The Last Boat Home

by Dea Brovig

  ‘What psalms are you singing?’ he wanted to know. ‘For the Christmas concert. What are the psalms?’

  Else was glad her mouth was full. The only students of the Gymnasium who took part in a Christmas concert were those who belonged to the Youth Choir at the bedehus, which performed at the Christmas tree party each year on 26th December. While she chewed, she tried to recall the concert organised by the schoolhouse the previous year.

  ‘“Deilig er den Himmel Blå”,’ she said. ‘And “A Child is born in Bethlehem”.’

  Her father lifted his mug to his lips. Else crept back to the kitchen, where she washed her plate and glass and replaced the loaf on the pantry’s middle shelf. She took a moment to collect herself, summoning the words of the first verse of Deilig er jorden from her memory in case he asked for a rendition, though she knew her voice would fail. She stared at her feet as they carried her over the floor to stand in front of him.

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ she said.

  Her father drank from his mug. His chin drooped to his chest as he glared at the fire.

  Else mounted the staircase to her bedroom and closed the door. In the dark, she began to undress. She pulled off her jumper, her roll-necked shirt; she unhooked the bra whose clasp Lars had struggled to unfasten. The simple embroidery of its twin cups ridged under her fingers like filigree. She unzipped her trousers and let them fall around her ankles. Her bare skin turned to gooseflesh in the cold. Outside her window, the branches of the cherry tree swayed in the breeze and tapped the glass.

  Else groped for the nightgown folded under her pillow, but paused before slipping it on. Standing next to her bed in her underpants, she leaned forward at the waist and drew a hand between her thighs. She remembered the shock she had felt earlier when Lars had started to whimper into her ear. She put on the nightgown and buried herself under the covers, where she lay blinking into the emptiness above.

  Sleep would not come, no matter how she longed for it. Else listened to the fjord, to the cherry tree’s knock. She closed her eyes and pressed her lips against her hand, thinking of the taste of Lars’s kiss. When a sound filtered through the wall that separated her bedroom from her parents’, she thought for a moment she had drifted into a dream. She sat up in bed when a sob tore off in a gulp.

  ‘Mamma?’ she whispered.

  The tree knocked. The tide washed out to sea.

  Else expected her mother to be up when she awoke the next morning and went downstairs to the kitchen. She tidied away her plate and glass from the night before and washed the mug that her father had left in the sink, sniffing it first to confirm her suspicions, then erasing the evidence with soap and water.

  In the hallway she buttoned her coat and, bucket in hand, set off across the yard to the milking barn, which looked more forlorn in its neglect with each winter it survived. Through the years whole strips of paint had been scrubbed away by rain, sleet and snow, exposing patches of timber that had been warped by the damp. The wind would take it one day, Else was sure. She would come out for milking and the cow would be pawing a pile of splinters.

  The barn door screeched when she shoved it over the concrete floor. Inside, the air was ripe with manure. Else lifted the latch that secured the cow’s pen and carried her stool to its usual spot before sitting down to begin milking. She could feel the animal’s ribs through the scratch of her pelt when she pressed her cheek to her flank. Else’s fingers found a rhythm and, as the milk pounded her bucket, the sound of its spurts beat back thoughts of her father, allowing her to remember what had happened in the Cadillac with a sense of awe at her own recklessness.

  Her arm was stiff with the burden of her pail as she retraced her steps over the yard. She had come as far as the swede stalks that were the vegetable plot’s last crop of the year when she spotted her father emerging from under the boathouse, an oar in hand as he guided the skiff free of its moorings.

  Else rushed indoors. In the kitchen, she prepared a tray with a slice of bread and honey and a cup of chicory, which she brought upstairs to her parents’ bedroom.

  ‘Mamma?’ she said. She balanced the tray on her arm as she rapped her knuckles on the door. When she heard no reply, she dipped its handle with her elbow and nudged it open. ‘Aren’t you feeling any better?’

  Her mother lay in bed facing the wall. The quilt had settled over her like a snowdrift. A pair of tights showed its ankles over the side of the dresser.

  ‘I brought you some food,’ Else said. ‘You should try to eat.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said her mother. ‘It’s only a headache.’

  Else waited for her to roll over, but her mother did not stir. She placed the tray on the mattress and sat down beside it. She had an urge to stroke the hair that hung limp over the pillow and wondered when grey had triumphed over brown. How strange, she thought, that she had not set it in curlers. Her mother always set her hair in curlers before bed.

  ‘Father’s out fishing,’ Else said.

  The quilt rose with her mother’s breath. It sank and rose.

  ‘Is there something you need?’

  ‘No,’ her mother said. ‘Go and make a start on the morning’s chores.’

  ‘The morning’s over, Mamma.’

  Else smoothed her palms over her trousers and stood and moved to the window to open the curtains. A faint light did little to brighten the room. She looked for her father on the water, but did not see the skiff. With the rowlock missing, he must have used the Johnson motor to zip into the skerry. Her mother’s housecoat lay in a heap on the floor. Else picked it up and shook it out and folded it over the arm of the chair.

  ‘Maybe we should fetch Dr Vedvik,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ said her mother. Then, more calmly, ‘No,’ she said.

  With a sigh, she propped herself up so that Else could see the damage her father had done. The lids of her mother’s left eye were swollen, the bruise deepening from purple to black above the cheekbone. Else felt as though someone was holding her head under water. Her throat closed up. Her mother’s face dissolved in salt.

  ‘It’s all right, Else.’ The words were sodden and slow. ‘It isn’t as bad as it looks. You mustn’t tell anyone. Do you hear me? Your father will be starting a new job soon. Things will get better then.’

  ‘What job?’ Else said.

  ‘At the shipyard,’ her mother said. ‘I spoke to Karin after luncheon the other day. Haakon has found him a position, though goodness knows it isn’t an easy time to be handing out work. We’re very lucky. Your father will see that soon.’

  Else imagined her mother in Karin Reiersen’s parlour trying to phrase the request while her coffee grew cold. She knew what it must have cost her to ask the favour of her old school friend. She sank onto the edge of the bed, sore with the thought of it, just as the idea of her family accepting charity from Lars’s parents made her want to scream. She pictured her father, sloppy with drink, handling a welding torch in one of Reiersen’s construction sheds. She saw him throwing a fist and slamming her mother to the floor.

  ‘What about the insurance money?’ she asked.

  ‘There’s no money,’ her mother said. ‘He hasn’t paid the Hull and Machinery insurance in years. It was too expensive, he said.’ The corners of her lips quivered in a sad smile. ‘We’ll be fine, Else, once your father starts work. And Karin has ordered a new dress. That should keep me busy for a while.’

  Else wanted to ask where it had happened. Had her mother been in the kitchen peeling potatoes for their dinner? Or sewing in the dining room, or dusting in the Best Room? Was this the first time, or had he hit her before?

  ‘As soon as he starts work,’ her mother said, ‘everything will be fine, you’ll see.’

  Else nodded at her mother’s bruise. She felt her hand pressed by cold fingers and she squeezed back and said nothing.

  Johann returned from his fishing trip having caught two coalfish, which he gutted and cleaned while kneeling on the pier. Dagny pan-fried the fillets and p
repared a sauce and the family sat together around the dining table to eat their meal. Else picked at the fish until dinner was done, when she scraped the leftovers into the bin.

  She used what was left of the day on her chores and was grateful for a reason to stay busy. After filling a bucket with soft soap diluted in water, she scrubbed the floor and the surfaces of the kitchen. In the Best Room, she flung the windows wide as she dusted and sweated in spite of the wind. She tore the cobwebs with her cloth and thumped the cushions with clenched fists. She polished the furniture until the wood gleamed and her hands ached with the effort.

  At half past nine, as she pierced the heel of a sock with a threaded needle she had chosen from her mother’s sewing box, Else remembered Lars. He and the boys would be at the paddock by now, sipping moonshine and wondering what had become of her.

  THERE WERE NO stars in the December sky on Johann’s first morning of work at the Reiersen shipyard. Else lay gazing at the ceiling beams over her bed and waited for the day to begin. Her parents’ bedroom door creaked before her mother’s clogs click-clacked in the corridor and on the stairs. Pipes groaned. Her father coughed through the wall. Else stayed under the covers for as long as she could.

  Once she was up, she milked the cow and returned to find her father in the dining room. His hair had been combed into a side parting. The outbreak of whiskers had been shaved from his jaw. She left him chewing a banana sliced on bread and climbed the stairs to wash in the bathroom. As she brushed her teeth, she studied her face in the mirror and saw nothing pretty in the high forehead and straight nose inherited from him.

  The kitchen smelled sweet with roasted chicory when she reappeared, feeling the cold in spite of her long johns and woollen sweater. She buttered a crust of bread, though she had no appetite for breakfast. She ate it on the spot while, beside her, her mother packed two sandwiches in greaseproof paper.

  ‘Can’t I pour you a cup?’ her mother asked.

  Else shook her head at the yellowed remains of the bruise which had been camouflaged with powder. Her mother followed her into the hallway, where her father was searching the closet.

  ‘Where’s my coat?’ he asked and his wife unhooked it from its peg. Johann pulled it on, then zipped the sandwich that she offered him into his pocket. He drew a hat down over his ears.

  ‘Don’t forget your thermos,’ Dagny said and handed it to him. ‘Good luck today.’ Johann trudged outside.

  Else dragged herself into the dark that shrouded the lawn and up the hill to the frosted road, trailing after her father at a distance that she hoped would keep her safe from conversation. The earth was frozen stiff all the way to the public dock, its pores plugged with ice and rotting leaves. A crowd had gathered on the pier. The shipyard’s labourers outnumbered the passengers who watched for the ferry to town. The workers huddled together as if for warmth, gazing at the shipyard’s boat that came for them from across the fjord, its navigation lamps sparking against the black water.

  Johann struck a match to the leaking end of a rolled cigarette. He scowled through the fog he exhaled and wiped his nose on his glove. Else licked her chapped lips and anticipated the moment when her father would turn around for home. When the boat put in at the dock, the labourers arranged themselves in a queue and each took their place in the cabin. Johann smoked until the last man had stepped from the pier. He hurled his cigarette into the water.

  ‘Goddamn it,’ he said.

  He climbed aboard and soon the motorboat was arcing away from the shore. Johann pressed himself into a corner on deck and bowed his head to his tobacco pouch. Else shuffled her feet. The ferry was late; there was still no sign of it. The air smelled of burning logs and she imagined the farmhouses nearby made snug by their blazing ovens. The circus men must be cold in their trailers. She thought all at once of the strong man standing in the manège, of his defiant look as he faced the howling audience. She shivered under her clothes as a wrack of cloud shed the winter’s first flurry of snow.

  Now

  Summer, 2009

  ELSE WAITS FOR Liv to shoulder her rucksack before she gives her the bus ticket.

  ‘So. You know which stop to get off at, right?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mormor,’ Liv says. ‘I know where I’m going.’

  Liv climbs the stairs to the coach and, while the conductor checks her ticket, waves at Else, who swallows the lump in her throat. However often her granddaughter leaves to visit her father, it never gets easier to see her go. This time, Nils has a month off from the North Sea oilrig where he works in the canteen for Statoil employees. Liv will stay with him for two weeks, before he takes his family on holiday to Cyprus. She does not seem to mind about not having been invited.

  ‘Why would I want to go with them to Cyprus?’ she said. ‘The baby has colic. It’d just be somewhere else for me not to get any sleep.’

  The driver starts the engine and the coach trembles as it reverses out of the depot. Else waves at its rear window’s tinted glass, unsure if Liv is watching but carrying on nonetheless. When the bus is out of sight she walks down the hill and through town to Lyngveien, disheartened by the thought of the weeks that lie ahead. She hopes that Liv will call her once in a while, or she will have to rely on updates from Marianne.

  Else slips into a side street, where she pushes through a revolving door into Meny. The supermarket smells of chickens roasting. She hangs a basket on her arm and opens a fridge for a pot of yoghurt and another for a carton of semi-skimmed milk. At the rotisserie stands Pastor Hansen, the new minister since Pastor Gonsholt retired to Spain. He nods his thanks when the attendant hands him a wrapped lunch cake and places it in his trolley.

  Else prods the oranges and chooses two for her basket, then picks a leek, a courgette, a red bell pepper. Dinner tonight will be for one. Marianne has agreed to work double shifts while Liv is in Stavanger. She is saving up, she says, though goodness knows what for. Since she started waitressing, Else has barely seen her.

  But she takes herself in hand as she approaches the cold cuts: she is being petulant, when she should be pleased Marianne has stuck with this job. She has long wished that her daughter would find a vocation she loves as much as Else does her own. Twelve years have passed since Ninni Tenvik’s first stroke, when the older woman’s physiotherapist volunteered to show her some simple massage techniques. While Else checks the price of frozen shrimp at the fish counter, she remembers what it meant to feel Ninni restored by her touch, as if, during the minutes of their first session together, she had succeeded in unlocking the source of her pain. She began to save up for courses in Oslo, catching a coach there and back, sometimes spending a couple of nights in a hotel. As she collected qualifications, she discovered that her fingers could do more than sew. ‘You have healing hands,’ Ninni told her once. Before she died, she and Tenvik persuaded Else to accept a loan to set up the spa.

  Someday soon, Else hopes that her daughter will experience this kind of fulfilment. Until then, a job is a job. It has been a while since Marianne last had one. In the International Food Aisle, Else inspects the jars of sauces arranged on the shelves. Mexican. Indian. Thai. She selects a sachet of oyster sauce to add to her pile, then considers the cellophane packs of noodles as fine as jellyfish tentacles. She lifts one gingerly and skims the instructions on the back.

  ‘Branching out?’ says a man’s voice close by.

  ‘Petter,’ says Else. ‘You startled me.’

  ‘I prefer Italian.’

  ‘Well,’ she says. ‘So do I, if I’m honest.’

  She laughs and feels awkward about having laughed. She rereads the noodles’ cooking times, leaning away from the arm that Petter reaches in front of her. He grabs a jar and studies the label with its bouquet of tomatoes and herbs before putting it in his basket.

  ‘Are you cooking for the girls?’ he asks.

  ‘Not tonight,’ Else says. ‘Liv’s away. She’s visiting her father.’

  ‘And Marianne?’

  ‘Work
ing,’ she says. ‘At the Hong Kong Palace. She’s got herself a job.’

  ‘Good for her,’ Petter says.

  ‘I thought I’d try something new.’ Else shrugs as if admitting to the absurdity of the idea. She replaces the noodles on the shelf and peers into her basket.

  ‘Well,’ says Petter. ‘I’ll be making enough lasagne for two.’

  ‘I’ve never tried to make lasagne,’ Else says. ‘Is it difficult?’

  ‘If you’d care to join me?’

  ‘Oh. I wouldn’t want to trouble you.’

  ‘It’s no trouble,’ Petter says.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t. I have a pile of paperwork to do.’

  ‘That’s too bad,’ he says. ‘Well, have a good night.’

  He walks away, then returns for a box of lasagne sheets. When he is gone, Else stays in the International Food Aisle for several minutes longer than she needs to. She decides on a jar of sweet and sour sauce and the bag of rice noodles she had been contemplating earlier. Afterwards, she spies Petter in a queue at the tills and takes a detour through Frozen Foods back to the fish counter.

  By the time she pays for her groceries, she has to ask for two plastic bags in addition to the canvas tote she has brought along. She retraces her steps to Torggata, her pace slow with the load of her shopping. A raindrop hits her arm as she nears the Hong Kong Palace. She pauses by its window and steps close to the glass. She has heard that the restaurant is popular. Even so, she is surprised to see it so busy this late in the afternoon.

  She spots Marianne waiting on a table, a notepad in one hand, a pencil in the other as a table of diners place their orders in unison. Her hair has been scraped back from her face, showing off the high forehead that screws up in panic. The pencil hangs in the air. An impulse to help her propels Else towards the door, but she stops herself from marching in. Marianne will not thank her for interfering. She continues up the hill that will bring her home.