The Last Boat Home

by Dea Brovig

  Over the course of the next weeks and months, more tankers appeared from the Skagerrak to moor up beside the first. They formed a neat row, two ships, then three, then four bound together with ropes and hawsers. With each new arrival, the locals rowed out their skiffs or steered their motorboats in for a closer look. They bobbed along the length of each hull, back and forth, staggered by their size. Dagny took to scowling at the tankers from the dining room window and muttering about a spoiled view. Tenvik discussed them with his wife whenever Else visited. She listened with one hand on her belly, the other holding a cup of tea.

  Ninni was knitting a cardigan for the baby: a lusekofte in white and blue, to be finished with tin buttons.

  ‘I think it will be a boy,’ Ninni liked to say. ‘Have you thought of names? Klaus is nice. Or Marianne, if it’s a girl.’

  Else knew from the headstones in the cemetery that these had been the names of the Tenvik children. She was not ready to think about what she would call the baby. She tried not to think about the baby at all. She sewed the clothes her mother brought home by the armload, pausing now and again to gaze at the tankers across the fjord, a beached herd robbed of its promise, forced to deny the pull of the sea.

  The sun set earlier every day. Dawn arrived later in a gloomy sky. Else realised that autumn had passed and winter was upon them.

  ELSE WAS FIVE days late when, on a Thursday morning in January, her contractions started. She had been working at the table in the dining room, which had been spread with blankets and sheets to protect the wood from her iron. Her arms were stretched long, but still she was forced to stoop to reach the surface beyond the obstacle of her belly. The cramp came in a ripple, a slow spreading of pain. She set down the iron and pulled out its plug.

  Her mother arrived from the barn carrying a pail of milk. She shook the snow from her hair as she stepped into the dining room.

  ‘I think it’s started,’ Else said.

  ‘Sit down,’ said her mother. ‘I’ll bring you a glass of water.’

  Else sat in a chair by the oven, gritting her teeth against a new stirring of pain. She pressed the floor with the balls of her feet until it had passed.

  That afternoon, Dagny hurried from the farmhouse. Else watched her through the window, a black speck against an unbroken plain of snow. The glass rattled with wind as she marched past the barn and onto the hill, the hem of her coat fluttering behind her. The trees swallowed her up and Else was alone. She hoped it would not take her mother long. She had promised she would ask Tenvik to drive her home as soon as she had finished with his telephone. The hospital would send a car once she had rung. It would not take long.

  Else stood to feed a log into the oven. She paced the floorboards, stopping to clutch the table ledge whenever the pain flared. She swallowed air into her lungs, breathed out and in and tried not to think about what was to come. But fear had grown solid inside of her, gaining substance and form with the expanding of her belly. She would not allow herself to think about the baby. There was only this moment, and the next, and that was all.

  A band of flames had erupted across her lower back by the time her mother returned. Else bit down hard on a moan as the front door opened and the wind burst into the farmhouse.

  ‘Tenvik wasn’t there,’ called Dagny from the hallway. ‘I’d hoped he would drive me, but only Ninni was home. I’ve rung the hospital. The midwife is on her way. We’ll stay in the dining room so you won’t have to use the stairs.’

  She was halfway into the room and struggling out of her coat when she saw her daughter. The coat dropped to the floor.

  ‘Else,’ she said. She rushed to her side. She laid one hand between her shoulders and the other on her forehead. Else lifted her face to her mother’s touch. It stung with a cold that cut the fever. The rest of her stayed bent over the dining table, her chest pressed flat on the pile of sheets and blankets.

  ‘It hurts,’ Else said through clenched teeth.

  ‘I know,’ said her mother. ‘Wait here.’

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ she said.

  ‘I’m right here. I’m in the kitchen.’

  ‘It hurts,’ said Else. ‘It hurts, it hurts.’

  Her mother set the kettle to boil. She filled a bowl with water from the tap and brought it into the dining room together with a clean kitchen cloth.

  ‘Come now,’ she said and supported Else while she helped her out of her jumper. The wool was clammy over her head. It cut off the air. Then the jumper was off. Else clawed at the buttons of her blouse with slippery fingers. Its cotton stuck in the creases of her armpits. Her face and throat were slick with sweat that ran between her breasts.

  A new contraction kicked her in the back, folding her again over the table. She groaned and wept.

  ‘The car is coming,’ said her mother. ‘Just hold on.’

  Hands smoothed away the hair that clung to her neck and cheeks. A damp cloth stroked her skin, dripping water onto the table. Else exhaled slowly and the tension released. As weak as her body was, she pushed herself up and started pacing again.

  She lost track of the minutes, of the distance she walked before each new contraction winded her. She knew only that the pain was getting worse and that the midwife had yet to arrive. Again and again, her stomach squeezed. Her womb turned to stone and she cried out for help. Her mother crept back and forth to the window.

  ‘It will be here any minute,’ she said.

  But the car did not come, however much she looked for it. She left the room and returned with towels that smelled of carbolic soap. After freeing Else from her clothing, easing the blouse and bra and trousers from her limbs one at a time, she slipped a nightshirt over her head and rubbed a hand along the base of her spine as if trying to snuff out the wildfire. Else screamed with the spasm of her guts. She clutched her belly.

  ‘No no no!’ she shouted.

  Her body surrendered to trembling. A cold gush of sweat poured down her back and she shook and her insides beat like a butter churn.

  ‘Breathe,’ said her mother, ‘breathe, breathe.’

  Her throat and mouth filled with vomit. She spat it onto the floor.

  ‘Breathe breathe breathe.’

  She felt a tightening of the bowels, a quickening, a mounting of pressure, a gravitational pull. Her innards were dropping; she was turning inside out.

  ‘It’s coming,’ her mother said.

  Hands on her wrists, squeezing as she pushed, leading her back to the table. Else gripped the wood with fingers set on shredding it to splinters. Her head sagged and roared with blood as she howled.

  ‘Again,’ said her mother. ‘You’re almost there.’

  She clamped her teeth and pushed.

  ‘I can see it. I can see the head.’

  She pushed again and felt a cleaving and a spilling down her legs. She pushed until her body quaked with an animal sound.

  ‘It’s a girl,’ said her mother. ‘Else, it’s a girl.’

  A mewl pierced the clamour between her ears and Else looked at her daughter. Her mother hugged the baby close. Tears dripped from her nose onto the purple gooseflesh of a scrawny body. She was oily with blood. Her head was smeared white, her eyes wrinkles of skin tipped by gossamer lashes. With every scream, her lips quivered and her hands searched the air. Her mother placed the child on Else’s chest, then wrapped a sheet around them both.

  ‘Come and rest,’ she said.

  But Else could not move. She stared at her daughter. The baby’s fingers stretched and flexed, seeking blindly before closing around Else’s thumb. A firm, desperate hold. Else’s breasts ached. Her womb convulsed with the afterbirth. She rocked her child and said a prayer.

  They were lying on the floor on a pile of blankets arranged by the oven when the hospital car arrived. Dagny opened the front door and led the midwife into the dining room. She knelt beside Else, who held her baby in her arms.

  Now

  Summer, 2009

  FOR THE FIRST few minutes, Else i
s alone in the barn. An arc of sunlight falls past her through the doorway, smearing her shadow over the floor in an uncanny distortion that stretches to the far wall. The air glitters with dust particles that make her sneeze when she steps inside. Her clogs clack on the concrete.

  She wonders when she was last in here. Even before her mother died, they had not used the barn for some time. There was no need to once Tenvik bought the cow which, by then, had stopped producing milk. Another kindness – one of many more to come. Else remembers the sun sweltering in a summer sky during the week when she cleared the space of sawdust and manure. While Marianne galloped make-believe horses in rings around her, she shovelled it into a wheelbarrow for disposal at the edge of the property.

  The recollection of her daughter as a child bolsters her now and she moves further inside. It smells of the damp that coaxes mould from the corners like fur. The stockades of the two stalls were torn down long ago and removed, along with most of the features that would remind her of her childhood. Even so, as she looks around at the gutted space, she sees her father on a ladder hammering nails into the roof. She sees a giant of a man hoisting a log towards the ceiling with his bare hands.

  The girls’ voices interrupt her thoughts and she backs again into the doorway.

  ‘I’m in here,’ she calls, glancing up the hill.

  Marianne and Liv escort an estate agent. His gait is eager, his expression impatient.

  ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘this is nice. A pearl. The location really is something.’

  ‘Well,’ says Else. ‘Here’s the barn. It isn’t much.’

  She sweeps a hand to invite him in. The estate agent – Morten, he called himself – obliges. He stops in the centre of the room and turns in a circle, screwing up eyes that dart in his head.

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ he says. ‘Barn conversions are very popular these days. If summer residents can get permission for them, that is.’

  Else nods. She is glad the girls are here. She would not have liked to be doing this on her own. She joins them outside to wait for Morten.

  ‘It’s strange being back here,’ Marianne says.

  When Morten emerges they make their way across the yard, their shoes trampling the grass where the onions used to grow. They continue to the front door, where Else hesitates, though her keys are ready in hand.

  ‘Aren’t we going in?’ Liv asks.

  Else fits the key in the lock. The hallway is dark when she pushes the door wide. She fumbles for the switch and a bulb illuminates the farmhouse entrance. Tenvik’s man has done a good job. Only a sprinkling of dust dirties the floor and he cannot be blamed for that, given that a month has passed since he last came to clean. Else has already decided to hire him again to mow the lawn and vacuum before the viewings begin. Stay focused on the practical, she tells herself. Meanwhile, Morten slips past her and starts to calculate potential.

  ‘May I?’ he asks and points towards the dining room.

  ‘Help yourself,’ Else says, and he does.

  Liv and Marianne accompany him. Else stays where she is on the threshold. Gazing at the ceiling beams above the staircase, she is surprised to find that the farmhouse is still intact. Somehow, she had imagined her neglect would have set its foundations to crumbling. A phantom house: that is what she expected. And yet, here it is, no different from how it was. Tenvik is right, of course. She should have sold it right away, but it has been easier to leave it alone.

  Else follows the others into the dining room and finds Marianne and Liv kneeling next to the sideboard. They are examining the bowls that are stacked inside.

  ‘They’re filthy,’ Marianne says. ‘Do you want to keep any?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Else says.

  Morten calls to them from the kitchen enclave. ‘It should get a good price,’ he says. ‘Since the council agreed to let properties be sold as holiday homes on this part of the coast, the market has opened up considerably. Of course it needs work, but we can emphasise its possibilities to prospective buyers. Knocking down the walls right here would make this space an open kitchen. A lick of white paint would make it nice and bright.’

  Else lets her eyes wander over the room as if allowing herself to be taken in by his vision. What she sees are walls the grey of seagulls’ wings. The door to the cast-iron oven hangs open on its hinges, exposing its empty belly, scraped clean and left cold for the longest time. In the corner above the table and chairs, which stand as if glued to their places, the windows show the barn at the end of a yard streaked with sun.

  ‘It’s different to how I remember it,’ says Liv. ‘Why haven’t we been back here since Oldemor died? It’s still yours.’

  ‘It’s ours,’ says Else.

  ‘Nobody lives here,’ says Marianne. ‘It’s just a house.’

  Her tone is flat when she speaks and Else ventures a sad smile. She prefers not to think about what it must have been like for her growing up here, in this town, in this house. The strong man’s daughter.

  ‘You know your mother was born here?’ she says to Liv. ‘Right in this room. The hospital car was late.’

  ‘I know,’ says Liv. ‘You’ve told me before.’

  ‘What’s next?’ asks Morten.

  Else leads the way through the hallway to the Best Room. The doorknob is cold in her palm when she twists it, releasing a musty smell from within. The crocheted curtains are brittle and yellow, as are the sheets that have been draped over the straight-backed chairs.

  ‘We should probably clear out the furniture before viewings start,’ says Morten. He strides inside and nods meaningfully as he approaches the window. ‘Great view to the water. That could really be enhanced. If the new owners were to cut down the cherry tree and put some windows in here’ – his arm sweeps the length of the wall – ‘the view would be beautiful.’

  Else smiles, but her thoughts have drifted. She is on her hands and knees beside her mother, scrubbing the floor with soft soap, scouring her father from the cracks. She is six months pregnant and hooking the window on its latch to air him from the four walls. Still the space smells of him.

  ‘Marianne,’ Else says, ‘would you show Morten upstairs? I think I’ll wait here, if that’s all right.’

  Morten follows Marianne and Liv into the hallway, leaving Else to herself. She pulls a sheet from one of the chairs and sits on its inadequate cushion. It is as hard as she remembers it being. While she waits, she crumples the sheet in her lap and listens to the sound of footsteps overhead.

  A new door opens in her memory, propelling her back onto her feet and across the room. In the corner cupboard, a skin of cobwebs hides onkel Olav’s coffee set. She punctures it with her finger and strands of silk fall away. Else reaches for a cup, lifting it and turning it under her nose. A dark residue tarnishes the white enamel of the bowl, but the exterior looks unsoiled by time. Gold leaves float on the surface of a black sea. She strokes the filigree with her thumb and recognises in the pattern a wish from her childhood.

  She decides to keep these. She does not want anything else.

  Else recovers the rest of the coffee set from its shelf, picking up the cups one by one and placing them on the table. As she does, the girls’ voices carry down in a chatter interrupted here and there by Morten’s deeper timbre. The creak of the staircase announces their return. Else retrieves the coffee pot last of all.

  ‘What’s that?’ asks Liv when she arrives in the doorway.

  ‘A gift from my uncle to Oldemor. I’m bringing it home,’ Else says.

  ‘Maybe we could take a look at the boathouse,’ says Morten. ‘I’m sure it will be a point of interest. It isn’t easy to get permission to build them from scratch these days.’

  ‘Could you finish showing Morten around?’ Else asks Marianne. ‘I want to get these packed before we go.’

  ‘This way,’ says Marianne and shows the estate agent outside.

  Liv stays behind with Else. She shuffles into the Best Room and stops by the table, where she t
ouches a fingertip to a cup. Slowly, she traces the outline of a leaf, then another, following the trail from the base in a spiral to the lip. Else takes the sheet that she removed from the chair and lays it out on the floor. She begins to wrap the first cup, stuffing its bowl and swaddling its handle with the material. Liv watches her work before rescuing a new sheet from the bench under the window and mimicking the process.

  ‘Three cups per sheet,’ Else says.

  When they have packed seven cups, eight saucers, a sugar bowl, a cream jug and the coffee pot into bundles, Else fetches a plastic bag from a drawer in the kitchen. She shakes it open and crams it full with the porcelain.

  ‘Let’s go and find Mamma,’ she says.

  In the hallway outside the Best Room, she peers up the stairs. The corridor is dark outside her old bedroom. Its door is open.

  ‘What is it, Mormor?’ Liv asks. ‘Do you want to go up?’

  ‘No,’ Else says. ‘I’m ready to go.’

  She and her granddaughter step out into the sun. Down by the water, Marianne is on her mobile phone. She throws back her head and laughs, and Morten jumps where he stands on the pier looking across to the Reiersen shipyard. Moored at the dock, a heavy-lift vessel sprouts four pylons from its well deck, shooting a hundred metres into the sky. Else has read about its arrival in the local paper. The accommodation unit it carries is bound for Ekofisk.

  The fjord is busy with boat traffic: speedboats, sailing boats, kayakers. A waterskier hangs on for dear life. The boathouse casts a shadow, long and lean, over the lawn. It seems to sag on its stilts. It looks used up, decrepit.

  Else locks the front door and climbs down to the yard. Together, she and Liv make their way to Marianne.

  PETTER IS WAITING for her at the Longpier. She sees his sailing boat docked in front of Peppe’s Pizza as she ambles down Torggata, the wind buffing her cheeks and washing the street with its salty, clean smell. Else pulls the elastic band from her ponytail and lets her hair fall down her back. She glances into the window of the Hong Kong Palace and carries on by.