by Karen Swan
It was all of four o’clock.
‘Well,’ she said, turning back into the room. ‘This is great, right?’
‘This is awesome,’ Zac said from his spot on the small sofa by the stove as he tried to get some mobile signal; surprisingly, there was at least some, although it flickered in and out of reach like a candle’s flame dancing in the wind. Lenny had got the stove fire going and was trooping back and forth with fresh buckets of logs from the log store that adjoined the end of the cabin. The space was warming up quickly now. In contrast to the other cabin, this one had been shockingly cold upon entering – no one had stayed here for over two months, Anders’ grandmother, Signy, had told them, and clearly she didn’t have the strength to keep fires going in here on her own.
Their cabin was almost identical to the old lady’s: a principal kitchen/living room with a bedroom off to the far end, but theirs also had another small sleeping space in the eaves, which was accessed by a rudimentary timber ladder and loft hatch opposite the front door. Apparently the stone-built areas below had been the old stables, where they used to keep the sheep, goats and cows, but she had said there was just an old barbecue set and some rusted bikes down there now.
The outhouse was further down the grass path that ran between the two cabins, set back from the storehouse that they had seen standing to the right of these buildings when they’d arrived. Bo hadn’t dared use it yet but Lenny had, declaring it ‘cold but all right; take a torch with you’.
She came away from the window and joined Zac on the sofa; it was, blessedly, not as austere as the formal blue velvet one in the other cabin, but rather a squashy red style she recognized as being from Ikea. ‘Do you think she actually does live up here, on her own, all the time?’
‘Well, she’s not on her own all the time – that guy said she has someone up here with her to help out with the lets in the summer period. And clearly he looks in on her regularly.’
‘Still, she must be pretty tough to live like this at her age. You’d think she’d be crying out for creature comforts. This is a pretty hardcore lifestyle choice.’
‘Precisely why I like her. Feisty,’ he murmured, kissing the top of her head.
‘But you’d think she’d go mad. It’s not like there’s anywhere she can walk around here, there’s no telly, barely any reception. What does she do all day?’
Zac shrugged, throwing one arm around her shoulder and pulling her in to him as he started scrolling his photo gallery with one hand. ‘Maybe that view is enough.’
‘It is a hell of a view,’ she murmured. ‘And I suppose there’s a lot of activity on the fjord in the summer for her to watch.’
‘Too much activity,’ he grumbled.
‘She probably likes talking to her summer guests too; I imagine she’s glad of their company.’
‘Well if she is, I hope she has better social skills with them than she did with us. What was all that about, going on about our names being odd and looking at our tans as though we’re diseased?’
‘I am definitely too dark for my colouring at the moment. It does look a bit strange,’ Bo murmured, holding out her arm and examining it.
‘It looks healthy,’ Zac argued. ‘She’s the one looking pinched and stricken.’
Bo smacked him lightly on the stomach. ‘She’s an old lady. Be kind.’
‘She started it,’ he grinned, chuckling as she whacked him again. ‘Oh yeah?’ he asked, forgetting about his phone and turning to tickle her instead, making her wriggle and screech. She tried to get away but his fingers had found her waist – or ‘tickle spot’ as Zac called it – and were showing no mercy.
‘No, stop, stop,’ she cried, gasping frantically with laughter, but she only succeeded in wriggling herself closer to him.
It was the sound of the clicking that made them both look up.
Lenny was shooting them again, his camera – which was always hanging round his neck – pressed to his face, the bucket of logs by his feet. ‘No, carry on, guys,’ he said, peering round the lens. ‘This is great.’
But Bo cleared her throat and pulled herself back up to sitting again; the moment had passed. ‘Don’t use any of that, Len, okay?’ she said, untwisting her jumper, which had spiralled around her torso in the tussle.
‘Why not? It’s great material.’
‘Because it’s private, that’s why,’ she said frustratedly, getting up.
‘Where are you going?’ Zac asked.
‘To have a bath,’ she snapped and she saw Lenny’s eyebrows hitch up at her tone. They had been arguing more and more lately. ‘And, no!’ she said, pointing a warning finger at him. ‘You can not photograph me there either.’
‘Bo—’ Lenny lapsed into a puzzled silence as she crossly filled the kettle and some saucepans with water from the rudimentary tap in the wall and put them on the stove for the first fill-up – the stove was operated by gas cylinder.
‘Kids, stop fighting,’ Zac murmured, lost to his phone again.
The small copper bathtub was situated in their bedroom at the end of the bed – not as any sort of design statement but purely because there was nowhere else for it to go. Still, it had an undeniably rustic charm that was all their followers’ aspirations. Who wouldn’t want to lie out in a hand-poured copper bath in the tiny wooden cabin of a Norwegian shelf farm?
While she waited for the water to boil, she wandered through to the bedroom to check on the fire in the small hearth. The flames were making the kindling crackle but it was still freezing in there – the red curtains were thinner than her knickers. Grabbing a pale green chequered wool blanket from the chair in the near corner, she pulled it around her shoulders and sank onto the bed, seeing if she could blow a little smoke ring with her own breath. Not quite.
The narrow bed had a striking red and white diamond-patterned patchwork quilt on it and she pulled that over too so that it covered her legs and tried to stop shivering. She was able to just hear the boys’ voices in the next room.
‘. . . to talk to her . . . getting really tricky lately.’
‘. . . I will . . .’
‘. . . just trying to do my job, man . . .’
‘I know, I know. I’ll talk to her.’
She dropped her head, knowing she had overreacted. Again. Lenny was right. He was just trying to do what they paid him for, and most of the time he made himself scarce at the appropriate moments. It wasn’t like he was demanding to be around either – as long as he had his smokes and Cokes (or a beer, any time after five) he was easy company.
No, it was her. She was jet-lagged and cranky.
Turning to her side and tucking her legs up, she lay down on the bed, pulling the red and white quilt with her. This was going to be her home for the next few weeks and it was good to be here; if she felt overwhelmed by it right now, that was only because she was tired. She would feel better come the morning.
Things always felt better in the light.
‘Ugh, what time is it?’ she asked, feeling the hand on her shoulder gently rocking her awake. Blearily, she opened her eyes.
‘Nine,’ Zac said, leaning down to kiss her temple. ‘Thought I should wake you now or you’ll be awake at two in the morning instead.’
‘Nine at night?’ she repeated, sitting up. It was the same day? It had to be the longest day ever, surely?
The curtains were still open, but outside the darkness had settled into something solid and impermeable so that only her reflection gazed back at her. She realized the room was warm at last and that she had kicked the green blanket to the floor in her sleep.
The bath had been freshly filled and was steaming gently, and she could smell and hear something delicious bubbling on the stove. She looked at Zac in amazement. Exactly how much had happened whilst she’d been sleeping?
He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her tenderly. ‘I love you, Bo Loxley. The future Mrs Austen.’
‘Hold your horses,’ she smiled up at him. ‘Ain’t nothing is set in st
one till I get a ring.’ She waggled her still bare engagement finger.
‘And you will. It’ll be the most beautiful one you ever saw, worth the wait for sure.’ He kissed her again. ‘When I propose next time, it’ll be perfect, I promise.’
Next time? Bo’s face fell as she remembered the agreement for the dummy proposal. During the course of their travels in the intervening period, she had somehow managed to forget all about it. ‘No. I’m joking. It was perfect, I loved it.’
Zac shook his head, looking disappointed. ‘But I messed up. I didn’t have the ring, I rushed it—’
‘And that’s what I loved about it – the spontaneity; the madness of it. The fact that it was just the two of us,’ she insisted, reaching up for another kiss.
But she could tell he was still annoyed with himself. The lifestyle they presented to their followers was so perfectly curated, he found it hard to accept when their private life fell anything short of that too.
She sighed as he got up from the bed and trailed his fingers in the bathwater. ‘Still hot but you should get in before it cools; it took five trips with the kettle and all those pans to fill it. I can’t believe you slept through it.’
Really? Five trips? ‘Neither can I.’
‘At that rate, I reckon we’ll get through a gas cylinder every third day, boiling up the water like that.’
She hugged her knees up to her chest, clasping her arms around them. ‘But there’s no other way to wash, is there?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ll ask the old woman tomorrow how the hell they got the cylinders up here in the first place. They weigh a ton. I don’t know how you’re supposed to carry them up the path we took. How would you even get them off the boat?’
‘Hmm,’ she puzzled. It had been tricky enough getting herself off.
‘Come, I want to show you something before you get in,’ he said, picking up the green blanket from the floor and holding out his hand.
‘What is it?’ she asked, trailing after him as they walked through the next room. The smell of soup bubbling made her tummy rumble immediately. ‘God, I hadn’t realized how hungry I am. Where did you even get this?’
‘Don’t get too excited. Lenny remembered we didn’t have any food, as well as no clothes, so he went to see our neighbour.’
’Oh no. Don’t say we’ve taken food off her?’
‘Only a couple of cans of soup that we’ll replace tomorrow. She told him where some kayaks for this place are stored down by the water.’
Bo stopped walking. ‘We’re going to have to kayak into town and back for food?’
‘And gas. Unless you can think of an alternative,’ Zac shrugged. ‘Come on—’
‘Wait a sec.’ She looked up at the hatch in the ceiling; a light was flickering and she could see a shadow moving across the rafters. ‘Hey, Lenny,’ she called up.
There was a short pause, then she heard the sound of heavy footsteps across the floorboards and his upside-down face appeared. ‘Yeah?’ His voice was benign enough but she could still detect the hurt in it.
‘Come down here, will you?’
He frowned but did it anyway, descending the chunky ladder quickly. Like Zac, he was an expert climber. ‘Yeah?’ he asked defensively again.
Without a word, Bo wrapped her arms around his neck. He smelled stale – of beer, sweat and the dying base notes of nicotine – but then she doubted she smelled too good herself, right now. They all needed a bath after a day travelling. ‘I’m sorry for being a moody cow earlier,’ she whispered and kissed his cheek. ‘You’re just doing your job; I don’t know what we’d do without you. You’re amazing.’
He smiled, his dark eyes softening. ‘It’s all right.’
‘I promise to behave from now on. You know I’m never good on the road, but we’re here now and this place is just so . . . us. It’s going to be amazing.’
‘Yeah.’ Lenny smiled back at her, always so ready to forgive.
‘Talking of amazing,’ Zac interrupted, reaching for her hand again. ‘You need to come out here and see this.’
‘What is it?’ she asked, shivering immediately as they stepped out into freezing temperatures. She didn’t have her coat on and it was like being plunged into an ice bath, making her gasp.
‘This.’ He didn’t indicate anything in particular in the pervasive dark but she still, naturally, looked up.
A gasp escaped her. ‘Oh!’ she cried, turning on the spot in disbelief and momentarily forgetting the cold. She had never seen anything like it, the night sky not so much freckled with stars as machine-gunned with them. Whichever direction she turned in, the indigo sky was knotted, threaded and laced with white twinkling lights; it looked heavy with the weight of them, as though they might pull the entire canopy of the sky down to earth. ‘It’s so beautiful.’
‘I know,’ Zac murmured, draping the blanket over his shoulders and hers, and pulling her in to him. ‘Lenny’s gonna keep watch tonight. He’s hoping the Green Lady will come out dancing for us, seeing as the skies are clear. He’ll wake us if one does come out to play.’
‘That would be incredible,’ she murmured, captivated. ‘It almost seems too much to ask for – all this and that as well.’
‘I know. But this is what it’s all about, baby. Just us and the universe.’ He rested his cheek against the top of her head. ‘This is all we’ll ever need.’
Chapter Seven
Was it a dream?
The thud-thud-thud was constant, making her frown in her sleep and pull the blankets higher over her shoulders as she squirrelled down into the pillows. Beside her, Zac groaned. But the sound didn’t retreat or pass over. It was getting louder and closer.
‘What the hell?’ she frowned, pushing the sheets back and propping herself up on her elbows, a tussock of blonde hair falling over her face; she blew it away again, trying to see out of the window, but the thin red curtains were drawn now. She could feel vibrations through the walls, the bed, her chest, and the windows were rattling in their frames.
Zac swore, getting up and instantly shivering as his feet touched the floor. He was wearing just his pants and a T-shirt – which was two more items of clothing than he usually wore to bed; he loved a cool room, but this was another level entirely. ‘Damn,’ he hissed, wrapping his arms around himself as, shivering, he pulled back the curtains and looked out.
The day outside was still limp, light more of a suggestion than an actual fact, and from her position in the bed Bo could see lights whirling outside. ‘What is going on?’ she frowned, getting out of bed herself and also swearing immediately as her feet touched the floor. Pulling on her socks and yesterday’s jumper over the thermals she’d slept in, she joined him at the window. ‘Huh?’ she muttered, as she saw a small helicopter hovering down slowly, aiming for the open expanse of grass just beyond the storehouse. ‘Who’s that?’
They watched as the rails came to a level touch on the ground and the blades began to slow. A few minutes later they had their answer as the door opened and Anders Jemtegard jumped down, a pair of ear defenders still clasped around his neck. He reached back into the cabin and pulled out a panoply of cases and rucksacks – their clothes! – and began walking up the grass towards the cabins as though they contained nothing heavier than children’s packed lunches.
Behind him, in the background, Bo saw the door to the outhouse open and Lenny step out in his boxers and a sweater, looking ashen-faced and dazed; she laughed out loud as she realized how it must have sounded in there to have an unexpected helicopter landing a few metres away. He had probably thought the tiny structure was going to blow away completely in the downdraught. ‘Poor Lenny!’ she cried, laughing even harder as he tried to walk, looking thoroughly shaken.
Hastily, Zac pulled on his jeans and ran through the main room, opening the front door before Anders could get to it. ‘Hey!’ he said brightly, greeting him with one of his homie handgrips. ‘So that’s how you get around out here. Pretty cool.’
Bo hear
d what seemed to be the customary half-pause before Anders responded ‘yes’.
‘Good morning,’ she smiled, coming through from the bedroom.
‘Good morning,’ he nodded, looking a little startled at the sight of her; no doubt her hair was looking particularly wild right now. ‘I have brought your bags.’
‘That’s so kind of you,’ she said, walking over to take hers. Even after the luxury of last night’s hot bath, it felt grubby to still be wearing the clothes she had worn all day and slept in all night.
‘Coffee?’ Zac offered hospitably, walking over to the kettle and half filling it.
‘No. My grandmother will be expecting me. I am taking her into the village.’
‘Really? Not even a quick one?’ Zac pressed. ‘We’ve got some really good Java,’ he said by way of enticement, opening his own rucksack and rifling through it for a bit before finally pulling out the bag of coffee. ‘Our small way of saying thanks for getting us up here last night. We hadn’t realized what collecting the keys from you entailed. Sorry for putting you out.’ He threw him an easy smile.
‘. . . Just a quick one then,’ Anders nodded.
‘So, your grandmother seriously still lives up here on her own?’ Bo asked, leaning against the back of one of the chairs as Zac got the coffee going.
Anders nodded.
‘How old is she? If you don’t mind me asking.’
‘She is ninety-six. But this is all she has ever known,’ he said, as though anticipating her next question. ‘This is her life. There is no novelty to it for her; it is not hard or lonely. She knows no other way.’
‘I guess the logistics of it makes a bit more sense now we’ve seen the chopper. That’s a pretty cool way for a ninety-six-year-old to get around. Sure beats a mobility scooter,’ Zac quipped as he unhooked the cups. ‘How long have you been flying one of those things?’