So, she was the only woman who was suitable because she had no life. Great. She lost her appetite for the contents of the bag on the passenger seat.
‘And the guy in charge of the investigation specifically asked for you.’
‘Huldar?’
‘Yes. Don’t ask me why but you’re are the only one he trusts with the girl.’
Freyja frowned. He didn’t know her at all, if you overlooked the single night they’d spent together. Surely he didn’t base his professional opinion of people on his personal sexual experiences? If that had been the purpose of their one-night stand, the results of her personality test would presumably place her in the rampant and insatiable category. She turned pink and was grateful that videophones had never become fashionable. ‘I’m sorry. There must be another solution.’
‘No, we’ve exhausted them all.’ His tone was final.
Although Freyja continued to raise objections, she knew how it would end. Before the evening was over the girl would almost certainly be in her care. Hopefully she’d have eaten by then. There wasn’t enough in the bag for two.
Chapter 17
Karl felt no particular guilt about missing his lectures. No one monitored attendance, so it was entirely up to him whether he went in or not. Now that his mother was no longer there to fret, nobody cared about his education, not even him – most of the time. It was a depressing thought, though he took advantage of his freedom, taking as much time off as he liked. If no one cared about his results, what did it matter how well or badly he performed? But it wasn’t really that simple. To meet the Student Loan Authority’s conditions, he had to stick at it. Had it not been for that, it was doubtful he would have attended any lectures at all or handed in a single piece of coursework. But if he wanted a study loan to live on he had to pass his exams, and if he wanted to pass his exams he had to apply himself.
Today, however, he was going to ignore the faint twinge of conscience. He deserved some time off. He had so much on his mind and finally, finally, he had found the energy to sort out his mother’s possessions. Halli and Börkur’s visit had been the catalyst and now he was going to make the house his own. For too long it had been like an outsized memorial to his mother – like the mausoleum of a dead pharaoh.
The realisation had sunk in that he was going to have to find himself some new friends, but there was no way he could invite people round to this grannyish house – always supposing he found anyone to invite round in the first place. Still, he’d had an idea that was bound to make him popular. His fellow students were always having trouble finding venues for parties. The offer of a house, a crate of beer and a few bags of crisps might help to get him noticed.
Transforming the place needn’t cost much; the ugly furniture could stay, so long as he removed most of the knick-knacks from the surfaces and took down the pictures from the walls. Tore down the window dressings and dumped every last net curtain in the bin. It was time to make his mark on the house, even if only by removing all traces of his mother.
He began by taking down Che Guevara from the entrance hall and stuffing him in the black plastic bin under the sink. One of the revolutionary leader’s eyes and half his military cap could be seen poking out of the rubbish as Karl closed the cupboard. Next he decided to tackle his mother’s bedroom with a view to moving in there himself. It was absurd not to use the room when it was so much larger than his. At the moment it was almost exactly as she had left it and that in itself was a little creepy, as though she might come home any minute.
He had closed the door some time ago to avoid having to see inside every time he went to the bathroom. The sight of his mother’s old dressing table covered in face creams and cosmetics was particularly disturbing, combined with a whiff of the heavy perfume that used to follow her around like a cloud. Of course no scent could carry from the closed bottles out into the passage, but that didn’t stop him imagining it. Strange that his mother’s smell should linger in his memory when he could hardly picture her face any longer.
When Karl opened the door the musty air in the room tickled his nose. He fetched some loo paper and blew it. He thought briefly of stuffing cotton wool into his nostrils but, abandoning the idea, decided to start in the bathroom instead. He went and fetched a plastic sack, swept all the cosmetics off the bathroom unit and carried them out to the dustbin. Among the objects he disposed of was a hideous white soap-dish on gilt legs that his mother had been very fond of. Karl had always thought it tasteless, implying as it did that they dreamt of a bathtub with claw feet but had to make do with a soap-dish. An expensive electric toothbrush, brand new – a Christmas present to his mother from Arnar – went into the bag as well, along with a mother-of-pearl hairbrush, an old confirmation gift that she’d kept for special occasions. Karl should have taken some of these to the Good Shepherd charity shop but he was terrified of losing momentum if he started trying to sort the stuff. Into the bin with it. It would all end up at the tip sooner or later, so what difference would a brief interlude with a new owner make?
There was a loud bang as the heavy sack landed on the bottom of the empty dustbin. It had an uncomfortably final ring; nothing that went into the bin could ever be retrieved. This dampened Karl’s zeal and he closed the lid with less of a flourish than he’d opened it with. It was insulting to his mother’s memory to dispose of her belongings like any old trash.
He went back inside. The bedroom was full of the worldly goods on which his mother had lavished such loving care. He had the odd notion that they welcomed his arrival, as if they had been waiting for someone to admire them again. But that wasn’t the plan.
Some objects only have value in their owners’ eyes; to others they are junk. With an odd sense of pathos, Karl realised this was true of everything his mother had owned. There had never been much money left over for buying nice things; the expense of rearing two boys had seen to that. All those foreign textbooks of Arnar’s had cost a bomb; all the books he amassed while he was deciding which subject to study at university. He wasn’t like Karl, who had chosen the subject he hated least. Oh, no. Instead of doing the bare minimum to pass his school-leaving exams, Arnar had devoted his time in the sixth form to methodically researching the syllabuses of all the subjects he thought might suit his needs.
Salary was the motivating factor. He intended to choose the field in which he was most likely to excel. He had no truck with mediocrity; he wanted to shine in a profession that was well remunerated. Arnar had been insufferably smug about this long-term goal, whereas all Karl had wanted in those days were comics, which his mother only bought for him in those months when Arnar didn’t require expensive new textbooks.
Karl repressed a sudden wave of grief for his mother; of nostalgia for a past that hadn’t really brought him much happiness. Though at least he hadn’t been alone then. He had to look forward, not back. Perhaps starting in his mother’s bedroom had been a mistake. It was as if her possessions had noticed the rubbish bag and were mourning their fate. Clearing out the house was proving to be much harder than he had expected.
Karl tried to pull himself together, keen to preserve the illusion, at least in his own mind, that he was less affected by their mother’s death than Arnar was. For once in his life he wanted to surpass his brother in some way, especially now that he had decided to cut all ties with him. From today their relationship was over – apart from discussions about the will. Arnar had shown that they were brothers in name only. That had become abundantly clear during yesterday’s phone conversation.
The memory still stung. Karl had swallowed his pride and rung Arnar against his better judgement. He had been driven by an idea he couldn’t shake off, an idea that had occurred to him before but that he’d always dismissed until now. But in the growing sense of disquiet created by the shortwave broadcasts the idea wouldn’t leave him alone, so without stopping to think he had taken the plunge and phoned. To avoid speaking to the awful Alison, he had dialled Arnar’s mobile number and for once the con
nection had been disconcertingly clear, as if Arnar was in the next room. This only made the conversation more difficult, as he couldn’t hide behind the usual crackling, delays and echoes.
Karl had let slip his diffident request, every word bringing him closer to the rejection he had been dreading – and received. He wasn’t even given a chance to finish. The instant Arnar realised that Karl was testing the waters about coming over to stay with him and go to university in the States, he cut him short. Maybe later. Not now. Alison was trying to get pregnant and it wasn’t a good time. Besides, it would make far more sense for him to apply to the famous, big-name schools on the east coast, which were much closer to home.
As if Karl would have any reason to go back to Iceland.
It went without saying that he could always visit them in the holidays. Well, not this Christmas actually, as they were going to Hawaii, and preferably not in the summer because they wanted to be able to drop everything and get away at a moment’s notice. By this point in the conversation even Karl couldn’t fail to grasp that all his brother’s words amounted to was a big, fat no. No, thank you. Don’t come. Not to study or on holiday. Don’t come. Ever.
His cheeks burning, Karl had only just managed to say goodbye and hang up before the tears of rage spilt over. His humiliation was complete.
Well, for all he cared Arnar could go fuck himself. He hoped Alison would leave him and he’d die alone in a hotel room in Hawaii. If he called and asked Karl to come over, he’d slam the phone down. Laughing. What a pity their mother had already emptied Arnar’s room. If she hadn’t, Karl could have started the clear-out by taking all his junk to the tip. Or making a bonfire of it in the garden.
The kitchen cupboard was overflowing with all kinds of tea that his mother had been more conscientious about buying than drinking, but there was no coffee in the house. Karl fetched the plastic sack and dumped the whole lot in it. It was a small victory; he was back on track and this time nothing would stop him. In the absence of coffee he drank a glass of water and immediately felt himself losing steam. His body craved caffeine but there wasn’t much he could do short of knocking back some of the vitamins his mother had accumulated like tea, for all the good they had done her. They were unlikely to give him the boost he needed, though, so he added the bottles of health supplements to the bag and knotted the top.
Two empty shelves met his eye as he closed the cupboard, feeling pleased with himself. It was good to have an occupation to take his mind off Arnar. And those sinister shortwave broadcasts. He felt ready to tackle the bedroom now.
His resolve deserted him at the door. Last time he’d set foot in there had been with his mum’s cousin, looking for clothes to bury his mother in. The cousin had inspected each garment in turn, holding dress after dress against herself to help Karl choose. He had feigned interest and resisted the temptation to ask her to lie down on the bed and try out the dresses in that position. After all, it wasn’t like his mother would be upright in her coffin.
In the end the cousin had opted for the dress she liked best.
During the viewing of the body, only his mother’s collar and shoulders had been visible, so she could have been wearing pretty much anything. He would have done better to give some thought to his own outfit. His jeans hadn’t made too good an impression on the handful of mourners who had bothered to turn up.
Karl felt the soft pile of the carpet between his toes. It had been there as far back as he could remember and his mother had cared for it so well that it looked like new. Nothing had been allowed in her bedroom that might stain the carpet. The only drink permitted had been water, and he never once remembered seeing her take a snack to eat in bed. He kicked himself again for forgetting to buy coffee. Drinking it on the carpet would have been the perfect way to mark the dawn of a new era. A far more symbolic gesture than clearing out her bedroom. Or the funeral. The mourners who did turn up had mostly been people his mother hadn’t cared for; in fact, he’d never seen or heard of half the congregation before – or since.
Two sweeps of the arm were all it took to clear the cosmetics – jars, tubes and bottles – off the dressing table and into the refuse sack. Karl felt no compunction. It all belonged in the bin. Who in their right mind would want to use a dead person’s leftover creams or perfumes? After he had knotted the neck of the bag and flung the window open, the room smelt less musty. He drank in the fresh air and felt the dull pain in his head receding. His mother must have had a permanent headache, walking around covered in all that muck. The fumes were bound to be toxic; maybe they had caused the cancer that had finished her off – in record time. He pushed the window as wide as it would go, then chucked the bag out into the hall.
At first he made good progress. With the same deft movements he emptied a chest of drawers full of socks, underwear and colourful scarves that he never remembered his mother wearing. Into the rubbish with it all. Then the bottom drawer, which was crammed full of children’s clothes that must once have belonged to him and his brother. Why she had kept them was a mystery to Karl; the fabric felt stiff and odd to the touch, so they would hardly come in useful for the next generation. Besides, it didn’t look likely that he would be increasing the human race any time soon, and if Arnar and Alison had children, his sister-in-law would sooner dress them in bin bags than in dusty old clothes from her husband’s childhood home.
She had once visited Iceland but instead of staying with her future mother-in-law, she and Arnar had packed up after two nights and moved to a hotel. Karl had been only too glad to see the back of them, especially his sister-in-law’s permanently disapproving face. She couldn’t take so much as a sip of water without carefully inspecting the glass first. His mother, who had talked of nothing else since Arnar first announced their plan to visit, had been hurt, though she tried to disguise it. After they relocated to the hotel, she kept trying to find excuses for their sudden departure, the most pathetic of which was that Arnar didn’t want to inconvenience her. Yeah, right.
He was brought up short by the sight of two clear plastic bags of clothes right at the bottom of the drawer. Both contained sets of children’s garments, one of which he recognised. His mother had taken them out on occasion and told him he had been wearing these the first time she laid eyes on him. Little dungarees and a top. The first time she showed them to him they had stirred up memories of a dark-haired woman lying under the covers in a hospital bed.
This time he didn’t experience anything. His former life was completely lost to him. The clothes went into the sack. He didn’t even bother to take them out of the plastic first.
The other bag contained trousers, a top and a cardigan, all of which were soiled. He hadn’t seen these before. Karl grimaced, puzzled, because it was unlike his mother to put dirty laundry away in a drawer. He turned the bag over in his hands, trying to work out if they had belonged to him or Arnar. Arnar probably. He didn’t recognise them, but then he had few memories from early childhood. He guessed the clothes had belonged to a boy of four or five, but what did he know about children’s sizes? Impelled by curiosity, he took the garments out instead of throwing them straight in the sack. A fine dust rose and tickled his nose.
As he sat there contemplating the clothes, he wondered why on earth their mother had hung on to them. They must be the outfit Arnar had been wearing when he arrived or the first time she saw him. It was the only explanation. Apart from his own dungarees, all the rest of the clothes in the drawer were hand-knitted or for special occasions. These were neither. A cardigan, top and trousers, the material worn and bobbly. Karl ran his fingers over it, recoiling when he encountered a hard stain. He picked up the top and examined it all over. There was some crusty substance on the other clothes as well, but the cardigan was too patterned and the trousers were too dark for him to see the marks. The white cotton, on the other hand, showed everything. The top was clean on the back but had stains on the front. These varied in size but were mostly round. It looked as if someone had spattered the
child with brown liquid. Karl sniffed at them but could only smell the inside of the drawer.
As he stared, mesmerised, at the brown spots, it occurred to him that they could be blood. Old, dried blood. How had he or his brother got blood all over him? And why had their mother kept the clothes as a reminder? He shuddered over the stained material. It must be something else. But what? All he could think of was some form of baptism into a weird cult. But surely the children wouldn’t have been sprinkled with some nasty substance?
He stuffed the clothes into the bin bag. If they were his, he had no memory of them. If they were Arnar’s, he couldn’t care less. The whole lot went into the sack and by the end the chest of drawers was empty. Karl stretched, pleased with his achievement. He was getting on brilliantly.
On top of the chest were photographs of the brothers at various ages. Karl put aside the pictures of himself but threw out those of Arnar. He gloated as the earliest photos of his brother vanished into the bag: they had been taken on film and the negatives had long ago been lost. His six-year-old brother’s gappy grin met his gaze as he closed the sack, and Karl felt a stab of guilt but it soon passed. Neither of them was wearing the stained clothes in any of the pictures. He shrugged off the problem. Why puzzle over a mystery that would never be solved? The only person who could have provided the answer was dead. And there was no way he was going to ask Arnar. He was as dead to him now as their mother. Anyway, he knew instinctively that their mother would have discouraged him from digging up the past. Karl didn’t care – but Arnar did.
The wardrobe was going to be a massive job. It contained the bulk of his mother’s clothes, along with countless boxes of all sizes, full of clobber she had thought worth keeping. The clothes wouldn’t present much of a problem; the only question was whether he should chuck them out or donate them to charity.
The Legacy Page 19
