A Summer of Drowning

by John Burnside

  The plane circled for a moment above the island, then it turned southwards and in that instant everything I knew disappeared. Outside, Bieggaålmaj was blowing in from the Finnmarksvidda, a cold current that held the plane in the air like a bauble – but, before that, he had gusted across Mongolia, touched with the smoke from horse herders’ yurts and the blue of the steppe, because this wind, this spirit, had a memory that lasted forever, beyond locality and time and season, and he remembered other places, other seasons, other peoples sleeping and dreaming in their own settlements, all the way from here to Kamchatka. To him, all our stories were the same – even the story I was enacting, going to visit a man I had not only never seen, but had never really thought of as a creature of flesh and blood. Now, I couldn’t tell whether I was glad to be learning the truth at last, or annoyed to discover that he was real after all. For several minutes, Bieggaålmaj shook the plane as if he would pluck it out of the air and toss it into the sea; then, having followed a line of faraway islands down the western coast, the plane turned inward and started across the mountains – and in the white gleam off the snow-capped peaks, I forgot about Arild Frederiksen altogether, forgot everything, in fact, except that clear unearthly light. By the time I woke up, the plane was touching down in a steady grey rain and the voice on the public address system was politely requesting people to remain seated, for their own safety and the safety of others, until the seat-belt signs were switched off.

  * * *

  I changed planes in Oslo. There was a delay before we took off on the next leg of the journey, but I didn’t care. I had been to London once before, but I didn’t remember it very well. It had been hot and I had been dismayed by the crowds of people in the streets, the way they bumped past each other with distant looks on their faces, as if they were trying desperately to pretend they were alone. Mother had taken me to the National Gallery and the Tate, and we had spent a day in Kew Gardens, walking around the Palm House and the alpine beds – and, though I could see what Mother meant when she said it was beautiful, I didn’t really like it. The Palm House was hot and airless and the alpine garden seemed to me nothing more than a sad imitation of the place we had just left. The place where I belonged.

  I emerged an hour later than scheduled into the mass of travellers at Heathrow Airport – there had been some kind of security scare just before my plane touched down, and now there were people everywhere: business travellers in crumpled suits trying to push through the crowds, a party of French children roiling and surging back and forth in the passport queue, a half-dozen Chinese women arguing with an unhappy-looking official in a blue-and-red uniform. I didn’t try to hurry. There was no point. It was more than an hour before I emerged into the main concourse and caught the Express into the city, the first of the three trains that would eventually take me to where I would be staying for the next three days. Mother had suggested I give myself longer, maybe make a holiday out of the trip, but I had rejected that idea. I didn’t know why but, as soon as we had agreed the arrangements and Mother had got on the phone to make my reservations, I had started feeling anxious about going, and I was glad that I wouldn’t be away for long. It rained all the way to Birmingham, but every now and then there was a sudden cascade of sunlight through the clouds, and the fields and backyards were transformed, the way a stage is, when the lights go up. It reminded me of home, that light – and then it was gone, and the rain set in again, gradually getting harder and greyer till, by the time I changed trains for the second time, it seemed that there was no light at all. No light, and no darkness; just a wash of dull, cold grey on the roofs and shopfronts and a low, rain-grey sky over the warehouse lots and wrecking yards that slipped by between stations.

  There was another delay on the third leg of the journey, when the train pulled up short and sat motionless for fifteen minutes without moving. When it finally did arrive, I got wet carrying my overnight bag from the train to the taxi; nevertheless, by five that evening I was standing in a warm, cosy-looking foyer, checking in to my hotel. I don’t know how Mother chose it, but it was perfect. The receptionist was a very thin girl with big, dark eyes and inky black hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, making her look like a character from one of the Gorey cartoons that Mother loved so. She had an accent of some sort, maybe Irish, but the gold name tag on her jacket said FRANÇOISE, which didn’t strike me as a very Irish name. She was extremely polite, but she didn’t smile when she gave me the key and wished me a pleasant stay, and I was glad of that. I didn’t want people to be friendly; I wanted them to do their jobs and then, when I had what I needed, to leave me alone.

  The hotel was an old stone building set in its own gardens on what the brochure described as a quiet, leafy street, just a few minutes from the town centre. I assumed that Mother had chosen it because it was family-run, which usually meant small – and, at first sight, it looked more like a large suburban house than a hotel. The lobby was dim and slightly cluttered in a friendly way, brass sculptures of horses and dogs stood in pools of gold lamplight on battered side tables, the wall facing reception was lined with shelves and filled with books that nobody had read for years – Kyrre Opdahl would have loved it – and it seemed welcoming, a house from some earlier and better age, when time passed more slowly and you could almost watch the patina forming on the tables and vases. When I got to my room, however, everything was plain and simple: a bed, a wardrobe, a table, a lamp that had been turned on in anticipation of my arrival, but no ornaments, no sculptures, no rows of faded books. There was a picture on the wall above the bed – a hunting scene, as I recall – and that was it. Outside, on the far side of the lawn, a street lamp was already lit, a soft orange light at the window that made me feel insulated and immune from time. I set my bag down on the bed, unpacked it and put my things away quickly, then I went to the window. The view across the gravel driveway and the slightly unkempt front lawn was of the brochure’s leafy street and, beyond that, what appeared to be a small children’s park surrounded by a barred fence. The road was busy with home-going traffic, but the park was empty and still in the pale orange street light. Someone had done all they could to make the play area seem welcoming: the uprights and bars of the swings were freshly painted in cherry red, the roundabout was gold and white and blue – but, now, in this daylong rain, nobody was there. It wasn’t a day for playing, it was a day for sitting on the stairs, listening to the rain, or reading a book about pirates or Cheshire cats.

  I sat down on the bed. There was probably still enough time to make it to the hospital, but I was tired and I felt damp and slightly grimy, and I didn’t think it would matter if I waited one more night. I was worn out after the journey, I told myself, and it would feel less of an intrusion if I visited in the morning. I would be better company for a sick person when I’d had some rest and, besides, the woman who had written the letters, this Kate Thompson, would surely be there now, and she would be a familiar face, a comforting presence for Arild Frederiksen – and surely that was what he needed, as the night closed in on his hospital room. I didn’t want to arrive in the evening, in the rain, just as he was taking his medicine and settling for the night – and I didn’t want to turn up unannounced either. Of course, I didn’t know, that evening, how serious his illness was, or I’m sure I would have gone to the hospital right away. That goes without saying. I had come to visit a man who was sick and had, presumably, asked to see me – or had it been Kate Thompson’s decision to summon me? Had she taken it upon herself to write, suspecting that Arild Frederiksen wouldn’t have done so himself? Or, if he had written, he wouldn’t have said he was ill. But Kate Thompson had said he was ill and, no doubt, she had known that this would make me feel obligated to come. And I had come, of course, because there really was no choice. But had she written to me with his consent, or had she made this summons a proof of how much she cared about him? She had called herself his friend but I had immediately assumed there was more between them – and, if that was a fair assumption, then she re
ally did have certain rights, as evening fell and the night drew in. At the very least, she had the right to be alone with him. I did take her number out of my purse, I even set it down on the bedside table and started to dial but, after a moment, I hung up and decided it would be best to wait till the next morning. That was only fair. Besides, I was tired after the journey and I needed to rest – so I dialled the number for home instead and waited while it rang. But there was no answer and, after a dozen or so rings, the answering machine kicked in. ‘This is Angelika Rossdal. I am busy right now. Please leave a message.’ It was a plain and simple recording, no frills, no sly touches of irony or humour – and it was the first time I’d ever heard it from a distance. I stood listening to the voice, then hung up when the tone sounded, because I couldn’t think of anything to say. Mother’s voice sounded so remote, so abstract, and it suddenly seemed to me that the voice I was hearing wasn’t her at all, but an impostor – and, though I knew that this was an absurd notion, I began to feel something close to panic, suddenly overwhelmed by the idea that I had travelled too far and for too long and, now that I was here, in this alien place, I wasn’t just hearing Mother’s voice from far away, I was hearing the entire house – the entire space that I usually occupied – falling silent and closing around my absence. I was far away from everything that I knew or cared about, far away in the rain and the English countryside, and, for a moment, I felt sick with dismay at the thought of somebody else going about my house, using my things, taking my books down from the shelves, listening as the phone rang, but not coming to answer it. That feeling only lasted for a minute or so, but when it left me, I felt utterly exhausted and I lay back on the bed, not even bothering to undress. It was still early evening, but I immediately fell into a troubled sleep, plagued by a dream that, I am sure, recurred several times over the next few hours, a dream in which the Sigfridsson boys were still alive, but they were trapped somewhere – in an underground room, or maybe the space beneath an upturned boat – and I could hear them calling out for someone to come and rescue them. In the dream, that someone was me, but I didn’t know what to do and, as I listened helplessly, the cries grew louder and more numerous till, finally, it was a choir of voices, crying out to be saved while the water or the darkness pulled them in, and I couldn’t do anything to help.

  I woke early the next morning and began preparing for my visit. I took the letter Kate Thompson had sent me, with the name of the hospital and her address, and I tucked it into my pocket, then I checked to see that I still had enough money in my purse and went downstairs. Even though I had fallen asleep early, I hadn’t got much rest – the dreams had gone on all night, it seemed, and it had felt odd, sleeping, then waking again, or half waking, in a dark room, hearing strange noises from the rooms below. At one point, I thought I could hear a boy calling – I thought the sound came from out in the park across the street – and, because the cry sounded so desperate, I got out of bed to go and look. I stood for a long time, gazing out over the gardens towards the empty little park under the orange street lamp, but I couldn’t see anyone. Now, I was tired and, at the same time, my annoyance at having to be here – my annoyance at having to go to the hospital, to see a sick man that I had never even met – was returning. I didn’t want to go to the hospital. I had an image of one of Munch’s famous sick rooms: the gaunt figure laid out on the bed, under a pile of blankets, the shadows closing in, the world outside – the sunlight, the flowers – impossibly distant, and I could almost taste the stale air and the faded, sweat-soiled linen. For a long moment, I even considered packing my things and going straight back home – then I thought of Mother, and then I put on my coat and went downstairs.

  The girl at reception looked identical to the one I had met the night before, only her name tag said RENATE and she had a different accent, maybe Polish, or Eastern European. I asked her to call me a taxi and she picked up the phone. ‘Where to?’ she said.

  ‘The hospital.’

  ‘Which one?’

  I took Kate’s letter from my pocket and read out the name of the hospital. The girl nodded and repeated what I had said into the phone. There was a short silence; then, without saying anything more, she hung up and made a note in a spiral-ringed notebook. She didn’t say anything; she didn’t even look at me. It was as if she had forgotten I was there. ‘How long will it be?’ I said.

  She looked up. For just one second, it seemed as if she hadn’t understood, and I was about to repeat the question when she finally spoke. ‘The taxi will be here in five minutes,’ she said carefully.

  I thanked her and sat down in the far corner of the lobby, next to a bronze sculpture of a horse. Twenty minutes later, I found myself at another desk, talking to another receptionist about the patient I had come to visit – a patient she appeared not to be able to find in her records. ‘How do you spell that?’ she said, her eyes fixed on the ledger in front of her.

  I spelled the name. ‘He’s Norwegian,’ I said. I realised, as I said it, that I had no idea how long Arild Frederiksen had lived in England – and it struck me, as soon as the words were out of my mouth, that his nationality was irrelevant.

  The woman didn’t look up. She didn’t say anything either – or not for a long time. Then, as if something had dawned on her, she raised her head and gave a wary, almost forced smile. ‘Let me just call through,’ she said. ‘Are you a relative?’

  I shook my head, wondering why she needed this information; then I nodded, because I thought she might turn me away if I wasn’t related to the patient. Wasn’t that something they did? I was certain I had the right hospital but, for a fleeting moment, it occurred to me that I might have made a mistake. ‘I have a letter,’ I said.

  The woman shook her head slightly then put her hand on a white telephone on her desk. ‘Why don’t you have a seat?’ she said – and I could see that she didn’t want to make the call while I was there, though I didn’t know why. She gestured at a large waiting area off to the left by a row of high windows. ‘I’ll call through to find out what ward your friend is on.’

  I shook my head and she gave me a startled look. Stupidly, I had wanted to protest, to say that Arild Frederiksen wasn’t my friend, but she had obviously misunderstood. She set her face, forcing herself to remain sympathetic, though something else – a trace of hostility, I thought – flitted across her face. ‘Please take a seat,’ she said. ‘Someone will come for you in a little while.’ Then, without waiting for a reply, she picked up the receiver and began to dial.

  As soon as Kate Thompson appeared, walking slowly through the crowd of random people who were coming and going along the corridor next to the waiting area, I knew who she was. I also knew that something had happened; though, to begin with, I didn’t realise that Arild Frederiksen was dead. I imagined complications of some kind, or emergency surgery, perhaps, but not death. Life is such a given, after all. Besides, it would have been ridiculous, my travelling all that way, only to find that the reason for my journey had disappeared a few hours before I arrived. I hadn’t wanted to come, I had no desire to meet this supposed father of mine but, now that I was here, it seemed only right that he would be present for the ceremony that Kate Thompson had worked so hard to set up. But he wasn’t. True to form, he remained an absence in my life, even now, when I couldn’t give a damn, one way or the other. If the receptionist had told me right away that he was dead, if she hadn’t been obliged to make that phone call, I would probably have left right away; but she hadn’t said anything, presumably because she had been told to contact someone when I finally turned up. I’d thought she was calling a charge nurse, or a doctor – and maybe she did – but the person who came to break the news of Arild Frederiksen’s death wasn’t a member of staff at all. It was Kate Thompson.

  It was a surprise to me that she was a rather large woman. Not fat, not even that tall, but large. Solid. Prepossessing. I hadn’t expected that. The letter had suggested a wispy, almost diffident creature, somebody slender in every s
ense of the word, but Kate Thompson wasn’t like that at all. Even in the waiting area of a hospital, in circumstances that must have been very difficult for her, she filled the space she occupied fully and quite deliberately. It was as if she wanted to say that she was here and that she had no intention of being dismissed or contradicted – which I took as a sign that she had been obliged to work hard, at some point in her life, to gain that sense of herself and, though she was humble enough to understand this self-possession as a privilege – as much luck as it was judgement or effort – she was determined to be herself, no matter what. In that sense, I suppose, she was the exact opposite of Mother, who took it for granted that she was in complete control of everything that happened around her, even though she appeared to occupy no space at all. Or rather, there was a space, a space existed, but you always knew that it was elsewhere, you always felt that it was distinct from your own clearly defined – and limited – territory. The first impression Kate Thompson gave off, however, was one of stolid presence, an air of deliberate and hard-won self-possession – and it occurred to me, later, that this was odd, considering that she had just lost the man she loved.

  She recognised me right away, just as I had recognised her. The waiting area was quite busy, and I could have been anyone, but she walked straight to me and held out her hand. ‘Liv,’ she said. It wasn’t a question. ‘You’re here.’

  I nodded and shook hands, but I didn’t say anything. Kate Thompson was around forty-five, I thought, not at all pretty, though possibly the kind of woman that men of a certain type and age would find attractive. Her hair was a deep, coppery colour which I assumed came out of a bottle, her lips were very full, and though it was obvious that she hadn’t slept for some time, there was something oddly appealing, something almost glamorous, about her fatigue. She let go of my hand and looked around – and I could tell, right away, that she had something to tell me that she would have preferred to say in less awkward surroundings. At the same time, she needed to tell me immediately and, because she couldn’t think of anywhere better to go, she resigned herself to the circumstances and said what she had to say. By then, however, I knew what it was that she needed to tell me. It had been there in her voice, when she’d said you’re here like that, as if she was saddened by the fact of my presence, and it was there in her face – a look, not of grief, or not just grief, but an odd apprehension. ‘I decided you weren’t coming,’ she said.