Only then did I discover that I was shaking. In the cool air there was perspiration on my face, and when I opened my handbag to take out a handkerchief, my fingers trembled so that I nearly dropped the bag. My reaction dismayed me. Laura Worth was my adversary. At least that was what I had hoped for. Now I was less sure. Not less sure of my antagonism toward her, but not sure that there was anything there worthy of my steel. The woman in furs had been a wraith, a ghost out of the past. She seemed hardly able to walk by herself, let alone stand up to a daughter she had injured.
But that was not why I was trembling. This was a reaction I did not understand. I blotted my forehead with my handkerchief and stood there for a few moments longer until the shaking subsided. Then I returned to my waiting taxi. It was around the curve, and the driver had seen nothing. I got in and told him to take me about Bergen—anywhere. He could show me the city.
It was a bright, beautiful city made up of both old buildings with steeply peaked gray slate roofs and tall chimneys, and blocks of modern buildings as well. It reached around the waters of the fjord on two sides, with that crowded peninsula thrusting out between, into the center of the harbor. Beyond lay more water and hilly islands, some of them the rocky North Sea skerries I had seen when we were coming in on the plane. It was a city which had been planned by geographic necessity, forced into its pattern by the mountains and water that circled it.
For Norway, May was a month of festivals and holidays, and we passed young people’s groups marching in the streets, drilling in uniform with their bands. Some of the boys carried crossbows that were apparently symbolic of the past. There seemed to be Norwegian flags everywhere, flying their red ground with the blue and white cross.
All of it flowed over and around me. I was still haunted by a white, beautiful face framed by fur and turned toward me unseeingly. This was not the way I wanted her to be. I wanted to see her strong and assured, filled with confidence. Only then could I bring her down with a satisfying crash. This pale, faltering woman was not the Laura Worth I had come to see. Perhaps her own life had caught up with her, and there was no need for me to bring her down. But I would not accept that. I had carried a painful and bitter resentment for too long to let it go easily.
I told my driver to take me back to the hotel, where I paid him and went upstairs to my room. I had a feeling of being suspended and not entirely of the world I was in. Certainly I must carry through my plan to meet Laura face to face. But for the moment I could only wait.
Late in the afternoon I dressed carefully for my meeting with Gunnar Thoresen. I wore brown wool, with a white cowl collar and dipping white cuffs. An antique gold pin and earrings were my only jewelry, and I brushed my hair to a darkly blond sheen. I wanted my father’s friend to like me and help me, and in a sense my careful grooming would hide my ungroomed feelings toward Laura Worth.
Promptly on time the call came to my room that he waited for me in the lobby. I put on my beige coat, caught up gloves and pocketbook and went downstairs. He was waiting near the lift. We seemed to know each other at once and he met me with an outstretched hand. I liked the look of him—tall, well built, but slender and narrow of face, somewhat ruggedly handsome, with the brown hair and eyes that were more typical of this West Land of Norway. He was friendly, courteous—I was accepted as my father’s daughter—yet there was a certain reserve about him that contrasted with the more easy camaraderie of the American. I liked that reserve. I did not want too much friendliness between us. Enough to aid me, but no more.
“I have found a place for my car,” he told me. “Parking is something of a problem. It is only a short distance to the restaurant, so if you do not mind walking—”
“I like to walk,” I said.
The evening was chill, but clear, and the sky had not darkened at all. The daylight would last in May, I realized.
“This is what we call festival weather,” Gunnar said. “In Bergen it rains a great deal. All through the winter it is likely to rain. We do not have the heavy snows of the rest of Norway. But in May the weather clears and is usually good for our annual festival season.”
I knew about Bergen’s famous Festspillene, the great festival of music, drama, and folklore, held every year in spring, with renowned musicians coming from all over the world to the place which had given birth to Edvard Grieg and Ole Bull.
We walked together up the street from the square as it climbed toward the huge gray stone building of the National Theater looming above. Gunnar chatted pleasantly as we walked, and neither of us mentioned Laura. All in good time, his manner seemed to say.
The restaurant was across from the theater and we went up a tiny circular stairway to reach the second floor. There we had a table set in an alcove beside a casement window that overlooked the theater garden. Light beige cloths and electric blue napkins graced the tables, and there were green plants hanging in pots from the ceiling. Only one other couple was dining across the small room.
“This is not our usual dining hour in Bergen,” Gunnar said. “We go early to business and leave our offices early. A man expects to be home by four-thirty or five, to begin what we call our second day—the time we spend at home with our families. Then we have our main meal at that time, with perhaps a snack around nine in the evening. At this present hour we go to restaurants only to talk and drink beer. This is a university town, and you will find students filling many restaurants now.”
I let him order for me and he chose the salmon, which he said I would like. When the waitress had gone, I faced him purposefully, feeling that I’d waited long enough.
“I saw Laura Worth this afternoon,” I told him.
He showed no surprise, but was silent while I explained. I had not been able to wait, I said. I’d been eager to look at my grandmother’s house.
“I got there just in time to see Laura come down those steep steps with Dr. Fletcher and a woman I suppose was Miss Varos. They helped her into a car and drove away. A small woman—Dr. Fletcher’s sister?—stayed behind.”
“Of course,” he said. “They were running from you. You must have startled Dr. Fletcher for some reason. I wonder why.”
“Then—then I won’t be able to see her?”
“Perhaps you will.” He gave me his slow, rather beautiful smile. He was a grave man, and I had not seen him smile before. “I was able to reach Irene on the telephone after I talked to you. She was not able to speak freely from the house, but she went outside to call me back. She said that Dr. Fletcher had seemed disturbed when he returned from his trip downtown, and he had persuaded Laura that it would be pleasant to visit the cottage she owns on a small lake near Fantoft. Mrs. Jaffe, the doctor’s sister, is staying in the Kalfaret house here in Bergen, but Irene was to go with Laura and look after her. We think it is all a plan to keep Laura from meeting you, should you become persistent. But like me, Irene thinks it may be good for her to meet you.”
“She looked quite ill,” I said.
Gunnar nodded soberly. “This illness has come on her only lately.”
Since her marriage? I wondered.
“It appears to be an illness of apathy,” Gunnar went on. “I have seen her a few times, and it is as though she had suddenly given up all desire to live.”
This time I wondered aloud. “It’s strange that she should make such a late marriage. Now that she no longer has her beauty, her youth—”
He contradicted me a little sternly, and I sensed that while there might be gentleness and kindness in this man, there was also a firm layer of bedrock.
“You do not know her, Leigh Hollins. I may call you Leigh? She can be a fascinating woman. There is more to beauty than a surface veneer, though perhaps someone as young as yourself has not yet discovered this.”
I bristled inwardly at his words. He was not all that old himself, and I did not like being put down.
“She’s also a very wealthy woman,” I said with some asperity. “Dr. Fletcher might not overlook that.”
“Th
ere is that possibility, of course. Though perhaps you are leaping to a conclusion.”
“It could be that she’s finally reaping everything she’s built for herself in the past,” I said, piqued enough to forget for the moment that I must be on guard with Gunnar Thoresen.
His dark eyes regarded me thoughtfully, and with the same disapproval I had already glimpsed in them.
“We all build for ourselves what we eventually reap. Is not that the cliché? I have known Laura Worth for many years, Leigh. Our families have, as you may know, been close. My father was devoted to her during his life, and so is my mother. She is a brave woman, a sad woman, who until now has not been broken by the years.”
I was grateful for the waitress’s interruption as she set soup plates before us and dry bread to break into the soup. Avoiding Gunnar’s eyes, I gave my attention to the delicious mushroom soup that was made with plentiful fresh mushrooms. I knew even more about Laura Worth and the past than he did. But for the moment I must keep what I knew and felt to myself.
“Irene and I had a discussion on the telephone,” Gunnar went on when the waitress had gone. His slightly formal manner of speech had a pleasant sound in contrast to the more slurred speech of Americans. I was beginning to tune into it. “We have decided that it is wiser if we do not immediately tell Laura that you are her daughter. In her present weak state, the thought of meeting the daughter she has not seen since the child was newborn may be too much for her. If she meets you first as a journalist, she may rouse herself to make a good appearance. She is quite capable of doing so. Then the next step of letting her know your identity will be easier. Perhaps you can use another name temporarily and merely identify yourself as a writer who is eager to interview her. I have suggested Mary Thomas as a possible name, since we had to settle on one. If you have no objection.”
I sensed a certain male assurance in these arrangements, but I had no objection. They might even suit my own purpose better.
“Then I’m to meet her after all?”
“We have planned something—if you do not mind.” At least he seemed to recognize a certain high-handedness in these arrangements. “At Fantoft, where she has gone, there is a place in which she often likes to walk. Our famous stavkirke is there—one of Norway’s few remaining stave churches. It is in a small pleasant park of walks and rocky hills. Irene will take Laura there at ten o’clock tomorrow morning, after Dr. Fletcher has driven back to town. If these plans suit you, I will drive you to Fantoft and Irene will bring Laura there. An extra car is kept at the cottage, which she may use. Then you can speak with each other alone.”
“She’ll have been told about me ahead of time?”
“Yes. That is, she will be told that you are a young writer from America who wishes to interview her for a book you are working on.”
“But if she has refused interviews for so long?”
“I believe Irene will persuade her. During the last few years she has begun to believe she is forgotten in America. It is even possible that she will welcome an interest great enough to bring you here.”
“I see. Then I’m to interview here there, if she will allow it? Is that all?”
“You Americans have a phrase,” Gunnar said. “To play something by ear—is it not? You must see how she responds. Nothing can be forced, but perhaps you will ask for another meeting.”
“What if Dr. Fletcher finds out and says no?”
“Laura will have been warned that he has already said no. It is a word she did not care for in the past. Possibly she will not accept it now. Possibly she is like yourself in this?”
I smiled at him, agreeing. He was perceptive, this lean Norwegian with the handsome, narrow face. Perhaps there was a certain obstinacy in him as well. I suspected that he did not like Miles Fletcher.
“Does Laura know about my father’s death?” I asked.
“Yes. It was in the papers here. Though I do not know how it affected her. Since her marriage, I do not see her often, and she has said nothing.”
“What has her life been like since she’s lived in Bergen?”
“Rather quiet. When she came here she seemed a woman badly hurt. She had made a foolish marriage which had not gone well and there had just been a divorce. She had been injured only a few years before by what had happened in Hollywood, and by the suspicions the public held against her in America, in spite of her exoneration by the law from any guilt. Where in the past she had lived in the public eye, she now hid from its gaze. In Bergen we do not trouble her. We tend to mind our own business and to leave alone anyone who wishes to be left alone. There has been a certain pride in the fact that this famous woman was born in Bergen. I believe her mother insisted upon returning to her own home for the birth of her child—even though she quickly took the baby back to her American husband. It is not overlooked that Laura Worth lives in our midst now. But we do not disturb her.”
“What did she do with herself during all those years?”
“She accepted certain friendships. My father and mother, and then myself were among them. She became interested in our winter sports, our summer hiking. She reads a great deal.”
“But all that is merely marking time,” I said. “It’s hard to picture someone who lived as Laura Worth did going into retreat, giving up a great career so completely.”
The waitress took our plates away, brought boiled salmon with small white potatoes and a side sauce of sour cream. When we had been served, Gunnar returned to my last question.
“She has not been altogether unhappy, I think. Perhaps not entirely happy, either. Who is? But that is enough talk about Laura Worth. I would like to know about you. This writing—it interests you greatly?”
His own interest seemed sincere and warm, and in spite of the flashes when he regarded me like an autocratic uncle, I was drawn to him increasingly. I still had not disillusioned him of his notion that I was a proper daughter seeking her mother. Yet while I didn’t deliberately deceive him, I held back from a truth which might make him refuse to help me. Now I attempted to tell him a little about myself.
“My father always encouraged me to write,” I said, and tried to describe the sort of things I’d had published. I wanted him to know that I was working hard toward success in my field.
“You paint an unusual picture,” he said when I paused: “You have great ambition, but what of the rest of your life? Do you make room for play, for enjoyment?”
“The most interesting sort of play is satisfying work.” Since I didn’t want to be lectured about a balanced life, I asked a question of my own. “Do you have a family, Gunnar?”
“Only my mother, who lives with me. My wife, Astrid, died several years ago. We had no children. She was always rather frail.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I had to ask the next question. “You were happy together?”
“Very happy.” His tone told me how much he had missed her.
We ate in silence for a little while, and I found the salmon as good as he had promised. There was no strain in our quiet. We had both lost those we loved and there was kinship in that.
When it was time for dessert he insisted that I must try the cloudberries—those delicious yellow berries that grow in the mountains of Norway. Not until we were having coffee did he return to the subject of Laura Worth. What I had said earlier must have stayed with him, troubling his thoughts.
“You will be gentle with her?” he asked me.
“I’m not sure that I’m a gentle person,” I said. “I’m likely to be direct.”
“An admirable trait. The Bergenser is direct also. But this is a vulnerable woman. You can wound her easily because you are her daughter. When she learns this, she will remember everything you have said to her.”
He was overlooking my own vulnerability. Laura Worth had wounded my father cruelly and turned away from me. I too carried wounds—for both my father and myself. I answered him carefully.
“I shouldn’t think she would care about my being her daugh
ter. She made her own choice long ago. She decided against my father, and against me. So why should my existence trouble her now?”
“There is such a thing as the blood tie, is there not? Perhaps it is a thing more of the heart than of the mind. Did you perhaps feel it when you saw her today?”
He had put his perceptive finger upon something I didn’t want to admit to myself, let alone to him. I didn’t want to remember that fit of trembling that had possessed me so unexpectedly, so unreasonably. Had that been it—the blood tie that flowed through my pulses and responded to Laura Worth against my conscious will?
“She’s a stranger to me!” I said a little too hotly. “I haven’t any feeling that she’s my mother. She interests me as an actress—an artist in her work. I can become excited about her career. I can—” I broke off, knowing that I protested too much.
I must be more careful with this man. He could probe too deeply. And if he knew how I truly felt about Laura Worth, I suspected that he would stop our meeting without the slightest qualm. He was her friend, not mine. He was my father’s friend and Laura’s, and there was in him a rough granite that would bruise anyone who flung herself heedlessly against it. My earlier feeling that I didn’t want to deceive him about Laura was fading. He would be a difficult man to fool and my one objective now was to go through with this planned meeting. What happened afterward would have to be met in its own due time.
“I suppose, more than anything else, I admire the fact that she’s been so single-minded about her career,” I went on. “I want to be like that myself. But of course I know there’s a price that must be paid in time and energy and concentration. Nothing outside must interfere, even though it might seem attractive at the moment.” I didn’t add that I meant to be even more single-minded than Laura had been. I would not be so foolish as to fall into emotional traps that would hurt others, as she had done.
“I wonder what such ambition is like?” he mused. “This is something I have not felt. I am fond of the sea and ships. I am fond of painting, at which I dabble a little. I enjoy the mountains in the winter, and the lakes and fjords in summer. I like to live my day fully, with work and pleasure mixed. We Norwegians sometimes wonder if Americans do not miss the best part of living because of this very rush and hurry and determination to—what is it you say?—to get somewhere?”
Listen for the Whisperer Page 4
