The Island

by Ben McPherson

  ‘And we are sure this is genuine? Where did you get it?’

  ‘One of Bror’s people. Milla. Waiting for me in the town square while you went back to the boat. Why would it not be genuine?’

  The tiniest of frowns. ‘So from Bror …?’

  ‘I don’t think Bror knows.’

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘This note is significant.’

  ‘Significant? Elsa, Tvist could have prevented the whole fucking thing. And all the while he smiles and tells us he understands how we must be feeling. And all the time he’s deflecting our attention away.’

  ‘You can’t confront him. That isn’t how we do things here.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m starting to realize that.’

  ‘I’m serious. If you confront him he will keep on smiling and he will freeze you out, and he will do it so slowly and so imperceptibly that you won’t notice he’s done it.’

  ‘Bastard, though.’

  ‘Cal,’ she said, ‘this is the knife in the table between you and Tvist. Cool your head. Show willing. Cooperate. Then choose with great precision the moment when you reach for the knife. Because when you go for him you need to go hard.’

  19

  I pulled into a street that ran parallel to the fjord. Fancy area, expensive, though the air was full of diesel and smoke. On the other side of a high fence a train yard blocked off the water. Elsa got out of the car and slammed the door. I opened the passenger window.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘I wish you were coming to this thing at the kindergarten,’ I said.

  ‘Believe me, so do I. But they want fathers to bond with other fathers, so you know …’

  ‘I already have my support group for that.’

  ‘You know they’re not the same thing. This is for the kids.’

  ‘Or you could shoot me now.’

  She laughed. ‘I didn’t bring my gun. Go bond with some fathers.’

  She watched me, smiling, as I drove off. In the rear-view mirror I saw her turn towards her therapist’s office.

  I drove around the corner, parked the car in the next street, switched off the engine.

  Why was I lying, and about something as trivial as my support group?

  For a while in August I had gone along to the meetings, but I was unable to follow because the Norwegian they spoke was nothing like the Norwegian I was learning. I would sit for whole hours absorbing the feeling of other people’s grief, trying to guess what they were saying. I never dared speak myself. I was a foreigner here. It felt crass to ask people to translate their suffering into my language. I quickly found reasons not to go.

  Awake in his car seat, Franklin kicked his legs, energetic, smiling. I leaned towards him through the gap in the seats, brought my face very close to his.

  ‘D,’ said Franklin. ‘D.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘D. Daaaad. Dad.’

  ‘D.’

  ‘Oh, Franklin, buddy. My beautiful boy …’

  ‘Mm …’ said Franklin, pointing.

  And there, suddenly, was Elsa, walking briskly along the other side of the road, away from her therapist’s, her trench coat buttoned tight across her chest. I watched her, ready to open the door, but she did not see the car. She passed by on the other side, stood outside a bar, looked about her, then ducked her head and entered through the low door.

  ‘M,’ said Franklin. ‘M-mmm.’ He had seen Elsa as she passed.

  I started the engine. I drove the car slowly up, stopped outside the huge plate-glass window. There was Elsa on a high stool, alone at the bar. I watched for a while, saw her order a drink.

  ‘M-mmm,’ said Franklin again.

  I could walk in. I could ask her what she was doing. But Franklin was in the back seat, and we had an appointment at the kindergarten. Besides, I didn’t want to make a scene, carrying my baby into a bar to confront Elsa.

  I wanted to trust my wife, and wouldn’t you?

  The kindergarten was a low-slung building, ugly and functional, with a play park around the edges. To the right a sea of baby strollers, to the left crates of toys stacked neatly at the side of the path. At the double gates parents were greeting their children, scooping them up, all laughter and soft loving words, lifting them high. In my arms Franklin kicked happily as he scanned the faces of the children, eyes wide, making happy little ah-ah sounds.

  ‘OK, love,’ I said. ‘Here we go.’

  ‘EEh,’ said Franklin. ‘Oh.’

  Other new fathers sat in the sunshine in overalls and heavy shoes, talking easily amongst themselves, already forming bonds. I headed nervously past them and in through the door, beneath a finger-painted Norwegian flag, all red, white and blue.

  ‘Franklin?’

  A ponytailed woman with an efficient smile, reaching out with two hands.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘This is Franklin.’

  I passed him over. A look of surprise in Franklin’s eyes, and for a painful moment I thought he might cry. The woman turned him towards her, smiled into his face, said, ‘Hi, Franklin, I’m Leni.’

  Franklin smiled back, delighted. ‘Lll,’ he said. ‘Ni.’

  ‘Hi, Leni. I’m Cal.’ I reached out.

  She offered me her elbow, then laughed. ‘Perhaps we do not need to be formal. Hello, Cal. Hello, Franklin. Welcome to father–child evening. Franklin and I will get to know each other while you work with the other fathers, Cal. We will discuss my assessment next week.’

  ‘Wait. You’re assessing him?’

  ‘Mmm-hmm.’ She nodded, as if this was obvious. ‘We assess the child’s needs. First through discussion with the child, then with the parents. Your family is multicultural, yes?’

  I looked about me, at parents with dark skin, at light-skinned parents with dark-skinned children, all speaking to kindergarten workers.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, suddenly aware of our whiteness. ‘I mean, I guess …’

  ‘You’re English?’ she said.

  ‘Scottish.’

  ‘Your wife is Norwegian?’

  ‘But that’s not …’

  ‘For us, this is two cultures. Let me go talk to Franklin and assess his needs. And then we can see if you agree. Say bye-bye to Papa, Franklin.’

  She turned, began to walk away, ponytail swishing halfway down her back.

  ‘He speaks Norwegian too,’ I said. She turned to smile and I felt foolish. Then she headed from the room.

  ‘Could this place be any more politically correct?’ A voice I recognized. I turned. A bald man, dark-skinned and powerfully built, in T-shirt and carpenter’s trousers, carrying a large green toolbox in each hand. The immaculately shaved skin of his head, the unmistakable set of his jaw, his eyes so dark that I could not see where the iris ended and the pupil began.

  ‘Jesus,’ I said.

  Tvist laughed. ‘It is good to see you too, Cal Curtis.’

  ‘You have a kid here?’

  ‘My little Josi. That’s why we’re all here, isn’t it? Fathers together. For the good of the children. Enforced bonding. This …’ he looked about himself, laughing. ‘This is how we build our perfect little social-democratic world.’ He handed me a toolbox. ‘Here is your electric drill.’

  ‘Isn’t this about three conflicts of interest already?’ I said.

  He punched my arm gently. ‘I must not forget that you are a satirist. Now, to the diaper room.’

  I stood there in the diaper room, with my drill and my bits, and Tvist stood there with his boxes of screws and nails and Rawlplugs and pencils. Around us men painted cupboards in primary colours. In the garden outside other men swept leaves into green plastic sacks.

  ‘So I’m wrong to think this would be a problem?’ I said.

  He smiled. ‘There is no conflict of interest. Precisely because this is for the children.’

  There was an openness that I did not remember from the police station. In other circumstances, I thought, we could almost be friends. And yet …

  And yet that
Post-it note. How long had it sat on his desk? While on the island those men murdered four adults and eighty-seven teenagers?

  ‘Nothing can be a problem,’ he said, ‘when it is for the children.’

  ‘All right.’

  And so we worked quietly and efficiently, and I swallowed my feelings and concentrated on building shelves for my baby son’s diaper room. Tvist passed me screws and drill bits and Rawlplugs, made neat little marks on the painted walls with his 2B pencil; and for a time the awkwardness between us did disappear. Men at work. For the children.

  Afterwards we sat on the large wooden planters outside, drinking instant coffee and eating pink wafer biscuits. The older children stood in line for sausages in potato pancakes. Tvist offered me a cigarette, which I accepted.

  ‘Can you imagine this place with an armed guard on the gate?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I really can’t.’

  ‘I used to read stories about men walking into kindergartens with automatic weapons, and I would think, that’s America, or that’s Chechnya: that will never happen here. And now I fear that our safe little world is changing, and such a thing can and will happen here, and I shall be forced to put armed guards at the gate of Josi’s kindergarten.’ He turned to me. ‘I can only imagine what it’s like to have a child not come home. We failed you on that day. We are doing what we can to put that right.’

  His smile – the sadness in it – looked absolutely sincere. And yet …

  ‘Can I ask you a question, Ephraim?’

  Tvist looked about him. ‘We are in an informal situation, no?’ He waved his hand demonstratively. ‘Ask away.’

  I said, ‘What if you had information that could have prevented a massacre?’

  ‘Then I would act on that information and prevent the massacre.’ Another sincere smile. ‘What kind of information?’

  A Post-it note with a car registration on it, I thought. But this was not the place to show my hand.

  When I got home Vee was playing Battle Royale. Her avatar was watching from a high tower, scanning the horizon through the sights of a rifle. Far below another avatar was jumping. Vee sighted up and pulled the trigger. The avatar below her disappeared mid-jump.

  ‘And … headshot,’ she said, under her breath.

  ‘Vee, where’s Mum?’

  She laughed. ‘Who ever knows the true answer to that question?’

  ‘So, not home yet?’

  She shook her head. ‘But guess who I found today?’

  ‘Who did you find?’

  She put her headset on to her desk, became very serious. ‘Arno.’

  ‘You … what do you mean, you found him?’

  She smiled. Her excitement was electric. No sense that she had overstepped a boundary.

  ‘Vee,’ I said, ‘you do know you mustn’t speak to that boy, don’t you?’

  ‘Dad, he knows something, I swear.’

  She had gone to Arno’s school; she had followed him home; she had asked him about Licia. Arno had run away. She had followed him for miles.

  ‘Vee,’ I said, ‘I need you to understand that you’re dealing with someone in a fragile emotional state. I had no idea he was even back at school.’

  ‘He was.’

  ‘You cannot approach him. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Sure. But I didn’t.’

  ‘You just told me you did.’

  ‘Fine. I won’t do it again. Sorry I spoke …’ She looked towards the hall. ‘There’s the answer to your other question.’

  I looked at her. What did she mean?

  She said, ‘You didn’t hear her?’

  I listened. I heard Elsa’s shoes drop. I heard her pad towards the kitchen. I found her by the cooker, reading from her phone screen.

  ‘Hey,’ I said.

  ‘Hey.’

  She looked up, turned her phone over, placed it on the worktop, smiled.

  I slid my hand into the small of her back, drew her to me. She rubbed her cheek against mine, then half-stepped away. I caught the scent of mint on her breath. Alcohol too, though she had done what she could to disguise it. She stepped backwards, half-sat on the table.

  ‘How was your session today?’ I asked.

  ‘Actually weirdly great.’ She nodded, as if remembering some detail. ‘Yes. Today was definitely a breakthrough day.’

  I looked at my wife, trying to find the lie.

  Elsa looked levelly at me, smiling. ‘Why don’t you fix us a drink?’

  ‘To celebrate your breakthrough?’

  ‘Sure …’

  If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn she was telling me the truth.

  I went to the freezer, set the gin and the shaker on the worktop. A thought stopped me. I turned to Elsa.

  ‘Would you fetch me some ice?’ I said.

  ‘We out?’

  ‘So it seems.’

  She padded out into the hall. I heard the front door open, heard it swing shut behind her. I turned her phone over. A message from a man named Sverre. Billing her for missing today’s session.

  A strange, vertiginous moment, catching Elsa in a lie like that. The end of something, I thought. When the foundation of our relationship was truth …

  I bit back my anger, tried to push all thought from my mind. I replaced Elsa’s phone on the worktop, face down. I began cutting peel and decanting olive brine. When Elsa returned with a large bag of ice, I had two martinis standing on the counter, ready to drink.

  She frowned. ‘I thought we were out of ice?’

  ‘I checked again. We weren’t. What was your breakthrough, by the way?’

  ‘It’s not supposed to leave the therapy room.’

  ‘Huh.’

  I handed Elsa her drink. My wife, who cannot tell a lie.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  I said, ‘OK, look. I understand that you may have emotional needs I can’t meet. And we are in the middle of something truly terrible. So if there’s something I need to know, then please tell me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said lightly.

  ‘I mean, in times of stress people turn to other people. People who make them feel understood. People more like them. Often someone from their own culture.’

  ‘Is this your way of asking, would I be happier with a Norwegian man?’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘Mostly no.’ She smiled. ‘It would make some things easier, of course. Fewer misunderstandings, for sure.’

  We were standing very close now. Her pupils were large. The flecks in her grey-blue eyes danced silver and gold. No trace of guilt.

  ‘Where are you going with this, Cal?’

  ‘I mean, marriages survive affairs. If the foundation of the marriage is strong enough.’

  She laughed.

  She smiled.

  She shook her head.

  ‘You’re a sweet, generous man. And an idiot. I am not having an affair.’ How easily she laughed as she crossed to the sink to pour herself a tumbler of water. She turned, leaned against the worktop, made sure she looked me in the eye once more.

  ‘We don’t have affairs,’ she said. ‘You don’t. I don’t. Affairs are not who we are.’

  How comfortably she held my gaze. How lightly she said the words, though she set down the glass so heavily that I thought it might break.

  Still, you would swear she was telling the truth.

  20

  Midwinter was unseasonably warm. By evening the pavements were slick with meltwater. I was already cursing myself for agreeing to meet Jo at the Muscular Arms. But Elsa had insisted: ‘We both need time away, once in a while.’ She was right. We were together for days on end, and the ground between us was fissuring and eroding.

  The sounds of the city were distant, damped down. Snow on water, water on ice, ice on frozen ground. I fell twice on the short walk from the station.

  The Muscular Arms was half-empty. The upholstered booths were threadbare, the wooden tables chipped and pitted. Jo bear-hug
ged me as I crossed the threshold, his stubble scraping mine, and at once I felt like his long-lost friend. Soon we were drinking hard, talking and laughing about football and darts.

  Three beers down, Jo set down a new glass in front of me. I raised it to my lips, took a long swig. Oslo Porter, dark and sharp and strong.

  ‘Not a bad half-litre,’ I said.

  Jo shook his head. ‘It’s a pint, mate. Why do you think we’re sitting here? Proper working pub. London Style.’ He gestured around him. Settlement cracks ran the length of the ceiling. The walls were painted yellow, the floor tiles crazed and split.

  ‘And just so it’s out of the way,’ he said, ‘the police interviewed me about my relationship with Licia.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I know they ask some pretty intrusive questions.’

  ‘It’s got to happen, mate. They’re being thorough for once. Skål.’

  We toasted each other the Norwegian way, holding eye contact as we drank.

  ‘How are you guys bearing up?’ he said as he set his glass down.

  ‘Did Elsa ask you to invite me out?’

  He laughed, shook his head. ‘I … thought you might like a drink.’

  ‘You’re a mensch,’ I said.

  ‘Plus Edvard’s not a big beer drinker. Doesn’t really get this place.’

  He took another long appreciative swig.

  ‘How are things with Edvard?’ I said.

  A pained look crossed his face. ‘God,’ he said, ‘where to start?’

  ‘Hei.’

  We looked up. Two women, both in their early thirties, each carrying a pint.

  ‘Hei,’ said Jo, turning back to me. ‘I did a stupid thing, Cal.’

  ‘English? Mind if we join?’ The women were smiling. The taller one was dark, her hair worn high on her head, elaborately pinned. Her friend was blonde, with smile lines around her eyes.

  ‘Other seats are available,’ said Jo. ‘And neither of us is English.’

  ‘But we could sit here, with you. And you could tell us about yourselves. And that would be nice.’ The tall woman. She said it so disarmingly that I began to move out of the way. An open face, intelligent and kind. No edge. She pushed in beside me, and I was aware of the shortness of her skirt, could feel the strength in her exposed thighs. Her friend slid in beside Jo, an expectant look on her face. I pushed up along the booth so as not to sit too close to those thighs.