * * *

  Though she suspected her aid would not be welcomed, Silje decided to spend the rest of the evening in Fólkvangr, helping with the wedding preparations. It would be good to spend some time away from the cottage, and it would give her father time to reflect on his past before she forgave him.

  And so she walked into the village where she drifted regally from house to store, offering her help in biscuit-making, cake decoration, the threading of bunting and the seating arrangements for the evening meal.

  She was shooed away from the church and the baker’s shop and so made her way back to The Mottled Goat where she curtailed the huge order of ale that Grette was about to make.

  ‘Silje, it is your wedding day,’ Grette proclaimed gruffly, tearfully.

  ‘I am well aware of this, Grette, and I am also well aware that every Fólkvangr wedding since 1929 has ended in a drunken brawl, and in one case, the death of the groom. This will not happen, not on my wedding day.’

  Grette promised to police the event and ensure that no one got perilously drunk or inappropriately punctured. But Silje remained steadfast, and so the ale requisitions remained short.

  Satisfied that she might have saved a life, possibly even that of her future husband, Silje went to inspect the building work for the marquee and the stand for the musicians. There she found that there was much to be learned about men while they worked, almost as much as when they lay on their backs.

  To begin with there were a number of things that should not be said to a man while he was engaged in masculine pursuits such as erecting a bandstand.

  She found Rodrek pounding a nail into wood using a stone when there was a perfectly serviceable hammer not an arm’s length from where he toiled. When she asked him if he should really be doing that, she was sent away with a hornet in her ear.

  Rodrek glared at her as she hurried away, before returning to the task in hand, whereupon he flattened his thumb with the stone.

  With her ears still burning, Silje held the ladder while Erik hung the procured Christmas bunting across the roof of The Mottled Goat. She watched him bend the wire hooks with his teeth and asked, ‘Do you not have a proper tool for that?’

  Again, the familiar glare.

  ‘Sorry, I was just trying to— Is this Mr Gundersen’s ladder!’

  Erik sighed. ‘He said he was happy for me to borrow it.’

  ‘But you did ask.’

  ‘Silje, perhaps Grette needs some help inside the tavern.’

  ‘She sent me here.’

  ‘I must thank her for that.’

  ‘But you did ask to borrow the ladder, yes?’

  ‘Yes!’

  Erik said the ladder was quite safe without her holding it and that perhaps she could help the Fólkvangr Embroidery Circle with the napkins…

  * * *

  And it was with the Circle that Silje discovered the true fount of all learning where men were concerned.

  ‘Do not cook the same thing for him week after week,’ said Mrs Schau, sucking blood from the end of her thumb. ‘He forgets many things, but never what he ate six evenings before.’

  The five women sat in a tight circle in Mrs Tufte’s parlour, sewing by candlelight. Silje tried to oblige but found that trying to see what she was doing in the dim light gave her something of a headache.

  ‘Keep his underwear clean,’ said Mrs Tufte, peering down at her handiwork through a pair of spectacles as thick as the tavern windows. ‘His shirts he will care little about.’

  ‘In fact he will prefer his shirts to remain dirty,’ Mrs Munsen added, ‘so that everyone can see that he labours endlessly, without stopping – ever.’

  ‘Do not get angry when he forgets your birthday and your anniversary, even if he becomes a small child when you forget his.’

  Silje could hear Freya in the kitchen and prayed she would come through and sit with them.

  ‘Accept all gifts, no matter how pathetic, with a grace and gratitude that is far greater than the monetary worth of the gift itself.’ Mrs Schau turned Silje’s napkin around and told her to pull the threads and start again.

  ‘Never
tell him why you are angry,’ Mrs Tufte said. ‘He must discover the reasons for himself.’

  Mrs Munsen agreed. ‘It is good for him to exercise his small mind once in a while.’

  Mrs Tingelstaad, at one-hundred-and-one, thought to be the oldest living woman in the mountains, said, ‘Only let him finish in your mouth if he has done something nice for you: fed the goats, milked the cows, cleaned out the privy and so forth.’

  The old women nodded in agreement, and Silje wished she’d thought to bring a notebook.

  ‘When Mr Tufte was alive,’ Mrs Tufte said sadly, ‘I always let him end in my mouth.’

  Mrs Munsen used her eyes to send a cool warning to the others.

  ‘Then you were a fool,’ said Mrs Tingelstaad without looking up. ‘You give the child one candy bar at a time; do not throw it the entire sweet shop.’

  Mrs Tufte shrugged. ‘He liked it, I liked it, and I did not have to change the sheets.’

  Mrs Tingelstaad had to confess that in eighty years of lovemaking she’d never considered this.

  ‘And you, child,’ said Mrs Schau, pointing a long, gnarled finger at Silje’s embroidery effort, ‘should learn to sew like a real woman. His socks will not darn themselves.’

  ‘I can sew perfectly well,’ Silje protested. ‘It is all these frills and laces I have no time for.’

  Mrs Tingelstaad grumbled over the years she’d spent needlessly washing sheets.

  ‘You should make time,’ said Mrs Tufte. She bit through the thread, tied an impossibly small knot and threw the napkin on the pile. She had completed eight before Silje had finished her first. ‘You cannot be gallivanting around the village poking your nose into everyone’s business. Young Erik will be your foremost concern from now on, as you have always been his.’

  ‘You think I will not make a worthy wife.’

  ‘I think you will make the greatest wife in the history of this village if you grow up and apply yourself.’

  Silje wondered if it was their time served on earth that granted old people some otherworldly right to be rude. ‘I am sure I will try my best,’ she said tightly.

  ‘I’m sure you will. Now, that one is ruined. Start another one.’

  Silje dropped the napkin in the basket and glumly picked out another plain square of cotton.

  ‘Watch for signs of slyness in the marital bed,’ Mrs Tingelstaad announced while squaring her wooden teeth with her little finger. ‘For creatures of such limited imagination they can be quite craven in their attempts to engage in a spot of buggery at your expense. Do not allow it.’

  The others nodded sagely.

  ‘Unless it is a special occasion,’ said Mrs Schau. ‘His birthday, Christmas and so forth.’

  ‘Not Christmas,’ Mrs Tingelstaad said. ‘That would be unseemly.’ She crossed herself, though to the best of Silje’s knowledge she was not a practising Catholic.

  ‘And never after a heavy meal,’ said Mrs Tufte. She raised an eyebrow when she noticed Silje was showing more interest in the parlour door than anything the four old women had to say. ‘If he should stray then do not berate him or beg him never to stray again. Never extract promises from him that you know he is incapable of keeping.’

  Infidelity was a matter always uppermost in Silje’s thoughts. She turned her eyes away from the parlour door and to Mrs Tufte whose own eyes had stained pink.

  ‘Then what should I do?’ Silje asked. ‘Forgive such indiscretions? Turn a blind eye to any philandering? Is that what you did, Mrs Tufte?’

  Mrs Munsen slammed her hand down on the table, making everyone in the parlour jump in their seats. ‘You will mind your tongue, young lady!’

  Mrs Tufte raised a conciliatory hand. ‘No, she may speak. The question is, will she listen?’

  ‘I am listening,’ said Silje.

  Mrs Tufte passed a sharpened look to each of the women in turn, a warning that what she was about to say must go no further.

  ‘What I did, Silje Ohnstad, is precisely what I have just told you not to do. I threatened, I begged, I tried to extract promises, and here I sit, abandoned.’

  ‘Abandoned?’ echoed Mrs Schau. ‘But I thought you said—’

  ‘Hush, Maeva!’

  Mrs Tufte placed her work on the table and sat back in her chair, her arms folded across her rounded stomach.

  ‘Then what must I do?’ Silje asked.

  ‘You must turn a blind eye and protect your sanity by extracting small vengeances wherever you can.’

  Silje frowned. ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘Fill his boots with goat shit.’ Mrs Munsen bit through another thread.

  ‘While he bathes in the kitchen, you must trip and dump a pale of ice into his lap,’ said Mrs Tingelstaad. She began work on her ninth napkin; she was clearly the fastest of them all.

  ‘I have an extract of nettles and poison ivy that I used to sprinkle in his underwear and on the privy seat,’ said Mrs Schau.

  ‘It takes time,’ said Mrs Tufte, ‘but they can be trained. If I had known these dear ladies when Mr Tufte’s eye first turned then he would still be with me today.’

  The other three women blushed and took turns to reach across and pat her on the knee.

  ‘And finish any other business before you take your vows.’ She held up her napkin to the light.

  Silje blinked and looked at her. Mrs Tufte ignored her, studying the lines of silk more intently than she needed to. The other women seemed similarly unwilling to meet Silje’s eye.

  ‘Why don’t you go through and see her?’ Mrs Tufte said.

  Silje replied in more haste than she would have liked. ‘There is no need.’

  ‘I feel there is.’

  Silje looked at her but the old woman still refused to look back. ‘I will return shortly,’ she said.

  ‘There is no hurry,’ Mrs Tufte replied. ‘Your heart really isn’t in it.’ And then she chose to look at Silje with a thin tight smile on her face. ‘I was referring to the embroidery.’

  Silje felt the hairs on her neck rising. She got up from her seat and went through to the kitchen where she found Freya making the most delicate skolebrød and the most terrible mess.

  ‘That woman is evil,’ she said.

  ‘She was speaking the truth,’ Freya replied without turning around.

  It means nothing, Silje told herself. She rarely turns unless she is asked to. ‘Can we go somewhere?’

  ‘Go somewhere,’ Freya echoed, scrubbing angrily at a baking pan.

  ‘Somewhere we can be alone.’

  ‘And why do we need to be alone?’

  ‘Do not tease me, Freya.’

  ‘You are soon to be married. Perhaps Mrs Tufte is right; perhaps it is time you acted like it. Perhaps it is time,’ she said, ‘you put away your childish things.’

  ‘That is not how I see you. You know it’s not. Why are you being like this? You said you would be happy to share me with Erik.’

  ‘I said I would share you, Silje. I never said I would be happy.’

  ‘So you tell me this now, seven days before my wedding.’

  ‘Dear God, you should really try to listen to yourself talking.’ Freya tried one of the cupcakes. She wrinkled her nose and spat it into her hand.

  ‘You should let Mrs Tufte make them.’

  ‘I wanted to do something nice for your day.’ She wiped her hands and shovelled the remains into the large pail she’d dragged in from the garden. Before she replaced the lid Silje saw it was half-filled with discarded cakes.

  ‘They would not keep,’ Silje said quietly. ‘They would spoil before—’

  ‘I am trying, Silje! I needed time to make them perfect.’ She shivered and ran her fingers and flour through her hair. ‘I just needed time. I wanted to show myself that I could be happy for you, but if my baking is anything to go by then clearly I cannot.’ She made an odd hiccoughing sound, and then another, and then she began to cry.

  Silje found herself with her arms folded around her, unsure a
s to how she’d arrived there.

  ‘I thought I could share you. I thought I could wait in the dark for what affections you could spare me. I thought I could live in the shadow of the love Erik and you will share. I thought I could help look after your children while you worked the orchid fields. I thought they would call me Aunt Freya and I would love them as though they were our own. I thought I could live half a life while you lived two. But I am not strong enough, or perhaps I am not that weak. I am sorry but part of you is not enough.’

  Silje kissed her and caressed her throat until she could feel her heart pounding inside her chest. She thought she’d won, but when she slid her hand between Freya’s thighs, Freya pushed her away.

  ‘No. I have much to do.’

  ‘More baking,’ Silje said, breathing as though she’d run the height of the mountain.

  ‘Don’t make fun of me.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She nuzzled the hair at Freya’s temple, taking in her scent. It was different now: a bitter cinnamon mingled with the smell of decaying orchids. Silje realised whatever Freya felt, her heart exuded through her skin.

  Again, Freya pulled away from her. ‘I have errands to run.’ She snatched two envelopes from the windowsill.

  ‘You made the invitations,’ said Silje, yearning for her and humbled by her in the same moment. ‘I did not know. They were beautiful.’

  ‘I have two left to deliver. Come with me.’

  ‘You are destroying what little beauty we have found in this world, Freya. Why should I go with you?’

  ‘Because I want us to walk together along the mountain paths, hand in hand as though we were intended. I want us to talk of our future marriage and our future children and our unborn grandchildren. I want us to close our eyes and wish ourselves at the altar of the village church. I want us to walk in the night and imagine when we are old and dying, spending our last days in front of a log fire in the cottage that belonged to your father. And I want us to do all this tonight.’

  Silje remained still. She had always believed herself to be a person empathic to the emotions of others – no matter how many told her otherwise; that she could feel the ebb and flow of Freya Dorfmann with whom she shared a love that ran deeper than flesh, perhaps deeper than the essence of humanity she called a soul. Theirs was a connection that bound their bones, their thoughts, their very lives. But if this was as she believed then Silje could not understand how she had not seen this day coming.