The Last Boat Home (3 page)

Else closes the door. She drifts into the living room and is grateful all at once for Marianne’s music, for the television’s din. She stops in the middle of the floor and stares at the screen until she realises she has been standing there for some time. With a sigh, she wanders into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea.

Then

1974

IT WAS ON
a blue-eyed Saturday afternoon in midsummer that Lars first kissed Else outside the toilets of the bus depot. She had woken up that morning wondering if he would. She hoped he would; it had been a while since he had tried his luck and she felt sorry for having turned her head away.

After breakfast, she caught the ferry to the Longpier and climbed Torggata to the top of the town. The racing had already started when she arrived at the depot. Two mopeds zipped along the car park in the shadow of the empty Kristiansand coach, stirring up clouds of dirt in their wake. Else recognised the yellow paint of Lars’s bike, sleek and shiny next to its rival. She strolled to the mobile kitchen at the edge of the lot, where a group of boys hollered at the racers and stuffed their gums with chewing tobacco.

‘Hi, Else,’ called Petter.

‘Back for more?’ Rune said.

Else folded her arms over her chest and nodded at the bikes. ‘Who’s he racing?’

‘Right now, it’s Joachim,’ Petter said.

‘Who’s winning?’

‘Lars,’ he said. He sounded disappointed. ‘I’ll be racing him next.’

The boys whooped and clapped when Lars crossed the finishing line. He raised a fist in the air before the yellow moped began to speed towards them. Else looked at her shoes. She studied her hands. A crust of dirt under one fingernail demanded her urgent attention.

Lars skidded to a stop in front of her. ‘Do you want to go for a ride?’ he asked.

‘Not a chance.’

‘Sure you do,’ he said. ‘I’ll go slow this time. I promise I will. So are you coming?’

Else hesitated, but swung her leg over the seat. She shrieked when Lars twisted the handlebars and the moped shot forward. The wind was fresh on her bare arms and she wrapped them around his waist, tight enough to feel his stomach beat with his breath against her wrists. She buried her face into his neck, aware of her breasts crushed flat against his back. He smelled of cigarettes and of summer.

Stones clattered in the wheels of the moped as it whizzed around the car park. It circled behind the depot building and lapped the mobile kitchen twice.

‘Hold on!’ called Lars and tipped into a turn. He squeezed the brakes and swore as the moped toppled over. Else heard the screech of tripping tyres before her shins scraped the ground. She rolled into a puddle and groaned at the sting in her legs.

‘Else?’ said Lars.

Her eyes pricked at the corners. She sat up and prodded the bloodied skin below one kneecap.

‘Are you crying?’ Lars asked.

‘No,’ she said.

‘Are you broken?’

‘You promised you’d go slow.’

‘Should I call an ambulance?’ Lars helped her to her feet and she dusted off her shorts. The rest of the boys came running.

‘Are you hurt?’ asked Petter.

Else hobbled to the toilets. Once she had closed the door behind her, she turned on the tap and washed the muck and grit from her leg. She cleaned her knee with a wad of the paper that had been left on the cistern in a tidy pile, flushing it away before splashing water on her cheeks. When she opened the door, Lars was sitting on the bottom step. He jumped up and she limped down the stairs.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘Are you?’ she said.

‘Just a couple of broken arms and two ruined legs.’

Lars lifted his hands to her shoulders and pulled her close. While greasy mists from the mobile kitchen settled over them like clingfilm, Else blinked at his grin. His lips gathered in a pucker before gluing shut her mouth. Hard, soft. Wet, rough. Her stomach seethed; bubbles danced along her throat. Between her ears. She was all fizz. It felt like laughing.

That afternoon, Pastor Seip was coming for dinner and Else had instructions from her mother not to be late. While Lars carried on racing against the other boys, she checked her watch, noting uneasily that she had just missed another ferry. She tried to catch his eye, but he was absorbed by the business of winning. It couldn’t hurt to wait a few minutes more. Else sat on the bench between Petter and Rune and looked on as Lars took his fourth victory of the day. She picked a chip from a paper plate in her lap and a dollop of ketchup dribbled onto her T-shirt.

When she could no longer avoid it, she got to her feet.

‘I’ll walk you down, if you want,’ Petter said.

Else smiled, but shook her head. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she said
and started for the road. She had almost reached the end of the lot when Lars’s moped drew up beside her.

‘Are you leaving?’

‘The ferry goes in five minutes,’ she said.

‘Want another ride first?’

‘I can’t. Pastor Seip is coming for dinner.’

Lars crossed his eyes and a snort of laughter shot up her nose like soda pop.

‘See you at church tomorrow, then,’ he said and spun away to rejoin the races.

Else gritted her teeth against the soreness of her knee and trudged down the hill, easing into a jog at the top of Torggata. She overtook one white timber building after another towards the harbour, where the water winked under the sun. The ferry was already docked at the Longpier. A handful of passengers had finished boarding the boat by the time Else hopped onto its deck and claimed a solitary spot at its stern.

The captain pushed off from land and steered them up the fjord, away from the Skagerrak and the cluster of islands that protected the port from the sea where, three hundred years earlier, merchant vessels used to offload their cargo. Bursts of salt air scrubbed Else’s face as the curve of the mountain eclipsed the town. She checked her watch and her stomach pinched. She hoped her father would be in a fit state when she got home. At breakfast that morning, his breath had been foul with the onions he chewed to mask the stink of the homebrew. She knew all about the distillery he kept hidden in the boathouse. He had visited it several nights that week.

The ferry passed from one fjord into the next, sailing by islands scabbed with lichen and reefs that lurked at the surface like aspiring icebergs. In the distance, the Reiersen shipyard swelled. Its cranes pierced the sky as the boat swayed closer, until warehouses and construction sheds separated from the drab blur behind
its empty graving dock. The shipyard sprawled on the waterfront, facing the opposite shore where the ferry put in. Else scrambled onto the public pier and across the road, where she had hidden her father’s bicycle behind an oak tree. Her wheels sprayed dirty fans behind her as she set off down the zigzag of the track. Under her breath, she prayed that Pastor Seip would be late.

When she reached the farmhouse, her ears were buzzing. She left the bike behind the milking barn and ran inside. Her mother was in the kitchen, her apron flapping as she pivoted between the oven and her pots. Beside her, her father belted out instructions.

‘That goddamned fish has to come out
now
!’

Else moved to the sink to wash her hands.

‘You’re late,’ said her mother.

‘Where have you been?’ Her father’s eyes were tinged with blood.

‘The ferry didn’t come,’ Else said.

‘Pastor Seip will be here any minute,’ he said. ‘Go and clean yourself up.’

After changing into her Sunday dress, Else raced down the stairs and began to wipe the dinner table.

‘The potatoes! The potatoes!’

Her father hooted from the kitchen as she carried through a tablecloth still warm from the clothes line and shook it over the polished wood. The good plates were stacked in a high cabinet. Else climbed onto a chair to retrieve them.

‘The butter! It’s burning!’

A layer of dust had settled on the top dish. She rubbed it off with the hem of her dress and set a place at the head of the table for Pastor Seip. She saw him through the window stepping over the vegetable patch in the yard.

‘He’s here,’ she called.

Her warning sent her parents scurrying into the hallway. They consulted their reflection in the mirror, smoothing stray hairs into
place and dabbing foreheads with their shirtsleeves. Her mother opened the door just as the minister’s fist was poised to knock.

Dinner was, by all accounts, a success. Pastor Seip doused his potatoes in melted butter, which floated on his plate like an oil spill. He polished off the ling he had been served and helped himself to seconds.

‘Very nice,’ he muttered afterwards, suppressing a burp behind his knuckles.

‘We’ll take coffee and cake in the Best Room,’ Dagny said. She rose from the table and led the way across the hall to the pride of the house.

It was the first time they had used the Best Room since Dagny had hosted last month’s ladies’ luncheon, although Else had helped her mother dust its corners several times since. Now, sitting opposite Pastor Seip on a low-slung bench, she felt the chill that the room imparted to all special occasions. The pine walls were painted a midnight blue that drained the warmth right out of the air. Lace curtains filtered the sunlight, scattering it over the furniture like shards of glass.

Pastor Seip’s stomach folded over his thighs as he leaned forward for his coffee cup. Else watched its progress to his lips, thinking how delicate it looked in his long fingers.

‘I hear the catch has been meagre,’ said the minister to Johann and took a slurp from his cup.

The china had been a wedding gift from Dagny’s brother, Olav, a sea captain whose merchant ship had been wrecked in a typhoon in the North Pacific. Else had been a baby when it happened. Sometimes, when she had the farmhouse to herself, she would sneak into the Best Room and flip the lock of the cupboard to rescue a cup from the top shelf, cradling it in her hands. She would trace a fingertip around the outline of a gold leaf on a black sea and try to imagine where it had come from.

‘I’ve been having some bad luck,’ her father said.

‘There is no such thing,’ said Pastor Seip. He fixed him with a meaningful glare. ‘“Be sober, be vigilant, for your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour.”’

‘More coffee?’ Dagny said.

‘Keeping vigilant,’ said Pastor Seip. ‘That’s the point.’

Johann shifted in his chair and a creak filled the room. The minister looked at Else for the first time all evening.

‘Amazing what we see,’ he said, ‘if only we open our eyes.’ His gaze fell like an anchor and she stopped herself from trying to squirm out of its way. She thought of Lars’s eyes, of how he had shut them tight when he kissed her. She watched as Pastor Seip deposited a cube of cake in his mouth.

‘Another slice?’ Dagny said.

‘No, no.’ The minister mashed the crumbs on his plate with his finger before slipping it between his lips. Then he stood and brushed his palms on his trousers. ‘I have other obligations this evening, I’m afraid. Thank you for the fish. It was just as my mother used to make it, which is the best way I know.’

At the front door, he took his hat and turned again to Else. ‘I trust you have been putting the lessons from last Sunday’s sermon to good use?’ he said.

Else nodded at her feet.

‘Oh, yes,’ said her mother. ‘She certainly has.’

Pastor Seip pulled his hat down on his head. ‘The years after one’s confirmation are a delicate time in every young adult’s life.’ He bent forward at the hips, bringing his eyes level with Else’s. His breath smelled of coffee. ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘you must pray, and you must work. It is always possible, I believe, to work harder.’

The minister straightened up and strode into the sun. He crossed the yard to the milking barn and disappeared up the hill that would bring him to the road. From the doorway of the
farmhouse, Johann stared after him, his jaw clenched and his lips thin. Without a word, he retreated into the Best Room and slammed the door shut behind him.

Else and her mother washed the dishes in silence. For a long while after Pastor Seip had left, her father sat alone, until the creak of floorboards and the groan of the back door announced his escape. Else knew he would be headed for the boathouse, just as she knew they would not see him again that evening.

‘I’ll have to dig up some more onions,’ said her mother and added a chopped bulb to the fish bones in her pot.

O
N A
S
UNDAY
in early September, Else stepped from the ferry at the Longpier and made her way up the harbour towards the church. They were not long into autumn and the leaves of the trees in front of the town hall had just started to turn. The days were contracting in preparation for winter, gathering up their dusks and dawns and giving way to chilly nights – but today, in the late morning, it still felt like summer. Sunlight dripped onto the dock in golden puddles that warmed her ankles as she plodded through.

‘Hurry up,’ called her father, who had already reached Dronning Mauds gate. Else’s good shoes chafed her heels as she ran to catch him up. She followed her parents and other stragglers up the hill, climbing towards the outburst of bells which called to them and the town of gravitas and observance.

In the churchyard, the steeple’s weather vane spun in the breeze, throwing a cartwheeling shadow over the grass. Else shuffled after it to the church’s open door and into the cool air of the nave. They were among the last to arrive and the pews were bustling with people. Women hushed butter-haired children, while their men adjusted suit jackets that some had first buttoned on their wedding
day. Halfway up the aisle sat Lars, swivelled around on the Reiersen family’s pew, wearing a glazed expression while he scanned the faces of the latecomers. He grinned when he saw Else, who did her best to ignore him as she settled onto a bench beside her mother.

The bells stopped tolling. In their wake, a shrill hum passed onto the air which the organist took up in a string of slow tones. The congregation stood and launched into the hymn that was chalked up on a board below the pulpit. While they sang, Pastor Seip thumbed through the pages of his Bible, glancing up now and then as if to measure their progress. Next to Else, her mother’s voice lifted and soared to the psalm’s final note.