The Sixteen Trees of the Somme

by Lars Mytting

  “Why didn’t Einar go to the police?” she said distantly.

  “I suppose the thought had not even occurred to him. What good would come of it? His daughter was dead. He knew he would have to give me up, and that his brother would hate him for eternity. He just wanted to spend as much time with me as possible.”

  “Do you think they forgave each other? Einar and my grandfather?”

  “Who knows?” I said and balanced the dog on my knee. “Should I row a little?”

  “No, no.”

  The precipitation alternated between snow and rain. The sea sloshed at the keel. Her hands were soaked, her skin puckered around the nails.

  “Why are we rowing to Haaf Gruney anyway,” I said eventually.

  “Let’s spend a few days there,” she said. “You and I.”

  “I can’t, Gwen. I have to go home and bring the sheep down from the mountains.”

  She looked over her shoulder at the island and adjusted her course.

  “Then why are you here?” she said.

  We said our goodbyes long ago, I thought. But how I answer her now will determine how we remember each other.

  “Because this boat is made of walnut,” I said.

  She reacted strangely, seemed . . . disappointed.

  “It must be,” I said and told her that its name had been Isabelle. “That’s why it’s so difficult to manoeuvre. I assume the entire frame is made of walnut.”

  Gwen stopped rowing. She shifted her grip on the oars so one hand was free, pulled off her cap and ran her fingers through her hair.

  “Not just the frame,” she said. “The entire boat is walnut. Including the thwart you’re sitting on. It carries enough wood for two boats, but you can’t see that when it’s in the water. The whole thing is a brilliant optical illusion. The keel is extremely deep, presumably made of thick walnut. The lower-grade wood is on the outside, and even that is remarkably beautiful. Three inches thick. The standard thickness for shotgun stocks.”

  We approached the southern side of Haaf Gruney. The stone buildings crept into view along with the sloping beach where driftwood landed.

  “When did you work it out?” I said.

  “When I came back from France. I was sitting in the stone cottage thinking about everything that had happened. I started thinking about Patna, that Einar had got it about the same time he started building coffins. A herring boat has to be sturdy. But this sturdy? I went down to the boathouse and scraped off a bit of tar.”

  “And are you sure?”

  “Turn around and look under the thwart.”

  I got down on one knee. She had scraped and polished a patch of the blackened wood, and even in the half-light I could see it was just as beautiful as on the Dickson shotgun. It was as if she had cleaned a grimy window and revealed the view of a fairy-tale castle.

  Gwen had been fiddling with something on the bottom of the boat, but now took up the oars again and held the blades high in the air, the water dripping off them. We rocked quietly past the sloping beach on Haaf Gruney. I sat down and tried to think ahead, to some kind of future.

  “Let’s share it,” I said. “The trees grew on my grandmother’s farm. The wood belongs to my family. But the pattern belongs to the soldiers.”

  She shook her head. The boat began to drift further from the island.

  “That will only make the chasm between us more evident,” she said. “And deep down you know it. If this were a normal boat, we would have driven to Lerwick, taken the ferry to Norway and brought down the sheep. I’m in no hurry. I’ll stay for the winter if you want. But the money will always come between us.”

  “Then have it all,” I said.

  “That’s easy to say now, but this old tub is worth a fortune. You could buy your farm twice over with the money. I could get Quercus Hall into shape, if not finish it. Money changes people, Edward. You tell me I can have it but you’re lying to yourself. Nobody would just give it away like that. Not even you. You believe it belongs to you, to your family. You would keep an eye on my spending. Think I’m frittering away your inheritance. Hate every single handbag I bought. Ask yourself what you would have done if Patna had been in the boathouse when you arrived?”

  “I don’t know. Broken it to pieces, probably. And then . . . sat down and thought about it.”

  “Aha! It’s what you’d do after you’d thought about it, that’s where it gets interesting.”

  I remembered what Mamma had written in the visitors’ book at Thiepval. “I think my mother would have liked me to sell it to your grandfather. With no fuss.”

  “She would, yes. But she was not the lover of a Winterfinch. You would soon have your doubts. At the first hint of an argument you would think you had failed Einar, failed the entire Daireaux family. That Duncan Winterfinch never kept his part of the bargain. At some point in your life you would need more money. You would curse yourself for having given it away, and you would curse me for having accepted it. But do you know what would hurt me the most?”

  “Tell me. It sounds like there’s a lot to choose from.”

  “Your mistrust. You’d always be thinking that I got involved with you in order to find the walnut. No, you never believed me, but do you believe me now? Can you feel your feet getting wet?”

  I looked down. Water was seeping through the bottom boards. She pulled hard on the oars and the sudden movement of the boat made it splash against my shoes.

  “What have you done?” I shouted in alarm.

  “I don’t want us to be forced to make a choice. I took out the drain plugs while you were looking under the thwart.” She held up two thick brass screws.

  “Have you gone mad?” I said, reaching for them. “Put them back!”

  She dodged me, making the boat rock, and I had to hold on to the gunwale to keep upright.

  Gwen tossed the bolts into the sea. The brass shimmered for a second before sinking into the darkness. I reached for the bailer, but it was gone.

  “Zetland’s over there,” she said, nodding towards the boathouse on Haaf Gruney. “I towed Patna over here, moored Zetland and rowed back to Unst. So we can get home after this.”

  The boat was already sitting lower in the water. Haaf Gruney was not far, but we were moving more sluggishly and drifting towards the black reef. Gwen seemed to have given up rowing altogether.

  “Dear Lord, Gwen! You don’t throw something like this away.”

  “Just as I said, now you’re showing your true colours. Your little bit of greed.”

  “No!” I lunged for the oars. “We’re not going to lose it. Is money all you see? There are four hundred years of history inside this wood, and a century of wars.”

  Then Gwen leaped up, twisted the oars free of the rowlocks and threw them into the sea.

  “That’s not how it’s going to be. This boat is going to drift out to sea, and the two of us are going to swim to shore and start over. We’ll dry off, make love and make this thing last as long as we can. The odds may be stacked against us, but I want it to work out!”

  I scrambled for the oars, managed to pull one in and paddled towards the other. But it was drifting away, and the water level in the boat was rising.

  “Let it go, Edward. Patna is heading for the bottom. A watery grave for a sad tale.”

  And then Shetland did what Shetland does best. The weather turned, a wind set in. The snowflakes transformed into a hard driving rain.

  “Sit down!” I shouted. “Then I can row us in.”

  The water was now up to our ankles, our trouser legs had turned black.

  “I want you,” she said. “When I’m with you, my heart wants to beat its way out of my chest.”

  She stood up and quickly climbed onto the beam, and the sea poured in like the surface water of a dam. I threw myself to the other side to balance the keel, and she lost her balance and fell into the sea. The waves swallowed her, and the boat rocked heavily into place again.

  I felt the other oar thump against the s
ide of the boat. I pulled it in, slotted both oars into the rowlocks and tried to row after her. But the sound of the oars between the pins had changed from a dry creaking to a heavy, obstinate scraping. The waves were now cascading in.

  I pulled the oar loose and slammed it against an oar pin, over and over until the pin cracked. I broke it off and stuffed it into the drain hole, hammering it in place with the oar, and did the same with the other. But it was too late. The sea belched in with each movement I made – Patna, the sea and I were one.

  I kicked off the hull and swam after her. The water was ice-cold and my jacket slowed me down. I saw the wooden dog drifting past, only its head above the water. Gwen had gone quite some way, there were only a few metres between her and the shore. But the waves grew higher and more restless, it was difficult to swim in.

  I glanced back. Patna was still suspended at the water’s surface, like a full tub. But now Gwen was heading towards the nearest land, towards the reef where the sea was churned into foam.

  “Not there!” I screamed, swallowing salt water. “You have to get to the beach!”

  A wave had carried her there, and when she was a few metres away, another came in and drove her hard against the black skerries. There was nothing for her to grab hold of. The crashing water muffled her screaming and immediately I saw blood, washed away by the next wave.

  13

  DRY SNOW DRIFTED THROUGH THE CRACKS AND FORMED small, white fans on the floor. On the windowsill there were empty flowerpots with traces of soil at the bottom. Alma would have put them there, and Bestefar must have removed the plants when they withered after her passing. Nobody had made any effort to brighten the place up since then. The cabin at the mountain pasture refused to get warm. I re-filled the cast-iron stove and shivered. A fly had come to life and crawled towards the stove, and now sat there bewildered.

  I heard the bleating of the sheep outside. Twelve so far, all with clumps of ice stuck to their shaggy wool. They were barely able to drag themselves through the snow. They didn’t like harsh, windy weather, and most were terrified and had migrated to the woods. They ran for dear life when I approached, even though they were starving.

  I went back outside, and a few hours later I had found only one more ewe. They had begun to wander off on their own, and were so afraid of people that it was a struggle to get them to follow me home.

  I stood near a patch of felled forest. I could see Saksum in the valley far below. The last time I had drawn attention to myself in the village was when I had arrived in the Bristol with a foreigner. We had bought Worcestershire sauce as a kind of protest. But it was a carnival; the car too odd, the jacket too much like a disguise, the explanation too longwinded.

  Now I wanted to be normal on the outside, so that I could get on with my real life on the inside. I wanted to go to the café at the railway station without being stared at. I no longer wanted to be the person who chases after people when they paint swastikas on cars. I wanted to go trapshooting without anyone wondering what I might be doing with a shotgun. All perfectly normal activities, which each and every person can have. I wanted to go down to the village and feel that I belonged, and at the same time be myself.

  So what should I do? Just do, I guess. Drive to the shooting range with my Dickson Round Action. Shoot a couple of series, pack away the gun and leave. Let people talk. Come back the next time. Just that. Business as usual. Let them see me.

  That was it, really.

  *

  I rounded up a few more ewes. Their wool was full of twigs, a nuisance come shearing time. They sped up when they heard the bleating of the rest of the flock. Near the fence, I couldn’t work out the numbers. There were more than twenty now. Someone had chased them in, but there was not a soul to be seen. Footprints by the gate, but I had not heard a car.

  When I went back the next morning the same thing happened. Someone had been by the pen chasing in more sheep than I had, while I was down in the woods.

  *

  The real cold arrived in the weeks that followed. Snow settled on the fields and the woods, sparkling, fluffy snow that covered the branches of the trees. I worked from seven to seven, to block out all thought of what had happened in Shetland.

  In the loft I found the old chart of freshwater fish. It had been included as a supplement to the summer edition of a weekly magazine. I had hoped that seeing it again would bring back more of what Pappa had said to me, but his voice was no more than an echo.

  Maybe that is how it is, I thought. We are not meant to remember everything.

  I cleared a path to the workshop, fired up the Jøtul stove and made a wooden frame for the chart. I went back up to the drawing room on the second floor, cold through the winter, and dusty and barren in the summer. Each generation seemed to haunt this place; on the walls were small photographs of gruff-looking men and subdued women with pinned-back hair, it was as though they lived up here with no visitors, abandoned and unwanted by those who came after.

  This is how empty a farm can get, I told myself. When the memory of Bestefar’s living room is the only thing that can warm me. Him standing in front of all those books, the glow of the Grundig stereo equipment, the amplifier’s thin needles flicking in time with his hands as he conducted absent-mindedly, and through it all, the smell of roast meat served at five o’clock on the dot, two plates, and the smoke of his cigarillos.

  Up here there was nothing, just the cold floor of a large, uncarpeted room, a dinner table for twelve that had never been used, leather-bound books with gothic lettering.

  I hung the chart in the hallway of the cottage. Cooked a trout from the summer fishing trip and shared it with Grubbe.

  *

  The wheels spun as I drove down the dead-end road. His driveway was so poorly cleared that I had to stop outside the gate. The Rover was in the carport with its summer tyres still on. The longest expedition for him in the winter was probably down his path, from the front door to the postbox.

  He was not dressed, even though it was twelve o’clock, and he seemed thinner and more stooped than I remembered him.

  “Have you eaten since the summer?” I said.

  He was about to reply, but broke into a coughing fit and waved me inside. “Nothing has flavour anymore,” he said and shuffled in after me. His slippers smacked against the worn parquet in the living room.

  “Coffee?” I said. “I’ll make a pot.”

  “You have the blessing of the Church. And would you mind fetching the newspaper? Even though it only gets worse. I’ll have to switch to Dagningen soon.”

  Apart from teabags and a packet of biscuits his kitchen cupboards were empty. There were crumbs and a dirty cup on the kitchen table. I heard him coughing in the other room.

  I drove to the general store and shopped as if I was going to spend the winter at the mountain pasture. I picked up copies of Aftenposten and Vårt Land and filled two boxes with food.

  When I came back into his hallway I heard Radio Oppland on full blast. I put the food away and made coffee in a large pot I found in the cupboard. The priest was of the generation that used one large enough for an entire evening of T.V. I followed the direction of the sound to find him lying in his office, on a couch beneath a wall-mounted bookshelf.

  “Do I smell coffee?” he said, getting up. “Or has He carried me home?”

  “Thankfully it’s only coffee, the red Co-op brand,” I said.

  He switched off the radio.

  “That will do. Have you made plenty?”

  “One and a half litres.”

  “Good,” he said. “Now tell me everything. Every last drop.”

  *

  When I stopped talking he sat for a long time with his eyes closed. His body rocked slowly back and forth.

  “Are you asleep?” I said.

  He opened his eyes. “Not at all. Rarely have I ever been more awake.”

  The old priest thrust his chest out to stretch his back. “As the priest in Saksum I have heard and seen a great
deal which has made me doubt whether the Good Lord’s plan is actually beneficial to mankind. But that does not seem to be the case today.”

  Outside, the winter darkness had settled in.

  “Does it torment you?” he said. “That you ran into the woods.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  There was silence.

  “You must let it go, Edvard. I have no scripture to offer. But we are innocent when we dream and we are innocent when we are small.”

  “I know that,” I said. “But I can’t seem to wriggle my way out of it.”

  “You have served a sentence many times over, one which nobody has judged you for. Think of your grandfather. I see him in a clearer light now, sitting alone at the organ concert. Maybe he knew everything that had happened and was afraid that you, when you missed them the most, would blame yourself for the death of your parents.”

  We were briefly silent again. His chair creaked as he twisted in it. “Why do we actually call it a television pot?” he said. “There’s no such thing as a radio pot.”

  We shared the dregs of the coffee.

  “These two women interest me,” the old priest said. “Which one made your heart beat stronger?”

  “I wonder that myself. It was like it was beating for Hanne when it pumped in, and for Gwen when it pumped out.”

  He got up stiffly from the chair. “I had a girlfriend once, when I was at the seminary. But it came to nought. I hesitated, I wasn’t quick enough when it mattered.”

  His eyes scanned the bookshelves, the piles of old sermons. “Take a look inside the green box by the desk.”

  I crouched down and flipped through the yellowed proofs of the Saksum parish newsletter.

  “I made them with Letraset and a typewriter. But dig down a little further and you’ll see something which is much closer to God. And then you must promise me that you will not shut yourself away.”

  There was a well-thumbed stack of Playboy Special Editions.

  “As a bachelor, I have had to make myself familiar with such ‘celibacy publications’,” the old priest said. “The regular editions are not that special, I don’t care for their hedonism. But every May there’s a special edition. Girls of Summer. I’ve been a subscriber for years. As you can see, it is all girls and no words. Nothing explicit. Just creation’s most magnificent opus. Woman as she was given to us by God. Unfortunately no paper edition of Woman will ever live up to the real thing. For the Holy Bible, however, it’s good enough.”