The Sixteen Trees of the Somme

by Lars Mytting

  “Do you remember how we were in the car to Lerwick? On the way to Edinburgh? At the restaurant?”

  “That was before we told each other who we really were,” I said.

  “We managed it for a while, didn’t we?” she said and unbuttoned her sailing jacket. She was wet to the skin.

  There was so much I should have said. How she had been good for me, but had wounded me all the same. But I couldn’t find the words. My fondness for her flared again when she said:

  “Tell me one thing, Edward. Back when we spent all that time together. Did you like me then? I mean really like me? As you would a girlfriend?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I did.”

  “And I liked you as I would like someone who could become my boyfriend. And now?”, she said, lifting her leg out of the puddle of water that had collected from her wet clothes.

  I did not answer. I opened the shotgun case and pulled out the weapon. Someone had rubbed oil on the barrels and waxed the stock.

  “I was at Dickson’s today,” she said. “Caught a plane. They pulled out the chequebook straight away.”

  “Then why didn’t you sell it?”

  She took a pack of Craven A from her pocket, but it had got wet, so she threw it casually into the bucket by the stove.

  “Haaf Gruney isn’t going anywhere,” she said. “It will always be here to remind me that I did something wrong. It – no wait, don’t say anything, Edward. There’s more.” She pulled out a key and handed it to me. “I lied. I was never at any board meeting. I was in—”

  “Forget it,” I said. “I know everything. I’ve already been there. They told me about you.”

  She blushed. Shame, biting shame, was something I had never thought would be evident on Gwendolyn Winterfinch’s worldly face.

  “I was trying to get the upper hand,” she said. “But I despised myself afterwards. Then there was that strange cross on the boathouse on Unst. And you said you were going to Muckle Flugga, but instead you rowed back out here with the white-haired old lady. I came over here later, thought that at least this shotgun should be mine.”

  “What you didn’t find that time,” I said, holding up the keys for the Bristol, “was the key to the other storage unit. It was with these.”

  “What?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Einar had another storage unit.”

  “Were they there? The gunstock blanks?”

  “All of them. Nearly three hundred. Of the finest quality.”

  She stood and zipped up her jacket. “So it’s over then.”

  “I guess it is. Unless you want to call your lawyer.”

  She walked towards the windowpane we had fixed. Pressed her finger into the putty, which was still soft.

  “Sell them,” she said. “I don’t care. Grandfather is dead. The war is over, the fund with Scottish Widows is closed.”

  “How would I get the best price?” I said.

  She laughed bitterly. “I’ve planned that out a thousand times over the past few days. You deliver a small shipment to a couple of auction houses, say Bonhams and Sotheby’s. Get them to tell a newspaper – preferably The Sunday Times – that the lost walnut has turned up. They’ll dig through the archives and put their best writers onto it. Oh, that will drive up the prices. Mysteries across two world wars. A missing fortune, a hint of deception which you have to dress up as best you can. Then you contact Dickson, Holland & Holland, Purdey, and not least Boss, and sell directly to them. Westley Richards too. Make it clear to everyone that this is the entire shipment. There is no more. Put it about that you’re the only descendant of the Daireaux family. Donate a sum to the war memorials at the Somme – just to give yourself a slightly cleaner conscience. I won’t interfere.”

  “You’re being honest with me now?”

  “Just get rid of it. And I’ll wander around Quercus Hall for the rest of my life putting buckets under the roof leaks.”

  “I’m leaving now,” I said. “So I won’t see you again.”

  Her body could find no balance; it was as though she could no longer tell the difference between starboard and port.

  “My lectures start next week,” she said. “Another autumn in which economics student Gwendolyn Winterfinch will have it hammered into her that she is no good. Mornings when she leaves the lecture hall early to go comfort-shopping for records and clothes. Board meetings in which she doesn’t utter a peep. Back to the flat to fiddle with books that don’t interest her. Back here to sit alone in Grandfather’s office, looking out at Haaf Gruney.”

  I closed the shotgun case, found my set of keys to the stone cottage and gave them to her. In return she handed me her bunch. One set of Norwegian Mustad keys.

  “And now?” she said, walking towards the door.

  “Now I’m going to Norway to harvest my crops. Then to France.”

  She frowned.

  “Why would you go to France if you’ve already found the walnut?”

  “Because I still don’t know what happened in 1971. And now I have the means to travel.”

  “Well, have a nice trip,” she said.

  I watched her walk down to Zetland in the half-dark. The jerking in her shoulders was unmistakeable.

  I began to cry too. I had liked her. I had even liked her when she lied. I liked her lies because they had brought me closer to the truth about Mamma and Pappa.

  I followed her down to the boat. I could hear her crying between the sound of the waves.

  “The walnut wasn’t there,” I said in the end. “There was no other key.”

  Had she continued standing there with her back to me, concealing new calculations, putting together a new plan, then I would have chosen differently.

  But instead she turned immediately, and even though I could not see her face clearly, I noticed that her movements were lighter, as though she had cast off a heavy load.

  “Then there’s still hope,” she said, running towards me. “As soon as I get away from here, I’ll be freed of all the nagging thoughts. Let me prove it to you.”

  “There’s nothing else you can do,” I said.

  “Oh yes there is,” she said, and she clung to me as she had at the ferry terminal in Lerwick. “I can miss the start of the semester at college. Let me come to Norway with you. Let me come to your farm, Edward. Let me be the silly girl who liked Forever Young.”

  IV

  Unexploded Shells

  1

  ON THE STONE STEPS OF THE LOG HOUSE STOOD HANNE Solvoll in a white dress. So resplendently pretty that it gave me a shock, both from the reunion and from seeing how lovely she looked, with her golden hair and glistening brown skin from days working in the hot sun.

  I had sensed danger the moment we turned off the county road. The gate was open. The wayside cut with a scythe. The sun shone on the houses and the lush farm. It was the same sight which had always greeted me when Bestefar was alive, everything well kept and fresh, the carrot stalks erect in newly weeded beds, the kitchen garden red with ripe currants.

  This was not how it was supposed to be. The grass should have been bushy, the vegetables ousted by weeds. When I drove into the yard and saw the Manta, I squirmed in my seat with regret. Because Hanne stood in the doorway, no doubt wondering why a strange Bristol had arrived at Hirifjell. Her hand rose halfway to wave when she recognised me, but dropped when she saw that I was not alone in the car.

  The trip had been fine, carefree even, and I really believed that Hanne would be gone. Stupid and naïve, I realised now. It was as though my sense of reality had been scattered on Shetland. I considered the trip to Norway no more than a pit stop on the way to France, and at first I deeply regretted allowing Gwen to come with me, but this eased as soon as the ferry set sail from Holmsgarth. All she had brought with her were two old leather suitcases. My luggage was a chaos of cardboard boxes and plastic bags. “I suppose you’ve never heard of ‘fitted luggage’,” she said. “Suitcases made for the boot. We had them for the Bentley, and I was only allowe
d to fill these two.”

  The juddering, creaky Bristol, she fell in love with it straight away, and when she got comfortable on the cracked leather seats, she said that it was like Whitehall on wheels. I enjoyed coming ashore in Norway, seeing the fir trees and proper wooden houses. Driving home with temporary licence plates, drinking fresh water from the tap, seeing the familiar selection of confectionery at the petrol stations, filling up with overpriced petrol. When we passed Laugen in the blinding sun, she said “This place is just marvellous”, and she really meant it, right up until we arrived at the tidy farm surrounded by woods.

  And there stood the warrior queen in a white dress on the stone steps, like a statue moulded to perfection, who seemed to be saying You’ve risked all this, you imbecile. Hanne scrutinised the Bristol, scrutinised me, scrutinised Gwen. Measured her from the shoes upwards with an expression that said: Look what the cat’s dragged in. She turned to me, ran a finger across the tweed jacket and said: “Nice jacket. Welcome home.” Then she walked to the Manta.

  I began to go after her, but stopped myself. I stood in the middle of the yard, between a chubby girl in a Burberry cape and a supple child of nature.

  I waited for Gwen to shout, “Who the hell are you?”, her Scottish dialect reverberating across the yard. But somewhere in a refined, upper-class upbringing there must be a blueprint for situations like this, because Gwen ignored Hanne. She simply unlocked the boot and pulled out her suitcase, without meeting the gaze of her rival.

  But before the dust from the Manta had settled, she dropped her suitcases, sat on the ground, and holding back tears said, “Who the hell is she?”

  She said it quietly, in a tragic way that made me feel like putting an end to it all.

  “Did you have her . . . waiting in reserve?”

  “She moved in of her own accord,” I said, kicking at the gravel.

  “I see.”

  I wondered how it would look inside, if Hanne had scattered her clothes and books everywhere.

  “When was it over between you two?” Gwen said. “Just now?”

  “Long before. She got an idea into her head. I only asked her to check in on the farm.”

  I looked towards the potato fields. I wanted to run up and see if all was well, or if there were signs of blight and potato scab after all.

  “And when did you ask her to leave?” Gwen said.

  “When I realised she’d somehow got it into her head that we were going to be together.”

  In the summer heat a faint scent of tar emanated from the timber walls.

  “You fucking bastard . . . When was that? Just before we left Shetland?”

  “No. Before you said you were going to Edinburgh. Before your secret mission to Lerwick.”

  “I thought we were done with all that. And when did you last sleep with her? Answer me honestly.”

  I squirmed. I cursed. I kicked at the gravel again. “A few days before I left for Shetland. But it was the first time in—”

  “I see, now I understand you,” she screamed, and stood up. “This is my punishment for having gone behind your back and sneaking into the lock-up!”

  “Now stop it!” I said and tried to grab her arm.

  “You bastard!” she snapped, pulling free. “Do me one favour, drive me to the train station. And that’ll be the last we see of each other.”

  “I chose you, Gwen. That time I called her, I wanted to be with you.”

  “So answer me one thing. If you had come home alone and she met you like that. In that dress, probably with no knickers and horny as hell. Would you have resisted?”

  “She didn’t know you were with me, Gwen.”

  “So answer me, then! And you’re saying that she didn’t know about me? Are you such a damned coward?”

  “I—”

  She threw the suitcases into the boot. “Back home only sluts dress like that. Jesus. Wish I had her tits. I bet you fantasised about her while we were having sex.”

  “Now that’s enough, Gwen!”

  She put her hands on her hips and walked a few paces away. Looking across the fields, she turned her face to the warm wind which carried the smell of freshly cut grass.

  “Damn,” she said quietly. “On top of everything I’m jealous of her, walking around dressed like that and she still looked elegant. Not a single blemish.”

  “It’s not as if she was naked.”

  “No, as a man you would say that, of course. I had it hammered into me by Grandmother: ‘You don’t do hair, make-up, legs and cleavage at the same time. You just don’t.’”

  She glanced again at the log house, turned and sat down in the only place that might remind her of home. The passenger seat of an English car.

  I went inside. The house had just been cleaned. A few of Hanne’s books and clothes here and there. On the first floor the double bed was made up with crisp, blue-grey linen. By the telephone was the picture of Mamma and Pappa.

  Back outside, Gwen had closed the car door and was staring straight ahead. Grubbe came across the lawn and sat at my feet. The shaggy tail of the forest cat beat slowly against the grass. He looked at me, but he was not going to meet me halfway either.

  *

  “Let’s go,” I said, and turned the ignition. “You can take the train to the airport. I’ll pay for your flight to Aberdeen. Or London. Wherever you want. But first do me one favour.”

  “Excuse me? You don’t qualify for favours.”

  “Just walk through the town with me.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Do you mean the tiny . . . the village down by the river? Why in the world would I want to do that?”

  “Just from the post office to the shop.”

  “I don’t owe you anything.”

  “You owe me the chance to explain where I come from.”

  “I know where you come from. Here.”

  I checked myself, tried to think through what I had told her about my life, how I had dressed it up. Then I got out of the Bristol, took her by the hand and dragged her across the courtyard, to the barn ramp, where Bestefar’s Mercedes stood covered in dust.

  “Do you recognise that?” I said.

  She put a finger on the boot and wiped off a layer of grime beneath yellow pollen. Rubbed at the windows and looked inside.

  “His car,” she said. “I saw it in Norwick when Einar was buried.”

  “We can’t avoid this, Gwen. Neither of us. He never told me that he had been to the funeral, or that—”

  “Edward,” she interrupted. “I’m totally fed up with all this mess. Take me to the station.”

  “Wait,” I said. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. But you are . . . a part of it. Look at the car door. In the summer someone painted a swastika there because Bestefar fought for the Germans on the Eastern Front. Before I met you, I wasn’t how you might imagine. I was a . . . a recluse. My world stopped at these fences. That’s how it was until I met you.”

  “So now you want to parade me around like a trophy? Make people say: Oh, he wasn’t what we thought after all?”

  “Just come with me, for your sake. It’s like . . . it makes sense.”

  *

  We parked by the post office and soon young boys on bicycles were stopping by the Bristol, trying to get a look at the speedometer.

  Gwen had slammed the door, tied the belt around her cape and crossed the street, where she now stood between the agricultural cooperative and the draper’s, fishing out a Craven A. She lit up and looked at her shoes, smoked as she always had, holding the cigarette over her shoulder with an open palm. But she was on guard. A slight twitch, a quick turn of the head.

  There was no white Manta to be seen, but from the corner by the post office the Hafstad boys were staring at her. Indolent youths hanging out by the sports club noticeboard, gawping at Gwen and muttering to each other. Mari Øvereng, usually the busiest person in the village, suddenly seemed to have all the time in the world.<
br />
  The village was weaving its thread.

  Gwen stood there and I let her, because I could see the defiance building inside her.

  “It’s nothing,” I said when I joined her. “They just want to know who you are.”

  “How can they see that from there?”

  “They can’t. That’s why they’re staring. They don’t mean anything by it, they just want to see what’s going on. I’m like that too. Even I stare, but I’ve only just realised it now.”

  “So before you just thought that everyone stared at you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I must have.”

  Something changed inside Gwen. Her movements became calmer, and she walked down to Nordlien, the grocery where affluent locals bought steak for the weekend and their children were able to buy sweets on credit.

  Everything stopped when we walked in. She grabbed a basket and began to fill it.

  Would she be staying after all?

  She picked up eggs, whole milk, smoked pork belly, black olives. A tin of Coleman’s mustard rather than Idun’s. A bottle of Worcestershire Sauce, and before she put it in the basket, she looked around as if to say: What’s so funny about Worcestershire Sauce? You do sell it.

  I had wanted to go into the village to see what it felt like to be someone else. I liked it for a bit, strolling round Saksum with a new lady, wearing Lobbs, buying Worcestershire Sauce and driving a Bristol. But now I felt naked. Saksum told me what neither the cat nor Hanne had said:

  Welcome home, but we still don’t believe it.

  2

  SHE STOOD BY THE WINDOW WITH BARE LEGS, WRAPPED up in one of the faded floral sheets that had been in the house all these years. I lay in bed with my eyes half open, wondering what she thought of the sheet. The girl who had worn tailored clothes her entire life.

  The sight of her here, with her back to me by the yellowed wooden panelling and my nature photographs. This could vanish so quickly, like a shape slipping away; she was so foreign here that I doubted whether the vision was real, even though she was right there in front of me, filled with an animalistic desire. I dared not close my eyes.