The Last Boat Home (25 page)

A grey morning light sneaks around the edges of the curtains, coaxing objects in her bedroom from out of the shadows. The brass handles of her wardrobe doors. The vase of cut peonies on her dresser. The clock reads 04:46.

04:47.

04:48.

She knows that daybreak has been and gone. She reaches for the glass on her bedside table and takes a sip of water.

04:50. It is late enough.

Else slides her feet from under the duvet and into the slippers parked on the floor beside her bed. She shuffles to the window and yanks open the curtains. Her body is bathed in light.

The day looks clear, the sky as blue as she imagines the Mediterranean to be, but the air will be chilly at this time. She chooses a pair of jeans from a pile of laundry waiting to be sorted on her armchair, zipping them up before pulling a jumper over the loose sway of her breasts. From the bottom drawer of her dresser, she finds the shawl that used to belong to her mother. She blankets her shoulders and breathes in deeply, hoping for a trace of a scent that has long since faded.

Else tiptoes up the corridor, past Liv, past Marianne and Mads, Mads and Marianne, and down the stairs. Once she has retrieved her phone from the kitchen counter she steals into the hallway, where she straps on her clogs and lets herself out into the street. No one is up. She has the morning to herself. She strolls by her neighbours’ houses, glancing at window boxes as she goes. Peder Wiig’s clematis is doing well. Janne Haugen’s roses less so. The bugs have been at them; they are beyond saving now. Else draws the shawl closer across her chest to quell a shiver while the soles of her shoes slap the asphalt. She turns onto Torggata, where hot dog boxes clog the gutters.

At the bottom of the hill the fjord spreads out like the night sky, the ripples of water twinkling in the light. Else is out of breath when she reaches the harbour. She places a hand on her chest to steady her heart. The waves nudge the concrete of the Longpier. A breeze pinches her cheeks, ruffles her hair, soothes the headache behind her eyes. She recovers her mobile phone and dials the numbers for her voicemail.

‘
You have two new messages
,’ says the automated voice.

‘Else. Petter calling. I hope you’ve received my messages. I won’t bother you again if you’d rather not see me, but ring me if you would.’

A beep, then Lars’s voice replaces the first. He sounds agitated after Petter’s formal tone.

‘It’s me,’ he says. ‘We have to talk. It’s important. Call me as soon as you get this.’

Else hangs up the line. Her hand drops to her stomach, her fingers rigid around the phone’s plastic. She looks out across the fjord to the islands that shelter the town from the sea. The rock is weather-beaten and stubbled with lichen. Three hundred years ago, before the harbour was equipped to receive merchant ships, crews would offload their cargo there. Rumour has it that brothels serviced the sailors while rowing boats ferried goods to the mainland. Else does not know whether the stories are true.

The port is gone now. No one lives on the islands. Whatever buildings were once there have been razed to the ground. Still people wonder. Still the whisperers whisper.

Else types a message with her thumbs:

Free at 1600. I’ll wait for you in the cemetery.

She punches the ‘send’ button. An envelope flies across her screen. She pockets the phone and sits on a bench to wait for the trawlers.

The wind is up when Else arrives at the churchyard. Throughout the afternoon, massing clouds have merged into a single, interminable strip and now the sky is dark and dense with unshed rain. A storm is coming. Else can smell it like a damp animal running rings, closing in.

Lars sits on the bench near her father’s grave. He has not brought his dog with him today. He stares over the tops of the tombstones at Else as she approaches, his head bowed, eyes
unblinking. He leans forward to rest his arms on his thighs and clasp his hands. Is he praying? Else is glad they are alone.

She takes a seat beside him and waits for him to begin. In the silence, she reads the lettering on her father’s headstone. ‘Johann Dybdahl. 1927–1975.’ It occurs to her that she is older now than he was when he died.

Lars clears his throat. ‘What a weather,’ he says.

‘What a weather,’ says Else. ‘You could say that.’

The saliva is audible when he swallows. He licks his lips. ‘It’s Victoria,’ he says. ‘She won’t let it go.’

Else nods and her chest seems to shrink-wrap her heart.

‘I never thought …’ says Lars. ‘We only did it twice.’

Did it
, Else thinks. As if they were still kids.

‘And all of that time, you were with the circus man. When did you start things up with him? When he was working on your barn? I used to wonder.’

Else remembers. She remembers Lars wondering aloud at the Gymnasium, holding court in front of the caretaker’s shed.

‘They had their spot right there in the cow shit. Her parents next door …’

‘… the size of a tree, like doing it with an animal …’

‘You don’t have to tell me,’ Lars tells her now. ‘It’s none of my business any more. But I need to know if Marianne could be mine.’

Else closes her eyes. If Lars were Marianne’s father … She thinks of the weeks spent locked in her bedroom before Johann’s death, when she stared through the window at the cherry tree praying for Lars to rescue her, praying that the worst of her fears would not come true. She checked the cotton of her underpants several times a day and thanked God when finally her period started.

‘Look, Else,’ says Lars. ‘I don’t see how she can be, but Victoria has this idea. I suppose it’s possible. We’d have to do a test.’

‘A test,’ Else says.

‘A paternity test. I could arrange it.’

‘There won’t be any test,’ she says.

‘But we’d have to be sure. Think about it. If Liv and Andreas, someday …’ He grapples with the word. Hisses it through his teeth. ‘It would be
incest
. You realise that, right?’

‘There’s no need for a test. I know who Marianne’s father is.’

Else forces herself to meet Lars’s eyes. Her heart hammers her breastbone with each pump of blood.

‘It isn’t you,’ she says.

‘It isn’t me,’ says Lars.

‘Marianne’s father is the strong man.’

A strangled sound escapes Lars’s lips. He drags his fingers through his hair.

‘Thank God,’ he says.

He slumps in his seat as if the air has been let out of his muscles. Else half expects him to slide into the grass. An image winks across her retina of Valentin cradling a baby in his arms. It shores her up. She could almost believe that it was true.

Lars’s eyes are wet when they next find hers. She thinks he might take her hand, but he keeps his to himself. ‘The strong man,’ he says. ‘I knew it. I knew it was. I mean, I wondered, you know, back then. But you would have said if it were me, wouldn’t you? But Victoria’s been so sure. She said it didn’t make sense. People would’ve found out. She said there was no way you could have kept your affair with him a secret.’

‘I didn’t,’ says Else. ‘Everyone knows.’

‘That’s right. That’s right.’

He shakes his head and rubs his eyes. In the distance, the cloud flickers with lightning. Both Else and Lars glance at it. He wipes his palms on his jeans as thunder murmurs.

‘I have to go,’ he says.

Else nods. She fondles the tassels at the ends of her shawl, curling one tightly around her finger until the tip goes white. Lars stands.

‘Are you all right?’ he asks.

‘And why not?’ Else says.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says and turns to leave.

She almost stops him.
What for?
she wonders, but sees no point in asking. What difference would it make?

Lars hurries across the cemetery the way she arrived. He picks up his pace as he nears the church, no doubt anxious to put the scene behind him. Else does not blame him. She stays on the bench and feels the dread of discovery seep through the soles of her trainers into the soil. Marianne must never know.

‘Johann Dybdahl. 1927–1975.’

Else reads. She rereads while the thunder grumbles, closer this time. She waits for the first raindrops to spatter her jeans before setting off home.

Then

1975

THE CHURCH BELL’S
lament carried on in an echo that wailed even after the ringing had stopped. It cancelled out the scuff of shoes, the rustle of Sunday suits, the congregation’s whispering. When it died away, only the beat of the rain disturbed the hush of flattened sound. Mist obscured the graveyard beyond the windows. The building was cold, but Else’s armpits prickled with heat. She sat alone with her mother on the first pew. Behind their backs, she could sense the mourners’ restlessness.

The organ’s prelude began. Soft and sombre, its notes dripped over the congregation before setting in a chord. A collective breath signalled the start of the opening hymn and Else’s gaze fell from the model schooner to her father’s casket, which stretched like a barrier to the altar. While her neighbours sang, Pastor Seip rose to his feet. His face was grim as he climbed down into the nave to take her mother’s hand. He moved on to Else and his fingers skimmed her palm, flaccid and watery as a jellyfish.

The minister returned to his place on the altar and leafed
through his Bible until the end of the hymn. He allowed some moments of silence to build before lifting his head.

‘May the Lord bless you, and grant you mercy,’ he said. ‘Today we gather to mourn the passing of Johann Dybdahl. I know I speak for Dagny and Else both when I thank you for joining them in grief. Johann’s presence among us will be missed. “For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.” So says Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, chapter fourteen. Johann has left his mark on those who survive him. He will not be forgotten. In death, he will live on in you.’

A trickle of sweat leaked from Else’s neck down her spine, gluing her blouse to the skin between her shoulder blades. Her mother touched a handkerchief to her nose. With the other hand, she squeezed Else’s wrist under the cuff of her sleeve.

‘Johann was born to Roy and Julianna Dybdahl on the thirteenth of September, 1927. The youngest of two children, he survived Berit, who died in infancy. He was a boy when he began work on the shrimp trawler that would be his livelihood until last October’s storm. He married Dagny Solvang from Lindesnes in 1955. Three years later, the Lord blessed them with Else, their only daughter.

‘Johann was born, lived, worked and died among us. He did not live to be an old man. The sea that sustained him for most of his forty-seven years, providing him and his family with their daily bread, saw him drowned in a terrible accident on the fourteenth of April. A tragedy, certainly, but a blessing, too, for the sorrows of the flesh are as nothing next to the bounties of heaven. It is not for us to question the workings of the Lord, but rather to give thanks that Johann has been delivered from his trials on earth. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” So says the Gospel according to John, chapter three, verse sixteen.’

From the choir gallery, a loud sneeze sent a twitch through the mourners. Pastor Seip shot a glare at its perpetrator, then turned his back on the congregation and raised his hands at his sides.

‘Oh Lord,’ he called, ‘please welcome Johann Dybdahl to your bosom. Forgive his sins and grant him everlasting life. Help his loved ones take solace in the hope that they will one day be reunited with him in your kingdom.’

He continued to pray. Else peered at the coffin, her folded hands squeezing the shake from her fingers.
Everlasting life.
Pastor Seip must be mistaken. And yet, judging by the crowd at his funeral, it did seem that the town had put her father’s catalogue of failings to rest. The pews were crowded with mourners, whose contributions had turned his casket into a flowerbed. A wreath of roses had been arranged over the spot where his chest lay frozen behind the buttons of his suit jacket. ‘From Haakon Reiersen with family’, read the ribbon. Else had seen it before the service, when she and her mother had first arrived. Thinking of it now she had to close her eyes, to rein in her anger. What right did she have? She had as good as killed her father. In the eyes of the Lord, she was as guilty as he.

Pastor Seip stopped speaking and, again, the pipes of the organ wheezed. Lips parted for the second hymn, while the candles’ flames shimmered like holy tears on the altar.

‘
Fold your wide wings, o Jesus, over me …
’

The sheriff’s office had returned the verdict of death by drowning.

‘Aggravated by several knocks to the head sustained during his fall,’ Alv Knudsen had said. Else had watched the men arrive from her bedroom window. First Tenvik, who trailed after her weeping mother, and, later, Ole Haugeli. By the time Knudsen responded to Tenvik’s call, her father must have grown quite used to the mulch of the boathouse’s berth. Dagny fortified the trio with cake and chicory to ease the shock of what they had found.
Then they fished the body out of the water. Else had sat on her chair, her forehead pressed to the glass as they hoisted her father off the property. He hung limp between Knudsen and Ole, his chin sagging to his chest like a drunk’s.

The final strains of the hymn faded. In the quiet that followed, Pastor Seip surveyed his flock. Else lowered her eyes to her knees and blinked away the nightmare vision of her father’s underwater scream. He could not hurt her now. She was glad he was dead.

‘Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” Jesus is the way. The path to heaven is through Him, and through Him alone will we arrive at our salvation. Let us pray for the soul of Johann Dybdahl,’ said Pastor Seip, ‘that he find rest and peace in death. Let us pray for comfort in this, our time of sorrow, and for the strength and humility to accept the wisdom of the Lord. “Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven …”’