by Lars Mytting
“When you booked the deck chair,” she said, “was it because you knew someone had booked a cabin?”
“Not at all,” I said.
“Well, I’m going below,” Gwen said when we had left the Shetland Islands behind. “Are you coming?”
*
“Take off your socks first,” she said, locking the cabin door. “Then you can take off your trousers.”
She turned her back to me as she unbuttoned her coat. A black jersey hugged her shoulder blades. I could see the straps of her bra and a vein throbbing on one side of her neck.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” I said.
“Absolutely. Socks off. Then the rest. All the way down. I’ll do the same, but with the light off.”
“I don’t know if I can accept this gift, Gwen.”
“Come on. This is your English lesson.”
“And what does a pair of socks have to do with my English?” My throat was dry and the blood was tingling in my forehead, but the proof of my body’s urgent desire to impose its will was throbbing in my trousers.
This is the price you pay for the masked ball, I thought. Anyone but the two of us, the real Gwen and the real me, would have slept together a long time ago. This is what we do to be able to keep our masks on. I had to sleep with the pilot to get past the reefs.
That’s a flimsy explanation, I told myself. The fact of the matter is that you fancy the pilot and everything that comes with her.
“Listen,” Gwen said, placing her index finger on my chest. “You asked me to teach you English. I took that to mean that you had made up your mind. English men are white as sheets. They always wear black socks. There’s nothing more unattractive than a pale naked man in black socks. That’s why you always take your socks off first. Come on. Be a good Englishman.”
*
I woke up and looked out the cabin window, felt the ship moving through the greyish-black sea. Hanne’s body still lived in my fingertips. The curve of her bottom, the tightness of her thighs, the joints of her spine as I ran my finger down her back. Gwen was different, rougher and broader, and when she straddled me in the middle of the night, my hands did not find what they were looking for, it was as if they were trying to transform what they felt into Hanne. At the same time there was a part of me that whispered, Yes, go for it, now that you’ve started, you might as well go all the way.
“What was that you were saying last night?” I said to Gwen when she was awake.
She pulled away the duvet. Chuckled. Reached for her suitcase and took out a pack of Craven A.
“Just before I felt the sea shudder beneath me?” she said as she lit a cigarette.
“Around then, yes.”
“That was part of your English lesson.”
“Now I’m nervous.”
“It was Queen Victoria’s advice to women on their wedding night. ‘Close your eyes and think of England!’”
“But you didn’t just say it,” I said. “You shouted so loudly they heard it in the engine room.”
“Good fun,” she said, passed me her cigarette and twisted out of the bed, dragging the duvet with her. The cabin was not very large, and I watched her as she walked the few steps to the shower. Her shoulder blades were bare, and her sizable bum stuck out from beneath the duvet.
I dozed. It was still dark outside.
She emerged fully dressed, in a white blouse and a black skirt.
“It’s almost five o’clock,” she said. “We have to be quick.”
“I thought the ferry didn’t dock for another three hours?”
“Your English lessons aren’t over. You’ll have to get changed before we go to Dickson & Son.”
“Sorry?”
“You’ll have to get changed.”
“But it’s just a gunmaker. Anyway, I don’t have much to change into. Other than clean underwear. I washed them in a pot of boiling water on Haaf Gruney.”
“Oh, my!” she said. “I suspected as much.” She ploughed her way through the clothes scattered on the floor and reached for a worn leather suitcase that stood in the corner. “Listen. A gunmaker is not just a place that ‘sells guns’. You will be standing at the very altar of British refinement. Where old money is burned as if it was Polish zloty. Where the rich can justify their purchases with the excuse that it will go on to the next generation, and the one after that. There are no, I mean absolutely no limits. The prices of these weapons are astronomical. And you want to march in wearing a scruffy anorak and trainers with holes in them? Is that really how things work in Norway?”
“I’d say most of Norway dresses better than I do.”
“They would think you’d stolen the weapon, that you’re stupid enough to see how much you can get for it. They might even call the police.”
“And you’re telling me this now?” I said, bolt upright in the bunk.
“The staff will be lovely, but they hate time-wasters and nitwits who lower the standard of the shop, and they hate wannabes even more, and by God, you can be sure they’ll make you understand that you don’t fit in. One look from them will bring you to your knees. Your only hope is to make them actually believe that someone in your immediate family once bought a Dickson. You have to be presentable, or you’re nobody.”
She had changed completely. All of a sudden she seemed genuine, through and through. The awkward expression somewhere between aloof and mysterious had been replaced with a lively and insistent eagerness. Was this the same Gwen Leask? Could a girl who babbled like that actually lie?
“How do you know all this?” I said.
“The current Winterfinch family is seventh-generation old money. But we don’t have time for that now. And anyway, you know perfectly well I can’t talk about my employer. The fact of the matter is that you look hopeless. Utterly unpresentable. Your haircut is cool, I’ll give you that. Passé, but wonderfully eccentric.”
She undid the leather straps on the suitcase, pulled out two pairs of corduroy trousers and weighed up the difference in the brown tones. She unfolded a tweed jacket of a deep-beige, subtly interwoven with criss-crosses of green and dark-red threads to form tiny, almost invisible squares.
She put her hands on her hips. “The point is that you need worn clothes. You don’t want to march in there wearing something starched, straight from the shop. Now hop in the shower, and don’t forget to shave. Preferably with the door open so I can have a peek. Chop chop.”
“Where did you get these clothes?” I said, changing the blade on my razor.
“A small loan from Quercus Hall. Highly inappropriate, but never you mind about that.”
I dried off and was handed a white shirt. “Egyptian cotton,” she said. The fabric was tightly woven, but soft and pliant. Warm against the skin, and not a single wrinkle. The trousers were a little loose, but she produced a leather belt with a golden-brown sheen and slung it around me to measure the length.
She stared at my trainers in disgust. They lay where I had kicked them off, the laces undone. All my life I had worn trainers or safety boots from the agricultural cooperative in Saksum.
“Stiff shiny shoes would give you away at once. You’re a ten and a half, right?”
I turned so she would not see my face.
It pained me, the vision of Hanne so pure and innocent in the garden back home. The two of us. From the first time I saw her moped headlamp by the postbox when she was fourteen, until the day she stood in Alma’s bridal dress. Her grey dress in the church.
It was too late. I had resisted the jump without realising I had already taken it.
From a dark-blue cloth bag Gwen took a pair of brown walking shoes. The shiny patina concealed a number of nicks and tiny scratches, like the back of a sunburned galley slave.
“A pair of John Lobb Derbys, with no adornment. Show me how you tie them.”
I bent down, tied a bow and stood up.
“Oh dear,” she said, getting down on one knee. “These aren’t trainers.”
> She adjusted the lengths of the laces and folded the ends in two loops. “Repeat after me,” she said. “Turquoise turtle knot. The only way to tie shoelaces. Watch.”
I looked down at the top of her head, which bobbed in time as she tied the knot and muttered at the shoes.
“The loose ends have to be turned towards each other. That’s important. Then you cross them . . . like this, and then you take a new loop, like this, afterwards you let go of this end, hold it with your thumb, like this, then you let go of this end, hold it with your thumb, like that, then you grab it with your index finger, there . . . then you slip it around the loop and pull it out again and tighten it underneath the first loop. Look at that!”
She worked on me as though I were an unfinished statue. Clipped a hair from my eyebrow with a tiny pair of scissors. Conjured up a vial of Truefitt & Hill Sandalwood and patted two drops on my neck. Found a loose thread on the jacket, clipped it off, adjusted the collar, reconstructed me.
“This is fun,” I said, and I meant it. “Where did you learn all this?”
“Don’t ask so many questions. How were you planning to transport the shotgun? Dearie me.”
“Well, in the grey bag I showed you.”
“Through the streets of Edinburgh with the barrels sticking out? Oh Lord.”
“The barrels don’t stick out. I am not—”
“Anything but this would be unforgivable,” she said, reaching under the bed and pulling out a slim suitcase. The corners had tarnished brass fittings, the leather was scratched, and one end was covered with faded luggage labels from train stations around the colonies. “This will be perfect,” she said. “I borrowed it from the rather large collection of sports equipment in the main building.”
*
I wished there were one hundred and twenty Norwegian miles between Aberdeen and Edinburgh, but in reality it was closer to twenty. In my head I had transposed English miles with Norwegian, and imagined travelling more than six times the distance. Driving in the low sun, “The Cutter and The Clan” in the cassette player, sharing a pack of Craven As.
Sweet deceit on a dual carriageway. How quickly I got used to it. How much better it was than the asphalt back home. How easy it was to say that this game of roulette was necessary because it served a greater good. How easily regret disappeared into the exhaust behind us.
I had never liked “nice” clothes; mostly they were for occasions I could not bear. Days on which I had to dress up never turned out well.
But these?
The shirt followed the contours of my body, the jacket did the same. I felt like a Leica fitting perfectly in its case.
“Don’t mention where you found the weapon,” she said. “It is not done to speak of such things in these circumstances.”
She had changed too. She wore a freshly ironed, soft blouse and held a thin, ribbed sweater on her lap. I suspected her grey knee-length skirt had been tailor-made and kept in a large wardrobe in Quercus Hall. If Hanne had worn clothes like that, she would look like the elegant daughter of a shipowner.
The only thing that dampened the effect was Gwen’s old wristwatch with the scratched-up glass.
“What’s the story with that watch?” I said.
“Just a small idiosyncratic touch.”
“Where did you get all this stuff? Did you study fashion design or something?”
“Oh, no. I know a lot about how to dress up well, but not much else. I’m a terrible economics student.”
The road signs counted down the distance to Edinburgh. Forty miles. Thirty-two. When it got down to eighteen, she asked me to pull in to a lay-by.
“Just leave the motor running and hop outside with me. You smell too clean, a little too . . . new. You’re missing a touch of nonchalance. Stand in front of the exhaust pipe. No, there. Turn around. Here, take this pipe. Dunhill. Here’s a classic tobacco. Three Nuns. Yes, pop off the lid. There should be a lighter in your pocket. There, yes. Let the smoke settle in your clothes. Mmm, exactly. They’ll recognise it. A smell to match the aftershave. It’s faded a little now. In fact, it’s faded a little too much. You need another drop. That’s it, yes. And the other side of the jaw. Keep smoking. Blow on the jacket, don’t spill the ashes. There. Now the scent is just noticeable, and only when you come right up close to someone. Let’s wrinkle your shirt a little. No, let me do it. Just a little. There you go. The clothes still look nice, you can see they cost a fortune. The point is that you don’t care. You’ve just spent a day outside with motoring and other sports. A hint of carelessness shows that money’s not important to you. You should never squander, never destroy anything, and for God’s sake never show that you’re rich – just live hard, have fun and wear things out.”
She got back into the car and spread the roadmap over her knees. “Now, let’s drive.”
*
“Remarkable.”
The two men mumbled to each other, pointing out the proof-marks under the barrels, commenting on little details about the mechanism. They were both in their late fifties, two gunsmiths wearing bluish-grey aprons stained with spots of oil. The man who had introduced himself as Mr Stewart was rubbing the wood with a white cloth. They held the barrel and stock between them, ran a measuring tape from the end of the stock to the trigger and noted the dimensions down to a sixteenth of an inch.
“Dickson Round Action, bar in wood,” Mr Stewart said. “Our pride and joy. Exceptionally rare.”
“How old is it?” Gwen said.
“Pre-war, certainly,” said Mr Stewart.
Gwen did not seem surprised. “Thirties?” she suggested.
Mr Stewart smiled, pleased that he had played up his point. “No, miss. The Boer War. It’s from 1898. Exceptional woodwork, to say the least. Are you after a valuation?”
“More than anything we would really like to learn about its provenance,” she said. “And be sure that it’s safe to use. It belonged to a distant relative and we’re not absolutely certain of its condition.”
I could not grasp what she had actually done, other than demonstrate rock-solid self-confidence. The entire shop was now at our beck and call. I stood in the background, studying her and the shotgun, which she had handled not like a weapon, but as if it were an interesting antique, and the gentlemen behind the counter met every question with a well-informed, polite response.
The interior of John Dickson & Son looked like a snapshot from a safari lodge. The shop was small, but old money oozed from its seams. It was neither an office nor a workshop, or even a shop, more like a drawing room and with some of the discretion of Landstad’s funeral parlour, where the presence of a cash register would be an affront. Near the entrance there was a selection of woollen clothes in earthen colours. The tags made me wonder whether the prices were in Norwegian kroner rather than pounds.
“Just a moment,” Mr Stewart said, disappearing into the back room. He returned carrying a large, leather-bound book with “1893–1905” imprinted on its spine. It smacked heavily against the table. He turned to a page and then went to fetch four other books. Gwen inched closer to get a better look and nodded now and then as they pored over illustration after illustration. Her knee-length skirt and ribbed woollen sports sweater were completely at home here. She was the vase on the table, and she knew it.
Around us were five large vitrines, each containing rows of shotguns with discreet engravings. Price tags were attached to the trigger guards with twine. One of them cost more than I had paid for my car and looked rather simple and austere. The gun next to it was twice as expensive. Another cabinet held new weapons. These had no prices attached.
“The books contain the specifications of every weapon produced here since 1820,” Mr Stewart said. “We use the serial number in the index volume to find the information in the other volumes. One book for the weapons as they were on delivery, another for repairs. Each book has one page reserved for each gun. If the page is full, we refer to a new book. This one here . . . let me see.” He ran his fing
ers down the lines of brown ink. “Here it is. Number 5572. It was made to measure for one Lord Ingram of the Isle of Skye. He took possession of the gun on August 24, 1898. ¼ and ½ choke – quite common. Top of the range back then. 150 guineas.”
“What do they cost now?” I said, and was immediately embarrassed by the ensuing pause. Gwen squirmed.
“Ahem,” said Mr Stewart. “They start at thirty thousand guineas. Depends on the wood and the engravings.” He said it quietly and casually, as though I had asked the way to the loo. “Well, we’re fortunate to have all the books intact. I see that we accepted it in part exchange in 1922. Then it remained unsold for a long period. Very typical, unfortunately. You can always study the history of war through the life of a British sporting gun. Many of the owners were officers who never returned for their weapons. Not to mention all the craftsmen who fell. The First World War was the darkest hour for gunmakers in this country. Indeed, this weapon remained unsold for nine years. It was not until 1931 that it was sold to . . . let me see . . . is this an H or an M? Yes, a Major General Mortimer. He must have had an entirely different build to Lord Ingram, as the stock was shortened by one and three-sixteenths of an inch and turned two and a quarter degrees inwards. I would estimate that he was five foot six inches tall and had a strong jaw. The weapon seemed to be in regular use; we had it in for servicing every other year until 1940. After that it disappeared from our records.”
“Another war,” I said.
“Precisely,” said Mr Stewart. He turned the pages back and forth, jotted down codes and page numbers, fetched new leather-bound volumes and searched through their handwritten pages.
My pronunciation must have been passable. The strange thing was that I did not feel overdressed. Walking between the stone buildings and down the busy streets of Edinburgh, with so much traffic that the only thing I could hear was a constant droning, I thought the clothes made me fit in, made me rather enjoy the person I had become.
“Here it is,” Mr Stewart said and pointed at a page. “In the summer of 1954 we polished out rust in the barrels and gave the weapon a general overhaul. Very typical at the time. Neglect when an owner passes away. The new owner was called Westley, lived in Lerwick on Shetland.”
