The House by the Fjord (32 page)

Anna, intensely protective of Ingrid's house, left it reluctantly. Later she heard that there had been great difficulty in getting the heavy chest brought down from the aperture, and Anna thought how light-heartedly Ingrid had thought of it as a perfect hiding place for treasures, never suspecting that one day long after her time it would be used to conceal a grisly murder.

Several weeks of investigation passed before Harry was arrested and charged. His nocturnal visit had been to check that the chest was still well hidden behind the stout partition he had built himself at the time of committing the crime. He had also needed to know that there was no danger of the hiding place being revealed during repairs from the fire damage. It was not Anna's evidence of witnessing his nocturnal coming and going that settled Harry's guilt, but the discovery amid the skeletal remains and rotted clothing of a gold ring that had slipped from his finger as he had struggled to lift the body into the chest in such cramped quarters. Steffan identified it as the one that had belonged to Magnus and which he had given to Harry.

Alex and Anna both went to the funeral of the resistance fighter, which was held at the little church of his country birthplace, and he was laid to rest in its churchyard. The service was attended by many people, including the Crown Prince, who came to pay his personal respects to a man of great courage.

It had all come out at Harry's trial that throughout the occupation his loyalty had been to Hitler and the Nazi regime, his own advancement being his prime concern. The meagre help he had given secretly to his fellow countrymen had been to ensure that the resistance did not suspect his duplicity, especially when it was beginning to look as if the Allies might win the war after all. He had convinced the local Nazi commander that he had shot and buried in the forest the resistance fighter they had been hunting, but in reality he had not dared to risk firing a gun where people in the area might come to investigate. He had stabbed his victim in a confrontation, and the hiding place in the
stabbur
had seemed ideal for concealment, since it was too risky to start digging a grave when he could be sighted by a local person in the mountains at any time. The old chest in the
stabbur
near at hand, which he believed destined never to be found again, seemed the perfect solution.

At his trial he also admitted setting fire to the
stabbur
in the intention of finally destroying forever all trace of his crime. He had not expected one bonfire too many to be noticed that night, when almost everybody was celebrating Midsummer Eve. Now, many such nights would pass and he would be a great deal older before he ever saw these celebrations again.

When the restoration work on the
stabbur
was finished and the aperture blocked up forever, the doors were painted the same mellow tawny colour that must have been Ingrid's choice in days gone by, and which was in harmony with the surroundings of fir and pine, particularly in autumn when many trees took on blazing colours and even the cranberry leaves turned crimson. It was a fresh beginning for the
stabbur
and it became both a library and guest quarters, with a few comfortable and traditional pieces of furniture, as well as some very fine hand-woven wall hangings, which, with the bright rag-rugs, had been bought at a handicraft shop.

A year later Anna gave birth to a son, whom they named David. Steffan delighted in the child, but not long after David's first birthday Steffan died quietly in his sleep. He had bequeathed the house to Gudrun for her lifetime and an income that would keep her in comfort till the end of her days. But, after Steffan's demise, her health deteriorated and she moved into a home for elderly people. She lived long enough to see Anna's daughter, who was born two years after little David and was named Julie. Although Anna, as well as Steffan's grandchildren, received generous bequests, a large portion of Steffan's fortune went to secure the future of a school for orphaned children in Africa that he had supported for many years. The four paintings that had hung in the hall of his home were bequeathed to a Bergen art gallery.

Anna felt the time had come now to decide where Ingrid's original journal should be hidden away again, but as yet she had not decided where that should be.

Twenty

To Anna's great joy, her children grew to love Ingrid's old house from which they went climbing or skiing or walking. It was also a place for them to take friends and hold parties, both in childhood and throughout their teens. David and Julie grew up with stories of Ingrid, for Anna wanted them to know what a remarkable woman Ingrid had been and how proud they should be of the magnificent paintings by the man she had married. They liked all they heard of Ingrid, admiring her for being so unconventional, which held a particular appeal for them in their tumultuous teenage years.

Julie had started early to keep a journal herself. She had always wanted to write, even as a child she had made up stories and written them down. She was presently a reporter with an Oslo newspaper and working on a novel at the same time. Her brother had become an engineer and was on one of the rich oil rigs in Norwegian waters. Anna had retired from teaching a while ago, which gave her the chance to travel with Alex whenever he had to go far afield.

Molde had spread out widely over past years and was again as charming a town as it had been in the past, with its new church and grand town hall and fine shops. A German horticulturalist, visiting the town on holiday, heard of the lost Molde rose through the wartime bombing and went home to propagate a red rose as like the original one as it was possible to be. So this rose now bloomed in the town's many flowerbeds. Although the magical scent of the original rose had proved impossible to recapture, this generous German gift had been a wonderful act of reconciliation. Anna always made sure that the new Molde rose flourished profusely in the garden of the fine house that she and Alex had built with a superb view of the fjord.

The roses had finished blooming and snow covered everything once again when Anna answered the telephone one afternoon. It was Molly on the line. Over the years, Anna had seen her and Pat frequently, for the three of them had remained good friends and always enjoyed one another's company.

‘Pat and I are arranging a girls' weekend in Paris!' Molly exclaimed. ‘It will be a reunion only for those who were in our circle of war brides at Gardermoen. So far everyone we have phoned has agreed to come. We have decided on a date in December, when all the tourists will have gone home and Paris looks more beautiful than ever in its tasteful Christmas illuminations. So can I include you? And don't you dare say no!'

‘I'd love it!' Anna replied, laughing. ‘Give me the date.'

When Molly had told her, she looked in her diary and saw she had no commitments that weekend.

‘Who will be coming?' she asked after giving her acceptance.

‘Only I know that! You and everybody else will have to wait and see. We're all going to just turn up at the excellent hotel where Olav and I have stayed a couple of times. But on this occasion no husbands are to be in tow. Or grown-up children either. This reunion is just for mature war brides!'

After the call ended, Anna wondered whom she would be seeing again. Nobody lived in those old Gardermoen houses any more, for they had been swept away long since in an enlargement of the airfield and the extension of all the runways, but there was a memorial where the concentration camp had been. Not all the husbands had remained in the RNAF, but those who were still serving had soared in rank, their wartime experience invaluable in the expansion of the country's forces under NATO. Molly's Olav was now a wing commander and they had a large and pleasant home in the Oslo suburb of Grefsen. Anna and Alex had visited many times. Along with everything else, much had changed throughout the country, old customs gone, and the
saeter
huts and high mountain farms had become weekend holiday retreats for the families that still owned them.

Anna arrived in Paris as arranged on Friday afternoon. After leaving the snow in Norway, the air seemed surprisingly mild, and as the taxi took her along the Champs Élysées, she thought how right Molly had been in praising Paris in December. The trees were hung with tiny golden lights that made them look as if they were magically gilded.

Molly was waiting in the hotel lobby and with a cry of pleasure came forward to give her an exuberant hug.

‘Isn't this fun!' she exclaimed joyfully. ‘You're the last to arrive. The others are already here.'

She led Anna into one of the lounges. For a few seconds, Anna was reminded of the first time she had met these women. All were looking towards her with beaming smiles just as they done all those years ago. They had become her friends and had endured with her all the domestic ups and downs of difficult housing, rationed food, the lingering presence of enemy prisoners and – above all else – had faced up with her in an unfamiliar northern clime to the coldest winter in living memory, when even Oslo fjord froze. Here was Jane, the one-time Wren and baker of cakes, now twice her original size, coming to give her a welcoming hug.

‘Anna! How good to see you again!'

Then Pat, whom Anna saw quite often, gave her a welcoming wave as Vanessa, who had once almost died of homesickness, embraced Anna fondly. She still had her shy and gentle expression, but her hair was tinted a challenging bronze, which suggested she now took everything in her stride. ‘You look as young as ever, Anna,' she said admiringly.

‘Not quite!'Anna contradicted in amusement. ‘Although I can feel the years falling away from all of us in this reunion.'

Now Helen had sprung to her feet and did a Scottish twirl. ‘I hope you've remembered all I taught you? I have a successful dancing school these days and Kristan is a football manager. He was always crazy about sport.'

Anna almost did not recognize Rosemary, who had been such a clever dressmaker, for her red-gold Rita Hayworth hair had turned a silvery white. Yet somehow it did not age her, for it had been expertly cut in a short, fashionable style that suited her, and she was wearing large sapphire earrings.

‘I hear from Molly that your marriage to your handsome Alex has worked out well,' she said to Anna after they had embraced. ‘Unfortunately, mine fell apart after five years when by chance Henrik met the girlfriend he had been in love with before he had escaped to England. Everything flared up between them as if the time apart had never been.' She made a little grimace. ‘The hardest to bear was the realization that I had always been second best.'

‘I'm so sorry to hear that,' Anna said sincerely. ‘But you decided to stay in Norway?'

‘Yes, it had become home to me more than England by then, because I had no family there any more, whereas my in-laws continued to be very kind to me. By then I had a little dress shop that was doing well and so I saw no reason to leave Norway. It was a decision I have never regretted. My business has expanded into much larger premises.' Then she added with a twinkling look, ‘I also have a lover and he is very good to me. So life can have its compensations.'

Last of all to exchange a hug with Anna was Wendy Misund, who had retained her shy, old-fashioned look. ‘Edvard and I are living now in Bodo beyond the Arctic Circle. He is a group captain these days. Our son followed him into the service and is an experienced pilot now.'

‘That must make you both very proud of him,' Anna said warmly, remembering when she had first seen Terry asleep in his pram at Gardermoen.

It was then that a waiter came with the champagne that Pat had ordered. They drank a toast to friendship. Then, dressed up and in high spirits, they went out to dine and afterwards to pre-booked seats at the Opera House. Next morning, they went for a tour of the Palace of Versailles. As Molly had foretold, there was almost nobody else there and they were often alone in the great rooms, except for an occasional caterpillar of schoolchildren going through, giggling and whispering with one another and not looking at anything.

When the war brides came to the Hall of Mirrors, it was to find its glorious length filled with a golden blaze of winter sunshine, which was pouring through the windows only to be held captive by its reflection in the opposite multi-mirrored wall. With nobody else there, Molly and Pat removed their shoes and merrily waltzed the length of it where once tragic Marie Antoinette had danced and dazzled with her beauty.

Back in the city, and after some serious shopping in the Champs Élysées, they dumped their purchases at the hotel and spent the rest of the afternoon in the Louvre. It was a tired but satisfied group that emerged later to sit down thankfully around one of the outside café tables, under a green and white striped awning. They did not notice that a woman in a taxi, caught in a traffic hold-up, had sighted them in surprise. Thrusting her fare at the driver, she seized the moment to alight and dodged across the busy street.

‘I've always wanted to see the Mona Lisa,' Helen was saying on a sigh of satisfaction, ‘and now I have done it at last.'

‘When I first saw her on a trip here in the fifties,' Pat said, ‘she was hanging on the wall in one of the galleries, but now she is enclosed in bulletproof glass.'

‘A sign of the times,' Anna said on a sigh.

They had all been served with the variety of drinks that they had ordered when the elegant woman from the taxi, wearing a Chanel suit and a fashionably tiny hat, began threading her way through the tables towards them. None of them noticed her until she reached them.

‘Hello, girls! How are you all? Are you having a reunion without me?'

It was Sally. They all gazed at her in astonishment.

‘What are you doing here in Paris?' Molly gasped, while Anna pulled an extra chair forward for Sally to sit down.