The Journey Home: A Novel

by Olaf Olafsson

  And so the years passed in fluctuation between light and shadow, hope and despair. So they passed, until the light went out and the darkness, thick as pitch, closed in on her from all sides.

  The day Jorunn committed suicide the sun was shining. My bedroom was stuffy after the heat of the night and I had just opened the window which faces the avenue of trees when Gunnar rang. While we were talking I watched Anthony walk over from the tennis court, dressed in white, wiping the sweat from his forehead as he approached the back door. Although it was a calm day, the curtain fluttered every now and then in some faint puff of breeze which carried to me—as if from duty and custom—the smell of omelette and fried bacon from the kitchen. I suddenly remembered that I had been meaning to say something to Anthony before he came in to breakfast, but couldn’t for the life of me recall what it was. I was distracted by this so that I didn’t quite understand some of what Gunnar told me, which must have been why I was startled when he said: “Do you think you’ll be able to?”

  “What?”

  “Do you think you’ll be able to come to the funeral?”

  I can’t remember exactly how I answered, doubt in fact whether I made any sense, as I had begun to tremble violently where I stood by the window. I dropped the receiver on the floor and took a long time to stoop down for it, finally grasping it with both hands and saying a hurried good-bye to Gunnar, promising I would ring him later.

  I lay curled up on the floor and shut my eyes. Somewhere in the distance I sensed the lapping of waves and smell of seaweed from the shore at home in Kopasker.

  “Disa, we’ll always be friends, won’t we?”

  “Yes, always.”

  “Even when we’re grown up?”

  “We’ll always be friends.”

  When I was finally able to stand up, it came to me that I had meant to remind Anthony about the scones I had baked the previous evening. They had turned out well, light and soft, perfect for spreading with blackberry jam to accompany his morning tea.

  I went down to the kitchen and fetched the scones from the cupboard. Anthony had already eaten, but had two scones out of politeness. I blamed myself for not having remembered them when I saw him coming in from the tennis court.

  “Are you alright?” he asked.

  “Please try at least one scone, will you?”

  It wasn’t until that evening that I found strength to tell him of Jorunn’s death.

  Old Marshall doesn’t talk much while he sits with me in the kitchen, looking out of the window. He nurses his cup between his hands, sipping the tea slowly and taking a long time to finish it. He has always been taciturn and people who don’t know him sometimes think he’s not quite all there. The other day I saw that he had something on his mind. His eyes looked evasive and he drank his tea faster than usual. Eventually he said: “You’ll have to look after him when I’m gone.”

  I knew he meant Anthony.

  “You’re not going anywhere, old man. You’re as strong as an ox. We’ll both keep an eye on him together as we always have.”

  “There’s been a strange horse down in the meadow these last few nights,” he said after a short silence. “A gray one. I don’t know where it comes from and if I watch it for too long it disappears.”

  He stood up, opened the door and looked out.

  “It often stops down by the stream and changes color in the moonlight. Turns blue. If it’s come for me, you’ll have to look after Anthony.”

  He turned and looked at me.

  I wonder if he suspects anything? I asked myself. Can he tell anything from looking at me?

  I glanced away. The clock in the hall struck three deep tones. My face appeared pale in the mirror on the wall.

  The morning the son of the house returned home aboard the Esja, my mistress gave me the little mirror in the kitchen. She was up unusually early that day and came down to the kitchen just after nine o’clock to have her coffee and tell me that I could have “that little mirror.” I don’t know what made her do this as I had never given any hints, though I was fond enough of it. I could lose myself in its reflection, vanish back in time with no commitments, forget my troubles and pretend that all was sunshine and light. Sometimes it reminded me of the sky above Kopasker when I was a girl looking for signs and portents. I had never mentioned to the mistress that I coveted the mirror and so it took me by surprise when she referred to it for the first time that morning. Without preamble, I might add, then never mentioned it again. Perhaps she had seen me dusting it and doubtless noticed the shelf I had put up under it for my bits and pieces, lipstick, comb and a feather, but had never seen me looking in it as far as I knew. I only did that when I was alone.

  I accepted the mirror gratefully and although I knew I would never want to move it from its place, it gave me a strange delight to be able to tell myself that it was mine.

  At eleven o’clock Dr. Bolli rang from the bank to announce that the Esja had anchored in the outer harbor. He said the British authorities still had to check the passengers’ passports but when this was done the ship would dock. The mistress got ready to welcome her son.

  But the day wore on without the passengers being allowed ashore. Dr. Bolli came home, obviously anxious. Each passenger had been made to give the names of six people in Reykjavik who could give the military authorities information about them. The mistress took to her bed. My employer paced up and down. I overheard him asking someone on the phone whether the government was going to intervene.

  The day passed, then the evening, and during the night, instead of going to bed, Dr. Bolli sat in his office in the darkness. I looked in on him once. He was motionless in his chair. I didn’t know whether he was asleep, so decided not to speak to him.

  The following morning the interrogations took place. The mistress didn’t appear but her husband went out before seven. When he rang around midday to let us know that the passengers had finally received permission to go ashore, his voice was so weak that I was shocked. Maria dashed straight upstairs to the mistress and helped her get dressed.

  At two o’clock the couple went down to the harbor to meet their son. Maria dusted and finished polishing the silver. I prepared a supper of lobster and goose according to the mistress’s instructions. There was lively music on the radio and my mirror and I were in a good mood from listening to it and exchanged arch glances more than once as I stood by the stove.

  It was nearly five o’clock when the front door opened. Maria and I went into the hall to greet them, Maria first, with me a little way behind. Father and son said little, it was the mistress who talked. We introduced ourselves. He nodded when he shook our hands, then immediately looked away.

  “Well,” said the mistress, taking off her hat, which was yellow with a red feather. “Home at last. Atli, dear, won’t you . . .”

  “I’m going to lie down, Mother.”

  “That’s a good idea. That’s a very good idea. It’ll do you good to rest before supper. We’re having a celebratory meal. After the journey . . . It’ll do you good to lie down.”

  Atli Bollason was of medium height with a round, pale face and tousled hair. He wore a black cloak with an astrakhan collar, a wide-brimmed felt hat on his head and a white scarf around his neck. He dropped the cloak on to a chair in the front room and left the hat and scarf on top of it. The hat fell to the floor but he didn’t seem to notice, at least he didn’t stop to pick it up but opened the basement door and headed downstairs. I noticed that he had a limp.

  “Maria, dear, would you make up a bed for Atli, please.”

  “There’s no need,” he said without looking round.

  Maria hung up his cloak in the closet and I went into the kitchen. There was a door to the basement from the kitchen pantry and from time to time I heard his footsteps, alternately heavy and light. It surprised me that he hadn’t gone to lie down and I began involuntarily to listen. Heavy, light, heavy, light . . . His footsteps echoed in my head until long after he had gone to sleep.

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bsp; Supper was kept waiting for him and so were his parents. At seven o’clock the mistress asked her husband to go down and fetch him.

  My employer got slowly to his feet.

  “He’s stirring,” he said when he came back. “He’ll be along in a minute.”

  They drank sherry. The mistress put Bach on the gramophone, which was still down in the drawing room following our Christmas celebration a fortnight earlier. The mistress talked. Her husband said nothing. At half-past seven she came out and called down the stairs to her son but got no answer. Shortly afterward, Dr. Bolli made a second trip down to the basement. She popped into the kitchen to see me.

  “I don’t understand this at all, Disa. Won’t the food be ruined?”

  I tried to calm her, saying I’d throw the lobster in the pan when they were ready to sit down and assuring her that the goose would be better for resting a little.

  “He’s tired,” she said as if to herself. “He’s always been so sensitive . . .”

  It was past eight o’clock when they finally sat down at the table. The son smoked nonstop, with an ashtray at his side. His mother tried to maintain a flow of conversation. He held the cigarette between the thumb and index finger of his right hand and picked listlessly at his food with the left, sticking the fork absentmindedly on to the plate so it seemed a matter of chance whether he speared a morsel of food. The mistress had asked me to open a bottle of the best red wine in the house, a Ducru-Beaucaillou from before the Great War, but her son chose to drink brandy instead, even with the goose.

  The mistress talked.

  “. . . you were only five years old, Atli dear. Do you remember? ‘You can wish for anything you like, Mother,’ you said, ‘because it’s a wishing stone.’ Just five years old . . .”

  The son lit another cigarette. Maria emptied the ashtray and wiped it clean.

  “You and Kristjan played together so often when you were boys. He’s working for his father’s firm now. I told Mrs. Thorarinsson you were on your way home. She was going to let Kristjan know. You were always such good friends . . . but now he’s started working for his father . . .”

  It was a monologue rather than a conversation and my employer was so strangely unlike his usual self. He retired to bed just after ten, forgetting to wish me good night for the first time ever. Mother and son remained sitting in the drawing room.

  “Shall we play cards?” I heard her ask.

  “Later, Mother, later. I’m tired.”

  He soon fell asleep in his chair. Maria and I helped each other clear up. The mistress came to see us in the kitchen, thanking us for the evening and saying something else complimentary which I’ve forgotten. Maria left toward midnight.

  I was pensive when I went to bed and lay awake for a long time in the light summer night.

  I was still thinking of little Marilyn when I woke up this morning. It was nearly eleven o’clock; I must have fallen sound asleep after taking those painkillers. I woke to the sound of a knock at the door—three knocks, I thought I heard—at first light, then more insistent. I felt groggy but got up anyway and put on my dressing gown. There was no one outside in the corridor when I opened the door.

  I was late for breakfast but persuaded them to bring me a slice of bread and cheese with my tea. The girl who answered the phone when I rang down to the lobby sounded extraordinarily like Marilyn, quiet and amiable, and I drew out the conversation for the pleasure of listening to her voice.

  I’ve always enjoyed eating breakfast in bed and decided to treat myself for once; after all, I had nothing better to do. There was a small round table below the window and I’ve moved it over to the bed as my bedside table is too high and, anyway, it’s piled up with the papers and documents I’ve been looking through since I arrived. As I drank my tea I reached out for a cutting which I had brought with me but been too busy to glance at. It wasn’t until I heard the sound of that girl’s voice in reception that I remembered I had brought it with me on my journey.

  Actually, I thought I had got rid of this magazine article and so was astonished when I found it among Marilyn’s old letters in the bottom drawer of my bedroom desk the day before I left. It’s from the Daily Telegraph: September 1959, I have written at the bottom of the cutting, while at the top is the headline Two Chefs, Two Styles—A Comparison. Before I go any further I should mention that I no longer believe little Marilyn was behind this article or tried to influence the author. Not deliberately, anyway.

  I admit I suspected her of spite when the article first came to my attention and I remember storming up and down, asking myself and Anthony how she could do this to me after all I had done for her. Anthony tried to calm me, convinced that Marilyn had taken no part in this attack on me. His tolerance and trusting nature got on my nerves, however, and I couldn’t help accusing him of being gullible and naïve.

  “Do you imagine this is a coincidence?” I asked. “An accident, maybe? Are you telling me that Marilyn won’t enjoy reading flattering things about herself and slanderous comments about me?”

  I find myself becoming worked up by the memory, so I’ll slow down, finish drinking the tea I ordered from room service and then try to the best of my ability to describe the contents of this article, the events leading up to it and its consequences. But first I’m going to take a sip of tea and a sugar lump, breathe in deeply as Dr. Ellis taught me and switch on the radio in the hope of hearing some decent music.

  Those who knew Nora Gannon generally agreed that she lacked both the judgment and the know-how to write about food. Many also doubted her integrity as her pieces often radiated envy and vulgarity. As with so many others in her situation, she herself had no doubt once dreamed of being able to cook and attempted a career in that field, but judging by her writing she had not been meant for it. It’s one thing to want something, another to be capable of it, and not everyone can cope with the disappointment. They become bitter, malicious and petty, with not a good word to say about anything. They try to promote themselves in this way but of course sink only deeper with every attack and end up having to heap even more abuse in order to climb out of the holes they’ve dug for themselves.

  Soft-hearted people tended to tolerate Mrs. Gannon and excused her by saying she was an able writer. I myself find her style pretentious twaddle.

  I made no secret of my opinion of Nora Gannon and there was no question that it had come back to her. For the first few years she snubbed me, never mentioning Ditton Hall in her annual articles about summer hotels and restaurants, pretending I didn’t exist and naturally losing face herself by her ludicrous behavior. I shrugged it off and in fact had long ceased to think about Mrs. Gannon when she could no longer resist the temptation and wrote the article about me and Marilyn. This was two years after Marilyn had made the move north to Windermere and Mrs. Gannon was “amazed” at how “she had achieved so much in such a short time.”

  The occasion of the article—if it can be called an occasion —was a party Marilyn held to promote her restaurant to the press. (Whereas it has never actually crossed my mind to do anything of the kind; I’ve never seen any reason to bribe these people to flatter me.) The party was the intended success, newspapers and magazines competed in their praise of little Marilyn and some even published photographs of her and William, her husband, who looked rather foolish in all the pictures, poor thing. I was pleased for her, even though I knew how she had obtained these accolades and was worried whether she could live up to them. But it never occurred to me that Nora Gannon would stoop so low as to use this opportunity to compare Marilyn’s cooking with mine. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that in making this comparison Mrs. Gannon broke all her own records of vulgarity and spite. And that took some doing.

  Anthony was convinced that little Marilyn had nothing to do with this attack but I couldn’t draw the same conclusion until I had thought long and hard. I decided at last that she had probably spoken incautiously to Mrs. Gannon but not deliberately tried to undermine me. She tried repeated
ly to get me on the phone after the article appeared but I wasn’t at home to her. I forbade Anthony to talk to her but don’t know whether he obeyed. After a year or so I decided to make peace with her. I suspect some people would have taken longer.

  I put down my pen and reach out for my teacup. The morning paper lies beside the pot: June 15, it says. Graduation tomorrow. What will he look like? I ask myself. Who will he look like? And what shall I say to him? After all these years. What can I say?

  The tea is cold but I finish the cup anyway. The skies are gray. I reach for my photo of him.

  Sometimes the son of the house would make a brief appearance but otherwise he kept to his two rooms in the basement or wrapped himself in the black cloak, which he must have bought on his travels, and disappeared into town. He reversed the clock, sleeping during the day and waking at night, generally emerging by three in the afternoon to have coffee and read the papers. If he bumped into Maria or me he would nod politely but say little, taking his coffee, papers and cigarettes into the study where he would sit chain-smoking and filling the ashtrays over and over again. He rarely ate supper with his parents, though he did tend to stay at home on the evenings when his father had visitors. He didn’t take much part in the conversation during the evening, but would sit in a corner listening to talk, according to Maria, of politics and finance, economic growth and profit, wholesale and retail, Franklin & Svensen—Import/Export, salmon fishing and the overbearing behavior of the damned British. Sometimes he would smile but as the evening drew on and the first cognac bottle had been emptied, he began to let slip the odd comment on what was being discussed. The guests seemed to pay attention to him, not least the swan-loving editor and importer Hallur Steinsson, and his wife’s sister’s husband, Heimir Frantz, a ship broker. They were extraordinarily alike to look at, Hallur and Heimir, both round-cheeked, stocky rather than fat, of medium height, thinning on top, Heimir beginning to go gray, Hallur still ruddy.

  “Quite right,” said Hallur whenever he thought something sensibly expressed. “There should be an article written about that.”