by Lars Mytting
I had meant to say that I missed her, because I did. The complication was that I did not miss all of her. I missed her warmth and her calm, but I did not miss the lead weight of her which threatened to hold me down.
“I’m managing just fine,” I said.
“But why are you still there if he’s dead?”
I wanted to tell her that there was a connection between Einar and the four days of my life I was missing. That I was trying to find out why Mamma had gone to Hirifjell, and what the inheritance was. But I sensed that that particular story was beginning to belong to somebody else, a girl I was both waiting for and was attracted to: Gwendolyn Winterfinch.
“Edvard,” Hanne said, “I don’t know where I stand with you anymore. I don’t know what to think.”
“Why do you need to think anything?”
“Shall I just hang up then,” she said.
The telephone beeped. I put in another coin.
“Hanne, I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to say. Can I ask you a favour? I’m going to have to stay another week. Can you swing by the farm and check for any signs of blight on the potato leaves? The key to the gate is under the black rock.”
“You’re asking me what?”
“Just to check for blight.”
“And what if there is? You can’t expect me to start spraying the crops and being your tenant farmer!”
“Just check to see if everything’s O.K. And if you could return the library books on the kitchen table . . .”
“When do they need to be returned by? The library has a two-month lending period over the summer. How long do you plan to be gone for, one week, two weeks . . . three weeks?”
“Another week. The sheep are up in the mountains. And—”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Why are you still there if he’s dead?”
*
I drove to Lerwick, to the ferry terminal at Holmsgarth. It stank of fish and diesel. The man at the ticket booth had a double chin and appeared to have been sitting there his entire adult life without exercise. I managed to postpone my return ticket to Bergen, and at the same time asked the times of the ferry to Aberdeen.
It could be something to talk about with Gwen. I could keep up the pretence that I intended to visit the Winterfinch family in Edinburgh, press her a little more.
The man in the booth raised his voice and said that he would not be selling me a ticket to Aberdeen.
“What?” I said, leaning through the opening in the glass.
“No tickets for you, sorry!”
I was about to protest, and then realised that it was just a figure of speech. The reason, he said, was that they were expecting a storm. A powerful one. “There are strong gales coming in. Really strong.”
Which is why they could not guarantee the arrival times. Or any arrival at all, it seemed. “Worst case scenario, the ferry can’t dock,” he said, “and has to wait out at sea. There have been occasions where they have had to wait like that for two whole days.”
I drove away from the terminal, rolled down the window and held out my hand in the breeze. Breathed in the smell of grass, looked up at the clear blue sky. Where was this storm?
*
I was halfway across Yell when it started. A gust of wind jolted the car sideways, as if a spring had broken. The road turned down into a bay, and I saw the storm approaching out at sea. The sky darkened, as though night itself was on the way, and the sea was already high and white and frothy. Driving uphill there was such a headwind that I had to shift into third.
An hour later, taking Geira across to Unst, I sensed real danger. The lorry drivers pulled up metal hooks from the deck of the ferry, grabbed thick orange straps and secured their vehicles so they would not slide around.
I was overcome by seasickness long before we got up to speed. Geira followed the swells like a float. Time stood still as the ferry was suspended at the top, before becoming weightless and falling straight into the troughs, with the water streaming over the bow and cascading onto the cars.
I counted three waves like that before I had to go below and throw up. When I came back up on deck, I saw that we were off course, Unst was not where it ought to have been.
We were heading out to sea.
In a cold sweat, I began to read the safety instructions. Lifeboats, muster points, evacuation procedures. The sea was greyish-green and beaten thin, like the wake behind a propellor.
In good weather, the journey took about fifteen minutes. After half an hour we were still not on course. But the crew were not shouting or showing signs of alarm, they just walked around with heavy steps, anticipated the drops when the boat fell through the waves, tugged at the straps on the lorries to check they were on the same notch as before.
The passengers took no notice either. People sat in their cars, switched on the windscreen wipers and continued to read the Shetland Times as the sea splashed over their bonnets.
I became a little less uneasy. Until an entirely new concern arose. Their actions could mean only one thing: that the weather could get worse.
*
At long last the metal ramp crashed down. I drove ashore, unsteady and dizzy, as though I had been drinking hard spirits all day. I parked up for ten minutes before continuing.
Through the rain I saw lights on inside the shop. A rare photographic theme, one that could exist only in this weather. But I had not been carrying the Leica with me for a few days. Perhaps a sign that I had begun to feel a little more at home.
I hurried inside and grabbed some sausages, tinned food and a bottle of White Horse. The shopkeeper seemed surprised to see me, and glanced furtively at the magazine shelf.
There she stood with her back to me, wearing a dark-green oilskin jacket.
I waited for her at the entrance. Her shopping bag was thin and light, mine was bulging with tins and threatened to split.
A boy from the Norwegian woods faces the storm with tinned food and distress flares. Gwendolyn Winterfinch faces the storm with six magazines, a box of chocolates and some looseleaf tea.
“Hello, stranger,” she said.
“Did you walk here in this weather?”
“A little windy, eh?”
*
We sat in my car.
“The ferry to Aberdeen isn’t running,” I said. “I’ll have to wait a little to visit the Winterfinch family.”
A blast of wind made the windscreen wipers clatter. We drove towards Quercus Hall, and as we passed Einar’s boathouse I looked at the waves.
“You can’t row out to Haaf Gruney when the sea’s like this,” she said.
“I know. I was thinking of sleeping in the boathouse, or in the car. That’s why I bought the food.”
It hung between us, the possibility of waiting at hers until the storm had let up. The possibility of her revealing who she was. And I would reveal what I really knew in exchange.
“You don’t have to sleep in the boathouse,” she said when we were parked in front of Quercus Hall. “I can take you across. And pick you up again tomorrow.”
“Is that a good idea?” I said staring out at the grey and frothing sea.
“I have access to an entirely seaworthy boat. But we’d have to leave now, before it gets really bad.”
“Isn’t it really bad already?” I shouted into the wind. “What if we wait a little and see if it gets better.”
“It won’t. It will only get worse. Look over there,” she said. “The storm petrels are gathering.”
A cluster of black and white birds could be seen through the deluge. They flocked together and settled on the wind, and they all headed towards Haaf Gruney.
“They can forecast the real storm,” she said. “That’s why they’re called storm petrels.”
8
WHEN I AGREED, IT WAS NOT BECAUSE I NEEDED TO GET back to the island. I did it to find out what could drive Gwen to defy the storm. To forgo the comfort and warmth of the stone cottage and her six brand-new magazines.
> “Are we really going to use that?” I said, pointing at the jetty where the boat she had arrived in on the first day was being tossed about in the waves.
“Are you mad?” she said and led me towards a huge boathouse a couple of hundred metres away. “We’re going to use this one,” she said, opening the gates.
In the darkness I caught a glimpse of a slender boat. Gwen disappeared inside and the next thing I heard was the roar of a powerful motor. It sounded like one of the big American cars that cruised around the Mobil station in the neighbouring village back home.
She backed out swiftly. An antique speedboat, perhaps twenty feet long, with two rows of dark-red seats and a low windscreen. The brown mahogany hull was scratched, the varnish was cracked and dull, the gunwale and the bow clad with chrome strips that were speckled with rust. Zetland was painted on the prow in matt black lettering.
“What kind of boat is that?” I said, reaching for the hand she offered me.
“Have you heard of a Riva?” she said as I sat down beside her. The sea crashed around us. The motor sputtered as she warmed it up. “Well, this is a Riva, but from 1924, before they became too flashy.”
The age of the boat and the elegant handiwork were visible in every nook and cranny. It was like taking a Rembrandt out in the pelting rain.
“You’re sure it can manage sea this rough?”
In response she asked me to hold on tight, pulled back a shiny lever and raced towards Haaf Gruney. Zetland cut through the waves like a torpedo.
“Duncan Winterfinch supplied them with mahogany,” she shouted over the roar of the motor, and when she revved the engine the exhaust sounded like an operatic aria. “He had this one built by old Mr Serafina Riva. The father of Carlo Riva, who in the fifties transformed the Rivas into the glossy Rolex boats they are today. When Rivas became flashy, Winterfinch removed the emblems. Or so the story goes.”
She was proud of him, her grandfather. He made her open up. It was just a matter of applying a little pressure, then she would reveal who she was.
“Where does the name Winterfinch come from,” I said.
“One of his ancestors was looking for a place to settle. It was winter, and he lit upon a lone finch in a tree. A migratory bird that had failed to travel south. It became the family’s sacred tree. So the story goes.”
Why didn’t I just do it? Ask her to tell me her name, then I could tell her something in return?
In truth I was beginning to enjoy this game, and I could tell that she was enjoying it too. She liked to play “the other”, and I liked it that the first card she played was the King of Spades. A card I could only beat if I showed her that I was holding the ace.
Her face was different out here in the wind. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair tangled. What held up were her clothes. The downpour had soaked right through my anorak, while she was dry under her oilskin. The rain was ice-cold and came down diagonally, the drops felt sharp. She turned to face them, let them prickle her skin.
“Saves money on facials,” she said, unabashed.
The Riva was at full throttle and in a matter of minutes we had pulled up alongside Einar’s rotting jetty. I tossed my shopping bag onto the boards and climbed out.
But instead of reversing, Gwen left the motor idling and looked across at the open sea, her hair flapping. She tossed a rope into the air so that the wind took it straight into my arms and asked me to drag the boat into the boathouse.
“Look at that,” she said. The clouds were even darker than those I had seen on Yell. They were rolling towards us black and heavy, like smoke from a volcano. “Now it’s getting really bad.” She opened the boathouse gate and tied Zetland to some barnacle-covered posts inside.
“What would the Winterfinch family say to you using the Serafina Riva, or whatever it’s called?” I said.
“Oh, Edward, they have another Riva, you know. Down in the Med somewhere.”
“One of the flashy ones?”
“One of the flashy ones. They belong to a different generation. A different style.”
“Where did you learn to drive a boat?” I said.
“My father.” She snapped the metal latch into place. “That way, he said, at least it wouldn’t be the weather that drove him from Unst.”
“Then why did you move?”
“Because the weather drove my mother from Unst.” She headed up towards the stone buildings while I stood looking out to sea. “Is it a storm coming, or a hurricane?”
“I have no idea. Those terms are useless out here.”
“Is there anything worse than a gale?”
“A furious gale. We don’t have any names for wind stronger than that.”
*
We sat in the spartan living room, each on our own side of the paraffin lamp, and ate Jenkins’ Cod Cakes as the wind howled beyond the walls. Even though I was sitting absolutely still, I could feel the movements of the boat in my body.
I waited for the right moment, and it came when she reached for the salt.
“I found some notes,” I lied, “from 1958. It seems that Einar had suggested to Duncan Winterfinch that he buy back the inheritance for three thousand pounds.”
Her hand was poised above the salt shaker, there was a twitch and then a hesitation. A fraction of a second during which her movement lost connection with her thoughts.
“I see,” she said flatly. “And did they strike a deal?”
“It seems Winterfinch didn’t want to,” I said.
Then the mask was back in place. She went on eating and began to talk about the storm and the weather.
But it was plain that she knew some of the story. She knew what had and had not happened in 1958, many years before she was born.
I very nearly told her everything, but I had the dead to answer to. If she knew so much in advance, so that all she needed was a year or a place name, then she could go back and find what Mamma and Einar had been searching for.
The booming from the sea grew louder. It was raining heavily now, hard against the windows, and we edged closer to the fire. We said nothing more about Winterfinch or Einar, we kept up our acts as the bewildered Norwegian and the ignorant housekeeper.
This will not end well, I said to myself, the two of us here. Hanne so far away, distant in every respect.
I looked Gwen in the eyes and thought: How long can a girl and a guy be under the same roof in a storm before they sleep with each other? Every gust of wind pressed us closer together, the stone walls protected us from the storm, but something else was taking hold; she gazed at me for longer, and I at her, with a kind of conviction that we were cave dwellers who in the end would have to turn to each other to stay warm, bring children into the world, preserve the human race.
Her nipples were stiff through the woollen fabric. I was turning into an animal. Just as her eyelids were growing heavy and seemed to contain an invitation, there was the sound of shattering glass. The racket from the storm grew louder and clearer.
The enchantment was broken, we jumped to our feet.
In the kitchen shards of glass were spread all over the floor. The rain was splattering in through the broken window, the drops hissing on the cast-iron stove.
There was a knock against the outside wall, stone on stone. Then another.
“We have to fasten the shutters,” she said. “The stones are blowing up from the shore and hitting the house.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Seriously! The postmen here aren’t allowed to stop near the shore during storms. Their vans get dented.”
I went to the broken pane.
“Don’t stand there!” she shouted, tugging at my sweater. “The shards will blow inside and cut you to pieces.”
“So what do we do?”
“Do you think the shutters are for decoration? Go outside and swing them shut, and I’ll fasten them from the inside.”
I had to force the front door against the storm. When it was halfway, the wind caught hold of it an
d almost tore it off its hinges. The storm came in and blew the jackets along the clothes rail. There was a howling in my ears and I was soaked through even before I reached the first corner of the building. Around me it was as if the sea had risen several metres; it seethed and frothed grey-green, ready to swallow the whole island. I pressed on, leaning forward as though climbing a hill, turning my back on the wind to take a breath. Down by the shore there was a harsh rattling sound, like the reverberations when a load of rocks empties from a trailer, each searching for a place to settle.
I unhooked the shutters while the pebbles flew about me, and her arm came through the broken window and pulled the shutters to. We went around the house like that until it was secured on the outside and dark on the inside.
She came out and stood beside me. She was drenched in seconds, her hair clung to her forehead. Below us the waves twisted like immense wood shavings.
“You know Muckle Flugga?” she shouted. “The lighthouse on Unst? After only a few years in service, they had to build the tower higher because rocks kept smashing the glass.”
“Soon the fish will be blowing up from the sea,” I said.
She nodded slowly. “It does happen, yes.”
The sea and the sky were dark and colourless. The two of us felt infinitesimally small before this fused, raging mass, it was impossible to see where it began or ended. The noise was as loud as a helicopter about to land.
And then I lost my balance. For a couple of seconds I truly believed that the entire island had worked itself loose from the earth’s crust. But it was just that I had leaned into the storm, only for it suddenly to subside.
A moment later the waves calmed, as though realising that they were alone in a primitive battle and now the wind was gone. The sea subsided, whipped up and full of air bubbles. The air was still laden with rain, but glimpses of light appeared to swirl beyond the cloud ceiling.
“Is it clearing up?” I said, amazed.
The rainwater trickled down her flushed face, but she did not wipe it off. “No. That was a ‘furious gale’. Now the one we don’t have a name for is on its way.”
The water gathered into a fresh stream that ran past our shoes. The roof tiles were still in place under the wire netting, but the door to one of the outbuildings had been left open, and was now crashing dangerously hard on its hinges.
