She looked at me and considered the question. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, at last. ‘I’ll have to finish the picture to find out.’ She inclined her head slightly in the direction of the cup. ‘Drink your tea,’ she said. ‘You have to rest and stay calm. You shouldn’t be getting all worked up. Drink your tea and I’ll make you something to eat.’ She didn’t say anything else, but quietly set about preparing a plate of sandwiches and sliced apples. I knew this was her way of bringing the conversation to an end – and, because of what happened next, it was several weeks before I was able to ask about the portrait again. By then, Maia was gone and I had started to wonder if I had made a mistake about her – to wonder if she was just as much a victim of the huldra as the Sigfridsson brothers and Martin Crosbie. So I asked what had happened to the painting, because I knew, I knew for certain, that whoever the real Maia was, Mother would have captured the truth of her in the work she had done over those last few days. I should have known, though, that she wouldn’t let me see. It was for my own protection, of course – she couldn’t risk having me relive the events of those days – but I was still taken aback by the lie she told me. The portrait hadn’t worked out, she said, and she’d needed canvas for something else, so she had painted over it. Naturally, I was shocked by that, not just because I knew it wasn’t true, but because I understood why she wanted to hide that painting from me – and it had nothing to do with my sanity. It was because the painting hadn’t failed at all: she had captured the gaze of the huldra and, as terrible as it was, she couldn’t bring herself to destroy that image. She had kept it, and I knew that, even as she stood in our kitchen lying to me about it, that portrait existed somewhere – if not in the house, then in a storeroom at Fløgstad’s gallery, or on the wall in some collector’s house in Oslo, or Los Angeles: the cold eyes of the huldra, gazing out from the face of an ordinary girl, a girl who could have been the artist’s own daughter, or a family friend, sitting patiently for hours in a bare studio with the last of the summer light falling on her face, revealing her terrible secret and, at the same time, making it beautiful.
Over the next two days, Mother went on treating me like I was some kind of invalid, bringing soup and crackers or cups of sweet milky coffee to my room and doing all she could to keep me there, telling me that I wasn’t well yet, that she was worried about me, I’d had a shock, all the usual things you say – not to make too fine a point of it – to someone you suspect of having come close to a nervous breakdown. And it was true: I did feel that I’d had a shock, though it wasn’t exactly the shock she meant, and I felt shaken and weak, but that didn’t mean I was unaware of what was going on downstairs, any more than it prevented me from suspecting Mother of keeping me out of the way for her own motives. I could see it in her face when she brought the soup: a kind of appeal, under the calm surface and, behind the appeal, a determination that she would continue working on the portrait, no matter what. It was too important to her, now, to finish what she had started. Later, I saw the painting that came out of those few days with Maia: a terrifying image of a cold, manic child in something that approximated, but didn’t quite match, a woman’s body – and that day, long after the huldra had disappeared into the darkness of summer’s end, I was stunned by the realisation that, whatever Mother saw in Maia’s face, the subtly fantastical figure she painted wasn’t that much different from the figure of the huldra in Kyrre’s stories. I even think she saw this figure on that first night, when Maia had just turned away from watching Martin die and she had asked about the girl, not because she was concerned about her, but because she saw the cruelty and tragedy in that face, and she had been fascinated.
It wasn’t the appeal in Mother’s eyes that kept me in my room for the next couple of days, however. It wasn’t fear, either. Or not fear of the huldra, anyhow. It was a bitter and unseemly curiosity. I wanted to see how long Mother would keep up her pretence. I wanted to see what would happen when she was done with the painting and sent Maia away, without a second thought – because I was quite sure she would do exactly that and, even though I was worried for her, something in me refused to acknowledge that concern. I wanted to see what would happen. I wanted to see how Maia would react to the inevitable rejection, and how Mother would react to her reaction. And, yes, at some ugly, defiant level, I thought the two of them probably deserved each other. They had been destined to meet from the first, in fact. It was part of the story. I didn’t love Mother any less – quite the contrary – but I wanted to see what would happen.
So I waited. I waited for two more days – at which point I knew that the painting was finished. I could hear Mother in the studio, clearing up, doing the small practical things she always did when she’d just finished a piece – and that was enough to tell me that she had no more use for Maia. So I got up, dressed quickly, and hurried downstairs. I knew better than to disturb Mother at that stage in the process; besides, what I wanted, then, had nothing to do with her. It was about the house. Everyone thinks of this as Mother’s house; everyone, including me, sees how artfully she has made it, how she created it as a shell for her inward existence, how the careful illusions of the garden and the ground floor are so perfectly maintained, saying so much about the skill of their designer, and so little about her true self, but they forget – we all forget – that this is my house too. It is my house and, for those few days, Mother had allowed it to become contaminated by a stray from one of Kyrre’s old stories. Now, I thought, it was time to claim back what was mine – or rather, to claim my share of a place that I had never fully inhabited until then. I wanted my home back and, as I hurried downstairs and went from room to room, scenting the air like a dog, checking for any sign of the huldra that might remain, I was careless enough to assume that, just because the kitchen and the dining room and the downstairs study were empty, my place in the world could be salvaged so easily. Yet the sweet, smoky scent was still there – it didn’t clear for weeks after – and it led me down the hallway and out through the open door to the garden. The sun was out, I remember, and it was very warm for that time of year, more like the beginning than the end of summer, and the scent of the huldra was sweeter, here – sweeter and, at the same time, stronger, a maple-syrup smell touched with dust and lanolin, though there was something else there too: a faint suggestion of milk, or was it the sickly cleanness of the stark white threads that run through leaf mould, sprouting new, misshapen forms in the birch woods? Whatever it was, I should have seen it for the warning it was, but I followed it all the way outside, all the way to the huldra.
She was sitting on the wide stone in the middle of the rock garden. She looked completely at ease, her face very calm, her eyes half closed, taking the sun as if she had lived here all her life, the second daughter Mother never had, my inverse sister, brighter and darker than me, more light to her, and more shadow – and yet, for a moment at least, when I first caught sight of her, it seemed to me that she was only pretending to feel at home in Mother’s garden. The calm, the apparent pleasure she took in her surroundings – it seemed to me that it was all an act, a bluff; but, if it was, who was it for? Who was she trying to convince?
She didn’t see me for a split second; then, when she did, the smile that ghosted across her face had something of anticipation in it, a hint of sly mischief that made me think again of some ugly and unnatural sisterhood. It was the smile of a younger child who knows the grown-ups aren’t watching, and decides to have some fun. She stood up and took a couple of steps towards me. ‘I love the garden when it’s like this,’ she said. ‘Don’t you?’
It wasn’t difficult to see what she was doing, but she was wasting her time if she thought she could provoke me. I wasn’t angry with her for being there, I was angry with Mother for letting her in. ‘I’m sure you do,’ I said. ‘But don’t get too comfortable. You won’t be here for long.’
She smiled sweetly. ‘It’s lovely and warm – out here,’ she said. ‘But why is it so cold inside?’ She stepped closer, so she was only a couple of f
eet away and lifted her hand, till it was level with my chest, so that, for a moment, I thought she was going to touch me.
‘We like it cool,’ I said, making an effort not to draw back. I didn’t want her to touch me, but I didn’t want to give ground either. ‘If you keep it too warm, it draws in all the vermin for miles.’
She laughed at that – and, even though she was standing right next to me, her face too close to mine, the laugh sounded far away, coming from somewhere at one remove from us, like the laughter you hear sometimes on a recording, when someone in the studio does or says something funny that you can’t hear, and people laugh in the background, far away and close at the same time, and privy to a secret that you don’t share. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But maybe there’s another reason.’ She waited a moment to see if I would respond, but I didn’t say anything. She smiled. ‘They do say a house takes on the qualities of the people who live there –’
‘It’s fortunate that you don’t live here, then,’ I said.
She laughed again. ‘It probably is,’ she said. ‘That really would be confusing.’ She stepped away, turning slightly to look back towards the front door, which was standing open on a whitish patch of sunlight, right at the threshold, and a dark, brownish area of shadow in the hall beyond. ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Did you ever fuck anybody?’ She glanced at me sideways, still smiling her sweet, practised smile. ‘Or are you just as cold as your nice, cold house …?’
I shook my head. I wasn’t going to be angry with her. I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction. ‘Have you got some business here?’ I said. ‘Will Mother be – using – you again today?’
That drew a hard, bright laugh, but she couldn’t quite hide her annoyance, and I understood that what I had thought before – that Mother had finished with her – was true. The picture was done and Mother was already beginning to detach herself, not just from the portrait, but also from its subject. Besides, it had never really been Maia she was painting. It was something else entirely. Something she had seen in the girl’s face that didn’t quite belong to her: a phantom that had taken up residence in her eyes for a while, and would soon move on.
Maia looked down at her feet and, just for a moment, I thought she was biting her lip. But that was all pretence too. Everything about her was pretence and I felt that, if I could only reach out and push against her, all that knowing, cocksure facade would crumble. There was nothing behind her but empty space. Nothing to her, other than a careful illusion. I didn’t reach out, though, partly because I wasn’t sure, but also because I didn’t want her to crumble. It was easier to dislike her for a while, than to watch her become the lost girl who might be hiding inside that facade. If you allow people to keep up appearances, then you can leave them to their own devices, but if you probe too far and the pretence falls apart, there’s always the risk of being implicated in the mess – and I didn’t want to be implicated in anything.
Though there was no danger of that – or not yet. Maia kept up the pretence for just long enough that I was almost convinced I’d hurt her feelings, then she looked up and grinned. ‘As a matter of fact,’ she said, ‘I actually do have to go – for a while.’ She looked at the house wistfully, though it wasn’t clear what she regretted. ‘Your mother has some things she needs to think over,’ she said, though it seemed she wasn’t talking to me any more. ‘She’s a complicated woman.’
I almost laughed out loud at that. There were no limits to the girl’s presumption. ‘You think so?’ I said.
She turned back to me and her face brightened. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘She’s a puzzle, that one.’ She sounded like Kyrre Opdahl.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I won’t keep you.’ I studied her face for a moment, hoping that no sign of triumph showed in my face – I couldn’t allow her to see that because, then, she would know that I hadn’t been assured of winning all along – then I stepped away carefully and, without turning my back on her, took a few steps towards the house. I didn’t want to have to look at her any more. It wasn’t that her rudeness annoyed me, or even that I found her pitiful, though for a moment I had, and that, too, felt like a triumph – a triumph that shamed me, rather. Still, triumph or not, I was still afraid of her – and that day, I at last understood why. As she had guessed, I was afraid that she would touch me. Nothing worse than that: just a touch. She would touch me and I would be touched forever – and I couldn’t say anything more until I was out of range of that possible touch. When I was, I could turn and leave her there, alone, watching me, that bright, amused look on her face still. As soon as I had taken myself safely out of reach, I could have been magnanimous and let things go, I could have told myself that, very soon, she would be gone to who knew where, and I would never have to see her again. I still believed that, and while I was angry that Mother had let her in at all, I was reassured by the conviction that she would just as easily send her away. It was possible that Maia saw her relationship with Mother as something real, perhaps even personal, but I knew better. Mother looked on her as a subject, nothing more, and now that the painting was done, she would move on to another subject. All of which was enough to allow me, at that moment, the possibility of being kind. I could easily have said nothing, and left her with whatever pyrrhic victory she seemed intent on winning. But I didn’t. ‘I wonder why you don’t get back to your own house,’ I said. ‘I imagine it’s lovely and warm there.’
Her face hardened. It only lasted for a second, but I saw it. She was genuinely angry, or upset, if only for that briefest of moments, and not only did I see it in her eyes, but she saw that I had seen. She recovered quickly, however. ‘Well,’ she said, the brightness returning, ‘you know what they say.’ She paused, expectantly, as if I really did know what they said. Then she laughed – that same laugh again, far away and knowing, not mocking, just enjoying a joke that was not only private, but beyond sharing. Or beyond sharing with the likes of me. ‘My home is in the wind,’ she said, quoting from something, though I didn’t know what. ‘And I go where the wind goes.’ She studied my face a moment longer, then nodded slightly, before she turned away. It was the slight nod of someone who has just received good news, or a rare compliment, but it was also the calculated, if almost imperceptible gesture of the victor in some subtle game that, for a time, and wholly for her own amusement, she had tricked me into thinking I could win. Now, I saw that she could never have been defeated and, though I didn’t know what her victory actually consisted of, I turned away quickly and made my way back to the house – and all the way, just as I had when I’d met her in the meadows, I was chill with the fear that she was following and that, if I stopped, she would be right there, reaching to touch my face if I even dared to look back. I didn’t lose that fear until I crossed the threshold and, turning to close the door, I saw her walking away, that old bounce in her step as she passed through the gate and disappeared into the birch wood, following the path down to the Brensholmen road, for all the world like some ordinary girl, out for a walk on a sunny day – and if he hadn’t moved at that exact moment, I would have been too preoccupied with her to notice Kyrre Opdahl, who was standing, half hidden in shadow, among the birches at the far edge of the garden. I don’t know how long he had been there but, when he saw me, he gave a slight shake of the head before he turned and stepped away. I knew, then, that he had been watching all along, and that this tiny, almost imperceptible movement was a sign to me, though whether it was a request that I didn’t say anything about his being there, or a signal of his unhappiness at having witnessed the huldra leaving our house as if she had every right to be there, I couldn’t have said and, a moment later, he was gone, stepping back into the full shade and disappearing quickly into the cover of the trees.
When I was sure Maia was gone, I went up to my room. Not because I felt ill, or frightened, but because I wanted to be alone. I kept to my room for the rest of that day, but I didn’t do any of the usual things I did when I was alone: I didn’t look at books or think about what th
e future would bring, I just sat by the window, looking out towards the Sound. I think, now, that I was trying to make sense of what had happened, going over the details in my mind and attempting to put it all into one convincing narrative, but no matter what I did, nothing made any sense. I must have thought, at the beginning, that I wouldn’t give up until I had an answer but, late that afternoon, when nothing that even remotely resembled an answer had arrived, I went to the window and saw Kyrre Opdahl’s car out on the road at the foot of our drive. I thought, for a moment, that he was coming to us with news of Martin Crosbie, but he turned and rolled slowly down the grassy track that led to the hytte, and emerged with a large plastic box in one hand and a roll of dustbin liners in the other. Even from that distance, I sensed that he was tired and weary – and I knew I had to go down and help him with whatever he was doing. I hoped he wouldn’t say anything about what he had seen – I felt, now, that Mother’s association with Maia was even more a betrayal of him than it was of me – but, if he did, I resolved to tell him that Mother had finished with the portrait, which I felt sure was true, and that Maia would soon be gone for good.
Mother always says there is nothing so beautiful as a wet meadow. That’s why it is so hard to paint, she says, because it is beautiful, and obvious beauty is almost impossible to work with. That morning, I saw what she meant and, as I headed down the track, I realised that I was actually walking in one of her paintings, a work she had spent weeks on, when I was fifteen or so. That painting had been possible, she said, because the beauty had been softened by the season: at the end of the summer, the first hint of decay had stolen in, tingeing a seed head here, or a blade of grass there, with grey, or brown, everything glossed with the rain, glossed, but not freshened, limned with hints of rust and charcoal, at the moment that comes after the last flourish, but before the descent into nothingness. That was how it was, that day – and I was surprised, because I hadn’t seen it coming. In a week or two, an autumnal cold would set in, the headland along the shore would be nothing but dry, wiry scrub, spotted here and there with the last of this year’s berries and the chalky, mint-green kråkebolle that the gulls had carried to land to smash upon the rocks. It seemed to be coming too early that year – yet I didn’t mind and, to my shame, I caught myself thinking that, soon, it would be too cold for hauntings, too windy, out on the foreshore, for ghosts and spirits. Out there, I thought, winter was inhospitable to everything, even the huldra.
A Summer of Drowning Page 27
