by Sandra Field
‘Stop it,’ she cried. ‘You’re putting the worst possible interpretation on what I’m trying to say. We’re friends; of course I don’t want you to disappear—’
With dangerous calm he said, ‘We’re lovers, Kristine.’
‘All right, so we’re lovers! But your brother’s coming back and I have to go to Fjaerland...and we’re having our first fight in nearly two weeks,’ she wailed.
‘A new record,’ he murmured, caught hold of her and kissed her very comprehensively. The hammock gave an alarming lurch, and Kristine, beguiled, said, ‘We’ve never done it in a hammock before.’
As he kissed her again, she realised thankfully that the future was settled for the next twenty-four hours. Tomorrow Lars would take her to Fjaerland. Beyond that, for now, she did not want to go.
And then she stopped thinking altogether.
CHAPTER NINE
KRISTINE fell instantly in love with Fjaerland. She and Lars had travelled there by ferry along the narrow fjord that bore the name of the village. The flanks of the fjord were furred with trees, the occasional farm sprawling halfway up the slope. Above the farms lurked the hard-edged mountains, where the white of the glaciers and the white of the clouds were one. The village itself was near the head of the fjord, the water silty from run-off from the great glacier called Supphellebreen.
Although the wooden houses and red barns of the village and the old-fashioned fishing sloops moored offshore enchanted her, beneath Kristine’s pleasure, like a dark thread, ran the knowledge that twenty years ago her father had left here in anger. Romanticise the sheer beauty of the village as she might, all the human emotions resided here as anywhere else. And some of those emotions were destructive.
Her grandfather lived near the glacier, so Lars found out by questioning an old man at the ferry dock. They set off, following the course of the river that ran from the glacier to the fjord, Lars keeping track of the farms that they passed. ‘It should be the next one,’ he said finally. ‘A yellow house, the old man said.’
The yellow house was set partway up the hill, surrounded by a cluster of barns and sheds; it was also, Kristine saw to her dismay, surrounded by a number of cars. ‘Are you sure that’s it?’ she said nervously.
‘It has to be. Looks like they’re having a party...want to come back later?’
It had required all her courage to come this far. The thought of waiting until tomorrow was more than she could contemplate. ‘I know it’s taken me nearly two years to get here,’ she said, ‘but now that I’m here I have to go in.’
Lars turned up the driveway. The house was as charming as the rest of Fjaerland, its façde decorated with yellow and white fretwork, roses rambling untidily over the old stone foundations. There was no one in sight. Kristine checked her watch. ‘We’re too early for dinner—what if something’s wrong, Lars?’
‘We’ll leave,’ he said with comforting brevity, parking in the shade of the house.
She took a deep breath. ‘I wish I wasn’t so scared,’ she muttered, and got out of the car.
The fragrance of the roses reached out to her in welcome. A cow was bawling in the field, and swallows chittered high above the peaked barns. She had lived here for the first two years of her life, she thought, and took another long breath. Then, with Lars close behind her, she walked up the wooden steps to the front door and knocked on it.
Pandemonium reigned inside: shrieks of laughter, a child crying, a babble of voices speaking Norwegian at top speed. She knocked again, louder. A man’s voice shouted something indistinguishable, then Kristine heard heavy footsteps clump towards the door. She wiped her damp palms down the sides of her shorts and tried to dredge up a smile.
The door swung open. The man was wearing a woollen waistcoat over a white shirt. He was in his seventies, with a grizzled beard, a shock of white hair, and a pair of the bluest eyes Kristine had ever seen. My eyes, she thought in stupefaction, and knew this must be Jakob Kleiven, her grandfather. Forgetting all the speeches she had so painstakingly rehearsed in Norwegian, she said in a brittle voice, ‘I’m Kristine. From Canada.’
When he opened the door he had been laughing. Kristine watched the laughter die away; as it did so, the face became more and more her father’s face, older but with the same uncompromising bone-structure. He’ll never let me in, she thought sickly. He’s my father all over again. I’ve come here for nothing.
He also appeared to have been struck dumb. Wondering if he spoke no English, she stammered, ‘Gustav Kleiven...d-datter.’
In very good English Jakob Kleiven said sternly, ‘Have you come in anger?’
‘No! Of course not.’ Suddenly it was quite clear what she in turn should ask, for there was no prevaricating with those piercing blue eyes. ‘Are you angry with me?’ she said.
‘No, child, no...you have come all the way from Canada to see me?’
‘I’ve been travelling for two years. My father doesn’t know I’m here.’
His face darkened. ‘Ah...Gustav. I wrote to him—two, three letters all those years ago. But never any answer.’
She remembered the envelope with the red and blue border. ‘I think he might have torn them up,’ she said gently.
He nodded slowly, as though she was only confirming something he already knew. ‘But you are not Gustav,’ he said. ‘You are his daughter, come from Canada to see me.’ A wide smile split his beard. ‘Velkommen, Kristine, velkommen.’
He gathered her into a rough hug. His shirt smelled of pipe tobacco and starch, and there was a glitter of tears in his eyes. Then he held her away from him. ‘You are so beautiful,’ he said gruffly. ‘I see Gustav in you—your chin and your eyes. And Nina, too. Ach, Gustav—for a while I thought he had broken my heart, my oldest son, so dear to me.’
‘Will you tell me why he left?’ Kristine asked.
Astonished, Jakob Kleiven said, ‘You don’t know?’
‘He would never tell me. Nor would my mother.’
‘Yes, I’ll tell you. But not now. Later...’ And he kissed her on both cheeks, ceremonially. ‘Kristine, you have made me very happy today.’
‘I was so afraid you wouldn’t want to see me.’
He was ushering her in the door. ‘Come in, come in, we are having a little party as you can hear...and your friend here?’ He beamed at Lars, pulling him in the door as well.
Hastily Kristine introduced him. Jakob gave Lars a stately bow, then said to Kristine, ‘You will meet more family today than you bargained for; it is Margrethe’s birthday so we are all here. Come along and meet everyone.’
The room into which he led them was full of people. Jakob explained who she was in rapid Norwegian, and out of all the faces surrounding her, faces smiling and exclaiming, Kristine fastened with deep relief on a familiar one. ‘Hello, Harald,’ she said.
‘I wondered when you’d get here,’ Harald drawled, and grinned lazily at Lars. ‘Glad to see you caught up with her.’
‘It wasn’t easy,’ Lars remarked.
‘Kristine, you know Harald?’ Jakob exclaimed, scowling mightily at his nephew. ‘How is that?’
‘We met in Oslo,’ Kristine explained hurriedly. ‘I made him promise not to tell you I was in Norway—I was really afraid you wouldn’t want to see me, Bestefar.’
‘He most certainly kept his promise,’ Jakob said, tugging at his beard. Then his smile broke through. ‘Now I tell you the names of everyone, Kristine.’
Names and faces were a blur to her; what was clear was that she was welcome. More than welcome. She was hugged and kissed and exclaimed over in English and Norwegian, Lars interpreting when language broke down. A drink was thrust into her hand by a tall young man called Iver. A child of five or six wanted to know if she had ever seen a polar bear. Harald lamented that Gianetta was in Genoa on assignment so couldn’t be with him.
Her head whirling, Kristine took a big gulp of her drink, sputtered at its bite, and heard Lars murmur in her ear, ‘Aquavit—be careful, it’s dynamite.�
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Then Margrethe, whose birthday it was, came up to her. She was carrying a baby of perhaps six months. ‘This is Sonja,’ she said shyly, in very careful English. ‘Will you like to say hello to her?’
Kristine put her drink down on the nearest table and took the baby in her arms. The deep blue Kleiven eyes stared at her unwinkingly, even as the child’s weight inexorably carried her back in time to the birth of Carl, eldest of her four brothers. Then Sonja smiled, a fat baby smile full of complicity.
It was impossible not to smile back. As Sonja grabbed a tendril of Kristine’s hair and pulled on it, gurgling placidly to herself, Kristine felt with a frisson along her spine that someone was watching her.
She looked up. It was Lars, standing only a few feet away from her, his face inscrutable as he gazed at her holding the blue-eyed child in her arms. Long ago she had vowed she didn’t want children. But what if this were Lars’s child? What then?
Suddenly it was all too much for her—the meeting with her grandfather, the roomful of relatives, the baby at her breast, the man silently watching her. Filled with a tumult of conflicting emotions, Kristine to her horror felt her eyes flood with tears, tears that spilled over her lashes and streamed down her cheeks. Helplessly clutching the child, she wished the floor would open up and swallow her.
Then Lars was at her side. Swiftly he transferred Sonja to her mother’s arms, produced a rapid explanation for the circle of concerned faces, and led her out of the room and through the front door. The sunlight was blinding, the roses a blur. She let him lead her down the steps and across the grass to the wooden fence around the pasture.
A cow with enviably long lashes and a gaze as placid as Sonja’s was peacefully chewing the cud. Kristine rested her hand on Lars’s wrist and said the first thing that came into her head. ‘Did the baby remind you of Elisabet?’
He looked down at her fingers. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there was that.’ With one finger he stroked the blue veins on the back of her hand, a simple gesture that reminded her of the nights she had spent in his arms, nights of pure happiness. Then he met her eyes. ‘But there was more than that. It was quite clear to me in that crowded room that eventually I’d like to have more children. And that I want you to be the mother of those children.’
Kristine jerked her hand free, the words coming without conscious thought. ‘No, Lars—not me.’
He said inflexibly, ‘Deny that you thought of that possibility when you were holding Sonja.’
‘That doesn’t mean I have to do it!’
‘I said eventually, Kris. Not this year or next. But some time.’
‘You’re like a glacier,’ she accused. ‘Grinding away bit by bit, quite unstoppable.’
‘In bed with you I’m not like a glacier,’ Lars retorted, and kissed her parted lips.
The cow butted his ribs with her nose, and Kristine, who had responded with fire rather than ice, seethed, ‘They’re probably all watching us through the window.’
‘They might as well get used to me—because I’m not going to go away.’
‘I’m going back into the house. I need a good dose of that aquavit.’
His eyes full of mockery, Lars said, ‘Too much of it impairs the sex life, elskling.’
The words came from somewhere deep inside Kristine. ‘You know what, Lars? At some level you still scare the hell out of me.’ Then she turned on her heel and ran for the house.
The party had picked up momentum in her absence. Trays of open-faced sandwiches had appeared, along with beer and wine; sticking to her word, Kristine downed the last of her aquavit, and made a concentrated effort to sort out some of her relatives. Margrethe was Harald’s sister. Their mother Mari was Kristine’s aunt, the one who through the years had kept in touch with Kristine’s mother. Knut and Edvard, one portly and one very thin, were her uncles. Iver, who had given her the aquavit, was Margrethe’s husband. Not one of them mentioned her tears. Kristine began to enjoy herself, and as she relaxed her small stock of Norwegian came back to her.
A cake bright with candles was carried in by Karoline, Jakob’s stout, white-haired sister. Knut, the portly one, went to the piano, Edvard produced a fiddle, and they all started to sing. Before long, as the sun disappeared behind the mountain peaks, they were dancing, folk dances that wove intricate patterns on the old wood floor.
It was past midnight when everyone went to bed. Harald had also brought a tent. Kristine went sedately to hers and Lars to his, and within five minutes she was asleep.
The next day the family started to filter away. Harald drove off in his sports car, the uncles went back to their respective farms, and Margrethe’s family left for Balestrand. Mid-morning a haying crew arrived from the village to fork the sweet-scented grass over long fences to dry. Jakob gave the orders while Kristine carried beer and sandwiches to the crew, among whom was Lars, stripped to the waist and plainly enjoying himself.
She sat down beside him to eat lunch, Great-Aunt Karoline’s straw hat perched on her head. The heat of the sun, the lazy drone of insects, the rustle of hay cast a spell that was irresistibly sensual. There were flakes of grass and dirt caught in the tangled hair on Lars’s chest, and he smelled of sweat and hay. He said softly, reaching past her for another sandwich, ‘I’d like to make love to you here, in the grass.’
As though he had touched her, her body filled with an ache of desire and her limbs grew languid. ‘It wouldn’t take you long to persuade me.’
He looked around. ‘We only have to get rid of eight other people.’
She loved that elusive gleam of laughter in his face; yesterday’s conversation about children receded in her mind. ‘Have some more beer instead,’ she said limpidly.
In the afternoon, while the crew laboured under the sun, Jakob invited her to sit with him on the rocking-chairs in the shade of the front porch. He went straight to the point in a way she was realising was characteristic of him. ‘It is a brief story but not a happy one, why Gustav left Fjaerland,’ he said ponderously. ‘But you wish to hear it?’
‘Yes. I’m hoping it will help me understand why my mother and father are the way they are.’
‘Well, then...Gustav never liked farming, even though he was the oldest of my sons and the land would be his. The village was too small for him, he said, there was not enough excitement. So he went away to Oslo, boasting of the wonderful job he would get. But within a year he was back, and would say nothing of what he had done there.’
Jakob began tamping tobacco into his pipe with his thumb. ‘He met Nina, who was pretty as a picture, and they got married and moved in here with me. Soon you came along and I was happy, for he had settled down, I thought.’ He lit a match, frowning. ‘While he was away we had formed a co-operative in the village for fishing and farming, and Gustav took over as treasurer—that too made me happy. But two years later we discovered he had been cheating it of money all along. Stealing from the villagers. From his own people and his kin.’
The match blew out in the breeze. ‘My son,’ Jakob said, his voice heavy with an old anger, ‘nothing but a common thief.’
Kristine sat very still, waiting for the rest. ‘We had a terrible fight, he and I,’ Jakob went on, clearing his throat. ‘I wanted him to work on my farm to pay back the money. He laughed in my face and two days later was gone, he and Nina and you, my little granddaughter. He left a letter on the kitchen table saying he was going to Canada and would never come back to Fjaerland.’
No wonder her father had hated the orchards and farms where he had worked. And no wonder her mother had always been so sad, for she had been torn from her village under a cloud of disgrace. Kristine said in a low voice, ‘I don’t believe he ever stole again. But he’s never been happy again either.’
‘When you go back I want you to take a message from me. The farm is still here, tell him, and I would welcome him home.’
She blinked rapidly. ‘I’ll tell him, yes. But I have no idea how he’ll respond. He never allowed us childre
n to speak Norwegian—and the boys all have English names.’
‘Perhaps the message is enough. That we forget the anger after so many years.’
Jakob went on to give her more details, then Kristine told him about her life as a surrogate mother for four small boys. The work crew came for their money, Lars headed for the bath-tub, and Kristine went inside to help Karoline with dinner. She had done what she had come to Norway to do, she thought, slicing tomatoes that were still warm from the garden. Before long she must go home and give her father Jakob’s message.
Home to Canada. Leaving Lars behind.
* * *
Three days passed. Lars was gone all day, joining the haying crew on other farms along the fjord. Kristine appreciated his tact in leaving her alone with Karoline and Jakob, missed him horribly, and spent the evenings in an agony of sexual frustration that she sincerely hoped was invisible to the rest of them. On the fourth day it rained. Lars perforce stayed home.
He and Jakob tucked themselves in a corner in the living-room and played chess, wreathed in Jakob’s tobacco smoke. And Kristine didn’t know which was worse—having Lars gone all day or having him underfoot in the house.
The rain had stopped by early evening, and Karoline had been shooed out of the kitchen. Up to his elbows in suds in the old-fashioned kitchen sink as he washed the dinner dishes, Lars said, ‘Let’s go for a walk to the foot of the glacier, Kris.’
She carefully put down the pottery bowl she had been drying. She liked it when Lars used the diminutive of her name. But she honestly didn’t care if she never saw another glacier in her life. How could she feel like snapping Lars’s head off and tearing the clothes from his body at one and the same time?
‘It’ll be dark soon,’ she answered unhelpfully. And the grass is soaking wet so we can’t make love in the field without my grandfather knowing what we’ve been up to, she added silently.
‘One night at my brother’s cottage would make both of us feel better,’ Lars said, as though he had read her mind.