Barbara (3 page)

“Oh, Gabriel’s no stranger,” said Barbara sullenly.

No, Gabriel was no stranger. He could sit here and see her white arms and neck – as a matter of course, too much of a matter of course. That was the trouble with it. Her skin was uniquely lustrous. Could that be because she had been in the tub?

It was not long before Magdalene went back again. But Barbara yawned.

“Barbara, would you like some silk ribbons and clothes and that sort of thing?” asked Gabriel in a voice that was suddenly confidential in tone.

Barbara started; her eyes suddenly sprang to life and her voice took on a warm tone: “Have you got some?”

“I might be able to get something for you.”

“Where? Where?” Her entire body had suddenly come to life; her face shone in radiant, almost comical anticipation.

“You mustn’t say a word about it,” said Gabriel.

“Of course not,” she shouted impatiently; she was trembling, radiant and secretive. That little laugh of hers rose in her throat.

“I have quite a lot out there in my place,” whispered Gabriel.

“Do you mean that? Out in the store. Shall we go straight away?”

It took only a moment: a chest was opened, a drawer pulled out, and Barbara was again in skirts and shoes with a scarf around her neck and deeply complicit. Gabriel was a little taken aback, and his mouth relaxed.

At that moment, Suzanne Harme, the bailiff’s daughter, arrived.

“Isn’t this fun,” burbled Barbara: “What do you think? I’m going over to the Store with Gabriel to look at some silks and dresses that he has there. Isn’t that exciting? It’s so nice you came.”

That was not what Gabriel was thinking. A great hope sank within him. Bloody hell!

“Over in the shop?” said Suzanne. She seemed to shudder a little. She was dark and elegant. She wrinkled her forehead.

“Isn’t it just so exciting?” Barbara repeated.

“I don’t know. Now, this evening? Won’t it attract attention? And father’s the bailiff, you know.”

“You don’t usually bother very much about that,” Gabriel burst out. “But we can manage perfectly well without you, you know.”

“Oh no.” Barbara didn’t agree.

“Well, father has an office in the Store,” said Suzanne. “And what if we are caught, Gabriel?”

“Oh. Don’t you think the bailiff’s ever sold a yard of material? What about that time the Dutch East-Indiaman was here? But in any case the bailiff’s office isn’t up there in my space – at least not this evening.”

“Mother, I’m going across to Suzanne’s for a while,” Barbara shouted as they went out. They made their way through Gongin in pitch darkness. The rain was gusting malevolently, both from above and below. They groped their way forward and had to tread very carefully.

“But this is smuggling,” Suzanne determined.

Barbara uttered a deep laugh. Exciting. She had to take Gabriel’s arm. Gongin was the only continuous street in Tórshavn. Otherwise just a few odd alleyways between the scattered houses and huts,
Skot
as they were called, often so narrow that there was scarcely room for two people to pass. They reached the top of Reyn, Reyn, where the school, the parsonage, Reynegaard, and the church stood. They went across the churchyard. Behind the church, in Church Alley, was the entrance to the shop, the northernmost of the buildings belonging to the Royal Store. Gabriel put a huge key in the lock. The pitch darkness, the sudden silence and the heavy air felt oppressive to the two young women as they stepped into the blackness of the warehouse. Gabriel felt his way forward, finally found a lamp, struck a light and lit it. They ascended a steep staircase and crossed the long loft. Their shadows fluttered across the creaking floor planks. The withered roots of the grass on the roof hung down here and there between the rafters. Suzanne shuddered and clung to Barbara.

They went into Gabriel’s lodging over in one of the gables. It was a small room with alcoves, a wall cupboard and chests.

“Do you never come across Master Naaber here?” asked Suzanne in a voice suggesting mirth mixed with anxiety.

“Master Naaber – who’s that?” asked Gabriel.

“Don’t you know? No, of course you weren’t born here. All the people of Tórshavn are frightened of him. He is supposed to haunt the lofts out here in Tórshavn at night.”

“I’ve never seen him.”

“He wears a black, pointed hood and talks to himself. And when he looks at you, he has yellow eyes.”

Gabriel didn’t like to hear this. He started to light some candles, making rather a noise as he did so.

“Haven’t you seen the
Council
either?” Suzanne went on.

“The Council, what are you talking about?”

“Yes, the Council.” Suzanne’s eyes opened wide. “The seven men. They meet in one of the buildings – I don’t know which – and sit at a long table.”

It was beginning to run cold down Gabriel’s spine. Suzanne was carried away with her own words. Her face was just a little distorted. Her voice was low and tense: “Several people have seen them. They sit there quite silently and write and write and seal letters.”

“Be quiet,” shouted Barbara vehemently. A shudder went through her and she gave a rather weak smile.

“You’re crazy,” said Gabriel.

They all fell silent. The weak light from the candlestick quite failed to penetrate into all the corners in the little room. Bare woodwork, dark from age, could be glimpsed through the magic wrought by the gloom. Suzanne’s eyes were still curiously radiant. But then Gabriel started to unpack, and colours blossomed from mysterious hiding places. The little room was suddenly transformed, the oppressive feel broken. Greedy female hands grabbed after the materials and spread them out; white fingers ran through crackling silks; the poor furnishings were bathed in light and radiance. At first there was nothing but silent wonderment and shining eyes. A hushed springtime had been created beneath Master Naaber’s turf roof – it rose mound-like on four planks; the two women sat spellbound.

Gabriel, shopkeeper and lover, played his cards intelligently; he did not waste his trumps, but went about things in a matter-of-fact manner and allowed the drama to develop like a firework display. The occasion was his. He did not break the silence, but simply let one miracle take place after the other.

“But Gabriel,” said Suzanne in a sudden fit of reason, “where did you get all this?”

“Do I need to tell you? I haven’t stolen it.”

“You must have been dealing on the quiet with some sly Dutchman or Englishman.”

Gabriel made no attempt to deny that. It sounded quite good. The truth was actually that it was one of the Royal Store’s own skippers he had been working with.

“And you have silk stockings as well,” exclaimed Barbara in amazement and delight.

“Goods are power,” thought Gabriel. He suddenly had a vision of Barbara’s wet woollen stockings that had lain by the fireplace, all drab and ordinary. He thought he had made a splendid trick and made another bid: “Just look here.”

He took a pair of brocade shoes out and placed them beside Barbara’s feet, which were all dirty with mud from the street.

Both women were wide-eyed. Barbara drew her feet back, a little embarrassed by the contrast, but a moment later she wanted to try the shoes. Gabriel had no objection to this; indeed he even wanted to help her, knelt down and removed her shoe. Barbara’s foot was simply in a coarse woollen stocking, but never mind about that – small and supple as it was it fitted perfectly in the fine shoe; indeed the shoe was, if anything, too big. Oh, that blasted Suzanne! Why had she come? Suddenly, Gabriel saw a dizzying perspective of what lost opportunities the moment held. He had so many things that Barbara would perhaps not have been unwilling to try!

His heart was thumping. And then it happened that his bright intellect suddenly let him down. He took out a fine garter. Would Barbara like to try that as well?

Barbara almost gasped and she looked at Suzanne. Then she laughed and said affably: “But a garter isn’t something to try on, Gabriel.”

Suzanne looked up, slightly confused, with a brief wrinkle on her brow, and then, with sudden enthusiasm, said, “Let me try those shoes.”

Barbara rose. “What would a dress in this stuff look like?” she asked, starting to drape herself in some flowered material.

“Now, if I had a skirt like this and then these shoes,” said Suzanne, shaking her foot a little under a length of silk.

“Oh, just look here,” exclaimed Barbara enthusiastically. She pulled something out of the pile and held it up to the light.

Gabriel tried to join in, but they did not listen to him. And suddenly it was clear to him that his wares had completely put him out of the picture. The two women had launched themselves into an intoxicated discussion about clothes; they selected and rejected, felt and tried. Barbara’s eyes were shining; she was shouting with delight; she was becoming more and more beautiful in her enthusiasm for beauty.

“I think I had better have my dress off,” said Suzanne.

“I think I will, too,” said Barbara.

Their dark costumes were wet and shapeless from the rain and made the fine garments damp when they tried them on. Suzanne had already started to undo her bodice when her eyes caught sight of Gabriel:

“Oh, Gabriel, go and leave us alone for a bit, will you?”

“Oh, that’s not quite fair,” said Barbara.

Suzanne directed a thoughtful, searching look at Gabriel. Then she came to a conclusion: “No, we can’t have you in here looking at us.”

And Gabriel went.

By chance discovered in his own room and thrown out like an unwelcome dog! He was furious. This was his splendid, great plan. And here he was standing out in the desolate loft. They had probably already forgotten him in there. He went backwards and forwards with his lamp, angry, but also really uncomfortable. Master Naaber! The gale had increased and lay like some unceasing, superior pressure on the building – an inexhaustible song of a thousand voices in torment. He reached the other end of the loft, by the Chapterhouse and looked out through the small window. The west bay was covered in spume and the froth shone through the darkness. The Chapter – were they now sitting at the counsel table somewhere or other in the Royal Store buildings? Perhaps no more than a few yards away. That confounded girl Suzanne – producing that story just this evening.
She
was not going to have to sleep alone in this building tonight.

He went back to his own door. Women and chattering inside. Barbara’s laughter, fancies and exclamations. Suzanne’s rather deeper and more prudent voice. No, in there they were deaf to storm and surf. They were not turning the hourglass; they were not counting the passing hours. Least of all did they take notice of Gabriel’s beating heart and burning desire. He was but a shadow in a loft. But in there it was summer. They were gorging themselves on clothes and trinkets and colours. He could imagine the rustling and crackling of the materials. Indeed, he would swear they had taken off every stitch of their homely woollen clothing. They were two butterflies sunning themselves in this fantasy, wrapping themselves in red and gold and blue, in airy calico and heavy silk –
his
wares. They were dressing up and filling themselves on vain delight.

It was a very long time before the women thought of letting Gabriel in again. By then they had chosen what they wanted. It was actually Barbara who had come to buy from him, although the other was also to have a little. And what did it cost?

Gabriel, lover and merchant – he
had
been thinking, under certain happy circumstances, to tell Barbara that it would cost her almost nothing. But now he was angry and reeled off some stiff, almost exorbitant prices.

The unexpected happened in that Barbara paid without query, in cash from a purse – wantonly, in silver. A sacrifice on the altar of beauty.

Gabriel blushed.

Suzanne had not been prepared for buying, so she needed credit. And was given it willingly – the finest lady in town.

Then Gabriel had to show them out. No thank you, they wouldn’t have any wine; it was getting late now, Suzanne thought. And Gabriel understood that he ought not to have waited so long with this trump.

As they were going through the long loft, Barbara said quietly and kindly to Gabriel: “I tried your garters after all.”

Was that supposed to be a consolation? A strange consolation, it must be said. And yet, in the way in which it was uttered it almost sounded like an expression of thanks. Was it true, as people said, that no one paid tribute to Barbara without receiving some sort of reward?

But Gabriel did not pay homage to her. The bitch! Parson’s tart. He knew a thing or two.

The women took leave of him in the churchyard. He went back through the graves, past the church. Barbara’s coins were still in his sweaty hand. Now he would soon be able to buy some land. But the little hound in Gabriel howled. Then he entered the dark, empty building to join Master Naaber and to enjoy a lonely bed.

And while the storm lay over the town like a nightmare, two women, cunning and suspicious, filled with experience and with a rich booty, crept through the driving rain in the alleyways, back to their homes.

“Of course, you know there is a widow in the benefice?

The speaker was the country’s bailiff.

The new Vágar parson, Pastor Poul Aggersøe, knew that. It was not something that had preoccupied him much at all. Most clergymen dealt with that problem in a very practical manner and married the widow. But he was made of less pliable material. He had not thought of marrying at all and it irritated him when others did so on his behalf.

He was sitting in the Tórshavn parson’s parlour, surrounded by people who wanted to hear news from the outside world. He had had to tell them about battles and about generals, about King Frederick of Prussia, whom no one could conquer, and about King Louis of France, whom no one could disturb in his debauchery. Everyone was in something of a state of excitement at the news, both the judge, the bailiff, the manager of the Royal Store and the commandant. They went to and fro and stepped over the high threshold between the parlour and the study. The women said nothing – with the exception of old Armgard, the old law speaker’s widow, and her sister Ellen Katrine, the woman with the crutches and the happy face. She was of the opinion that no one could be compared with Marlborough, who had been alive when she was a young woman.