This Shining Land

by Rosalind Laker

  “I’m so sorry. That dear man.”

  Anna looked nostalgically towards the house, her voice softening. “It’s good to be home again. I’ve always loved this house. All this time I’ve longed to be back here.”

  “There’s somebody indoors whom you know. He’s putting new doors on a cupboard in the cellar.”

  “Is it Steffen?”

  “That’s right. The man I’m going to marry.”

  Anna’s face bloomed anew at this announcement and she embraced Johanna again. “That’s marvellous! I always wanted you to meet each other. I remember not telling him that Viktor and I would be away on holiday when he telephoned the day before we left to say he planned to come to Oslo very shortly.”

  Johanna laughed quietly. “I admit I have wondered about that. A lot has happened since then. Let’s go inside. I’ll tell you all about it.”

  In the house, after an exuberant greeting with Steffen, who swung her off her feet, Anna was like a child in her joy at being home again. She ran in and out of the rooms, relieved to find the house much as she had left it and wasting no tears over the ornaments and silver that were missing. Before Johanna and Steffen departed for the railway station in the morning she was full of plans to convert the upper floor into an apartment for them after they were married, for warning had been given in the press that the housing shortage was going to be acute throughout the country. The situation would be aggravated by the number of war brides coming from Britain and Canada. There was also urgent need to house those from northern Norway, as hundreds were still homeless from the devastation caused by the Germans in their retreat before the Russians, who had returned to the other side of the Finnish border, which was now their territory.

  “I don’t even know yet if I’ll be doing the same job as before the invasion,” Steffen pointed out, not wanting to build up Anna’s hopes. “You mustn’t bank on our being here.”

  For the first time since her return, some of the happiness dulled in Anna’s eyes. Johanna, watching her, saw that she dreaded the loneliness of the house without Viktor.

  Rolf was at home on the farm when Johanna and Steffen arrived. A flag was flying at every farmstead in the valley in honour of her brother’s safe return. The local brass band had come the first morning to play patriotic tunes under his window, a tribute he missed by sleeping right through it due to a party in the mess on the eve of his homecoming! Johanna met with smiles again. Neighbours came running to their gate to wave to her and, when the chance presented itself, apologise for not having guessed she had been engaged in secret work. The pleasure of being home again was overshadowed by a new sorrow. Rolf broke the news to her, one look at her parents’ faces having prepared her.

  “Erik is dead. He served with the Shetland Bus, risking his life many times over before he was caught and shot at Akershus Castle. I hear there is to be a memorial stone in the courtyard where so many of our men faced the firing squad. At least we can pay our last respects to him there. The Germans used communal, unmarked graves. We may never know where he lies.”

  When Johanna was able to accept what had happened, she was thankful that her parents would have a grandchild to bring them some comfort in the years ahead. Nobody could ever take her late brother’s place, but the newest member of the family, when Wendy arrived with him, would give them a new and healing interest.

  At Astrid’s home Johanna and Steffen found her in full possession of the whole house again, which she had scrubbed from cellar to attic. Bonfires had disposed of everything soiled during its tenancy.

  “I did what I always said I would do when liberation came,” she said. “I drove those women out with a broom and threw a bucket of water over one who had always been impudent to me. The Resistance weren’t much help. Mostly they stood and laughed. It was the same when the police turned up. In the end the women were taken away in police vans and I invited everyone else in to drink up the wine in the cellars. We had a wonderful liberation party!”

  They stayed several days with her. During that time they heard that Tom Ryen had been arrested and could expect a long prison sentence when brought to trial. There was talk of the firing squad for Vidkun Quisling when he was called upon to account for his crimes, but capital punishment had been abolished for many years under Norwegian law and people were against its being restored under any circumstances, even for the traitor who had endowed all traitors with his own name for the rest of time.

  While still at Astrid’s Johanna received a letter that had been forwarded from the farm. Karen had phoned Gina and learned of Erik’s death. Afterwards she had penned a courageous letter. She had had one baby at the child farm that had been taken from her and sent to Germany. There was no way of tracing her son. Then she had been impregnated again and given birth to a daughter before the liberation. If Erik had lived she believed he would have adopted the child, loving her as he did. In that respect nothing had changed, for she intended to keep the baby and bring her daughter up on her own. Her brother-in-law had returned with other prisoners from Germany and her sister had come through safely. They wanted her to live with them when they reopened their bakery in new premises, but she needed to be independent and build up a new life for herself and her child. Did Johanna know of any accommodation that might be open to her as an unmarried mother?

  “I do!” Johanna exclaimed aloud. She knew what it would mean for Anna to have a baby in the house to love and care for. It would be the answer to everything. Karen could find herself a job in Oslo and have no worries during the day about the baby’s being well looked after. Knowing both women—Anna with her generous heart and Karen with her sweet nature—Johanna foresaw a most satisfactory outcome to their individual problems. Meanwhile she had her marriage to look forward to and the forthcoming meeting with Rolf’s wife, her English sister-in-law.

  Thanks to Wendy’s having an influential uncle in the diplomatic service, she was able to arrive in Norway ahead of the rest of the war brides, actually travelling with a party returning to the embassy in Oslo. She was up at four o’clock in the morning, the sun having risen long before her in the everlasting summer light, to get her first glimpse of Oslo Fjord from the deck of the ship. Its beauty astounded her. Skerries and islands floating jewel-like to set off rocky shores where matchbox houses in muted primary colours perched on lush green against woodland and dense forest. Every house on shore and every summer cabin tucked into island scenery had a flagpole, spattering red, white and blue like confetti amid the trees. Sailing dinghies skimmed the surface; everyone was up with the sun and fishing boats tonk-tonked out to sea. Overhead the sea gulls made an ever-changing pattern of white and grey against the blue sky. This was her new land. She loved it already.

  She stood at the rails with her baby in her arms as the ship sailed into harbour. The city seemed to smile at her. She could see a reception pavilion surrounded by flowers on the quayside and was told it had been erected for the homecoming of King Haakon in a few days’ time. The royal arms glinted from the City Hall, which dominated the harbour and was hung with bunting. The ancient Akershus Castle loomed up from the water. Amid those gathered on the quayside she could see Rolf in uniform, a bouquet of red roses in his hand. She waved excitedly to him and he waved back.

  “We’re here, Paul,” she said softly to her son, still waving. “I’ve brought you home.”

  It was a daunting prospect to learn later that she was to meet her in-laws all on the same day at the wedding of Rolf’s sister. She need not have worried, for when the time came she had never felt more welcome, and the valley and the farmstead seemed like a missing part of the pattern of her life, put together at last.

  Johanna and Steffen were married in the local church by the fjord. In the congregation Wendy saw national costumes for the first time, worn naturally as best wear on special occasions. She was as intrigued by the embroidery and gold ornaments as she was by the interior of the ancient church with its pine fragrance and rich decorations painted by the hands of valle
y craftsmen who had been gone two hundred years and more. Johanna wore a white gown previously worn by Astrid’s grandmother—a high-necked, long-sleeved garment of lace and silk that had simple lines and suited her slender figure. When the bride and groom emerged into the sunshine there was no chiming of the church bell, for it had been rung with such enthusiasm on liberation day that it had cracked, the fate of several old bells throughout the land.

  The weather being warm, the wedding feast was set out on long tables in the shade of trees by the farmhouse. The traditional wedding cake, which had not been seen throughout the Occupation, being made of ground almonds and sugar, rose in a tall pyramid of rings, the ingredients having been sent from Sweden and baked by Anna, who had brought it with her from Oslo. Throughout the meal there was a programme of songs dedicated to the bridal couple and those close to them, sung to familiar tunes, the words written by friends and family. There were also plenty of speeches. Gunnar, who was best man, spoke of the time he had known the bride and groom during their Resistance days, but did not refer to any specific venture. That was to become the accepted rule among those of the home front. Without any discussion, there was a spontaneous, unspoken decision among them all that since they had each played a part with many others, none holding himself or herself to be more important than the rest, there should be a veil drawn over individual achievements. Many members of the Resistance were to receive decorations from the King, Steffen included, but he never spoke of what he had done, not even to Johanna, and she respected his reserve.

  They returned to Oslo to see the King come home. It was June 7, exactly five years to the day since he had sailed into exile. Again the city burst into rejoicing on a scale that surpassed in many respects even that of liberation day. After rain in the morning, the sun came out to greet the King in naval uniform and the Crown Princess and the three royal children, who had returned home with him. In an open car the King rode up banner-hung Karl Johans Gate to the palace. On the balcony he took the salute as those of the Resistance marched past him in their thousands, in the weatherproof jackets and rucksacks that had been their everyday wear throughout five years of hiding in mountains and in secret work. Steffen and Johanna were among their number. With them marched brass bands leading armed forces, released prisoners from the camps and, miraculously, a Jewish boy, one of only twenty-four Norwegian Jews to survive the extermination camps in Germany and come home again. It was the greatest procession the city had ever seen and a day Johanna was to remember all her life. The cheering in the exhilaration of freedom regained was to echo in her heart down the years.

  In 1984 she was in London shortly before Christmas. Steffen, who had substantial interests in a Norwegian oil company, had had a business meeting with his British counterpart. She had accompanied him from their home in Oslo, seizing the opportunity to do her seasonal shopping in her favourite London store. Both their sons were married with three children each and she had a long list to fill. At the end of a busy day she was relaxing in a taxi on her way back to the hotel when it turned into Trafalgar Square. Suddenly she leaned forward and tapped urgently on the glass to the driver.

  “Stop here, please.”

  “Your hotel isn’t around here.”

  “I know. I’ve changed my mind for the moment.”

  With a Harrods green plastic bag full of festively wrapped gifts on her arm, she got out and paid him. As he drove away into the rush hour traffic, she turned to look across at the Norwegian Christmas tree by the fountains in the lee of Nelson’s column. Casually and expensively dressed, her elegance could still turn heads as she walked slowly across the square until she came within a few yards of the tree, which a short while ago had been felled in the forests around Oslo. Her gaze travelled slowly up its great height of forty feet or more to the crowning star. Its thickly foliaged branches sparkled with white lights and swayed in the chill breeze as if vibrating with life, an aura of brilliance hanging about it. The glow fell full on her upturned face, whose beauty had defied the passage of time.

  Every year a Norwegian tree came to London at Christmastime, just as it had during the war to remind an exiled king of his homeland and of the people who awaited him there. It came nowadays as a link between the friendship of the past and the friendship of the future. Many memories stirred within her. Beloved faces long since gone passed again before her eyes. She was deeply moved, just as when she had visited the Resistance Museum in Akershus Castle for the first time and viewed the history that had been hers and that of forty thousand others of the home front. By that long-ago agreement there were no names, not even of those whose exceptional courage had changed the course of history.

  A young choir had filed into place by the tree, boys of a cathedral school, looking well brushed and neat for the occasion. There was some shifting of feet, a fluttering of song sheets, and then the choirmaster raised his arms, demanding full attention. They opened with “Silent Night,” the music of their clear, high voices rising against a backcloth of the National Gallery and St. Martin-in-the-Fields. She lost track of time as she listened to them.

  Somewhere a clock struck, reminding her that Steffen would be back at the hotel and looking for her. They were still lovers. There had never been anyone else for either of them. Leaving the Christmas tree, she hailed another taxi and it drew up for her. She paused for a moment before getting into it, looking back over her shoulder. The tree was a beautiful sight, the lights as white as the snows of Norway.

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  My grateful acknowledgements to my Norwegian friends Liv Bergsholm, Gerda Deverall, and Ella Christiansen for their generous help in my research.

  R.L.