The Last Boat Home (8 page)

‘I’m perfectly capable of driving.’

‘You’re not driving,’ Victoria says.

With an exaggerated sigh, Lars relinquishes the key. Liv climbs aboard after Andreas and they each choose a side to pull in the fenders. Victoria pushes a button and the anchor retracts before Marianne leaps from land, holding the end of the rope. She stows it away and the boat floats into the skerry. The island’s shouts and laughter dwindle behind them. They have hardly begun their journey when Liv lies down next to Else, stretching across the cushions of the sunbed to place her head in her grandmother’s lap. Else strokes her hair and considers the silhouette on the sailing boat. She wonders which way Petter’s face is turned.

O
NLY THREE CARS
are parked in a shaded corner of the car park. Else crosses the empty lot together with Liv, who skips up the wheelchair ramp and leans against the door to the nursing home. In a reception area that smells of bleach, a girl dressed in a burgundy scrub suit is visible behind a window. She removes an earphone as Else draws close and the notes from a tinny guitar solo stray into the silent space.

‘Knut Tenvik,’ Else says. ‘Don’t worry. We know where we’re going.’

The girl replaces her earphone and they continue down the hall, past the numbered rooms that house ‘Assisted Living’ residents. It is something quite different from the secure ward where Else’s mother spent her final days. Even now, more than a year since her death, Else feels the guilt that comes with each visit to Tenvik. She should have done more, researched some new medication, but her mother was in a hurry at the last. She seemed to embrace her slip into dementia with a calm that pained Else almost as much as seeing her fade.

A staircase next to a wall plastered with drawings from the local kindergarten brings Else and Liv to the second floor. In the middle of the corridor a door opens into a common room, where a handful of the home’s residents are gathered at a table playing whist. Tenvik sits in his wheelchair by the window, gazing at the fjord below. His hair has been washed. It springs from his skull in a dandelion clock’s puff of white.

‘Hi, Knut,’ says Liv.

‘Young lady,’ he says. ‘And there is Else. And Marianne?’

‘Mamma’s with her boyfriend,’ says Liv.

‘Well, that explains it,’ he says. ‘And what does Else make of that?’

‘She doesn’t like it.’

‘I’m right here,’ says Else. ‘I can hear you, you know.’

Liv exchanges a smile with Tenvik before she darts to the kitchen to find an orderly who will make their coffee. While she is gone, Else carries two chairs to Tenvik’s side.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asks. ‘Any more trouble with that cough?’

‘I’m fine,’ he says. ‘Tell me, how’s business?’

‘Fine,’ Else says.

‘Well,’ he says, ‘then everything is fine.’ A laugh gives way to
a splutter and Tenvik hacks onto his knees. Else waits for the attack to pass.

‘Have the doctors said any more?’ she asks.

‘It’s nothing,’ he says. ‘When are you going to take me out for lunch? It’s the food here that’s killing me, not the cough. One more meatball and I’ll thank them for having me.’

Liv returns with a middle-aged woman, who places a thermos of coffee on the window ledge. She lifts cups from her tray, a jug of cream and a plate of biscuits. While Else pours the coffee Liv reaches for a saucer of sugar cubes, tearing the wrapper from one before handing it to Tenvik.

‘Here,’ she says and watches, delighted, when he pinches the cube between finger and thumb. He dips a corner into his coffee and the liquid bleeds into the sugar, staining its granules a caramel brown. Tenvik pops the cube into his mouth and sucks.

‘That’s more like it,’ he says. ‘Have you been to the house?’

‘There hasn’t been time,’ Else says.

‘You really must sell it. It’s an asset, Else, you can’t just leave it to rot. Stop by the farm while you’re at it, will you? I want a report on how Karsten is treating my cows. Do you remember, young lady,’ Tenvik asks Liv, ‘what fun we used to have on the farm? You liked to drive the tractor, just like your mother used to. How about another sugar cube?’

Liv awards him with a second cube and he repeats the procedure. Then she stands and wanders to the television set. She flicks through the channels while Else fills Tenvik in on the town’s gossip since her previous visit. The council has approved a proposal for a new supermarket behind the Statoil petrol station. Rimi, she thinks, or perhaps it was Kiwi. Janne Haugen mentioned it, but she can’t remember now. Plans are going ahead for the expansion of the Solbakken pier into a marina. Janne said the work would begin in September. It should be ready before the summer season starts next year.

‘What else?’ Tenvik asks.

‘That’s more or less it.’

A frown puckers his lips. He touches Else’s wrist with three crooked fingers. ‘So it isn’t true that Lars Reiersen is back.’

‘Oh,’ Else says. ‘He’s been back for a while.’

‘Funny,’ says Tenvik. ‘You haven’t mentioned it.’

‘They’ve been here for ages,’ says Liv, still watching the TV. ‘We went out on their speedboat for
Sankt Hans
. We were in the parade. His son’s called Andreas.’

‘Is he?’ says Tenvik. ‘And what about his wife?’

‘Victoria,’ Liv says. ‘She’s nice. She’s pretty.’

‘She’s young,’ Else says. ‘Not much older than Marianne.’ She sips from her cup, angling the porcelain in a way that she hopes will hide her blush. ‘He’s doing something with the shipyard. I haven’t asked what.’

‘I’m sure you’ll hear soon enough,’ Tenvik says. ‘You know how people like to talk.’ His eyes are clear in spite of his age. They study Else’s face for a beat too long before he throws up his hands and bellows to the room. ‘Who’s going to tell me about Marianne’s new boyfriend?’

‘Me!’ says Liv. ‘They’ve been together for ages.’

‘Everything’s relative,’ Else says.

Liv points the remote control at the screen, which flashes and blinks out. She pushes herself from the armchair and recounts the details her mother has shared about the Swede. Else finds herself wishing the nursing home would serve something stronger than coffee. She checks her watch and pours herself another cup.

Once Liv has kissed Tenvik’s sunken cheek, she leads the way home. Else pauses now and then while her granddaughter pulls a wild flower from the roadside. They take a short cut onto Lundgata through the bottom of Terje Bull’s yard, where they keep to the shade under the ash trees’ branches.

‘Do Knut’s legs hurt him?’ Liv asks.

‘No,’ Else says. ‘He can’t feel them any more.’

Liv stops to admire a dog rose that droops from its stem over a gatepost.

‘Not that one,’ Else says. ‘That’s from somebody’s garden.’

‘Why didn’t you tell him about Lars?’

‘What do you mean?’ Else asks.

‘That he had moved back.’

‘I didn’t think it would interest him.’

Else chews her top lip and points at a tangle of wild strawberry stalks that pokes out of the underbrush. She rummages in her pocket for a clean tissue and balances herself on her haunches next to Liv, who picks the tiny berries and places them on the paper cupped in Else’s palm. The fruits are bruised, or else hard and yellow under the seeds that spot their skin. Else chooses a berry that is ripe enough and, with her tongue, mashes it into a sweet pulp against the roof of her mouth. She winks at Liv, anticipating her protests, the burst of indignation that will give way to laughter. Her granddaughter considers her with a solemn expression that stings her heart.

‘I know about you and Lars, you know,’ she says. ‘That he was your boyfriend.’

‘Liv,’ Else says.

‘Mamma told me,’ she says. ‘When you were younger. Andreas says he and Victoria fight about it sometimes.’

‘Liv,’ says Else, ‘what a thing to say.’

‘Why not? If it’s true.’

‘That’s enough,’ Else says.

‘But is it true, Mormor? I want you to tell me.’

Else feels her throat is being scrubbed with steel wool. ‘It was a long time ago,’ she says. She avoids meeting Liv’s eye, though she can sense that her granddaughter wants more from her. She pinches another strawberry from its stem and arranges it with the others, then supports herself with her free hand in the soil.

‘Is it true,’ Liv says and her voice is strange and Else hates herself for being the cause of its strangeness. ‘Is it true that my grandfather was in the circus?’

‘Yes,’ Else says.

‘Did you love him?’ Liv asks.

Else looks at the fjord. It glistens in the gaps between the houses. The sun is bright. It hurts her eyes.

‘Yes,’ she says.

Her knees are stiff when she stands and carefully folds the corners of the tissue over the berries. ‘I think that’s enough for now. Don’t you?’

Liv nods and follows her grandmother down the road. She slips a hand that fits exactly into Else’s and presses the fingers and lets them go.

Then

1974

AFTER THREE DAYS
of performances, the circus packed up and drove away. Its lorries and wagons and cars with their trailers disappeared without fanfare down the coast road, leaving behind a glimmer of possibility that seemed to Else to dull the colours of what had been there before. She treasured moments of solitude when she was able to return in thought at least to the sawdust at the edge of the ring to watch white horses galloping and tightrope walkers gliding across the sky. Often she would call to mind the circus troupe’s performers and try to imagine the places they came from, far-away countries, towns and cities that bustled and buzzed under a different sun. She felt their departure like a promise revoked, but still remembered them hopefully. In three years, she would finish school. She would not have to stay in this town forever.

Several weeks passed before Else went back to the paddock. In that time, in the halls and classrooms of the Gymnasium, the students continued to trade stories from the Big Top as if each had seen a different show. As the only one of their friends to have
visited the circus twice, Lars took charge of the collective testimony. Those whose parents had disapproved, who had spent the nights of the circus’s stay in mourning for what they were missing, assembled in the yard by the caretaker’s shed, where he recounted the wonders that he had witnessed in the manège. He described a contortionist folding his body into six segments and a strong man lifting a horse with the tip of his thumb until, little by little, his audience disbanded and talk moved onto other things.

Bjørn Fodstad brought an American football to school that an aunt had sent him from Wisconsin. For the next two weeks, Lars, Rune and Petter used the breaks to blunder after the oblong ball. Else cheered them on together with Gro Berge and Hanne Austbø, whose parents were Smith’s Friends and who was the youngest of eight siblings, or else the girls would climb Torggata to the bakery and Gro would ask her mother for some of yesterday’s raisin buns. Sometimes while Else was eating her roll, she would find herself listening for a blast of horns on the hill outside, though she knew the circus would not come back for another year, if at all.

A sombre sky settled over the town. Its clouds were low and tinged grey. After a stretch of days deprived of sunlight, the locals began to mutter about an ugly autumn. In the mornings before school, when Else stood at the public dock and watched the shipyard’s boat ferry its workers across the fjord, her breath met the air in a thickening fog and she knew that winter would follow soon.

On a Saturday at the end of October, Else kicked through the rotting leaves on the forest floor behind the Tenvik farm. A torrent of rain had finally subsided and the brook thundered under the weight of new water. The paddock bore the scars of the circus’s visit. The grass had been chopped before its arrival and what was left had been gouged by hooves and tent pegs or churned by feet and countless sets of tyres. Else’s shoes sank into the soggy earth. She hesitated when she saw two trailers parked on the meadow.
Smoke spiralled from the remains of a fire in a ditch and melted into the sky.

Lars was not there. In front of one of the trailers a man leaned over the open bonnet of a Volkswagen, his ponytail wagging between his shoulder blades when he spat a gob into the soil. Else had begun her retreat when she heard a shout. Another man had stepped from one of the caravans and was yanking shut its door. He started towards her across the field.

‘Hey!’ he called. ‘Are you looking for Tenvik? This is private property. Are you looking for the circus? The circus has gone.’

As the man approached, his scar came into focus. His left eyelid wilted across the iris that darted in his eye. He stopped too close to Else, who realised she was staring and looked away. He took his time to study her.

‘You need something?’ he said.

‘I’m just waiting for someone.’

‘Lucky someone,’ he said.

‘He’ll be here any minute,’ Else said.

‘Maybe I’ll keep you company while you wait. I’m Yakov. You want something? Coffee? Cigarette?’

‘No,’ Else said. She crossed her arms over her chest, her muscles taut even after Lars had ducked under a branch into the clearing. At first, he did not seem to notice her companion. He brushed the pine needles from his hair and then his hand dropped to his side.

‘I know you,’ he said. ‘You’re from the circus. You’re the brothers with the net. You are, aren’t you? I saw the show. I saw it twice. You and your brother were pretty good.’

A smile thinned the circus man’s lips. He called to his brother, who was still bent over the car’s hood. ‘Do you hear that, Oleg? This boy says we were pretty good.’

Oleg aimed a fresh lump of phlegm into the mud.

‘So what are you doing here?’ asked Lars. ‘This is private property.’

‘That’s what I just finished telling your girlfriend,’ Yakov said.

Lars nodded. He stood almost as tall as the foreigner and met his challenge with an indifference that made Else shrink.

‘We’re doing some work for Tenvik,’ Yakov said. ‘If that’s all right with you?’

‘But what about the circus?’