by Sandra Field
‘You’re jealous,’ Kristine said in amazement. ‘But you don’t have to—’
‘I’m confused, I’m angry and I’m sexually frustrated,’ Lars said succinctly. ‘If you want to add jealous to that, feel free.’
‘The other cars are driving off; we’d better go,’ she said, stepping to the side of the road.
Lars grabbed her by the shoulder, kissed her hard on the lips, and tramped off towards his car. Kristine stood with her mouth open, the kiss having driven any intelligent response from her mind, and then hurried after him. She was glad she didn’t know anyone else in the queue; there were advantages to being in a foreign country. Certainly her four brothers, who thought of her as even-tempered and very much in control of her life, would not recognise her now.
* * *
The dinner with Philippe was not at all the ordeal that Kristine had envisaged, because Lars set himself out to be friendly and the wine mellowed Philippe. The steaks were excellent, and afterwards they sang around the camp-fire accompanied by Suzette on the guitar. They then went to their separate sleeping-bags.
Lars had not kissed Kristine goodnight. Neither had he paid any more attention to her all evening than he had to Philippe, Daniel or Suzette; plainly Philippe was not quite so sure that she and Lars were lovers. Doing up her tent flap, Kristine also decided Lars had meant every word he’d said this afternoon. The choice of beds at the cottage would be hers, and hers alone.
If they made love, Lars was not the kind of man to conveniently disappear afterwards. How was she to know what she would feel for him once they were lovers? Perhaps sharing his bed would mean she couldn’t travel light ever again.
Is that what she wanted? To travel with Lars at her side?
Could one man undo the lessons of a lifetime?
* * *
Kristine, Lars and Philippe parted company very amiably the next morning. It was to be another hot day, Kristine thought, glancing up at the pale blue sky where the sun already blazed white. ‘I may have to drive slowly,’ she said to Lars as they packed the last of their gear. ‘My car was overheating a bit yesterday.’
‘We could have it checked in Balestrand.’
Mechanics cost money. ‘We don’t have much further to go to Fjaerland, do we? Probably someone in my family could fix it for me,’ she said hopefully. Although, for all she knew, her family might not let her past the door.
‘So you’ve definitely decided to go and see your grandfather?’
‘I guess I have.’ She sighed. ‘I want to know why my father left home twenty years ago, and he’ll never tell me. I have this memory—I think from the first year we were in Canada, so I’d have been very young—of a letter arriving with pretty stamps on it and a red and blue border on the envelope, and of my father tearing it to pieces and my mother crying as if her heart would break...she always hated Canada. She still does. Her only contact with home is the Christmas card she sends to Harald’s mother.’
In the first sign of gentleness she had seen in Lars for what felt like a long time, his face softened. ‘Then I think you’re right to go. I can see it’s not easy, Kristine.’
‘Nothing seems very easy,’ she burst out. ‘I know I’m up and down like a yo-yo where you’re concerned, Lars. Right now when you look at me like that I’d make love with you in the back seat of the car...and then as soon as you’re out of sight round a bend in the road I start worrying again—it’s crazy!’
He said flatly, ‘Because of what’s happened in your life you worked out a certain way to survive, which served you well. But now you’re having to decide if that’s the way you want to live for the rest of your life. I want you to change—change is always frightening. And the choice is yours.’
‘All we’re going to do is make love,’ she cried. ‘That doesn’t have to change my whole life!’
His voice tempered like a steel blade, he said, ‘You might find it does.’
She flung her haversack in the back seat and slammed the door. ‘Let’s go,’ she said irritably.
‘Why don’t you go first? That way if you have car trouble I’m right behind you.’ He spread the map on the hood of her car, his finger tracing their route.
Kristine remembered how his hand had held the curve of her breast and stared blankly at the narrow red lines on the map, where the yellow of the land was split by fingers of blue. What am I going to do? she thought. What in heaven’s name am I going to do?
‘We take this ferry across the fjord,’ Lars concluded. ‘Then we turn north again.’
‘Fine,’ said Kristine, scurried round her car and started the engine. As smoothly as if it were a Jaguar, her little car drove out of the campsite.
The scenery was, as always, breathtaking. They drove along the shores of the fjord, which was bordered by mountains topped with blindingly white glaciers. Pink clover, purple knapweed and yellow daisies spattered the fields as though an artist had gone wild with her brush. The next ferry took them across waters of a dazzling blue.
But as they started driving again Kristine soon found herself climbing steeply. Trees crowded the narrow road on either side, parting occasionally to allow unnerving glimpses of the trail far below, winding like a grey snake up the side of the mountain. She had heard of hairpin turns; perhaps Norwegians invented the term, she thought wryly, keeping a worried eye on the temperature gauge.
It was not up to the danger zone yet. Surely she’d make it safely to Fjaerland. And surely she’d find a welcome there after all these years. Even if her grandfather had shown her father the door he’d still be pleased to see his Canadian granddaughter. Of course he would.
The car groaned up the hill. She had already passed several of the triangular road signs warning of zigzags; Lars, who was keeping a careful distance behind her, was often out of sight. The Jaguar, she was quite sure, could swallow this mountain trail in a single gulp.
Then Kristine saw a new sign, a black triangle within the red one, and as she was working out that it must mean a sharp decline she arrived at the top of the mountain. The view was stupendous. For a fatal two or three moments she drank in the sinuous curves of the road far below and the far-away glitter of sun on the stream in the valley. Heaving mountain ranges stretched as far as she could see, their lower slopes clad in myriad shades of green. Then she brought her attention back to the road and braked sharply for the turn.
Nothing happened.
Her breath paralysed in her throat, Kristine frantically pumped the brake, and with a kind of horrified fascination saw the first curve in the road rush towards her. Even though she had the presence of mind to gear down she took the turn much too fast, her tyres squealing on the tarmac. A car labouring up the slope blasted its horn at her.
No matter how hard she pushed, the brake pedal went straight to the floor with no resistance. In a clash of gears Kristine shifted to second and felt the rubber momentarily grasp the road, the car bucking like a bad-tempered horse.
The next turn presented her with a sickening view of tumbled rocks disappearing into nothingness on her left. The tyres crunched in the gravel shoulder and with a tiny sound of sheer terror she ground the gear shift into first and pulled hard on the handbrake.
The car slewed sideways. The drop surged towards her. Kristine wrestled with the wheel, desperately aiming for the opposite bank, and by some miracle the Fiat responded. She saw rocks and the slim white trunk of a birch tree rushing at her. Clutching the wheel as though it were a lifeline, she thought with total clarity what a fool she’d been not to have made love with Lars. Then she closed her eyes for the crash.
The noise was deafening—the hideous scrape of metal on stone, the shattering of glass, the whine and screech as the car body buckled around her. And then, dramatically, silence.
Birch leaves were brushing her nose through the gap where the windscreen had been. Kristine raised a hand to push them away and saw blood on her wrist. I’m bleeding, she thought. So I must be alive.
But the words made
no impact; it all could have been happening to someone else. From a long way away she saw a face appear in her window, a man’s face as familiar to her as her own. Lars. Of course, he had been following her. Although he looked awful, she thought detachedly. Dead white under his tan. How odd. She wouldn’t have thought you could look white under a tan.
He was saying something. She frowned, trying to concentrate. He seemed to be asking if she was hurt. What a silly question, she thought. How did she know?
Then he was wrenching her door open. It squealed horribly, just as if the crash were happening all over again. She gave a whimper of fear and tried to strike him away.
He reached round and unbuckled her seatbelt. Then, with exquisite gentleness coupled with an underlying haste she could not understand, he was easing her out of her seat. Pain stabbed her at wrist and knee. Her head flopped against his chest as she breathed in shallow gasps that seemed to come from somewhere outside her.
Lars was running up the slope away from the car. He was jolting her unforgivably, each step sending arrows of pain shooting along her limbs. She mumbled a protest.
From behind them came a sound like a miniature clap of thunder. Lars froze to the spot. Then, slowly, he turned, and Kristine saw with numb disbelief that the bonnet of her little car was enveloped in flames, bright orange flames sending up billows of thick black smoke.
Lars’s body sagged. ‘Thank God I was so close behind you,’ he said hoarsely, and tightened his arms around her, his face resting on her hair.
Past his shoulder she could see the Jaguar parked by the side of the road. Another car that had come round the bend had jammed itself into the space behind it. The driver was running towards them, shouting something.
It was all too much. Kristine closed her eyes, her last recollection the heavy pounding of Lars’s heart beneath her cheek.
* * *
Kristine was in a room she had never seen before. A very pleasant room, she thought in puzzlement. It was painted a soft pink with white trim, and golden light was pouring in the tall window, carrying with it the fragrance of roses.
The cottage? Surely not. No cottage she had ever been in had had such a high ceiling or such an air of faded elegance.
She was lying flat on her back in bed, a double bed with crisp white sheets that smelled of summer breezes and sunshine. Her arms were on top of the covers, one wrist bandaged. Her head hurt. She moved her limbs and discovered that her knees and her elbows hurt, too. Then the door opened and Lars came in. ‘Is this the cottage?’ she croaked.
‘You’re awake!’ he exclaimed, crossing the room in three quick strides and sitting very carefully on the edge of the bed. ‘They stuffed you full of pain-killers at the hospital. But the doctor said you should wake up before evening.’
‘Doctor? I—’ Her eyes suddenly widened as memory rushed back. ‘The car—the brakes failed. Oh, Lars, I was so scared, I thought I was going to die—’
She pushed herself up, blindly reaching out for him. He took her in his arms, holding her as she stammered out the terrible fear of those last few moments before the accident. Then she suddenly raised her head, meeting his eyes. ‘You saved my life,’ she whispered. ‘I remember now—the engine exploded, didn’t it? You were afraid that was going to happen—that’s why you were in such a hurry to get me out of the car...’ A tremor racked her body. ‘Lars, how can I ever thank you?’
‘I don’t need thanks,’ he said in a voice husky with emotion. ‘Having you here is thanks enough.’
She scarcely heard, because another memory had surfaced. She blurted it out. ‘Do you know what was the last thing I thought before I ran into the cliff? I thought what a fool I’d been not to have made love with you. I—I was afraid it was going to be too late.’
Her eyes filled with easy tears. Lars said cogently, ‘You’re supposed to be resting. And we aren’t going to be doing anything as active as making love for several nights, elskling—you’ve got cuts on your knees and wrist and you’re covered with bruises. But tomorrow we’ll drive as far as the cottage and you can recuperate there.’
‘Where are we now?’
‘The best hotel in Balestrand. And I want no arguments about money.’
Incredibly she managed a laugh. ‘You’re quite safe, I don’t have the energy to argue...is it evening already?’ He nodded. ‘Will you be here tonight?’
‘The staff’s going to bring in a cot so I can sleep in the same room. And don’t worry about your things—the fellow who came along behind us got your backpack out of the trunk.’
He lowered her to the pillows, the expression on his face filling her with a wild, unreasoning happiness. She said, knowing her words for the truth, ‘Lars, you redeemed something today. You weren’t able to save Anna or Elisabet...but you did save my life, and that has to count for something.’
He was playing with her fingers. He said roughly, ‘When I came round the bend and saw your car smashed into the cliff, I thought I’d lost you too. I don’t think I could have borne that, Kristine.’
She said with all the energy she could muster, ‘You don’t have to—because you saved my life.’
Drained by the effort those few words had taken, she lay back on the pillows. He had saved her life. Did that give him a claim on her? If so, she would never travel light again, whether she was with him or not.
CHAPTER EIGHT
FOUR days later Kristine was swinging gently back and forth in the hammock on the front balcony of the mountain cottage that belonged to Lars’s brother. The cuts on her knees were healing, although her bruises were now an unbecoming, jaundiced shade of yellow. Today she had gone swimming in the lake behind the cottage for the first time since the accident, Lars never straying far from her side.
He was inside cooking dinner. He liked to cook, she had discovered, although he had a dislike of recipes, preferring to improvise. The results were always interesting and almost always edible.
For the last four days, he could have been one of her brothers.
The words had come unbidden to her mind. She gazed at the horizon, where the glacier called Voggebreen reflected the rays of the sun, and played with the words. Lars had fed her and changed the dressings on her knees and washed the horrible scent of smoke from her clothes. Two nights ago he had held her hand when she had woken from a horrifying dream of being enveloped in fire. And all this he had done as impersonally as if she were a chance-met stranger.
At first she had been too tired to care; the shock of the accident had so exhausted her normally buoyant stock of energy that she could not have handled any emotional demands from him. But she was feeling better now. Much better. So much so that his impartial kindness, his casual conversations were beginning to irk her beyond belief.
Perhaps he had changed his mind. Perhaps he didn’t want to make love with her any more.
Yet even as she formed the words her instincts told her they could not possibly be true. Lars was as steady as a rock, as steady as the granite boulders that surrounded the cottage. So if she assumed he still wanted her he was holding back for a reason, and the most logical reason was her injuries.
She looked down at her knees, scabbed and bruised and far from pretty. She was certainly no magazine pin-up. Was that the problem? He didn’t like her looking less than perfect?
Somehow she didn’t think that was true either. So perhaps the reason lay in the conversation—or rather, argument—they had had while they were waiting for the Gudvangen ferry. Lars had said words to the effect that he wouldn’t force her. She could choose whether she wanted to make love with him. And she could choose when.
She rubbed her elbow. She had three stitches in one of her cuts and they itched. She would have much preferred not to look like a patchwork quilt the first time she made love with Lars. But she was tired of waiting. There had been integrity in the agony of regret that had seized her in the moment before the accident—integrity and truth. And thanks to Lars she had been given a second chance.
/> She extricated herself from the hammock, feeling various twinges from muscles and tendons that were still healing. Wandering into the kitchen, she gave Lars a bright smile. ‘How long before dinner?’
He was peering rather dubiously at a sauce he was stirring. ‘Half an hour,’ he said abstractedly.
He was wearing shorts and a vest-top, minimal garments that strengthened her resolve. ‘I think I’ll have a shower,’ she said.
His attention was solely on the saucepan. ‘Go ahead.’
Her eyes narrowed. I’m going to make you sit up and take notice, she thought, or I’m not worthy to be called a woman.
Nose in the air, she pivoted and headed for the bathroom. She showered and shampooed her hair, wrapped a towel around herself, went back to her bedroom and closed the door. Then she settled down to some serious work.
Her hair was growing; she dried it briskly, encouraging its natural wave until it stood around her head in a froth of curls, thereby covering most of the bruises on her forehead. She spent twenty minutes making up her face. Her dark sweep of lashes and dramatically heightened eyes, while they did not totally mask the scratches on her cheek, certainly distracted from them. She then slid her naked body into the sea-green jumpsuit that Gianetta had given her, painted her fingernails and toenails, and buckled her blue sandals on her feet.
There was a full-length mirror on the back of the wardrobe door. While the jumpsuit hid the deplorable state of her knees, it hid very little else, she thought, wondering if she was going to have the courage to walk into the kitchen dressed like this.
He probably won’t even notice. He’ll be too busy stirring the sauce.
Right on cue, Lars called down the hall, ‘Are you out of the shower, Kristine? Dinner’s ready.’
And so was she. She took a moment to practise a seductive smile in the mirror, then swayed towards the kitchen in her high heels, trying to ignore how they accentuated her various aches and pains. Lars had set the teak table in the alcove overlooking the serried mountains and the lake; she took the candles from the mantelpiece, lit them, and put them on the table, then quickly went out on the deck to pick one of the sweetly scented Rugosa roses that grew wild around the cottage. As she came back in, Lars was carrying a casserole dish in from the kitchen. He took one look at her, put the dish down on the table, and said, ‘My God.’