The House by the Fjord (9 page)

There was one small shop that they always visited ever since Sally had made a very special purchase there for herself. The shop owner had had a sudden delivery of some stock that had been brought personally into the country by a friend from the States. By chance, Sally had travelled into Oslo that same morning and was passing the shop just as the blinds went up to reveal, in a kind of unveiling, a lovely pale-grey coat with a sumptuous fur collar. She had gone into the shop instantly and her purchase of the coat had been a source of wonder for many of the war brides. They could only guess at the price and would not have been able to afford it in any case. Yet, ever since that day of Sally's good fortune, every war bride going into Oslo would always make a point of looking in that particular window, if only to gaze at the unattainable, but so far there had not been a repeat of that wonderful delivery.

Anna and Molly, having made their usual pilgrimage to look in the window, finished their Christmas shopping by each buying a flowering plant for Aunt Christina, for they knew there was nothing she would like better. They went straight to deliver their gifts to her, always calling on her whenever possible, and as usual she welcomed them warmly and plied them with refreshment.

Anna had been given several good recipes for bread by Aunt Christina, for like most of the war brides she had begun making her own loaves and rolls. There was a bread van that delivered, but often it had run out of supplies before it reached Gardermoen. Anna had had an amusing experience the first time she wanted to buy yeast from the local shop, for she had forgotten her dictionary. So she mimed kneading dough and puffing out her cheeks until understanding dawned on the shop-woman, who was promptly convulsed by giggles that she could not overcome. She was still giggling when she handed over the yeast to Anna, who was equally amused.

Although bread deliveries were erratic, it was never difficult to buy fresh fish. The fish van came every Thursday, the fishmonger hooting his horn at every halt to let housewives know he had arrived. Fru Dahl and Anna were regular customers, for meat was still in short supply and the fish was always the day's catch and the choice excellent. There were times when Anna thought to herself that she had never eaten so much fish in her life before, even though she had grown up in a seaside town. Once she had remarked to the fishmonger that it must have been a great help for people to have fish off ration during the Nazi occupation, but he immediately corrected her.

‘No, that was not the case. We had to supply daily quotas of our catch to the German troops and there was very little left – and sometimes nothing – for our own people.' Anna thanked him for enlightening her. There seemed to be no end to the privation that the Norwegian people had suffered during the occupation. Yet nothing had shaken their united defiance.

Five

It had been arranged that Anna should travel by train with Pat and Rolf and little Mandy to the west coast at Christmas. Rolf's parents lived in the family farmhouse on the outskirts of Andalsnes, the town that lay at the head of the Romsdal fjord, and from there it was either a ferry ride or a drive to the town of Molde, which was Anna's destination. Correspondence with Johan's father had resulted in an arrangement that she would be met by car at the railway station upon her arrival. Whether he would be driving or somebody else at the wheel he had not stated.

‘Train tickets are going to be hard to get,' Pat told Anna, ‘because there are still only comparatively few trains due to sabotage during the occupation and general neglect during those years. As long as German troops could be moved about, the travelling public had to take whatever was available. What's more, the Norwegians are all like homing pigeons when it comes to Christmas! As for the traditional Christmas tree, I don't know what any one of them would do if they didn't have one! I remember so well from last year – my first Christmas in Norway.'

‘Johan and I only had two Christmases together in our lives. I remember how jubilant he was when the news came to the squadron that King Haakon had received his annual Christmas tree, brought back by Norwegians returning from secret sorties there.'

‘Yes, he had one every year throughout his exile. I read in the paper it's why Norway is sending a tree to London this year, and intends to do it in perpetuity in appreciation of all the UK did for the King and Norway during the war.'

‘I'm glad of that. Did you enjoy Christmas here as much as at home?'

Pat answered thoughtfully. ‘I missed my parents and my brother, but otherwise I thought Christmas a lovely time to be here. Rolf is going to line up early for our train tickets, because it will be a case of first come first served. He intends to take up a place at four o'clock this afternoon at Oslo's railway station before the sale of tickets starts tomorrow morning at eight o'clock. He wants to be sure of getting a sleeping compartment for you with me and Mandy, because it is a long overnight journey.'

‘Do we have to go into Oslo to catch the train?'

‘No, we'll get on it at ten o'clock when it stops at Eidsvold, which is the nearest railway station for us.'

‘Is that what you did last year?'

‘No, we were too late to get train tickets and travelled by bus, which took forever. I couldn't face that again.'

Anna was not present when Rolf returned home with the sleeping-compartment tickets, waving them triumphantly, and he had also managed to book a seat for himself. She heard later what an ordeal the long wait had been; there had been a fiercely bitter wind constantly gusting snow from across Oslo fjord in a night temperature that was far below freezing, making the long row of those patiently waiting look like an endless row of snowmen. Pat was concerned that Rolf would suffer after-effects, but a hot shower and a substantial breakfast soon put him right again. All that remained was to book a taxi to take them to Eidsvold for their departure.

This proved to be difficult too, for there were not many taxis in the area and all had been booked long before. Eventually one taxi driver, wanting to be helpful, called in a friend, who agreed to take Rolf and his family with Anna to Eidvold railway station on the night required.

The temperature continued to drop steadily in the final weeks before Christmas. It was thirty degrees below zero when the substitute driver and his car arrived half an hour later than the time that had been arranged for him to come. Pat had begun to panic, thinking he was not going to turn up, and was so relieved when he did arrive, tooting his horn to announce his arrival, that she declared herself ready to kiss him. Rolf, in his haste to get the girls and his child out of the cold night into the vehicle failed to notice that there were no chains on the car wheels to prevent skidding. Neither did he realize that the driver, silently and solidly wrapped up, who had not moved from his seat to help with the luggage, was drunk. That became all too obvious to Rolf when he took the seat in the front beside him and was assailed by the man's alcohol-imbued breath. But it was too late to do anything about it now, and Rolf had grave fears as they set off into the blackness of the night amid the swirling snow.

It was a dangerous drive in every way, the wheels constantly sliding from one side of the road to the other on the icy surface, and there were no lights along these country roads to aid the journey. Rolf wanted to change places and drive the taxi himself, but the drunken driver stubbornly refused, gripping the wheel with a relentless strength. He was a large man, greatly overweight, and there was no way he could be budged single-handed out of the driving seat. He refused utterly to give up the wheel.

‘No,' he declared stubbornly, his speech slurred. ‘You've no licence to take passengers.'

‘Neither have you in your alcoholic state!' Rolf retorted. ‘If the police stop us, you'll lose the one you have!'

But persuasion and threats proved useless and the nightmare journey continued. Fortunately there was very little traffic, but they were still a distance from Eidsvold railway station when the taxi finally skidded off the road into a bank of snow. The girls screamed and Mandy, warmly wrapped in a plaid shawl, woke with a start and began to cry. Rolf leapt out to view the damage with the light of a torch he had previously used in loading the luggage. The snow had softened the impact and he could see no real damage apart from a buckled fender, but there was no way the taxi could be brought back on to the road without a tow rope.

There followed a seemingly endless wait for a vehicle to come along that could be of help, and all the while the time ticked away to the arrival of the train at Eidsvold. If they missed it, it would be end of their getting to their destinations for Christmas. Rolf paced up and down, watching for headlights to appear. Normally of a jovial nature, he could be angrier than most at incompetence and carelessness. He did his best to soothe the girls' anxieties.

‘Don't worry. Someone will come along soon. Then we'll be on our way again.'

Yet he looked surreptitiously at his watch whenever he was out of their view.

Suddenly the glow of headlights appeared, and to his relief he saw it was a van. He waved it down and the driver was quick to jump out and help a fellow motorist. It was not an uncommon accident.

He produced his own tow rope, which most drivers kept in their vehicles for emergencies, although Rolf had failed to find one in the taxi.

The car was soon back on the road and by now the driver had sunk into a drunken stupor. With further help from the van driver, Rolf managed to heave him out from behind the wheel and into the neighbouring seat. He would have liked to dump the fellow at the side of the road, but he could not let him freeze to death. Then, after thanks and an exchange of Christmas greetings with the van driver, Rolf drove off on the last lap of the journey. It was already past ten o'clock and he hoped desperately that the train would be a little late and give them some leeway to get there. On the back seat the girls were silent, as if holding their breath in suspense.

At last they arrived at Eidsvold railway station. Rolf darted ahead, prepared to halt the train if it should still be there. Within minutes he was back again and opened the car door for the girls.

‘No need to hurry,' he said wryly. ‘There's been an avalanche on the line, which has delayed the train for clearance, and there'll be a wait of at least four hours.'

Relief that they were still able to get the train made the long wait ahead seem negligible to the girls, but even though they waited in a warm waiting room with a big black stove kept refuelled by a porter, they soon found that time dragged by. The wooden wall-seats were uncomfortable and not an inducement to sleep. Like the other passengers waiting with them, they dozed, ate sandwiches they had brought with them and drank hot coffee from a vacuum flask. All the time Mandy slept as snugly as if in her own cot at Gardermoen.

It was more than four hours later when the train eventually came thunderously into the station, hissing steam. Everybody grabbed luggage and rushed out on to the platform. It was snowing heavily and the sleeping cars were at the far end of the train. Rolf hurried the girls forward and helped them aboard into the entrance compartment, but Anna found that the connecting door into the sleepers was locked. Although she and Pat hammered on the door and Rolf shook it, there was no response.

‘The attendant must be at the other end of the car,' he exclaimed in exasperation. ‘I'll find him!'

He leapt out on to the platform again, but as he slammed the door after him the train began to move. Pat gave a shriek.

‘He'll be left behind!'

Anna cupped her hands against the glass and peered out, but it was impossible to see anything in the thickly swirling snow. She turned back to Pat, both having the same anxious expression at the seriousness of the situation, for the temperature in this narrow space was the same as outside.

‘How long before we get to the next halt?' Anna asked.

‘It could be two hours,' Pat answered tremulously.

‘We must keep Mandy warm at all costs.'

Although the child was still wrapped in the plaid shawl over her winter coat, Anna knelt to open her suitcase and take out a thick cardigan, which they added to the wrappings around the child as well as a spare scarf. Then they both sat down on their upright suitcases and tried not to think how long they might have to wait before they gained the chance to change to another part of the train. Now and again Anna banged on the connecting door, but there was no response.

They had fully resigned themselves to Rolf having failed to reboard when half an hour later there came the sound of a key being turned in the connecting door. As they sprang to their feet, the door opened with a gush of warmth and the sleeper-attendant stepped aside to let Rolf come rushing in to gather them up.

‘It's taken me all this time to search the train for this lazy devil right here behind me!' he declared angrily. ‘He was sleeping out of sight in the luggage car! He's lucky I didn't murder him! Now,' he added as he shepherded them into the corridor of the sleeping compartments, ‘I'll get you settled into number thirty-two.'

But the uniformed attendant, an officious-looking little man, was holding up his hand and blocking the way. ‘There are no sleeping compartments or seats left, but you ladies can sit on the floor with other people without seats further up the train.'

Rolf looked as if he might explode with rage and held up the tickets. ‘I waited sixteen hours in the worst of Oslo weather to get these sleepers and I mean to have them!'

The attendant answered with smug satisfaction. ‘You were not here to claim them by the booked time of ten o'clock and therefore you have forfeited your right to them. Two other passengers are occupying them now.'