World War II Thriller Collection (114 page)

“They haven't given you any money, though.”

Harald was shocked. “My grandfather bequeathed money for my education.”

“But he left it to me to dispense. And I'm not going to give it to you to spend in nightclubs.”

“It's not your money—you don't have the right!”

“I most certainly do. I'm your father.”

Harald was stunned. He had not dreamed of this. It was the only punishment that could really hurt him. Bewildered, he said, “But you've always told me that education was so important.”

“Education is not the same as godliness.”

“Even so . . .”

His father saw that he was genuinely shocked, and his attitude softened a little. “An hour ago, Ove Borking died. He had no education worth speaking of—he could barely write his name. He spent his life working on other men's boats, and never made enough to buy a carpet for his wife to put on the parlor floor. But he raised three God-fearing children, and every week he gave a tenth of his meager wages to the church. That's what God considers a good life.”

Harald knew and liked Ove, and was sorry he had died. “He was a simple man.”

“Nothing wrong with simplicity.”

“Yet if all men were like Ove, we'd still be fishing from dugout canoes.”

“Perhaps. But you're going to learn to emulate him before you do anything else.”

“And what does that mean?”

“Get dressed. Put on your school clothes and a clean shirt. You're going to work.” He left the room.

Harald stared at the closed door. What next?

He washed and shaved in a daze. He could hardly believe what was happening.

He might go to university without his father's help, of course. He would have to get a job to support himself, and he would not be able to afford the private tuition that most people considered essential to supplement the free lectures. But could he achieve all he wanted in those circumstances? He did not want merely to pass his exams. He wanted to be a great physicist, the successor to Niels Bohr. How could he do that if he did not have the money to buy books?

He needed time to think. And while he was thinking, he had to go along with whatever his father was planning.

He went downstairs and ate without tasting the porridge his mother had made.

His father saddled the horse, Major, a broad-backed Irish gelding strong enough to carry them both. The pastor mounted, and Harald got up behind.

They rode the length of the island. The journey took Major more than an hour. When they reached the dock, they watered the horse at the quayside trough and waited for the ferry. The pastor still had not told Harald where they were going.

When the boat docked, the ferryman touched his cap to the pastor, who said, “Ove Borking was called home early this morning.”

“I expected as much,” said the ferryman.

“He was a good man.”

“Rest his soul.”

“Amen.”

They crossed to the mainland and rode up the hill to the town square. The stores were not yet open, but the pastor knocked at the door of the
haberdashery. It was opened by the owner, Otto Sejr, a deacon of the Sande church. He seemed to be expecting them.

They stepped inside, and Harald looked around. Glass cases displayed balls of colored wool. The shelves were stacked with lengths of material, wool cloth and printed cotton and a few silks. Below the shelves were drawers, each neatly marked: “Ribbon—white,” “Ribbon—fancy,” “Elastic,” “Buttons—shirt,” “Buttons—horn,” “Pins,” “Knitting needles.”

There was a dusty smell of mothballs and lavender, like an old lady's wardrobe. The odor brought to Harald's mind a childhood memory, suddenly vivid: standing here as a small boy while his mother bought black satin for his father's clerical shirts.

The shop had a run-down air now, probably because of wartime austerity. The higher shelves were empty, and it seemed to him there was not the astonishing variety of colors of knitting wool he recalled from his childhood.

But what was he doing here today?

His father soon answered the question. “Brother Sejr has kindly agreed to give you a job,” he said. “You'll be helping in the shop, serving customers and doing anything else you can to make yourself useful.”

He stared at his father, speechless.

“Mrs. Sejr is in poor health, and can't work any longer, and their daughter has recently married and gone to live in Odense, so he needs an assistant,” the pastor went on, as if that were what needed explaining.

Sejr was a small man, bald with a little moustache. Harald had known him all his life. He was pompous, mean, and sly. He wagged a fat finger and said, “Work hard, pay attention, and be obedient, and you may learn a valuable trade, young Harald.”

Harald was flabbergasted. He had been thinking for two days about how his father would respond to his crime, but nothing he anticipated had come close to this. It was a life sentence.

His father shook hands with Sejr and thanked him, then said to Harald in parting, “You'll take your lunch with the family here, and come straight home when you finish work. I'll see you tonight.” He waited a moment as if expecting an answer, but when Harald said nothing he went out.

“Right,” said Sejr. “There's just time to sweep the floor before we open.
You'll find a broom in the cupboard. Start at the back, sweep towards the front, and push the dust out through the door.”

Harald began his task. Seeing him brush one-handed, Sejr snapped, “Put both hands on that broom, boy!”

Harald obeyed.

At nine o'clock, Sejr put the “Open” sign in the door. “When I want you to deal with a customer, I'll say, ‘Forward,' and you step forward,” he said. “You say, ‘Good morning, how may I serve you?' But watch me with one or two customers first.”

Harald watched Sejr sell six needles on a card to an old woman who counted out her coins as carefully as if they were pieces of gold. Next was a smartly dressed woman of about forty who bought two yards of black braid. Then it was Harald's turn to serve. The third customer was a thin-lipped woman who looked familiar. She asked for a reel of white cotton thread.

Sejr snapped, “On your left, top drawer.”

Harald found the cotton. The price was marked in pencil on the wooden end of the reel. He took the money and made change.

Then the woman said, “So, Harald Olufsen, you've been in the fleshpots of Babylon, I hear.”

Harald flushed. He had not prepared himself for this. Did the whole town know what he had done? He was not going to defend himself to gossipmongers. He made no reply.

Sejr said, “Young Harald will come under a more steady influence here, Mrs. Jensen.”

“I'm sure it will do him good.”

They were thoroughly enjoying his humiliation, Harald realized. He said, “Will there be anything else, then?”

“Oh, no thank you,” said Mrs. Jensen, but she made no move to leave. “So you won't be going to the university?”

Harald turned away and said, “Where's the toilet, Mr. Sejr?”

“Through the back and upstairs.”

As he left, he heard Sejr say apologetically, “He's embarrassed, of course.”

“And no wonder,” the woman replied.

Harald climbed the stairs to the apartment over the shop. Mrs. Sejr was in the kitchen, dressed in a pink quilted housecoat, washing breakfast cups at the sink. “I've only got a few herrings for lunch,” she said. “I hope you don't eat much.”

He lingered in the bathroom, and when he returned to the shop he was relieved to see that Mrs. Jensen had gone. Sejr said, “People are bound to be curious—you must be polite, whatever they say.”

“My life is none of Mrs. Jensen's business,” he replied angrily.

“But she's a customer, and the customer is always right.”

The morning wore on with painful slowness. Sejr checked stock, wrote orders, did his books, and dealt with phone calls, but Harald was expected to stand waiting, ready for the next person to come through the door. It left him plenty of time to ponder. Was he really going to spend his life selling reels of cotton to housewives? It was unthinkable.

By midmorning, when Mrs. Sejr brought him and Sejr a cup of tea, he had decided he could not even spend the rest of the summer working here.

By lunchtime he knew he was not going to last the day.

As Sejr flipped the “CLOSED” sign, Harald said, “I'm going for a walk.”

Sejr was startled. “But Mrs. Sejr has prepared lunch.”

“She told me she doesn't have enough food.” Harald opened the door.

“You've only got an hour,” Sejr called after him. “Don't be late!”

Harald walked down the hill and got on the ferry.

He crossed to Sande and walked along the beach toward the parsonage. He felt a strange, tight sensation in his chest when he looked at the dunes, the miles of damp sand, and the endless sea. The view was as familiar as his own face in the mirror, yet now it gave him an aching sense of loss. He almost felt like crying, and after a while he realized why.

He was going to leave this place today.

The rationale came after the realization. He did not have to do the job selected for him—but he could not continue to live in the house after defying his father. He would have to go.

The thought of disobeying his father was no longer frightening, he realized as he strode along the sand. The drama had gone out of it. When had this change taken place? It was when the pastor had said he would
withhold the money Grandpa had left, Harald decided. That had been a shocking betrayal which could not possibly leave their relationship intact. At that moment, Harald had understood that he could no longer trust his father to have his best interests at heart. He had to look after himself now.

The conclusion was strangely anticlimactic. Of course he had to take responsibility for his own life. It was like realizing that the Bible was not infallible: he found it hard to imagine how he had formerly been so trusting.

When he reached the parsonage, the horse was not in the paddock. Harald guessed his father had returned to the Borking house to make arrangements for Ove's funeral. He went in by the kitchen door. His mother was at the table peeling potatoes. She looked frightened when she saw him. He kissed her, but gave no explanations.

He went to his room and packed his case as if he were going to school. His mother came to the bedroom door and stood watching him, wiping her hands in a towel. He saw her face, lined and sad, and he looked quickly away. After a while, she said, “Where will you go?”

“I don't know.”

He thought of his brother. He went into his father's study, picked up the telephone, and placed a call to the flying school. After a few minutes, Arne came on the line. Harald told him what had happened.

“The old man overplayed his hand,” Arne commented. “If he'd put you into a tough job, like cleaning fish at the canning plant, you'd have stuck it out just to prove your manhood.”

“I suppose I might.”

“But you were never going to stay long working in a damn shop. Our father can be a fool, sometimes. Where will you go now?”

Harald had not decided until this moment, but now he had a flash of inspiration. “Kirstenslot,” he said. “Tik Duchwitz's place. But don't tell Father. I don't want him coming after me.”

“Old Man Duchwitz might tell him.”

That was a good point, Harald reflected. Tik's respectable father would have little sympathy for a boogie-playing, slogan-daubing runaway. But the ruined monastery was used as a dormitory by seasonal workers on the farm. “I'll sleep in the old monastery,” he said. “Tik's father won't even know I'm there.”

“How will you eat?”

“I may be able to get a job on the farm. They employ students in summer.”

“Tik is still at school, I presume.”

“But his sister might help me.”

“I know her, she went out with Poul a couple of times. Karen.”

“Only a couple of times?”

“Yes. Why—are you interested in her?”

“She's out of my league.”

“I suppose she is.”

“What happened to Poul . . . exactly?”

“It was Peter Flemming.”

“Peter!” Mads Kirke had not known that detail.

“He came with a car full of cops, looking for Poul. Poul tried to escape in his Tiger Moth, and Peter shot at him. The aircraft crashed and burned.”

“Good God! Did you see it?”

“No, but one of my airmen did.”

“Mads told me some of this, but he didn't know it all. So Peter Flemming killed Poul. That's terrible.”

“Don't talk about it too much, you might get into trouble. They're trying to pass it off as an accident.”