by Bee Rowlatt
She loved her child, and made “precautions” for her care. But she still did it. She tried to die. I look at Will. He’s humming to himself. She didn’t love her little Frances any less than this. I sit for more long minutes on that stone, in a deep vague sadness, getting a damp bum while Will grabs out for the long grasses waving nearby. I look around again. Above all, above the sea and the town, it’s so peaceful. There’s a sense of healthiness here: it feels wholesome and sane. It could be the cleanliness, or the proximity of the sea, but I can see why it was here that Wollstonecraft began to recover. Eventually I sigh out a long breath, and inside my head I tell her something:
You haven’t ceased to exist.
Chapter Four
“Sympathy in a Strange Land”
When we get back to the hostel, Will invents a new game. He crawls at high speed out of our room and away down a long corridor. I wait, then chase after him, scoop him up and bring him, laughing, back in my arms. Off he crawls again, his hands make a splat-splat noise on the floor, a light clapping, as he trundles like a determined beetle. We do this until he gets tired, and I start to think about packing up the monster rucksack.
Moving on we have yet to meet Gunnar, the tireless Wollstonecraft detective. Mick, the heartbroken captain in a stripy sailor’s top. Knut, the only communist mayor in Norway, who is proud that Wollstonecraft came to his town, despite the fact that she detested it. I will encounter a taste of what proper fans get when they meet another fan. It’s solidarity with a slight edge: “I love and understand her.” “I love her more. I loved her first!” “Well, I am so intimate that I can criticize her – we’re practically siblings.”
But first, like Wollstonecraft, we must head west. Wollstone-craft left Tønsberg having enlisted the great and the good to her cause. She put together a legal case and was lobbying hard. Urged on by Imlay, her strategy was to impress upon Norwegians that their fellow countryman, Peder Ellefsen, was a tarnish upon their reputation. She would take it to the highest authorities. But first she must track him down and confront him face to face. “I am forewarned that I shall find them still more cunning and fraudulent as I advance towards the westward”. She pursues Ellefsen westward along the crazy shoreline. And we pursue her.
At the bus station in Tønsberg they tell me we’ll have to change buses twice on the way to our next stop, Kragerø. But it’s not as bad as I expect. Luckily the buses are a feature of child-friendly Norway: the drivers leap out to help us on board. They smile and chat. One holds Will while I fold the buggy and then asks his passengers to move, giving us two seats together. I’m still recovering from the contrast to British buses when he even installs a baby seat, so Will can sleep all the way.
It’s another moment of triumph. I’ve found that, on balance, travelling with Will is proving to make life easier rather than harder. He gives me the biggest smile when we’re in the queue at the bus station, and I’m instantly happier than anyone else in the whole place. I realize that at home I’m always trying to squeeze my life around him. It’s like a see-saw, either doing baby things or grown-up things, but never both.
But this is different. Here we are on the same side, in it together. I tell him everything that’s happening, and he smiles back. Even if it’s about how I’m dying for the loo and should’ve gone before we left, he beams at me. I reach into his baby seat, stroke his see-through blonde hair and gently twirl the curls around his ears.
Travelling with a baby is especially handy for anyone of a curious bent. It gives you improved access, a licence to talk to anyone you like. People catch your eye and smile. (Some people do hate kids, but they probably also hate humanity and are therefore no loss.) Will’s presence elicits acts of kindness I’d surely have otherwise missed. Maybe I look more vulnerable. Wollstonecraft remarks on the Norwegians’ curiosity towards her:
A woman, coming alone, interested them. And I know not whether my weariness gave me a look of peculiar delicacy; but they approached to assist me and enquire after my wants, as if they were afraid to hurt and wished to protect me. The sympathy I inspired, thus dropping down from the clouds in a strange land, affected me…
A young couple on the bus waves at Will and strikes up conversation with me. They’ve dropped down from the clouds in Sweden, and are travelling to Kragerø to look for work. They tell me many young Swedes are coming to Norway now, because unemployment is higher there, and wages are higher here. They offer Will some radioactive-looking sweets, and he munches them while I try to look mellow and un-disapproving.
There are wild lupins everywhere, alongside the railways, roads and motorways. Bushes of towering purple spires, giving a crazy Moominland vibe. Another person on the bus tells me it has now been made an offence to plant lupins in your garden, because they all escaped and are taking over the entire country. This can’t be true, but I love it anyway. Heading towards Kragerø, the landscape through the bus windows changes dramatically. It gets wilder, steeper soaring rocks. Road signs feature pictures of a moose. Our road hugs the coastline, so nothing is in a straight line, as the water comes in and out of the land. It dominates our route, sending us over and around.
I pull out my huge map of Norway, folded specially to the right place. This is not a country that fits easily onto a map, being quite a silly shape, like Chile. Norway is like a large hairy blanket draped over the top of Europe. Looking closer, you see that the country is almost all coast: endless islands, zigzag coastlines and fjords inside fjords. There is water everywhere. I recall reading that eighty per cent of Norwegians live within ten kilometres of salt water. It is their element. Rocks burst through all around us, small islands, soaring rocky cliffs, or the tell-tale white foam showing that they’re just below the water’s surface.
I rest my forehead against the windowpane, and another blaze of purple lupins zooms by. I’m not entirely sure what the next part of our journey will entail. It’s all up in the air. But of one thing I’m certain: of all the pieces of good fortune I’ve had so far on this trip – a gleefully large number when I think about it – the best must have been making contact with Gunnar Molden.
Gunnar is a Norwegian historian, museum curator and Wollstonecraft enthusiast. His research into the treacherous tale of Wollstonecraft and the missing silver spans decades and countries. Among his discoveries is a letter written by Wollstonecraft herself, buried for years in some maritime archives in Denmark. His detective work informs the thrilling ‘Silver Ship’ chapter of the Lyndall Gordon biography that I’ve been devouring.
I first contacted him by email, expressing my interest in Wollstonecraft’s voyage. He replied politely, including his phone number in case I had any questions. Are you kidding? Of course I did – I called him right away. He was quiet and shy, and full of Wollstonecraft knowledge. On and off, through the many swerves and obstacles of getting the trip organized, he has regularly helped out and given contacts and ideas. He is the fairy godfather of my trip. And I’ve never actually met him.
Now we’re on a bus to Kragerø where Gunnar has asked his cousin Ingvild and her husband Per to put us up in their summer house. The plan is to stay there for a night and then set off on the boat trip the following morning. The boat trip. The Boat Trip. This is the maximum, the ultimate, the most Wollstonecrafty part of my journey. We plan to travel by boat just the way Wollstonecraft did, right up to her final and most westerly destination: Risør. Just as it is in her letters.
I’m struggling to believe the boat-trip part: it’s a bit too good to be true. Gunnar says he’s sorted it out. I told him, way back, that I couldn’t afford to pay him as a consultant, and he dismissed the idea: “Leave it to me. And I can find us a boat.” Wollstonecraft met similar generosity:
The farmers are hospitable as well as independent. Offering once to pay for some coffee I drank when taking shelter from the rain, I was asked, rather angrily, if a little coffee was worth paying for.
A little coffee these days will set you back around £5. In a country where yo
u have to double-check your finances before you order a drink, how I’ve managed to access a whole boat is still a mystery to me.
Who, among the people at the bus station in Kragerø, is cousin Ingvild? I have no idea what she looks like, but fortunately we are fairly easy to spot. No one else is tottering under a rucksack like a misshapen tortoise whilst pushing a beaming baby in a large buggy. Ingvild comes up and gives me a hug. We chat as we walk over a bridge and up the extremely steep hill to her house. Good god! This whole country is on a slope of about one in three. I try not to pant as I speak.
By the time I have emerged from under the rucksack and released Will from the buggy to crawl straight up the nearest rock, Ingvild has brought out the best tray I’ve ever seen. White bread and poppyseed bread, butter, fresh slices of raw salmon, a pot of apricot jam and two mugs of steaming black coffee. I’m starving. I set to, while Ingvild hovers over Will, singing to him in Norwegian as he tries out some rock climbing. I cradle the coffee cup, breathing into it and letting the steam blur my vision. This is going to be a good place to stay.
Ingvild and Per are generous hosts. Wollstonecraft would’ve loved this: staying in real people’s houses rather than inns and hostels. We eat fish and talk about Norway. Per is director of the National Maritime Museum in Oslo. Again – the watery theme. He tells me how Kragerø used to provide the wider world with ice.
From the 1820s, tons of pure Norwegian ice were shipped abroad to be stored in ice wells, and used for medical and food-preservation purposes. Eventually Kragerø’s finest came to the attention of one of London’s most life-enhancing immigrants. Carlo Gatti was the granddaddy of ice cream: his penny ices gave a taste of previously unimaginable joy to the ordinary people of London. I smile and ruffle Will’s head. Londoners were lapping up Kragerø long before we got here.
There’s a slight pause in the aquatic chat, and I’m suddenly sleepy. Using Will as an excuse for an early night, we head upstairs. Ingvild has kindly pushed two beds together in the attic room, but there’s no cot. Despite being hobbled by the faded-pink sleeping bag handed down from his sisters, Will begins to romp. This free-range set-up is a novelty for him: he clambers all over, pulling my hair, tapping the walls, chuckling. In the middle of the night I despair and tie a blanket round his middle, then tuck both ends firmly in between the mattresses. He battles this cruel anchor at some length before we finally sleep.
Early the next morning I’m walking back down the steep hill, half-dragged by Will in his weighty vehicle, to get nappies from the shop. After a rough night, Will is now embarking on a high-maintenance morning. He keeps shaking his head from side to side and looking affronted. “I’m the one who should be affronted, mate.” I refer him to the nappy containing a monstrous poo that I’ve just disposed of in Ingvild’s polite wooden house. Such an unruly beast that I had to double-bag, then bury it at the bottom of their bin. We continue down the hill in an atmosphere of mutual resentment.
The tyranny of Will means I still haven’t brushed my teeth, showered or had breakfast. It’s a big and important day – the long-awaited day of the boat trip, and my first meeting with Gunnar. And I’m starting it with a headache, dry eyes and tetchy feelings. These extend to Wollstonecraft. Won’t she just once mention what a monumental pain in the neck children can be? It’s all “blessed darling babe” this, and “rosy cheeks” that. Why? Because she’s got a maid. She has Marguerite. I do not have Marguerite. I catch my reflection in a fish shop window, scowling.
On our return, Ingvild offers to take Will while I gratefully shower and get dressed. I join them for a miracle fry-up. A few fried eggs later things are looking up in Kragerø and we’re raring to go. Wollstonecraft herself never came here, but a house that she stayed in did. Norwegian houses apparently travel around in the most light-hearted way. I find this funny, coming from a land of sturdy bricks, with our tales of pigs who build straw houses. And look what happened to them. “But it’s simple!” says Ingvild. “You just pack it up. You take the house down plank by plank – they’re numbered. And then you put it all back up somewhere else.” Well, there’s the global Scandi phenomena of Lego and Ikea explained.
Shortly after breakfast, Gunnar Molden arrives. Here at last: the great Wollstonecraft detective. I hadn’t put a face on him in my mind – perhaps someone wizened and wispy-looking. But he’s younger than I expected, and quite solid. He looks like a boy scout on a day trip, carrying two plastic bags and a rucksack, with a baseball cap pulled down firmly over his eyes. He has a determined expression and he’s not very talkative.
Ingvild’s husband Per joins us, and we set off to look for the Wollstonecraft house that moved from somewhere else to here. We knock on the door. The owner is an attractive yoga teacher. She has never heard of Wollstonecraft, nor had any idea that anyone of great historical importance lived in her house. She kindly offers to hold Will while we look around inside. No way! He’s coming right in with me.
We stand around inside the house, looking at the wooden planks. Gunnar and Per chat to each other, while I roam eagerly about, examining her stairway, trying to get a vibe, like some hapless Ghostbuster – a hint, an echo, a feeling of anything that could tell me that Wollstonecraft was truly here. It doesn’t happen. Yoga Lady’s house is style-magazine trendy, with art books and vases just so. By the time I catch myself poking around in her bathroom cabinet, it’s clear that this is not working, and I trundle back downstairs, Will on my hip, to rejoin Per and Gunnar.
They’re still standing there, talking in detail about the house’s wooden panelling. On top of the failed ghost-busting I confess I’d expected a more immediate bond with Gunnar, given our shared passion. I slyly observe him talking, and he’s so low-key he’s hardly even there. What could possibly have drawn him to one of history’s most shouty women? I resolve to find out. This may take time. Not least because Norwegians talk so slowly.
After years working in radio I can’t help but to hear this kind of speech with a sinking heart: “This will take ages to de-umm.” De-umming is a self-explanatory part of a radio producer’s job. A bad ummer means your interview can be minutes shorter once it’s been de-ummed. Of course you mustn’t get carried away, you don’t want someone to sound completely different. And on rare occasions an umm is a powerful signifier of deliberation or discomfort. This should never be de-ummed.
But despite the deliberate slowness (new layers of rudeness here, on top of Wollstonecraft’s centuries-old ones), the Norwegian language itself is delightful. It sounds like German being spoken in a Welsh accent. Norwegians have a strange vocal tic: they say “ja” inwardly. It’s a small gasp of incoming breath, designed for agreeing politely or filling a pause. The first time I notice it is with Gunnar, and I wonder if he’s suffering a respiratory difficulty. I soon begin trying it out when no one else is around.
We say goodbye to Yoga Lady, impressing on her, one last time, how her house is truly blessed by the greatness of its possible former inhabitant. She nods patiently. We head off down towards the harbour, and on the way we bump into a distinguished whiskery old chap who is greeted by Per and Gunnar with some degree of reverence. He is a retired historian. Per and Gunnar introduce me as a person from London who is writing a book.
“What’s it about?” he says peering into my face.
“It’s inspired by the life of Mary Wollstonecraft,” I say.
“Ah yes – that Wollstonecraft. I’ve read her and I didn’t like her,” he says. “She’s one of those feminist types, all her writing is just a load of emotions.”
I’m stunned. I know of course that people don’t like her. In history she has been despised, slandered, rejected from all sides. I know this. But after so much fan-club action I’m unprepared, and too slow to gather my wits in her defence:
“But – but, there are lots of, you know, facts too!”
Afterwards I’m ruffled, I’ve let her down. As we walk away, the indignation grows. After all, she writes about Reason all the time. But even
so, should there really be no emotion? Emotions have their uses: “We reason deeply, when we forcibly feel!” And anyway, who wouldn’t get emotional, surrounded by dismissive entitled old farts LIKE YOU? I retrospectively crack my mind’s knuckles. Yeah. He got off lightly.
Gunnar and I say goodbye to Per and continue down to the harbour to find Mick. He is the skipper of the boat we’ll be travelling in, and a well-known local figure. He’s originally English, but moved to Norway decades ago. Mick has a stripy maritime top and a cockney accent; he’s tall with white bristles all over his face and head. He has crinkles around his eyes from staring at distant blue horizons. He is the most perfect specimen of a sea captain you could ever wish for. He also plays bluegrass banjo and has a broken heart, I discover within a few moments of meeting him.
“This boat is a Colin Archer!” Gunnar announces while Mick beams with pride.
“Ah, a Colin Archer,” I say politely.
“A Colin Archer, yes, a genuine Colin Archer,” they repeat with joy. It turns out that Colin Archer was a nineteenth-century Norwegian shipbuilder of Scottish descent who became a national hero. He designed the nation’s fleet of lifeboats and built the mighty Fram, sailed by both Nansen and Amundsen on their legendary polar expeditions. The same Nansen who invented the Nansen Passport for stateless refugees. As a quietly huge gift to the world, this almost beats Kragerø’s ice cream.
“You are safer in a Colin Archer than in any other boat!” shouts Mick, as we hoist my rucksack and Will’s buggy on board. I have a fleeting recollection that the same was said of the Titanic, but this is indeed a powerful-looking boat. “This is my girl!” he booms. “After my wife left me, the boat is all I have. She’s thirty-two foot long, weighs eleven tons, and her average speed is five to six knots depending on the wind.”
