The Storm Sister

by Lucinda Riley

  Pip’s hands trembled slightly as he raised them over the keyboard, but as he launched into the slow series of bell-like tolls that opened the first movement of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, his nerves left him. The stormy passion of the music filled him as he closed his eyes, mentally hearing the accompanying parts of the string and woodwind sections as his fingers danced through the rapid progression of arpeggios that followed. He was halfway through the lyrical slow section in E flat major when Herr Heide stopped him.

  ‘I think I have heard enough. That was really quite marvellous. If you play the violin even half as well, I can see no reason not to offer you work, Herr Halvorsen. Now, let us go to my office and we will talk further.’

  Pip returned home an hour later, walking on air, and immediately broke the news to Karine and his family that he was now officially employed by the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra.

  ‘I will only be a “swing”, covering piano and violin when the regulars are unavailable or unwell, but Herr Heide tells me the current pianist is old now and often unable to perform. He may retire soon.’

  ‘Franz Wolf is like a creaking gate and has arthritis in his fingers. You will have many chances to play. Well done, my boy!’ Horst slapped him on the back. ‘We will play together just as Jens, my father, and I used to.’

  ‘Did you also tell him that you are a composer?’ Karine pressed him.

  ‘Yes, but Rome wasn’t built in a day, and for now I am just grateful I can support you as a husband should once we are married.’

  ‘And perhaps one day I can join you in the orchestra too,’ Karine said with a pout. ‘I don’t think I’m going to make a very good Hausfrau.’

  Pip translated what Karine had said to his mother and she smiled. ‘Don’t worry. Whilst you and your father are making music, I will teach Karine all she needs to know about looking after a home.’

  ‘Two Halvorsens once more in an orchestra, a son about to be married and, I’m sure, many grandchildren to love in the future.’ Horst’s eyes twinkled with happiness.

  Pip saw Karine raise her dark eyebrows at him. She had often said she was not the maternal type and was far too selfish to have babies. He didn’t take her seriously; it was her way to try to shock by saying the unthinkable. And he loved her for it.

  Karine and Pip were married the day before Christmas Eve. A fresh fall of snow lay in a pristine blanket over the city, and the twinkling lights that bedecked the streets of central Bergen added a fairy-tale atmosphere to the proceedings as the two of them rode in a horse-drawn carriage to the Grand Hotel Terminus. After the reception party that Horst had insisted on paying for, the newly-weds finally said goodnight to their guests and made their way upstairs. As they entered their hotel room, which had been given to them as a wedding present by Elle and Bo, they fell into each other’s arms with a hunger that only six months of abstinence could produce. As they kissed, Pip released the buttons of Karine’s cream lace gown, and as it slid from her shoulders and arms, his fingertips followed its path downwards, trailing across her elegant collarbones before moving to brush her dusky pink nipples. She moaned and grabbed a handful of his hair, releasing his mouth from hers, and guided his head towards her breast. She gasped in pleasure as his lips closed around her nipple and she simultaneously pushed the dress down over her hips so that it finally fell to the floor. Then Pip lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed, his breathing rapid and shallow, driven mad by desire. As he stood beside the bed and clumsily began to divest himself of his clothes, Karine knelt up on the mattress and stopped him.

  ‘No – it is my turn now,’ she said huskily. She deftly unbuttoned first his shirt, then his trousers. A few seconds later she drew him down on top of her and they lost themselves in each other.

  Afterwards they lay together sated, listening to the clock in the old town square as it struck midnight.

  ‘That was definitely worth converting for,’ Karine announced, propping herself up on her elbow and smiling into Pip’s eyes as she stroked his face with the back of her fingers. ‘And if I hadn’t said it before, I say it now, as your wife of a few hours – and I want you never to forget it: I love you, chérie, and I cannot remember ever being happier than I am tonight.’

  ‘Nor can I,’ he whispered, taking her hand from his cheek and pressing it to his lips. ‘Here’s to always.’

  ‘Always.’

  40

  1938

  As the snow and rain fell incessantly on Bergen during January, February and March, and the brief hours of daylight fell swiftly into darkness, Pip spent several hours each day at rehearsals with the Bergen Philharmonic. At first he was only called on to perform in the evening concerts once a week at most, but as poor Franz, the old pianist, began to take more time off due to his worsening arthritis, Pip gradually became a regular fixture in the orchestra.

  Meanwhile, his spare time was consumed with composing his first concerto. He showed no one the results of his efforts. Not even Karine. When it was finished, he would dedicate it to her. In the afternoons after rehearsals, Pip would often stay on in the concert hall. There, surrounded by the ghostly atmosphere of an auditorium without an orchestra or audience, he would work on his composition at the piano in the pit.

  For her part, Karine was kept busy by Astrid, who she had come to love dearly. Her Norwegian slowly began to improve and she did her best to learn the art of homemaking under her mother-in-law’s good-natured guidance.

  As often as Elle’s work would allow, Karine would meet her friend in the tiny apartment above the chart maker’s shop on the harbour front and the two of them would discuss their hopes and plans for the future.

  ‘I can’t help feeling jealous that you have your own home,’ Karine confessed over coffee one morning. ‘Pip and I are now married, yet we still live under his parents’ roof and sleep in his childhood bedroom. It is not the most seductive location for romance. We must always take care to be quiet, but I long for the freedom to make love with abandon.’

  Elle was used to her best friend’s bold statements. ‘Your time will come, I am sure,’ she smiled. ‘You are lucky to have the support of Pip’s parents. For us, it is still difficult. Bo’s elbow is far better than it was, but it has not yet recovered sufficiently to allow him to audition for the orchestra here, or anywhere else for that matter. He is devastated that he cannot pursue his passion at present. As I am, too, for that matter.’

  Karine knew exactly how that felt – having been confined to a domestic environment since arriving in Bergen, her own musical ability had been limited to the casual evening performances at Froskehuset. But she also acknowledged that her problems paled into insignificance compared to the challenges that faced Elle and Bo.

  ‘I’m sorry, Elle, I’m being selfish.’

  ‘My sister, you are not. Music is our lifeblood and it is hard to live without it. At least something good has come of Bo’s inability to play. He enjoys his work with the chart maker and has thrown himself into learning about methods of navigation. For the time being, he is content, and so am I.’

  ‘Then I am glad,’ said Karine. ‘And happy we are still living in the same town and can see each other as often as we want. I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

  ‘Or I without you.’

  In early May, Pip announced to Karine that he had saved enough money to be able to rent a tiny house on Teatergaten, in the heart of the town, only a stone’s throw away from the theatre and the concert hall.

  When he told her, Karine burst into tears. ‘It is very good timing, chérie. Because apart from anything else, I should tell you that I am . . . mon Dieu! I am pregnant.’

  ‘But that’s the most wonderful news!’ Pip exclaimed, rushing to his wife’s side and enveloping her in an ecstatic embrace. ‘Try not to look so horrified,’ he teased, as he tipped her quivering chin up so that he could meet her gaze. ‘You, with all your naturalistic beliefs, should be the first to admit that a child is simply the r
esult of two beating hearts in love.’

  ‘I know all that, but I am sick as a dog every morning. And what if I don’t like the child? What if I turn out to be a terrible mother to it? What if—’

  ‘Hush now. You are simply frightened. As all new mothers-to-be are.’

  ‘No! The women I know have always revelled in their pregnant state. They have sat there like broody mares patting their burgeoning stomachs and enjoying the attention. And all I see is an alien inside me, taking away my flat stomach and sucking dry my energy!’

  With that, Karine collapsed against him in a further fit of noisy sobbing.

  Pip suppressed a smile, took a deep breath and did all he could to console her.

  Later that evening, they told Horst and Astrid they were to be grandparents. And that he and Karine would be moving into a home of their own.

  A general round of congratulations ensued, although Horst did not hand Karine a glass when the bottle of aquavit was produced.

  ‘You see?’ she complained as she climbed into bed next to him. ‘All my pleasures are now in the past.’

  Pip chuckled as he pulled her into his arms and his hand reached under her nightgown to caress the tiny bump. It was, he thought, like the first sighting of a half-moon in a starry sky. He and she had made it together. And it was a miracle.

  ‘It is only another six months, Karine. And I promise that on the night of the birth, I will bring an entire bottle of aquavit to your bedside and you can drink the lot.’

  In early June, they moved into their new house on Teatergaten. Although tiny, it was pretty as a picture with its duck-egg-blue clapboard exterior and a wooden terrace leading from the kitchen. Over the summer, while Pip was at work, Karine, with Astrid and Elle’s help, worked hard to decorate the interior and placed pots of petunias and lavender on the terrace. In spite of their meagre budget, it gradually became a haven of homely tranquillity.

  On the night of his twenty-second birthday in October, Pip came home from the theatre after an evening performance to find Karine, Elle and Bo standing in the sitting room.

  ‘Happy birthday, chérie,’ said Karine, her eyes dancing with excitement as the three of them moved aside to reveal an upright piano that was placed behind them in the corner of the room. ‘I know it’s not a Steinway, but at least it’s a start.’

  ‘But how . . . ?’ Pip asked her in astonishment. ‘We haven’t the money for such a thing.’

  ‘That is for me to worry about and for you to enjoy. A composer must have his own instrument available at all times in order to pursue his muse,’ she said. ‘Bo tried it and says it has a good tone. Come, Pip, and let us hear you play.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Pip went to the piano and ran his fingers over the fallboard that protected the keys, admiring the simple inlaid marquetry that decorated the golden wood on the panel above it. There was no maker’s mark, but the instrument was well constructed and in excellent condition, and had obviously been lovingly polished. He lifted the fallboard to reveal the gleaming keys and then searched around for something to sit on.

  Elle stepped forward hastily. ‘And this is a gift from us,’ she said, producing an upholstered stool from its hiding place behind a chair and placing it in front of the piano. ‘Bo carved the wood himself and I sewed the seating pad.’

  Pip glanced at the finely turned pine legs and the intricate needlepoint pattern on the cushion. He felt overwhelmed. ‘I . . . don’t know what to say,’ he said as he sat down. ‘Except thank you, both of you.’

  ‘It is nothing compared to what you and your family have done for us, Pip,’ said Bo quietly. ‘Happy birthday.’

  Pip lifted his fingers to the keyboard and began to play the first few bars of Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio in G Flat. Bo was right, the instrument did indeed have a beautiful tone, and he thought excitedly how he could now work on his concerto at any time of the day or night.

  As Karine grew larger, her due date only a few weeks away, Pip sat at his beloved piano, scribbling frantically and experimenting with chords and harmonic variations, knowing that once the baby arrived, the peace of the household would soon be disturbed irrevocably.

  Felix Mendelssohn Edvard Halvorsen – his first name given after Karine’s father – arrived into the world happy and healthy on 15th November 1938. And just as Pip had suspected, after all Karine’s fears, she took to motherhood like a duck to water. Whilst Pip was glad to see her so fulfilled and content, he had to admit that he sometimes felt excluded from the close-knit mother-and-baby bond. All his wife’s attention was focused on their precious son and Pip both adored and resented the change of focus in equal measure. The thing he found hardest to cope with was that in the past, Karine had always encouraged him to work on his composition; but these days, it seemed that every time he sat down at the piano, she shushed him. ‘Pip! The baby is sleeping and you will wake him up.’

  However, there was one particular reason that made him glad that Karine was in a maternal cocoon – it meant that she did not care to glance at the newspapers, which every week seemed to reveal escalating tensions in Europe. After the annexation of Austria by Germany back in March, there had been a glimmer of hope at the end of September that war might be averted: France, Germany, Britain and Italy had signed the Munich Agreement, which conceded the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia to Germany, in return for a pledge from Hitler that Germany would make no further territorial demands. The British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, had even announced in a speech that the agreement would lead to ‘peace for our time’. With all his heart, Pip prayed that Mr Chamberlain was right. But as the autumn wore on, the talk in the orchestra pit and on the streets of Bergen was increasingly gloomy – few believed that the Munich Agreement would hold.

  At least the Christmas festivities provided a welcome hiatus. They spent Christmas Day at Horst and Astrid’s house with Elle and Bo. On New Year’s Eve, Karine and Pip held a small party in their own home and as the midnight bells rang in the new year of 1939, Pip took his wife into his arms and kissed her tenderly.

  ‘My love, all I am I owe to you. I can never thank you enough for what you have been to me. And given me,’ he whispered. ‘Here’s to all three of us.’

  On New Year’s Day, Karine – who had been persuaded to leave Felix in the tender care of his grandparents – together with Pip, Bo and Elle, boarded the Hurtigruten ship in Bergen harbour and they set sail up the magnificent western coast of Norway. Karine even forgot her maternal pangs as she gazed at the countless stunning sights they passed. The Seven Sisters waterfall, suspended on the edge of the Geirangerfjord, was her favourite.

  ‘It is truly breathtaking, chérie,’ she said as she stood on deck with Pip, muffled in layers of wool against the sub-zero temperatures. They both stared in awe at the incredible natural ice sculptures that had formed when the tumbling streams had frozen solid in mid-flow at the onset of winter.

  The Hurtigruten sailed on and up the coast, darting in and out of the fjords and stopping at all manner of tiny ports with food supplies and mail deliveries, providing a lifeline for the residents of the isolated communities dotted along the coast.

  As they sailed towards the northernmost point of their voyage, Mehamn, high on Norway’s Arctic coast, Pip explained the phenomenon of the aurora borealis to his companions.

  ‘The Northern Lights are like the Lord’s very own heavenly light show,’ he said, trying to summon the beauty of the spectacle into words and knowing he was failing.

  ‘You have seen it?’ asked Karine.

  ‘Yes, but only once, when the conditions were right and the lights appeared as far south as Bergen. I’ve never taken this trip before.’

  ‘How is it formed?’ asked Elle, as she stared up at the clear, starry sky above them.

  ‘I am sure there’s a technical explanation,’ Pip conceded, ‘but I am not the person to provide it.’

  ‘And maybe there is no need for one, anyway,’ said Bo.

  The
passage up from Tromsø was choppy and both the women took to their cabins as the ship approached the North Cape headland. The captain announced that this was the best vantage point from which to see the Northern Lights, but knowing how sick Karine was, Pip had no choice but to leave Bo alone on deck staring up to the heavens and go below to care for her.

  ‘I told you I hated the water,’ Karine groaned as she crouched over the bag that had been thoughtfully provided for those suffering from seasickness.

  Dawn broke over more tranquil waters as they left the North Cape and sailed south back towards Bergen. Bo greeted Pip in the dining room, his features flooded with excitement.

  ‘My friend, I saw them! I saw the miracle! And its majesty was enough to convince the most fervent non-believer in a higher power. The colours . . . green, yellow, blue . . . the entire sky was lit with radiance! I . . .’ Bo choked on his words, then recovered himself. His eyes glistening with unshed tears, he reached out his arms to Pip and clasped him in a hug. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

  Back in Bergen, so as not to disturb baby Felix, Pip retreated to the deserted concert hall, or to his parents’ house to use the piano there. He found his brain was foggy, due to the endless broken nights when Felix would scream incessantly from a bout of colic to which he was particularly prone. Even though Karine would get up to attend to the baby and leave her husband to sleep, knowing how much work he had to do, the high-pitched noise of Felix’s cries reverberated around the paper-thin walls of the little house so that rest was impossible for either of them.

  ‘Perhaps I should simply slip some aquavit into his bottle and have done with it,’ said an exhausted Karine over breakfast after a particularly bad night. ‘That baby is killing me,’ she sighed. ‘I am so sorry for the disturbance, chérie. I cannot seem to quieten him. I am simply a bad mother.’