A Summer of Drowning

by John Burnside

  ‘Ah,’ I said. I assumed that it was a message from Mother – what else could it be? – and I walked back to the desk to take the envelope – and she gave it to me, almost right away, but not before she allowed herself a moment of hesitation, as if she wanted to play with me. To tease me. She smiled – and I saw an insinuation in that smile, as if she knew something about me that I didn’t know myself, or maybe it was something about the contents of the envelope that she knew. I took the letter – and it wasn’t a message from Mother, after all; it was a sealed envelope, with my name and the name of the hotel printed on the front. ‘Thank you,’ I said, ignoring her little game. I sensed a complicity with the person in the back room, then, as if the ploy with the letter had been performed for their benefit, but I had no intention of getting dragged into whatever it was they had in mind.

  The girl’s face became serious, as she readopted her professional manner. ‘You’re welcome,’ she said, then, without speaking another word, she returned to the back room.

  First, the desert is the country of madness. Second, it is the refuge of the devil, thrown out into the ‘wilderness of Upper Egypt’ to ‘wander in dry places’. Thirst drives men mad, and the devil himself is mad with a kind of thirst for his own lost excellence – lost because he has immured himself in it and closed out everything else. So the man who wanders into the desert to be himself must take care that he does not go mad and become the servant of the one who dwells there in a sterile paradise of emptiness and rage.

  Like the envelope, the contents of the letter were typed and there was nothing to show who had sent it. Nothing at all, in fact, but this one paragraph, printed in the middle of the page. I read the words carefully, then I read again:

  So the man who wanders into the desert to be himself must take care that he does not go mad and become the servant of the one who dwells there in a sterile paradise of emptiness and rage.

  It was absurd. It meant nothing at all, but I knew that whoever had sent the letter had intended me to understand something very specific. But who had sent it? I didn’t recall telling Kate Thompson which hotel I was at, and there was nobody else within a thousand miles of the place who even knew my name. Besides, if these words were intended for someone, surely they should have been sent to Mother, not to me – after all, she was supposed to be the recluse, she was the one who had taken herself off into the desert, not me. Though it was only a desert to the untrained eye and Mother’s presence there was purposeful and necessary. It wasn’t a retreat, it was an act of faith. Faith in her work, and in her own mind. And it certainly had nothing to do with the devil.

  Who had written these words? And who had typed them out and sent them to me? Was it the same person? I didn’t think so. These lines were from some great book, some classic of theology or literature – and I felt sure that, if I could have shown them to Mother, she would have told me the author’s name right away, without even having to think about it. They even seemed familiar, a quotation from something that I already knew, though they weren’t familiar enough for me to be able to place them. I read them again – and as I did, I felt sure I had seen these words before. But where? When? And who had typed them out so carefully and sent them to me? Had I said something to Kate Thompson that gave me away, not the name of the hotel, but some hint or clue that allowed her to work out where I was staying? I didn’t think so – but then, nobody else could have done this. Nobody, other than Mother, even knew where I was.

  I picked up the phone and dialled reception. It rang several times, then the girl picked up. ‘Can I help you, Miss Rossdal?’ she said. She sounded formal and distant, not at all sing-song, and I wondered if her friend had gone.

  ‘I just … I wonder, were you there when the letter arrived?’ I said.

  ‘The letter?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The letter you gave me just now.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ she said. ‘The letter.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘No,’ she said at last, without the least hint of regret in her voice. ‘It was Renate who took the letter.’

  ‘I see. Is Renate there now?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Well, did she say anything?’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean, Miss Rossdal?’

  ‘I mean, did she say anything about the letter? About who left it.’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ she said. There was a short silence before she spoke again and I sensed that her friend hadn’t left, but was standing right next to her, listening in. ‘Can I help you with anything else, Miss Rossdal?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll ask Renate tomorrow –’

  ‘Renate won’t be here tomorrow,’ she said quickly.

  ‘She won’t?’

  ‘It’s her day off,’ she said – and now her voice wasn’t professional any more. There was a slight – a very slight – hint of mockery, or amusement in it, and I sensed that the person she had been with earlier, the person standing right next to her at that moment, was, in fact, Renate, and I knew, then, that it was impossible. They were playing a game with me, though I couldn’t think why, and the letter was part of that game. And maybe not just the letter.

  ‘What is this?’ I said. ‘What are you playing at?’ and I waited a moment, for her to answer, but she didn’t say anything, and I could see her, standing at the desk, holding the phone away from her ear, so the other one could listen. Then, when I was certain that she had no intention of answering me, and was just waiting to hear what I would say next, I hung up.

  It rained all night. I had felt so tired, getting back to the hotel that, in spite of the letter and the lies Françoise had told me, in spite of the sense I’d had of being followed, in spite of the near panic I had drifted into, first in the doorway of the hotel and then, later, a few moments after I had put down the phone – in spite of all these things, I had expected to fall asleep right away and not wake till morning. But I couldn’t sleep. I ran the bath as high as I dared, then I called home, but there was no answer, so I took off my wet things and lay for a long time in the hot, steamy water; then I put on the thick terry cotton dressing gown in the wardrobe, called Room Service and asked them to bring me a Steak Sandwich, a Chicken Caesar Salad – the one on the menu, not a side order – and a large bowl of Nachos with Hot Salsa Dip, then I ordered Crème Brûlée and a selection of local cheeses to follow. I was hungry again, and I wanted to order everything on the menu, the Burger and Home Fries Special, the Turkey, Brie and Cranberry Baguette, the Apple Pie with Cornish Clotted Cream and/or Vanilla Ice Cream. I wanted to eat it all, and then sleep for days, alone in my room, with the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door and nobody there to see me. It was twenty minutes before the waiter came and it was obvious, as he set the tray down on the little table in the corner, that he was surprised to find only one person in the room. He didn’t say anything, though, he just started fiddling with the cutlery. I waited for him to go, then I began to eat. It was three or four times as much food as I usually had for dinner, but I ate it all. Every last nacho, every last drop of salsa, every crumb of cheese. When I was done, I felt calm again, just as I had earlier, when I’d bought the stuff at the delicatessen. I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes – and for the first few minutes, it seemed that I was about to drift away. I was so tired. I lay still and felt my arms and legs sink into the duvet, and my mind began to swim. I think I even slept for a few seconds, before something clicked – inside my head, somewhere in the room, or further away, I couldn’t say – and I opened my eyes. There was nothing there, and no other sound, but I had heard something, and though I tried to let it go, before it was too late to slip back into the slumber I had almost achieved, I couldn’t. I lay a while longer, then I stood up and went to the window. Outside, the garden of the hotel was empty, nothing but rain falling into the circle of orange street light, but for one instant – one fleeting instant and no more – I thought I saw someone in the play park opposite, a girl or a woman, I thought, with her face tipped up into the rain, her e
yes fixed on the light from my window. It was only an instant and, when my eyes got used to the darkness, I saw that I had been mistaken. It was a trick of the light, a reflection on the wet surface of the play area. It was understandable, given how tired I was, that my eyes might deceive me, and I realised, quite quickly, that there was nothing there. I stood a moment longer, aware that I was wide awake now, then I forced myself to go back to bed, creeping in under the covers this time and switching off all the lights save one small lamp in the corner, but I knew, even as I did, that sleep wouldn’t come. It was impossible, now. I wasn’t afraid, I wasn’t suffering from anxiety or the panic I’d felt earlier, but I couldn’t get myself settled either, and I lay awake for hours, wishing I could just get up and go home. I don’t know what time it was, when I finally did drift away, but I know it was late, and what sleep I did get was short, dreamless and empty.

  I went down to breakfast early the next morning. Nobody else was there, so I took a table by the window and sat staring out at the park across the road, while I waited for someone to come and take my order. I waited for a long time, maybe ten minutes or more, before a girl in a black skirt and a white sateen blouse emerged from the kitchen, carrying a basket of croissants. She didn’t see me to begin with; then, having deposited the croissants on a long buffet table by the far wall, she turned and made a great show of hurrying over. She was tall and thin, with very white skin and – just like Françoise and Renate – her long dark hair was pulled back tightly into a ponytail. ‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘Can I take your room number?’

  I told her the number and ordered some coffee, then I helped myself to a plateful of croissants, a couple of cold boiled eggs and some bread from the buffet table. When the girl came back, I ordered the Full English Breakfast, then I sat staring out at the wet gardens. Everything was wet from the rain still, and the sky was overcast; there was nobody on the street outside, though the odd car swished by, splashing through a puddle that had formed just outside the hotel gates and disappearing in the direction of the town centre. I stared out at the play park. To begin with, I thought it was empty; then I noticed a girl, maybe six or seven years old, standing by the metal fence that ran around the play area. She was wearing a thin cotton dress and a skimpy cardigan and she seemed to be alone, which struck me as odd, at that time of day, but I guessed she must live nearby, and her mother was keeping sight of her. Still, it seemed wrong for her to be out there, with it being so wet and more rain threatening, and I was looking around, trying to see where the mother was, hoping she would come and bring the girl a coat or take her away to where it was dry and warm, when the street and the fence around the park lit up unexpectedly, as if someone had switched on a lamp in a far room, and I saw that the girl had come closer to the fence and was staring back at me through the sudden light, her face bright like the face of an angel in some painting by Raphael – except that, now, I saw that her expression wasn’t angelic at all, it was spiteful and cruel and that cruelty was directed at me, for some reason. I had never seen her before but, as she advanced towards the fence, the look on her face turned to a grimace of utter, violent hatred, not just of me, but of everything and everyone. This girl – this thin, cold child in a hand-me-down cardigan and faded dress – hated me, not for anything I was or had done, but because I existed, in her world, and she didn’t want me there. And the oddest thing was that, as she came closer, and I could see her just a little more clearly, she seemed familiar. I had encountered this girl somewhere before, I was quite sure, though I couldn’t have said where and, in retrospect, I can see that she was too far away from me to make her out properly. Now, I can say that she could have been anyone, and that the look on her face was just the look that children sometimes put on, when they don’t get everything they want; but at that moment I was sure I knew her and I was trying to work out how – trying desperately, because, all of a sudden, it seemed vital that I work this out – when the waitress came with the cooked breakfast. She had slipped into the professionally pleasant manner that all the women who worked at this hotel seemed to have adopted; she was even close to smiling, in fact, when I heard her and turned from the window – but something must have been visible in my face, some reflection of the girl’s rage and loathing, because her expression changed right away and she came to a dead stop. ‘What is it?’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’ She appeared to be frightened, rather than concerned – frightened for herself, in fact, and not for me.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s just …’ I turned back to the window, and she turned too and looked out. ‘I was startled by the girl,’ I said – but now I could see that there was nobody there, just a thin figure hurrying away towards the far side of the park, a figure that could have been the girl I saw, but could just as easily have been someone else entirely, as it disappeared from view.

  HULDRA

  MOTHER PICKED ME up at the airport. She was wearing her long blue jacket and the velvet scarf that I had given her the previous Christmas, the one with the poppies. She loved that scarf, and she had been surprised when I gave it to her, because I don’t think she had been expecting anything so fine. And, as it happened, she was right to be surprised, because Ryvold was the one who had chosen it, not me. I had run into him in town while I was Christmas shopping, and he had pointed it out: a luxurious, charcoal-grey scarf with a red-poppy motif, the velvet thick and secretive, like the fur of some live creature, the colours almost too vivid, like the colours in a Sohlberg painting. I had known immediately that he was right, of course, but the fact remained that it hadn’t been my choice, and some part of me still felt guilty that I had passed that gift off as my idea. It was the first time I had given her something she really liked – and though she had done all she could to conceal her surprise, I had sensed it nevertheless, and she understood that she had let something slip. That was why she had only worn it once or twice since, and that was why she was wearing it now, as a sign, as a welcome. She wanted me to know that nothing had changed between us, or not for her at least: she was still my mother, and I was still her daughter, and she wanted me to understand that she was happy about that. It didn’t matter that we had almost nothing in common. What mattered was that she was happy, and she wanted me to be happy too.

  She knew right away that something was wrong, of course. How could she not? After my vision in the play park, I had gone upstairs and stayed in my room till it was time to leave, eating nothing, trying desperately to fall asleep and, at the same time, worrying that, if I did, I wouldn’t wake up in time to get my connection back to London. After a day of ravening hunger, I had completely lost my appetite; now, all I could do was drink water and lie on the bed, hovering between sleep and waking and listening to the world going about its business all around me. Then, when it was time to go, I packed my bags and hurried downstairs. There was a new girl on reception, not Françoise, not Renate; this one was a blonde, moon-faced Englishwoman who ran up my bill and asked if everything had been to my satisfaction with a look on her face that said she would have been happier anywhere else than there. The bill paid, she called me a taxi, and I started out on the first leg of my journey in brilliant sunshine, the trees and hedges still wet from the rain, but sparkling in the morning light as the car headed for the station. It was sunny all the way to London, it was sunny at Heathrow, it was sunny in Oslo. When I got off the plane at Tromsø, the sun was on us as Mother walked me to the car, and it felt like a spotlight on my face, picking out every shadow, and Mother noticed, but she didn’t say anything, other than to remark that I looked tired and that I should go straight to bed when we got back.

  She didn’t ask about Arild Frederiksen. She didn’t want to know what had happened or whether he was all right. She didn’t want to know why Kate Thompson had suddenly decided to contact me on his behalf, after he had stayed away for eighteen years. She didn’t want to know anything – though she left a small, rather tidy space between us for me to say what I wanted to say, if I should choose to
talk about it. She must have known that he, or Kate Thompson, would tell me his side of the story and she must have wondered how I would react, but she would never have admitted – to me, or to herself – that she was capable of giving such matters even a moment’s serious consideration. I think she wanted to leave that neat space around an experience that was mine and mine alone – and I understood that this decision was symptomatic, not of what Kate Thompson would have taken as coldness, or indifference, but of an exaggerated, almost entirely formal delicacy on her part. After all, she had encouraged me to make the trip, she had needed to let me go, she had bought the plane tickets and paid for my hotel, but she had no wish to intrude upon the experience. At the same time, she wanted me to understand that she would listen, if I wanted to speak, or answer any questions I might have, or give advice if advice were needed. The man I had gone to see was nothing to her now, but he was, or he might be, something to me, and she wanted me to understand that she knew that. And of course, I did. I understood completely. When I saw her standing there, in that red-poppy scarf, I knew that she wasn’t at all interested in what anyone else might say about what she had done or failed to do in a long-ago past. She knew, without a doubt, that she had nothing to answer for, and no other concern than my well-being. Her behaviour was perfect – she was perfect – and it troubled me, all the way home, that I would have doubted that perfection on the say-so of a woman I barely knew. A woman who had judged her years ago and decided, as such people do, that she was heartless and self-involved. I had seen that judgement, and even though I had never for a moment accepted it, I was afraid that Mother might think otherwise. I was worried that she would guess what had been inferred from what I had told Kate Thompson about her and I was afraid, suddenly, of hurting her. I wanted to say something to allay any possible suspicion, but during the drive home and, then, during the quiet, slightly ashen days of bed-rest and self-recovery that followed, days of exaggerated kindness and good grace with one another that made it seem all too obvious to me that something was in the process of being concealed, not only for now, but for always, I couldn’t decide what to say until so much time had passed that I couldn’t say anything.