‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It took longer than I expected.’
She nodded slightly. We were still standing, and there were people nearby, people sitting or standing all around us, and it was awkward for her, but it was obvious that she couldn’t delay telling me any longer. ‘He died last night,’ she said. ‘I mean … it was early this morning.’
‘Ah.’
‘There were complications,’ she said.
‘I see.’ I didn’t know what that meant and I realised that I’d never known what his problem was. Had he undergone surgery? Was it an infection? What kind of complications did she mean? I thought of asking, but she began speaking again before I could say anything.
‘We thought you were arriving yesterday,’ she said. ‘I thought –’
‘My flight was delayed,’ I said, but I don’t think she heard me. She was starting to tell me something, something she had gone over already in her mind – and I wondered what time it had been that morning when Arild Frederiksen had died, and whether she had been at the hospital all along.
‘I didn’t tell him,’ she said. ‘Not till you confirmed you were … I didn’t want to get his hopes up.’ She closed her eyes, and it reminded me of something, the way she did it. She closed her eyes and kept talking, and I remembered that it was something one of my teachers had done. I could see the woman’s face, and I remembered that she had taught Literature, but I couldn’t remember her name. What I did remember was how irritating it had been. ‘He wanted to see you,’ she said. ‘He talked about you often, these last few weeks, but he didn’t want to ask …’ Her eyes opened suddenly – and I remembered that that was what I had disliked so much in that Literature class. It had felt like a trick, in school, as if the teacher – her name came to me, then: it was Mrs Olerud – it was as if by closing her eyes this Mrs Olerud was wishing away the inferior version of the person she was talking to, and then, when she opened them again, was hoping to find somebody better. Somebody capable of understanding what she had to say. ‘It wasn’t his idea, to write, and I didn’t tell him that I was getting in touch. Not till I knew you were coming.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said – and I hoped she understood that I wasn’t apologising. That I was – offering her my condolences. In American films, they had a way of saying that – I’m sorry for your loss, they said, when somebody died, or when the policeman has to interview the dead man’s wife, just hours after they find the body. I’m sorry for your loss – it was a neat, clean phrase, but it sounded too easy and I didn’t say it. I didn’t say anything else, in fact, because there was nothing I could say. The loss was hers, not mine, but for either of us to acknowledge that, I knew, would be a mistake.
She turned away. There was nothing more to say, though, obviously, we couldn’t just leave it at that. We didn’t know each other, I had never even met Arild Frederiksen and, as I had just been given to understand, I only had her word for it that he had ever wanted to meet me in the first place. He hadn’t asked her to write to me, he hadn’t asked her to send me copies of his books. Through all the years I was growing up, he had made no effort to find me, or to come and visit. He hadn’t even written a letter – so I had no way of knowing if he had really agreed to Kate Thompson’s approaching me. Perhaps he had said he did, for her sake. To honour her good intentions, perhaps. He probably didn’t even know about the phone calls, or the messages on Mother’s answering machine. I waited. The situation seemed to demand something from her, some indication that she accepted that there was nothing more to say, some sign that it would be acceptable for me to leave. She wasn’t ready for that, though. She needed something more. She stood for a long moment, gazing out at the hospital grounds; then she turned back to me. ‘Perhaps you’d like to see him?’ she said. Her voice was very quiet and I thought I detected a trace of doubt – enough, at least, that I knew she wouldn’t insist, when I rejected the idea. ‘I could ask,’ she said. ‘If you felt you’d like to see him. To say goodbye.’
I shook my head. I wanted to say – I wanted to shout at her – that Arild Frederiksen was dead, and that I had never even met him, so how was it possible for me to say goodbye to him? I wanted to shout that I didn’t know him, and I didn’t know her either. She had taken it upon herself to intrude upon my life, but that was all. I wanted to shout at her that she should accept things as they were – but I didn’t. I didn’t shout; I just shook my head and said that what she had suggested wouldn’t be necessary. That upset her, of course, but she didn’t say anything. She lowered her head, and I thought she might be on the point of tears, so I waited for her to regain control of her emotions. I was still hoping she would say or do something that would allow me to go, but she didn’t speak, or look up, for a long time and, gradually, I sensed that she was drifting into some private train of thought, some memory that had nothing to do with me. It wasn’t exactly the sign I had wanted, but I decided that it might be enough. I cleared my throat, to get her attention. ‘You must be very tired,’ I said. ‘I should go, and let you rest.’
She lifted her head. Her eyes were dry and her face seemed, if anything, unusually calm. She didn’t say anything, though, she just looked at me – and I realised that she either hadn’t heard or hadn’t understood what I had said.
‘You’ve been up all night,’ I said and then, for some reason, I looked at my watch. There was no reason for this: I didn’t have any place to be, and I didn’t remotely care what time it was. It was, I think, an involuntary movement and nothing more – but she noticed the gesture and, as slight as it was, it upset her.
‘What are you saying?’ she said. Her voice came out hard, so I thought for a moment that she was angry. ‘Do you have to be somewhere?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s just … I thought I would leave you to …’ I didn’t know what came next. I think I was going to say that I would leave her to her grief, but I knew that that wasn’t appropriate.
‘No,’ she said. Her voice was softer now, but she still seemed angry. Or maybe she was unhappy at how awkward it was turning out to be. ‘I don’t understand.’ She stared at me, not so much angry as dismayed. ‘I mean … You only just got here,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry I was too late to …’ It was hopeless. What was I supposed to say? I just wanted to shake her hand, or sign a paper or something, and get out of there – and my desire to get away was apparent to her.
‘He was waiting for you,’ she said. ‘He was trying so hard to hang on. Even the nurses noticed it.’ She shook her head in wonder, presumably at Arild Frederiksen’s tenacity – and also, I thought, at my apparent callousness. To her, it was quite straightforward: my father had been dying, and I had been hurrying to his bedside. Only I hadn’t hurried fast enough – and maybe I hadn’t hurried at all. ‘We’d thought you would get here last night,’ she said again, and this time it was an accusation. She was watching me closely now, studying me as if she had just discovered a new life form that she wasn’t quite familiar with – and I felt a sudden rush of apprehension, something like the apprehension you feel when you find yourself with someone who wants to say something you don’t want to hear. A sincere person who is just about to say something, but hasn’t quite found the words yet. Someone who might reach out and touch you, someone who might take hold of an arm or a hand. I stepped back, and she sensed my apprehension. She sensed that I didn’t want to be touched, or made to feel guilty, and she decided to be gracious. ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘If you have nowhere else to be, I thought we might get a coffee. I mean, now that you’re here, I thought you might want to talk.’
‘What about?’ I didn’t know what she meant. She had told me what she had told me, and there really wasn’t anything else to say. What more did we have to talk about? I had come too late and Arild Frederiksen had died before we could meet. That was unfortunate, but it wasn’t anyone’s fault. There was no need for explanations, or reminiscences, or some cosy heart-to-heart. In fact, there was no need for any kind of
talk at all.
‘Well,’ she said – and I could see that she was surprised by my question. ‘I could tell you … I thought you might want to hear about him, since you never had the chance to get to know him … That’s if you have the time, of course.’ There was a trace of resentment in her voice, but it wasn’t put on – if anything, she was trying to hide her feelings. It bothered her that I had taken so long to make this visit and now it bothered her even more that I seemed in such a hurry to get away, but she didn’t want to come across as judgemental, in spite of all that. ‘I thought you might like to …’ She considered a moment. ‘You didn’t have a chance to get to know him,’ she said. ‘That was a source of unhappiness to him …’ She ventured a thin smile. ‘I thought I could tell you something about him. He was your father, after all.’
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to listen to her stories about a man I had never known, and I was bemused by the fact that it meant so much to her. I felt unhappy and imposed upon, and I wanted to refuse this apparent kindness that wasn’t a kindness at all, but I didn’t know how. It’s an art, refusal. At the time, I hadn’t mastered it, not the way Mother had, and I was hampered by awkwardness and a desire not to seem impolite. ‘What about you?’ I said. ‘Were you –’ I wanted to say close, but she was annoyed with me now and, though she wanted to conceal her annoyance, she couldn’t stop herself from jumping in.
‘Were we? What – lovers?’ She laughed. ‘Well, after a fashion. After his fashion, I should say.’ She smiled, then looked away. There was a long pause. ‘Arild was a real Aquarius,’ she said, still not looking at me. ‘He was so busy loving the whole world, he didn’t get round to specifics …’ She glanced back at me quickly, then she smiled again – but I could see that the smile was a cover and that she was, in fact, close to tears. A long moment passed, as she fought off some unwelcome feeling. An unwelcome feeling of – what? Grief? Betrayal? Disappointment that they hadn’t been closer? ‘Well, I’m sure you don’t believe in that sort of thing,’ she said.
‘What sort of thing?’
‘You know. Astrology. That sort of thing.’
I shook my head. ‘Ah,’ I said.
She gave a soft laugh. ‘Why?’ she said. ‘What did you think I meant?’
I didn’t answer – I felt caught out somehow, but I didn’t know why – and she seemed amused by my apparent confusion. ‘The cafe’s just over here,’ she said, turning to lead the way. She was confident, now, that I would follow. ‘It’s quite nice. I’m sure you could do with a coffee, after your journey.’
* * *
The cafe wasn’t nice in fact. It wasn’t really a cafe at all, it was just a section of the main concourse that had been blocked off and furnished with tables and chairs, so you could watch the people coming and going as you drank your coffee and ate your iced doughnut: nurses in uniform, porters wheeling trolleys, visitors with bunches of carnations or fruit baskets. The coffee was thin and weak, and it came in a polystyrene cup with a garish purple logo on the side. Still, it wasn’t as if I was there to drink coffee. Kate Thompson found a quietish table in the corner and sat down. ‘There’s milk over there, if you want it,’ she said, and I realised that she had sat at that table once or twice before.
I shook my head. ‘Black is fine,’ I said. I sat down opposite her. The tables were small and rickety, and I felt that we were too close, but there was nothing to be done about it. It was, at least, quieter than the waiting area had been and, from where we were sitting, I could see a patch of greenery, at the far end of a wide grey-and-white corridor. After the previous day’s rain, the trees and shrubs were still wet, but now the sun was poking through the clouds and, for the moment, everything in that bright square of greenery was sparkling.
‘So,’ Kate said, with the air of someone good-naturedly changing the subject. She had put aside her annoyance and, now that she had me where she wanted, she was ready to start over. I wondered, again, why talking about Arild Frederiksen meant so much to her. ‘What does it mean: Liv?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Your name,’ she said. ‘It sounds like it ought to mean something. Like – I don’t know, life or something …’
I shook my head. ‘It’s just a name,’ I said.
‘So Liv isn’t life in Norwegian,’ she said – and for a moment, it seemed she was challenging me, or maybe asking me a trick question, the way the class show-off used to do in school. She smiled. ‘I thought it was life,’ she said.
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it. Not like that,’ I said. ‘It’s just a name. Do names have to mean something?’ The question annoyed me. It should have been obvious to her that I didn’t want to be there any more. I hadn’t wanted to be there earlier, when we were in the corridor, but now things were different – and I sensed something ugly was coming. The proving of a point, perhaps, or the justification of something that, as far as I was concerned, didn’t need justifying. Then, as if she had read my mind, her manner changed. She sat back in her chair and gave me a kindly, even sympathetic look, a look that, as I saw it, deferred rather too obviously to the grief I ought to have been showing, as if to say that it wasn’t her place to question my apparent calm – and I saw that she was trying to imagine, not that I was some heartless creature who felt nothing, but that I was hiding this grief, not only from her, but also from myself, out of some misplaced sense of loyalty, or amour propre. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But I don’t know what your mother told you about him, and I have to ask, because I don’t want to go over things you already know –’
‘She didn’t tell me anything,’ I said.
That surprised her, of course. Not only the fact, in itself, but that I could admit so calmly that I’d had no idea who my father was. She swayed forward, then leaned her elbows on the table and looked into my face. ‘You mean you didn’t know anything about him? Who he was, what he did …’
I shook my head. ‘I didn’t even know his name, until you wrote to me,’ I said. ‘And even then …’
‘Even then?’
I sat back in my chair, away from her. I didn’t wish to be scrutinised. ‘Even then,’ I said, ‘I couldn’t know for sure that he was who you said he was.’
She bit her lip. She was scandalised now, scandalised and offended by my lack of emotion, which she no doubt considered unnatural – but she was also enjoying this. Everything she had imagined about Mother was being confirmed. She had probably read articles and searched for Angelika Rossdal on the Internet, and she would have loved the image of the cold recluse who only cared about her work. She was the kind of person who took up other people’s pain, holding the grudge that they were too hurt or self-deceived to hold themselves, and she no doubt imagined that, whatever had happened all those years ago, it was Mother’s fault. Oh yes; she had to be enjoying this – though I think now that some part of her was trying not to. Or rather, some scrupulous part of her, at the front of her mind, was trying not to relish what had just been confirmed to her secret and slightly craven satisfaction. ‘And your mother never spoke about him?’ she said.
‘No.’
‘She never spoke about their life together, in Oslo?’
‘No.’
‘Really?’
‘I can’t imagine there was much to talk about,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t a lasting relationship –’
‘Ah. So she told you that much?’
I shook my head. ‘She didn’t tell me anything,’ I said. ‘She had left all that behind. She’s happy now, where she is –’
‘Happy?’
‘Yes.’
‘How’s that?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘How is she happy?’
I shook my head again. I felt offended for Mother’s sake, because a judgement was being made that I didn’t think was fair, but I had no intention of allowing her to upset me. ‘I don’t know that that’s any of your business,’ I said.
Her mouth hardened and she sat
looking at me for a long moment before she spoke again. ‘You’re right,’ she said, finally. ‘It’s not my business. But it is yours. It was yours.’ She was visibly upset now, but I couldn’t tell if she was genuinely angry, or whether she was just pretending – to herself as much as to me – to keep from being overwhelmed by some personal and perhaps slightly shameful sadness that she didn’t want me to see. ‘He was your father,’ she said. ‘And that was your business. You can’t tell me that it was all right, just to erase him … That it was all right for you both to pretend he didn’t even exist –’
I shook my head. ‘Nobody pretended anything,’ I said. ‘He went away, and that was that. He was forgotten –’
‘He went away?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that what your mother told you?’
‘Yes.’ I thought for a moment. It wasn’t true, of course; she hadn’t told me anything. I had just assumed – but it was a reasonable assumption, all things considered. I looked at her. She was watching me closely now, and I felt uneasy, because I knew she was trying to read something in my face, trying to find a way through what she must have thought of as a lie.
A Summer of Drowning Page 18
