by Betty Neels
‘I can’t possibly—I’ve piles of work…’
‘There is nothing on until two o’clock on Monday afternoon. We’ll drive back here in the morning and you can get it done then.’
She took a mental view of her pages of notes. ‘No, I can’t.’ She did her best to keep disappointment out of her voice and only half succeeded.
‘Then work for an hour or two after dinner.’ He wasn’t going to argue. She agreed; there would be several hours after the meal; if necessary she could type until the early hours.
They had a leisurely dinner in the almost full dining room, talking about the week and its happenings, and he encouraged her to talk about Oslo. Had she liked it? Was there anything she particularly wanted to see, or some place she wished to visit? ‘And you will have some time to shop before we leave,’ he assured her, ‘although I expect you have noticed that things are very expensive.’
She had. ‘Perhaps people earn more here?’ she essayed.
‘Yes, they do. But their silver and pewter are worth buying, and their famous sweaters.’
She had ventured to enquire the price of those on one of her brief visits to the shops. Once the price had been translated into pounds, she knew she couldn’t afford one, but being handy with her knitting needles she had bought wool and a pattern, miraculously translated into English; when she was back home and had the time, she would knit a sweater for herself.
When they had had their coffee she excused herself on the grounds of being tired and bade him good night, a little peevish because he evinced no disappointment at being left to spend the rest of the evening on his own. Once they were back home, she mused, going to run a bath and getting her case from the wardrobe, she would make up her mind what to do; whether to go on working for him, seeing him each day, hiding her feelings, treasuring their rare moments of friendliness, or leaving and getting another job. The mere thought made her feel sick. She undressed, had her bath, packed her case with night things and the velvet skirt and a blouse and sat down in her dressing-gown and started to type her notes. She worked for a long time; that way she couldn’t think about anything but her work, but if she went to bed she would only lie and think.
When, at last, she got into bed she didn’t allow her thoughts to stray but kept them resolutely on the weekend ahead of her. She wasn’t looking forward to it, although it would be super to see something of Norway, but the prospect of meeting the professor’s family she found daunting. They would never have heard of her and she couldn’t do any of the things the Norwegians did. She would be a fool on skis or skates, and she was pretty sure that if anyone suggested climbing a mountain she would disgrace herself. She eventually went to sleep and had a nightmare in which she was trying to catch up with Jake and Brenda, climbing with the speed of light ahead of her while she followed them in maddening slow motion.
In consequence she was a little pale in the morning and over the breakfast table the professor eyed her thoughtfully. ‘You’re tired—you certainly need a couple of days off. Well, fresh air and young company will put that right.’
He smiled kindly and bade her make a good breakfast and when she bent her head over her plate allowed himself a small smile.
It was still quite dark when they left but the sky was clear and the snow crisp under their feet. The professor threw their bags on to the back seat and drove carefully down the drive and on to the road.
‘It’s a matter of the best part of three hundred kilometres,’ he told her. ‘Main road almost all the way. We pick up the E 68 and go as far as Laerdal and then take a secondary road. It’s beautiful country; I think—I hope you’ll like it.’
Whatever the future held, the present was all she could wish for. They didn’t talk much but as it grew lighter and the magnificent scenery became clearer, Charity got carried away with the splendour of it all. When they stopped for coffee after an hour she was bubbling over, gaping at the mountains around them, the stretches of clear dark water between them, and ahead of them more mountains, some with their snowcovered tops shrouded in cloud.
They had stopped at a small wooden hotel at the foot of a waterfall and she stood looking round her, taking great sniffs of the cold clear air. ‘But why is there a hotel?’ she asked. ‘There is not a house within sight.’
‘It’s a favourite ski-run for weekenders and there are ski trails through the forest; the place is packed out on Saturday and Sunday during the winter and in the summer it’s just full of campers and hikers.’
He took her arm and urged her indoors. ‘Coffee, and not too long over it. I promised we’d be home for lunch.’
The coffee was delicious and so were the buns which came with it. Charity, anxious not to hold things up, made short work of them and then looked round the snug cosy room with its big wood-burning stove and wooden walls.
The professor said easily, ‘It’s through that door at the end, turn left.’
‘I’ll be quick,’ she assured him. It struck her forcibly that Sidney would never have done that; what was more, she would have felt embarrassed if he had. She sighed. She had always imagined that being in love—head-over-heels and as unlike her tepid feelings for Sidney as chalk from cheese—was a mixture of roses and moonlight and soft music, but it wasn’t; it was being comfortable with someone and not feeling complete unless they were with you. She sighed again; she would have to come to terms with the situation. As soon as they got back to England, she promised herself, and hurried back to where he was patiently waiting for her.
It was full daylight now, a clear bright day, the snow sparkling in the sun. Charity, pausing to take a quick look round before she got into the car, took a deep breath. ‘It’s heaven,’ she said happily, and just for the moment it was, because the professor, holding the door open for her, bent his head to kiss her.
He shut the door on her, walked round the bonnet and got in beside her, and said placidly, ‘Keep your eyes open, the scenery is quite something from now on.’
‘Don’t do that again,’ said Charity severely, willing her heart to regain its steady beat.
He turned in his seat to look at her. ‘Another word for Charity is love. Shall I call you that?’
Her heart became quite disorganised again. She said in a voice which shook because she couldn’t breathe properly. ‘Certainly not, Professor,’ and then, because she loved him so much and everything was getting out of hand, ‘Please—Please don’t talk like that—do remember Brenda.’
He pressed the self-starter and sat listening to the engine. ‘And where does Brenda come into it?’ he asked gently.
‘Well, of course she does, it’s me who doesn’t,’ declared Charity ungrammatically. She made a great deal of effort to pull herself together. ‘I expect you miss her?’
He was still looking at her, his mouth curved in a tender smile. ‘When we get back home and there is time, we must have a little talk; I fancy that we have our wires crossed.’
He kissed her again, very gently. ‘I do not like to be thwarted,’ he observed with calm. And then drove on.
She was given no chance to think about that; he kept up a steady flow of conversation about their surroundings which meant that she had to listen to him.
She would have liked to have stopped in Laerdal, a large village, spread backwards from the fiord and into the narrow valley behind it. But the professor, after the briefest of pauses, drove on, taking a narrow road through towering mountains, their peaks snow covered, through tunnels cut into their heart until they reached Aurland, where the road ran beside the fjord once more.
Flam, as far as Charity could see, was mostly railway station, and a small one, at that. But it was very important, for it connected up with the railway to Oslo and had a busy ferry service to the villages along the Sojnefjord. The professor turned away from the ferry terminal and drove up a narrow road towards the village and then turned away from it to take a rough lane leading to the snow-covered slopes of the mountains. He was going slowly now over the packed snow,
passing one or two houses set back from the track until he drove through open gates and stopped before a large wooden house standing on the lower slopes of the mountain, birch trees encircling it.
Charity got out of the door he had opened for her. There was an awful lot of snow; its vivid whiteness made the waters of the fjord seem dark. She studied the house and derived comfort from its solid appearance. It wasn’t modern; it had a sloping roof and a square tower at one end, and an elaborate lattice-work porch, with a balcony covered in by glass above it.
He tucked an arm under hers and led her to the door, which opened as they reached it. Charity had tried to imagine Jake’s mother, without success, but now that she saw her face to face, she saw that imagination would have been a waste of time. His mother was tall and slim, grey hair drawn back from a serene face, quiet eyes like his and the same slow smile.
Oh, dear, thought Charity, what a marvellous mother-in-law she would be; if only Brenda will appreciate her…
The professor flung a large arm round his mother’s shoulders and kissed her and then, as an afterthought, kissed Charity; a light kiss on her cheek.
‘And this is Miss Charity Graham, Mother.’
Mrs Wyllie-Lyon took Charity’s hands in both of hers. ‘My dear, I am so very pleased to meet you, and so, when they see you, will the rest of the family be. They’re upstairs, cleaning up after some cross-country skiing. I’ve seen to it that your skis are ready, Jake.’
‘Good, and a pair for Charity?’
‘Of course. You’ll be an expert by the time you go, Charity; the entire family will see to that.’
Charity gave the professor a speaking look. She said coldly, ‘I’m not sure that I could even stand up in them.’
‘Oh, you’ll have me to hold on to,’ he told her easily. ‘I’ll put the car away, Mother, while you take Charity to her room. We’re famished.’
They watched him walk away, both loving him.
Mrs Wyllie-Lyon led the way indoors. ‘I don’t live here all the time,’ she explained as they crossed the wide hall with its wooden walls and floor, and started up the staircase. ‘I’ve a home in England, too. Essex—a village called Tollesbury. Jake goes sailing on the Blackwater.’
They had reached a landing and Mrs Wyllie-Lyon put her hand on a door to open it and turned to look at Charity. ‘You sail, my dear?’
Charity shook her head. She had no chance; she couldn’t ski, she couldn’t sail. She could type, of course, and a lot of use that was.
Her room was delightful, furnished simply but not, she decided, cheaply, and with a view over the fjord which was breathtaking. She unpacked her case, inspected the bathroom, did her face and hair and went downstairs.
The professor was waiting for her, sitting on the bottom tread, with a very small girl on his knee. He got up and perched her on his shoulder and said, ‘This is the youngest, Elsa; come and meet the rest.’
The large room seemed full of people, brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews, all apparently glad to see her. She drank the sherry she was offered and they trooped in to lunch, a buffet of cold dishes where everyone helped themselves. That eaten and coffee drunk, she was borne away to change into slacks and sweater, a woolly cap crammed on to her dark hair and someone’s scarf wound round her neck and someone else’s mitts pulled over her hands. She was to be taught to ski and the whole family wanted a share in the teaching. Jake was waiting for her again; they went outside into the winter sunshine and someone latched skis on to her boots and someone else thrust sticks into her hands.
The professor was beside her, vast in a bulky sweater, a woollen cap on his head and goggles over his eyes. He slid her own goggles over her eyes and said cheerfully, ‘Now do exactly what I say…’
The skis had lives of their own. They crossed themselves endlessly and turned left when she wanted to go right, so she spent a great deal of time lying in the snow, to be hauled to her feet by obliging hands. All the same, after an hour she could at least stand upright and, even more, she could move very cautiously forward. What was more, she was enjoying herself. She was getting the hang of it very nicely when the professor declared that that was enough for the moment. The short day was closing in, anyway, as they went back into the house. ‘Tomorrow we’ll take the trail through the forest,’ he told her. ‘Very easy going.’
He unlatched her skis and set them against the wall of the house, and bent to take off his own. ‘Well, yes, thank you,’ said Charity, ‘but don’t you want to have a real run, or whatever you call it?’
He pushed his goggles up over his head and took a good look at her. ‘Time enough for that, too,’ he told her easily. ‘Did you enjoy that?’
‘Yes—Oh, yes, I did! I’d love to ski well—I mean swoop down through the forest and over the mountains, but of course I’ll not get as far as that.’
Her companion grunted and turned away to look at the darkening sky. ‘A good day tomorrow, I believe. We’ll ski in the morning and after lunch I’ll drive you over to Laerdal to see our famous Stave Church. Now—tea.’
It was a protracted meal, eaten in the living room with the grown-ups sitting at their ease in the comfortable chairs and the children on cushions and hassocks. And after tea, cleared away by a cheerful young girl, the ladies of the party fetched their embroidery and knitting and settled down to a cosy chat while the men went off to play billiards. Charity, thankful that she had had the foresight to bring her knitting, felt quite at home, especially when Jake’s mother said in a pleased voice, ‘I can see that you are good at handiwork, Charity. The winter may be long, but it doesn’t seem so when we have busy fingers. You must try some of our embroidery.’
Charity had seen it in the shops in Oslo; fine stitchery, worked from a chart without a pattern. To please Jake’s mother she was prepared to try anything. She would buy a cushion cover or something and take it back home and when she was an old lady she would look at it and remember…
‘You look sad,’ declared one of Jake’s sisters. ‘Are you very sore from your ski lessons?’
Sore or not, she was prepared to try again after breakfast the following morning and this time it was easier, she wasn’t scared any more, at least not on the gentle slope to which Jake had taken her. He pronounced himself very satisfied with her progress and presently left her in the willing hands of his older nephews and nieces and went swooping off with a younger brother. Charity watched them go rather sadly; she would never be able to skim along at such a speed and even if she could there wouldn’t be much point in it for she wouldn’t be here. She would have become lost in self-pity, only she forgot that she had her skis on and moved a foot, got entangled and fell over, to be hauled to her feet by little boys hooting with laughter. She laughed, too, and spent the next hour learning to go up a slope as well as down, quite forgetting to be unhappy.
After lunch Jake got the car out, declaring that she couldn’t go back to England without seeing a Stave Church. And at her mystified look, ‘Not far away. We’ll drive back to Laerdal and go through the valley to Borgund; it’s a main road and it will be open.’
She flew to get her jacket and pull her woolly cap over her ears.
It had clouded over and every now and then there was a flurry of snow.
‘Tea about four o’clock,’ warned Mrs Wyllie-Lyon as they went, ‘and there is eple kake; I made it myself.’
Under the grey sky the snow-covered mountains looked awesome. There was no wind and before they got into the car they stood together in silence.
‘A far cry from Wigmore Street,’ said the professor softly.
Charity nodded. ‘A different world…’
‘But you like it?’
‘Oh, I love it.’ She looked up into his calm face. ‘No buses, no queues; it must be heaven in the summer.’
He smiled a little. ‘And heaven now,’ she heard him say softly, and then, ‘Jump in.’
She was surprised to find that Laerdal was a good deal larger than she had thought, its ch
arming wooden houses strung out along the valley at the end of the fjord. At first there was the semblance of a village, then the narrow streets petered out and there was just one road, cleared of snow, running beside the fast running river. The houses became more and more scattered, although each one appeared prosperous and self-sufficient, and even the most modest of them had a double garage. Presently the mountains receded behind snow-covered slopes and they passed a small white-painted wooden church and Jake stopped the car.
The Stave Church was close by, standing a little way from the road, a strange pagoda-like building, its many pointed roof adorned with fierce dragons’ heads.
‘Why dragons?’ asked Charity, and she tried not to notice the professor’s arm about her shoulders.
‘Well, it was built in the twelfth century when the people here weren’t quite converted to Christianity, so they played safe, built their churches and added the dragons to ward off the devil of their heathen beliefs. Come inside.’
It was almost dark there and very cold. ‘They must have frozen to death hearing mass,’ observed the professor, ‘and they had to stand, too.’
They went outside presently and crossed the road and walked briskly through the snow by the wild rushing river.
‘Fish?’ asked Charity.