‘Yes.’
‘And a fool.’
‘No.’
‘Why do you bother with me?’
‘Because you’re what you are.’
‘I don’t see.’
‘No.’
He laughed again. I wanted to go on being serious, but it was hopeless if he was laughing at everything I said.
‘I’m going to turn in,’ I said. My sulking only amused him.
‘Put that horse blanket over you or you’ll be cold later on,’ he said. The fire was dying and I kicked some of the ashes with my feet. High above us I could see the mountains where we had been, and the rough stone track leading away through the trees. I could imagine the cold air and the silence of the snow. Around us the trees rustled, shivering before morning, and in the distance, unseen, ran the mountain stream down into the valley.
The white light of the sky belonged to the snow, I thought, and the pale stars, and the sound of the rushing stream. This was our last night, and we would never come here again. Tomorrow we would be in the world once more.
I did not want ever to forget all that had happened.
I lay with my face in my hands, and turning sideways I could see Jake sitting motionless with his back to the tree, staring at the same mountains.
‘What do you think about, when you look like that?’ I said.
‘Different things,’ he said.
‘What sort of things?’
‘You sometimes.’
‘What about me?’
‘Wondering how you’ll get on.’
‘I’ll be all right.’
‘I think so.’
‘It doesn’t matter much, anyway.’
‘It does to me,’ he said.
‘Why should you worry?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘This has been fun, hasn’t it, Jake?’
‘Yes.’
‘We won’t change anything, getting away from here?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll never like anything as I’ve liked this.’
‘I wonder.’
‘I just couldn’t. I feel as happy as hell.’
‘Do you?’
‘Sure. It’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘You’re a queer chap, Jake.’
‘Think so?’
‘Yes. I don’t want to be with anyone else.’
‘That’s fine.’
‘You never say anything much, do you?’
‘No.’
‘Good night, Jake.’
‘Good night,’ he said.
Next day we had our first sight of the fjords. The road came away from the mountains down into the valley, and there before us we saw the stretch of blue water like a channel, with the high mountains on either side standing as a chain of sentinels, their snow heads turned to the white sky.
It seemed strange to come across people once more. Even the grass huts on the hillsides looked civilized after the lonely mountains. Laardel was the name of the village. The men and women stared after us on our horses as though we were madmen.
There was not anywhere much in Laardel where we could stay. Some fellow came up to Jake and started to talk, pointing to his own house, where I gathered we might have a room for the night. I did not bother to listen. I left Jake to make any arrangements. I got down from my horse, and went to the edge of the blue water.
Up in the silent hills I had not imagined a fjord could be as beautiful as this. The air was hot, and the sun was shining. The water was the same colour as the sky.
The fjord seemed hemmed in by the mountains, from where I stood I could see no outlet, but I supposed that away ahead there would be a narrow channel. The fjord was as still as a lake without the suggestion of a ripple; I felt the touch of it would be colder than the white streams and the ice from the glaciers, and the depth of it unfathomable, greater than any ocean.
I could see the mountains reflected in the water.
There would be no shadows even when the sun was gone, and no sound. The light on the water would be the same, night and day. I could imagine there would be no birds here to sing. They would be afraid of the sound of their own voices.
It was beautiful, but it was too big for me and too remote. I knew I could never get close to it. I went back to Jake and the horses.
‘I wish we hadn’t come,’ I said.
He laughed at me, looking down on me from his horse. ‘Why, where do you want to be?’ he said.
‘I don’t know - somewhere on a stretch of land where I can breathe. Or I’d like to be on the Hedwig with a gale of wind blowing, and some chap shouting from the deck. There’s no air here, and no sound. It’s all shut in.’
‘We’ll get away to-morrow,’ said Jake. ‘This fellow tells me the steamer touches here. She goes on to another belt of fjords. She’ll take us to Balholm. Maybe you’ll like them better!’
‘I don’t know,’ I said; ‘I wish we hadn’t come.’
I asked Jake what we should do with the horses.
‘We don’t need them any more,’ he said; ‘we can leave them here. One of these fellows will buy them.’
‘I don’t like getting rid of them, Jake.’
‘No, nor do I, but we can’t take them on the water. We knew we had to leave them somewhere.’
‘I don’t know why we have to go on like this.’
‘I thought you wanted to,’ he said.
‘Yes - I do really. Only every time you leave something - it’s like leaving a bit of yourself.’
‘I know.’
‘It’ll be a rest sleeping in a bed again, anyway.’
‘Yes.’
‘Funny - last night we were alone up in the mountains and now we’re here, and people around.’
‘You don’t hate it, Dick?’
‘No - but every minute, every second time is slipping away from us - and things don’t last - and we don’t know what’s going to happen.’
‘You like that generally, Dick.’
‘Yes. Oh! hell, Jake, I never know how I’m going to feel over anything.’
‘Come and get some food, boy,’ he said. We went along the road to the house. I felt better after I had something inside me. I suppose this was the first real square meal we had had for days.
‘This is grand,’ I said to Jake. I got up and stretched myself and we stood outside the little house, and looked down the road to the still water. The sun would soon be gone behind the high rim of a mountain. The sky was orange, and long orange fingers crept across the snow.
Then a black crag hid the sun from sight, but still the light did not change. Everything stood out clearer than before. A man was rowing a boat over the water. He looked as though he were painted against the background. A child ran down from a hill and called to him. He called back, waving his hand. Then a woman came from a house with a blue handkerchief on her head, and she took the child up in her arms. Soon there did not seem to be anyone standing around. The sun was gone, and the sky was olive green. The mountains were reflected like black shadows in the water. There was no other sound but the white falls streaming down the rocks and crashing thousands of feet below. It never got any darker than this.
I smiled across at Jake.
The fjords were pretty good after all.
7
When we woke we saw the steamer had dropped anchor opposite Laardel jetty. She must have come in while we were sleeping. She was painted white, and looked rather fine against the blue water. She flew Norwegian colours.
Her decks were crowded with people. There were two little steam launches fussing round to take the passengers ashore.
‘We’ll never find room on that packet,’ I said.
‘Sure we will,’ he answered; ‘it’s early in the year, she’s not as full as you think.’
‘I don’t care about mixing with all that crowd,’ I said.
‘You don’t have to talk to them,’ said Jake.
I felt hot and self-conscious about meeting a whole bunch of men and women. Our clothes were all wrong, we looked like advertisements for a Western picture. Everybody would laugh at us.They were just a smart gang of tourists on that boat.We probably should not be allowed to go aboard.
‘I say, we’re going to look a couple of fools, Jake, honestly we are.’
‘Who cares?’ he said.
‘I hate being stared at,’ I told him.
‘No one’s going to stare at you.’
‘Well, anyway, I don’t like it.’
‘We’ll be all right.’
He paid for our night’s lodging while I shambled about, my hands in my pockets, wondering why I did not mind being dependent on him for everything. We walked down the road to the jetty.
Some of the people from the steamer were just landing in one of the launches. I heard them talking excitedly over the chug-chug of the engine, and somebody was pretending to sing in a high falsetto voice, and a woman laughed, a silly high cackle of laughter.
I scowled, with my eyes on the ground. I would not even look at them, I hated them all. I wanted to be back in the mountains and never to hear the voices of people, nor to mingle in their idiotic lives.
Some man, a guide I suppose, marshalled them out of the launch on to the landing-stage, and then waited for them to gather round him in a little group. He held up his hand for silence. He called out, speaking first in Norwegian and then in English. ‘We are here for one hour,’ he said, ‘we see many things. Those who wish to walk may take the road to the left. The rest, who wish to be explained the sights, please follow me.’
He set off, poor fool, at a rapid stride, his anxious face sweating beneath large horn-rimmed spectacles, and the crowd went after him, tripping over their feet, running like silly geese to buy picture postcards from a stall.
Jake was bending down to the launch, talking to one of the sailors. Then he straightened himself and winked at me.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘this chap will run us over in the launch. He thinks we’ll get a cabin all right.’
In a few minutes we were chugging over the water to the steamer. She looked large as we drew alongside, passing under her stern.
Christiana was her name.
We went up the ladder, and on to the main deck.
Everything was white and scraped. The brass was polished. It was very different from the barque Hedwig. I did not want to be there at all. Jake disappeared in search of the purser. I waited by the gangway until he should return. I could hear feet scraping on the lounge deck overhead and somebody started a gramophone.
A girl hummed in time to the music, and I supposed it was her foot tapping on the deck.
Half-unconsciously I whistled the tune under my breath, wondering what sort of a face she had.
This tourist steamer was spoiling all the beauty and grandeur of the fjord. Still, it couldn’t be helped.
‘You haven’t been long,’ I said to Jake when he came back.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘we can go as far as Balholm. We can keep to ourselves,’ he went on;‘we needn’t worry with this crowd.’
He made a face at the sound of the gramophone overhead.
‘That’s not so good, Dick.’
I shrugged my shoulders; I did not mind it so much as I thought I would.
We stood for an instant, looking up at the mountains where we had come from the day before. They seemed very far away to me. The record was changed on the gramophone, and I went on whistling the new tune.
‘Those machines ought to be condemned,’ said Jake, still looking at the mountains.
‘Oh! I don’t know,’ I said.
I went up to have a look at the view from the top deck.
The Christiana left Laardel about midday for Gudvangen. Jake and I looked about for some quiet corner on the boat where we could get away from the crowd. The weather was marvellous, and it was impossible to sit down in our rather poky cabin with its two narrow berths, one above the other, so we had to become tourists like the rest of them, with a couple of deck-chairs under a large tarpaulin, while people near us exclaimed at the beauty of the view and ran about the deck clicking their wretched little Kodaks. They were a mixed crowd. A few Scandinavians, one or two English, with the majority German and American. They looked all wrong against the background of mountains. I felt they did not have any right to be there at all, neither they nor the steamer with its spotless deck and its polished brass, and the chugging swish of the propeller through the deep water. Jake and I ought to have been in a boat by ourselves. I wondered if one could sail through these fjords. It would be glorious, but the water looked dark and treacherous and there was never any wind.
Jake had found an American paper. He was reading up baseball news. Funny, the way he fitted in to any sort of atmosphere. The crowd did not seem to worry him.
I could not settle to read or to sleep. I felt restless for no reason. I did not know what I wanted to do. There was a party of Americans lying on rugs opposite, placed against the skylight of the saloon below. They were the people who had the gramophone. It was rather amusing to watch them. They were a party of five, three men and two girls. I leant back in my chair and wondered on the relationship between them all. Who was married to whom, and so on.They none of them behaved as though they were married. One fellow looked dull. He wore spectacles and was reading a book. I thought he must be the brother of the girl with dark hair, because when she asked him to go and get her a rug he said he couldn’t be bothered, and then one of the other fellows leapt up and found one for her instead. He seemed pleased to be able to do it, but she didn’t smile at him much. The other boy kept playing the fool with a camera, and taking photographs of them in ridiculous positions. He was the comic of the party. Everyone laughed whenever he opened his mouth. The other girl was asleep, or pretending to be. She had red hair. She wore a white dress without any sleeves. She buried her face in the crook of her arm and smiled for no reason in her sleep.
She was pretty good. I looked at her most of the time. I wondered which of the men she worried over - surely not the chap in the spectacles. Some fellows knew how to get away with anything. She probably treated them all alike, though. She sat up after a while and combed her hair. It didn’t need anything doing to it. Then she reached over with a lazy hand and started the gramophone. It was the same tune I had whistled in the morning. She shrugged her shoulders in time to the music, and the comic boy lit a cigarette for her and put it in her mouth. She hummed in a low key. Jake moaned faintly when the gramophone started and he got up from his chair.
‘I’m going to see if they’ll let me up on the bridge,’ he said; ‘I’d like to have a chat with one of those fellows. The second officer seemed all right. It’ll be quiet there, and the mountains will be grand.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Are you coming, Dick?’
I yawned and stretched myself.
‘No - I think I’ll stay here,’ I said.
‘Right.’ He disappeared along the deck. His getting up had attracted the attention of the American party. They all looked at him, and then back at me. I felt a fool sitting there by myself. I picked up Jake’s paper and pretended to read it, but it was upside down. Somebody laughed. I was sure it was the girl with red hair. I kept my face glued to the newspaper, so that they should not see the colour of my face. After a while I lowered it, and found they were not looking at me at all. I fumbled for a cigarette to give me something to do. Then I found I hadn’t got a match. I felt more of a fool than ever. The comic boy looked across and saw me with the unlit cigarette in my mouth.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘d’you want a match?’
They all looked at me. This was terrible. They probably thought I had done it on purpose, so as to be able to talk to them.
‘Thanks awfully,’ I said, and got up, tripping over the chair.
‘Did you come on board at Laardel?’ said the red-haired girl.
‘Yes,’ I said,‘we�
�d ridden from Fagerness through the mountains.’
‘Oh! boy!’ The man in spectacles looked up from his book.
‘That’s a devil of a way on horseback, surely?’
‘Yes, it is quite,’ I said. ‘It was worth it, though.’
‘I suppose you came through the most fascinating country,’ said the other girl, and the red one smiled and put on another record.
‘Wasn’t it just too romantic for words right up in those big hills?’ she asked me.
It was a damn silly remark, but she was pretty enough to get away with it. I smiled too.
‘I don’t know about that,’ I said.
‘Oh, I’d love to have done it,’ she went on; ‘I’m just crazy over mountains and things.’
The chap with glasses began to ask boring questions about our average mileage a day, and how we had managed about food and sleep. I answered him anyhow, because I was trying to listen to what the red girl was saying to the boy with the camera.
‘. . . you’ll get me mad, Bill, clicking that li’l thing at me,’ she said.
Then there was a pause for a few minutes, and I looked down at the red girl, who was swaying in time to the music.
‘That’s a good record,’ I said.
‘It sounds swell on a real band,’ she said; ‘it sends me cold all over and crazy to dance. Do you dance?’
‘No - I’m not much good at anything like that,’ I said.
‘What about your friend?’
‘No - I don’t think he does either.’
‘How far are you going?’ asked the man in spectacles.
‘I think we only go as far as Balholm,’ I said.
‘They say that Vadheim beyond is a great spot,’ said Bill.
‘Yes - you ought to come on to Vadheim,’ said the girl with the red hair.
‘What sort of a trip have you had so far?’ I asked the dark girl. It did not look too good to be only bothering about the red one.
‘Why, it’s been divine,’ she said, ‘we can’t get over these fjords.
They’re better than anything I’ve seen back at home. This is my first visit to Europe and we’ve done England and France and Germany all in two months. What do you think of that?’
I'll Never Be Young Again Page 8