The Island

by Ben McPherson

  ‘It’s just …’ I said. I caught Jo’s amused smile. ‘We’re both spoken for.’

  ‘And what?’ said the blonde woman. ‘Married men can’t talk to us?’ Pretty, I thought. Interested in Jo.

  ‘To be clear …’ said Jo, ‘… neither of us fucks.’

  The women exchanged a look.

  ‘My friend Jo prefers the company of men,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

  Jo sighed. ‘My friend Cal is prone to making irrational choices. A fuck with a woman he just met in a bar will not make him more rational. You ladies will find better pickings at one of the tables over there.’

  ‘OK, Jo,’ said the blonde woman, reaching across the table, making a point of shaking his hand. ‘Nice to meet you. Thank you for being clear. I’m Solveig. I do not wish to fuck you. Either of you. And this is Nina. I think also Nina does not wish to fuck you.’

  They got up to leave.

  ‘Sorry for the interruption,’ said Nina.

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ I said.

  We watched them go. They stood at the corner of the bar, ruffled.

  Jo said, ‘And now your foreigner’s mind is thinking I had no right to speak to those women like that.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘And maybe you want to flirt with a girl in a bar, buy her a few drinks and go home to Elsa. In which case, my bad. And I will walk over there and tell Nina that, and maybe she will come back and you can buy her some drinks. But Cal, man, you have “needs an actual fuck” cut into the lines in your face.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Oh come on,’ he said. ‘I saw the way you leapt away from her when her leg brushed yours. You yelped.’

  ‘I did not yelp.’

  ‘You yelped. What’s that, if not a guilty conscience?’

  ‘Tell Elsa from me that I don’t fuck other women.’

  He laughed, shook his head.

  ‘What’s funny?’

  ‘Just … Elsa’s pretty much erased me from her life.’

  ‘I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.’

  His eyes searched mine. He looked away. ‘Maybe you can understand that I worry about you guys.’

  ‘Do you think she’s faithful to me?’

  He took a long slug of his pint. He put the glass carefully down on the table. ‘Cal, mate, no one comes easily through losing a child.’

  ‘So that’s a no?’

  He ignored me and carried on. ‘People become strangers in their own home and they fuck other, easier strangers in bars.’ He took another long swig. ‘But I really don’t think that’s Elsa. She’s completely devoted to you.’

  ‘I always thought that.’

  ‘So what’s changed? Have you and Elsa stopped having sex?’

  ‘Well, I can’t speak for my wife …’

  Jo was looking out at the snow, orange in the light of the streetlamp. ‘I’m not an audience. Don’t turn this into a joke.’

  ‘I don’t seek an audience.’

  He was right, though. He was my closest friend here; he had known Elsa since they were children. I wanted to tell him that our marriage was eroding, that I had lost a daughter and now I was losing my wife. But Jo was Elsa’s friend before he was mine, so instead I said, ‘You were about to tell me about Edvard.’

  ‘OK. Let’s do me instead.’ He made a bridge of his hands, fingertips pressed together. ‘I am coming to the conclusion that the man I love actually hates me.’

  I laughed.

  Jo stared at me for a moment. The look in his eye told me he was serious. ‘Since Garden Island, Edvard works stupid hours, and last Friday he rang me and asked if I could bring his uniform and his shaving kit to him on my way to work, because he’d been up all night, and had to be at a press conference. And I was running late, but I said sure. And then my train was delayed, and I didn’t think …’ He was looking down at his feet, shaking his head. ‘And you’re going to find this ridiculous, Cal, because it is utterly ridiculous, but I left the uniform in his rucksack behind the counter at the café opposite the station, because I’ve done it a million times. But that was before Garden Island. Everything’s changed now, hasn’t it?’

  I thought of the Andersen brothers in their police uniforms, the badges torn by briars. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I guess it has.’

  ‘And when Edvard got there it was gone. On the CCTV there’s this little wiry kid hanging about, but you don’t see him take it, and the staff remembered nothing. And it’s probably not terrorists and it’s probably just a kid being a kid. But it doesn’t matter how many times I try to speak to Edvard’s boss, because she really doesn’t care that it’s my fault and not Edvard’s. Edvard is responsible for his own uniform. And Edvard hates me. I mean, he tries not to, I know, but he does. I humiliated him. I put him under suspicion.’

  ‘Did you get it back?’

  ‘No. And you can’t talk about this.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘He’s the best thing that ever happened to me.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Was. Now he turns away when I kiss him.’

  I said, ‘I’m sorry, mate.’

  ‘I am so fucking stupid. Because I know the uses a police uniform can be put to …’

  21

  The winter refused to end. In the morning dark I would inch Franklin’s stroller across the treacherous ice, terrified that I would stumble, that I would lose my grip, that my best belovèd son would careen down the hill into the relentless traffic that waited at the bottom. I felt stupid and unwieldy in my Loden coat, a stranger in a land where no one else was afraid to fall.

  Most days I met Tvist at the kindergarten as he was delivering Josi. Such a beautiful child she was, all ringlets and dimples. She had her father’s dark, watchful eyes and a wondrous, radiant smile. Franklin and Josi would kick and shake their toddler fists, burbling and chuntering at each other. We would undress them down to their woollen underwear, place them into the welcoming arms of the workers, drop their lunchboxes in the crate, check their lockers for snowsuits and woollen hats and stacks of fresh diapers. Then Tvist and I would walk out and stand together on the sheet ice beneath the street’s only light.

  We would nod at the arriving parents, and they would nod in reply. We would laugh about the cold and the dark, sometimes share a cigarette in gloved fingers, our smoke and our breath curling upwards in the frigid air. And we would talk. We talked about our families. We talked about the rules of comedy, and the frustrations of police work. I never asked Tvist anything important; he was careful never to mention Licia or the Andersens. He was a good man, I sometimes thought, trying to rebuild his force, fighting a bureaucracy that was complacent to the core.

  ‘Do you know what I found out?’ he said one day. ‘This will outrage you. It outrages me. Guess when the greatest number of my officers are at work? Go on. Make a guess. No? It’s not at midnight on a Saturday, when serious crimes are being committed. No, it’s at midday on a Tuesday, which is virtually crime-free.’ He was looking at me, expectant. ‘My staffing rosters are being organized around the convenience of my officers.’

  ‘I can see that’s not good,’ I said cautiously. ‘Are you actually allowed to tell me this?’

  ‘It’s coming out in the evening news today.’ Still that expectant look, as if he wanted me to get there before he did. I smiled a noncommittal smile.

  ‘You almost wish a person would write a satirical piece.’ He gave a strange little out-of-character sigh. ‘It would … send the right message.’

  ‘The right message?’ I said.

  ‘That the world is watching us. That we need to improve. That self-sacrifice lies at the heart of police work. An American officer understands this, I think. My own officers do not.’

  His brown-black irises, very close to mine, flicking from my right eye to my left. ‘You could write something.’

  I laughed.

  Tvist smiled but did not laugh. He said, ‘I could provide any needed information.’

>   He was serious.

  ‘I can’t help you in your internal battles,’ I said. ‘That wouldn’t be satire. It would be … I don’t know what it would be … Don’t you employ consultants for this stuff?’

  ‘If only your principles would allow me to employ you as a consultant …’

  I wondered sometimes if he was trying to buy my sympathy. I knew his detectives had made no progress on the dress or on the house church. And I knew – and Tvist didn’t know that I knew – about the Post-it note on his desk.

  To tell him I knew would be to declare war. I was not yet ready for that.

  At half past eight the street lights in Oslo would go out, all at once. Sunrise was officially at nine, though we rarely saw the actual sun. The filtered daylight felt like a mistake, an unintended interruption to the unending dark.

  Elsa and I settled into our new reality, as parents of a missing child. We grew used to television cameras and microphones, to stares in the street and to journalists who could not quite meet our gaze. We dressed like concerned parents in respectful, conservative clothes. I took to wearing dark suits; Elsa to high-buttoned blouses and long-flowing skirts.

  We read prepared statements to the press, which we agreed in advance with Tvist:

  If you have any information, anything at all …

  We miss you, Licia.

  Please come home …

  We were kind to each other inside the home, made a point of holding hands and kissing in front of the children. To look at us you would think we were getting by. But Jo was right to be concerned. The truth was that in eight months Elsa and I had not fucked once. And the lie she had told about her therapist: I could not let go of that.

  In February I lost my column in the Beltway Times.

  ‘Your writing’s gotten serious, Cal,’ my editor said. ‘This is a satirical column.’

  ‘Satire’s purpose is serious, Gina.’

  ‘And your writing always had a point behind the laughs. But white supremacist murderers? Every week? Do you want to be on these guys’ radar?’

  ‘Isn’t that my risk to take?’

  ‘Plus our readers need some actual laughter …’

  The argument was lost. I could come back, she said, when I was ready. But I knew that – in the kindest, nicest way – she was firing me.

  I had long since stopped going to my support group. It felt wrong to ask other people to translate their pain into my language. Now I was adrift in this country and it frightened me. Elsa had always been my anchor, and she too was adrift. I knew I should tell her about my column, that by not sharing the truth I was failing her, but I was ashamed at my own lack of resilience. I was afraid that the winter would finish us as a family. I knew that it must not.

  I learned everything about the murders on Garden Island. I memorized the coroner’s report, learned the Norwegian terms for hollow point and jacketed, for bone fracture and lung collapse. I forced myself word for word through the articles that detailed the time and the manner of every death. Hard to explain, but knowledge kept at bay the fear that threatened to enfold and engulf me. It kept Licia alive in my mind.

  We had to survive the next few months. The trial date was set for June. We hunkered down and we coped, though how Elsa managed I was not sure. She floated around the apartment like a heroine in an Ibsen play, all buttoned-up blouses and long flowing skirts.

  At night I would hear Elsa in the bathroom. She would turn on all the taps, stand naked under the shower screaming her fury and her frustration at the cruelties fate had dealt us. When I met neighbours on the stairs I would see in their faces that they heard her too. Perhaps she thought the water disguised her screams.

  I took to going for walks. Occasionally I would catch sight of Elsa in a grocery store, talking easily with the staff, or see her laughing happily with people I did not know as she waited for the train into town. I would marvel then at how easily she fitted into this place, while I stood on the periphery, watching. How easily a person might think my wife was happy, when I knew for certain she was not.

  One afternoon I found myself at the coffee bar in the mall. I stood by the thick plate glass, scanned the interior. Baskets of bread hung from a heavy wire, slowly making their way down from the bakery to the walnut-topped counter. There were candles; there were tablecloths; there was raw blackberry jam. All very clean, very hygge.

  Bored-looking women in slacksuits drank fruit drinks through steel drinking straws, their lips plumped with collagen. One of those moments where you could imagine everybody who lived in this country was tall and white and blond. Every tooth was straightened, every blemish removed, every strand of hair professionally lightened. And there was Elsa, alone at a table, listlessly reading Posten.

  Elsa reached for her coffee, took a slug, winced at the taste. A strange erotic thrill, watching my wife, unseen. So beautiful, as she sat there, radiating don’t-come-near. So unlike these other women, with their puffed lips and their smoothed cheeks, their foreheads stiff with botulinum.

  Where was Franklin? I looked about me, at the strollers lined up outside the door, their wheels resting in loose slush. In a stroller very like ours, a child swaddled very like ours reached out a fist and beat at the air. I leaned towards him, ready to lift him and carry him into the café’s warm air, but it was not Franklin. I turned. Elsa was looking down now, speaking softly. She had Franklin at her side, I guessed, just out of sight.

  I began to lean my weight against the door. I paused.

  That man at the next table, staring at Elsa. His entire being was directed at my wife. I took a step into the shadows, amused. How could he be so obvious? For a time, Elsa did not seem to notice. Then she looked up, met his gaze, dismissed him with a half-smile.

  I smiled too. Not a chance, friend.

  Elsa turned the page of the newspaper. But something had caught her off balance. She took a sip of her coffee, and this time – I could see it – she forced herself not to wince at the flavour. Every time she looked up, there was the man, all eyes. His hair was dishevelled, his movements staccato, but his clothes were clean and his trousers pressed.

  The man leaned across, rapped twice on Elsa’s table. I noticed his shoes now, leather-soled, highly polished, not a salt mark to be seen. He spoke a word that looked like ‘Hello’.

  Elsa looked up. This time she did not smile. The man spoke again. His fingers hovered by the pocket of his jeans, then by his breast pocket. Elsa’s brow knotted in annoyance. From beside her she picked up Franklin, asleep in his car seat, put him gently down on the table.

  You see? I thought. My wife. My son.

  Now the man was on his feet. As I watched, he walked to the end of the counter, where he stood by the coffee machine. He exchanged words with the girl behind the machine. The girl smiled.

  Around me the babies slept peacefully in their strollers. Footsteps crunched heavily on gritted paths. Car wheels spun on ice. The man laughed gently with the girl behind the machine. In a concrete gym across the parking lot women in leotards danced to a beat I could not hear. Soon they too would be making their way to the café, to detoxify their bodies with wheatgrass and ginger.

  The man was walking towards Elsa carrying two cups of coffee. He slid one carefully to Elsa’s side of the table. Surely now she would ask him to let her be?

  But no. She nodded politely. The man sat down at her table, his back to me.

  I could end this. All I had to do was to enter the café, to approach Elsa, to introduce myself to this man and ask him his business. But I stayed in the shadows, watching as Elsa took Franklin’s seat from the table, placed it carefully at her feet.

  The man was the first to leave. I hung back as he walked towards his car, shoulders hunched against the wind. A grey Volvo, rust-stained around the wheel arches. He got in, slammed the door shut. A line of wet snow fell from the roof on to the tarmac.

  I took out my phone and wrote the number plate into it.

  Dinner was dominated by Franklin: he pu
shed food from his plate; he burbled; he dropped his spoon experimentally on to the floor and watched, fascinated, as Elsa picked it up. Every time. His eyes fizzed with delight.

  Elsa was on her hands and knees, reaching under the table.

  ‘Actions have consequences,’ I said. ‘Maybe leave it there, love.’

  Elsa got to her feet, passed the spoon to Franklin. ‘Don’t use the word love like that, Cal. Like it’s a control mechanism.’

  ‘He’s right, though, Mum,’ said Vee. ‘Why are you being Franklin’s bitch?’

  ‘Vee,’ I said, ‘don’t.’

  ‘Or what? Mum will get worse? How could she actually be worse than she is right now?’ She folded her arms, angry with us both.

  Elsa sat in her place. ‘I guess we’re all a little on edge.’ She reached out across the table, took my left hand. ‘Sorry, Cal.’

  ‘Sorry, love.’ I smiled a careful smile. ‘How was coffee at the mall today?’

  ‘Good,’ she said, levelly. ‘Coffee at the mall was good.’ But I could feel the racing of her mind. Had she told me she was having coffee? Had she told me she was going to the mall?

  ‘Franklin sleep all the way through?’

  Perhaps Elsa could hear the edge in my voice. She smiled, as if puzzled.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Franklin slept.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Sorry if I was sharp.’

  We both turned to look at our daughter.

  ‘What is this?’ said Vee. ‘How come suddenly it’s the two of you united against me?’

  ‘This isn’t about sides,’ said Elsa. ‘But in future please don’t use the word bitch in front of your brother.’

  ‘Fine. Just—’

  She was on her feet, heading from the room.

  ‘Vee, would you please—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘—pick up your plate—’

  The door swung shut behind her.

  I sat staring at Elsa, waiting for her to speak, but she simply sat staring back.