The House by the Fjord (21 page)

‘Then I'll fetch you as soon as you let me know that you feel the time is right for you to return to Molde. And,' he added softly, ‘to me.'

‘The other day you mentioned that you had a court case coming up that you expect to last three weeks,' she said thoughtfully. ‘When you have finished with that case, I think I'll be ready to return.'

That evening, after they had supper together, he set off to drive back overnight in the everlasting daylight to Molde. As she prepared for bed, she wished she could explain to him that the reason for her procrastination was that she needed to read more of Ingrid's journal before she visited the old house. Somehow she could not hurry her reading of it, almost as if every tiny incident, however mundane, had to be retained in her memory. A new paragraph in the journal had particularly caught her high interest.

Today I made a strange discovery! Quite by chance I found an old bridal chest that at some time had been dumped in this secret place! It was most skilfully hidden away and I would defy anybody to find it. I only found it myself because I was curious to explore every part of my property. The chest has a great lock on it, but any key that it had once possessed was missing. I think somebody had stored it for future possible use and it had just been forgotten. Although I managed to lift the heavy lid, I found nothing inside. It was empty. Not as much as a hairpin in it. Then I could not hold the lid up any longer and it crashed down with a noise like thunder. I could not read the bridal name on the front of it, because the chest had been so ill-used, but if ever I gain some treasures I shall hide them in it. No thief would ever discover them in such a secret hiding place . . 
.

The entry had been made when Ingrid had been living in the house for almost two years. By now she had bought two sheep, but only for their wool, for she knew that even if she were starving, she could never eat them. She called them individually Ida and Klara and had wept for their moment of pain when one of the farmers had obliging clipped their ears to distinguish them as her property, for she let them wander with other flocks and grazing herds of cows on the high mountain pastures during the summer months.

She sometimes went to check that her sheep had come to no harm, fearful of them being whipped away by the claws of a great eagle, for they were often sighted wheeling high against the sky, and once one swooped low over her head with thundering wings when she was fishing in the river. Sometimes she went higher up in the mountains to a lake in the rocky terrain that was full of speckled trout. There she would catch two or three and fry them over a little fire before eating them with crusty buttered bread.

At other times she enjoyed going up to the mountain pastures where there was a little cluster of cabins forming what was known as a
saeter
, one of many on the mountainous west coast. It was where the daughters of the local farmers stayed all summer on the high pastures, their duty being to milk the cows allowed to graze there at that time of year and then send the daily output in large churns down wires every morning to the valley below. Then turns were taken by the girls every evening to bring the cans up again. They all loved the freedom away from parental supervision, and on Saturday nights the lads from the valley came to join them for parties, bringing bottles in their pockets. Ingrid had been invited to these gatherings, but she had no interest in the local lads.

When the wool from her sheep was cleaned and washed, she dyed it in colours of her choice – red and orange and mountain green – and spun it on her spinning wheel before weaving it into cloth on a loom, which she had purchased and had installed in the room off the large living room. She described, with the aid of little illustrations, the new winter cloak, pretty blouses and simply styled gowns that she made for herself. She had glued beside the entries tiny scraps of the material used for the garments that she had mentioned, which pleased Anna immensely, for it gave her such an insight into Ingrid's wardrobe.

I know myself to be the best-dressed woman in the district
, Ingrid declared, causing Anna to smile at her unabashed conceit. It was clear that Ingrid would have been the focus of attention wherever she went, for she must have been as bright as a parrot in her colourful garments compared with the sombre everyday clothes usual to country women.

Ingrid had had a number of suitors, some local and others who had heard about her and came to try their luck. But she had sent them all away and her description of some of them made highly amusing reading, causing Anna to give a gasp of laughter. Yet Ingrid also wrote openly of what pleased her about some of them, such as noting that a particular suitor had a firm bottom or good legs in tight trousers, as well as observing under her lashes that some of the young men were greatly blessed in the right quarters. Others who were included as being pleasing to the eye had broad chests against which Ingrid thought any woman would like to lay her head. Strong muscled arms also attracted her as she thought how easily she could be lifted up and swept off to bed. She never minced her words, but wrote as freely as if she were talking to an intimate confidante, which indeed she was, as in reality the journal was meant entirely for her eyes alone. More and more, Anna understood why her staid father-in-law had not wanted the journal to be read by other than family eyes.

Anna wondered what Ingrid would have thought of Alex with his intelligent good looks and very male attractiveness. It was almost certain that she would have approved of him, perhaps even marrying him if the decades between them had not existed.

There was another happening of interest that Ingrid had recorded and which Anna read eagerly. It was Ingrid's account of a visit she made to see an old man named Jacob, who remembered her grandmother and told what he had heard of her great-grandmother too. He was stone deaf and so he did most of the talking, for he could not hear Ingrid at all in spite of his ear trumpet, which he thrust in her direction whenever he saw her lips move. But he had been told why she had come and was like many old people in being able to remember the past vividly, while not being able to recall anything he had done the previous day. Ingrid had recorded the interview in detail, saying how they had sat outside in the sunshine, he with a battered old hat on his head and his feet in plaid slippers. She had held a fringed, brightly patterned parasol over herself that she had bought at a market.

‘
You're a pretty one,' he said, complimenting me in his reedy old voice, ‘and so was your grandmother. I have heard tell that your great-grandmother was a comely wench too, but I was not born when she lived in your house during her widowhood. Her Christian name was Ragnhild and her daughter, who was your grandmother, was Solveig. She was a happy child and was grown into a young woman at fourteen when her parents took her off to America. She did not want to leave here, but her father thought he could make his fortune there. He died on-board ship before he had even reached American shores, but Solveig and her mother worked hard and did well. They kept a boarding house, sold it and bought a bigger one and then another, until eventually they had a small hotel. By this time Solveig was married and had a daughter. Then after she was widowed and her mother died, Solveig waited until her daughter was married and then came back to Norway. It was the best move that she could have made, because it was said she had lost her smile the day she left here and never regained it until she was home again.'

Then Ingrid had written:
How my poor dear homesick grandmother must have suffered until she was back where she belonged! I shall never leave my dear home, which she loved as much as I. Not even if a king or an Indian potentate or any other rich man should propose to me and want me to live in his grand mansion! My own mama most surely had yearned for the old house too, but had loved my father so much that she had let him take her away to live in one town after another, his being always on the move. I recall his saying once that my mother used to talk of her childhood home as if it had been paradise
.

At that point Anna had closed the journal for the time being. Now she understood the strong female hold on the house and also its link with America. It must be one of Ragnhild's female descendants who was now entitled to the house if she herself did not claim it. The more she read of the house in Ingrid's journal, the more she became fascinated by it.

Anna was still involved in all the activities enjoyed by the war brides. At their coffee mornings they chatted about letters they had received from family and friends in England, where life was still far from easy and some food rationing was still in progress. In spite of rebuilding in London and other cities, there were still gaping holes everywhere from the bombing. Then one day Anna received a letter from her aunt that surprised her immensely.

‘My aunt in England,' she told the others, ‘who has been a widow for years, is going to marry a lodger who came to live at her house not long after I arrived in Norway. He is manager of a fun palace on the pier.'

‘Shall you go to the wedding?'

Anna shook her head. ‘No, it was notification only and not an invitation. Most importantly, if I went to England now, there would be people on this side of the North Sea who would be afraid that I'd never come back. I don't want to cause them any distress.'

Including, she added silently to herself, Ingrid, who had been calling her to the old house ever since she had first opened the journal, even though she had not realized it at the time.

Anna hoped that Ingrid would give a clue as to where she had found the secret place with the old bridal chest in it, but it seemed as if Ingrid was not going to refer to it again, ensuring even more that it would never be discovered by others. Much of what she wrote was mundane, such as how many logs she had ordered for the winter, the higher price of flour, the cost of a clock for the kitchen and the recipe for what she called a sunset pudding, which consisted of egg whites and sugar whipped until peaks formed and then ripe cranberries were folded into it, turning it palest pink.

Whenever the snows came, Ingrid would see in the morning light a
fjording
plunging its legs into the white depths as it came up the slope, dragging behind a wooden snowplough to clear a way for her. A farmer's son followed it and was in charge. Once or twice, when the snow lay extra thick, the boy would get up on the roof of the house and clear it, for roofs sometimes fell in if the weight of the snow was too heavy to be sustained. Then the boy would urge the horse down the slope again, clearing the way even more, but not before she had given him a mug of hot chocolate to drink and some cake. She always found a titbit for the horse too.

Once Ingrid was ill and had to stay in bed, developing a high fever. She was cared for by Marie, who had never left the valley, living with her husband on his father's farm. In the neighbourly custom that prevailed, local people came with offerings to help Ingrid recover from her illness, such as eggnog or a nourishing broth and sometimes a specially cooked invalid dish, all in the hope of aiding a speedy recovery. It made Ingrid aware how much she was missed by the local community and she knew that although many thought her strange with her bright clothes and outspoken manner, they all – except the most straight-laced – liked her, the men always following her with their gaze whenever she walked by with her swift step and a sway of her hips that was natural to her.

When Ingrid was well enough to sit out of bed with a shawl over her knees, she raged against her physical weakness, causing Marie to be thankful that her role as a nurse was almost at an end. Yet all she had done had been deeply appreciated by the invalid and she knew it.

It was while I was still convalescing
, Ingrid wrote,
that I saw at last the man whom I knew instantly to be my soul mate . . 
. She had come down to the valley on horseback, lacking the strength yet to walk down and up again. In the shop she waited to be served and heard the shopkeeper telling another customer that there was an artist at work nearby.

‘Who is he, Andreas?' she asked as soon as she was being served, being long since on Christian name terms with most people in the valley. ‘Why is he here?'

‘He's from Bergen and just now he is painting a scene that includes old Jacob's house,' the shopkeeper replied. ‘Says it's picturesque, although since the old man died last year, his son doesn't take much care of it and it stands there empty.'

She tried to think what would have appealed to the artist about the house, for in her opinion it was a blot on the landscape and should be demolished. Outside the shop again she put her purchases into Hans-Petter's saddlebags. She decided that she had just enough strength to walk the short distance to Jacob's house to see the artist at work and judge his talent, for she needed a picture or two for her house, and then she would walk back again. She set off at a slow pace that was all she could manage, much to her annoyance, and came to where she had a good view of the artist. He sat on a portable stool with his back towards her, concentrating on the canvas set up on an easel in front of him.

The painting looked extremely good from a distance, highlighting the colours in bold strokes unlike anything she had seen before. Then, as he turned his head slightly to gaze at some aspect of the scene he was capturing in his particularly bold style, she saw his face. It seemed to her that her heart stopped for a few golden moments. This was he! The very one whom she had always hoped to meet one day. He had the most beautiful face she had ever seen, framed by a mass of tousled dark hair, his strong well-shaped nose balanced by a determined chin, his mouth wide with a full lower lip that hinted at a passionate and sensuous nature that would match her own entirely. She could not see the exact colour of his eyes, but they were dark and shadowed by thick black lashes. She was almost overcome by a longing to rest her arm along his broad shoulders and to feel those hands with the long nimble fingers on her naked body. Dazedly, she realized that for the first and only time in her life she had plunged deeply into love.