The Blue Place

eight

Some wield money like a blunt instrument, bludgeoning their way to what they want. Others hold it up like a flashing light: Look! See how important I am! I prefer to employ it as a lubricant, to ease the wear and tear of daily living. The first time I had crossed the Atlantic as an adult I had spent nine hours folded up like an accordion in coach class, surrounded by children coughing up their childhood diseases into air that was changed only five times an hour. So this time, when dinner was served, about an hour into the flight, we were sitting in business class, on leather seats with footrests and individual screens. The cabin attendants were slightly older, with the expert makeup and extra pounds that come from confidence and efficiency. There was even room for our attendant to hand the tray directly to me in my window seat rather than resort to the pass-along method used back in steerage. My steak and Julia’s salmon were presented on real plates, and we had a choice of wine. Julia had mineral water. Afterwards, we sipped coffee. Julia’s was decaffeinated. She was the one twisting restlessly in her seat.

“Perhaps you should try to sleep.”

“Yes.” She didn’t sound convinced.

The cabin attendant whisked away my empty cup and I pulled down my window shade, dug out blanket and pillow, and prepared to get comfortable, which was more difficult than usual because of the healing gash along my ribs.

“Won’t you be too hot?”

“My body temperature will drop when I’m asleep.”

“What about your sleep mask?”

“They’ll dim the lights soon enough.” Wearing something over my eyes in public has never struck me as particularly safe. I reclined my seat, pulled up the blanket, and listened to the muted roar of the plane as it hollowed through the night.

I woke up five hours later to find Julia looking at me. There were dark circles under her eyes. “I don’t understand how you do that. I just can’t relax with all these people around.”

“Your body would wake up if necessary.”

“At least you’re not claiming it’s a Norwegian thing.” She looked better than the other passengers, most of whom were far gone down the red-eye, puffy face road to transatlantic hell.

I stretched, carefully, folded away my blanket, and pulled up my window shade.

Imagine a blood orange, torn open, and a highly polished mahogany desk. Smear one over the other and add a wash of light blue: dawn over Ireland; rich, unearthly colours that reached past my eyes and stole part of my soul. People were not designed to see such things. I felt the cellular hum of four hundred people as they dreamed or worried or rehearsed speeches in their head in this steel and aluminium shell thirty-three thousand feet over the sea, hurtling through air that is just that, thin air, and knew we were remote from the world, separate, aloof, supported by nothing but speed and physical laws I could recite but have never really believed.

A few minutes later lights were going on, the smell of coffee seeped back from the galley, and people woke and murmured to their companions. A full English breakfast brought me back to the real world, then we started the ear-popping descent.

I joined Julia in the noncitizen immigration control line. She said nothing when I got out my American passport, though I knew she must be wondering. I was wafted through but they asked Julia a dozen questions. She was smart enough to keep her temper but by the time they let her go her eyes were snapping.

“So, do you suppose they have X-ray eyes and can see through your hand luggage to your UK passport?”

“It’s the smile. Make it sympathetic but mechanical, as if to say: Jeez, bet you’re as bored with your job as I am with you doing your job, again. Let’s be quick and efficient and pleasant about this.”

Her irritation lightened to amusement. “It’s nothing to do with the smile. It’s the eyes. They say: Nothing personal, but delay me and you die, old bean.”

“Old bean? They stopped saying that a decade before the war.”

“Which one?”

“Here, ‘the war’ means only one thing: World War II.”

“You’re a chameleon, you know that? Ten minutes on British soil and you’re already in their mind-set.” She eyed me speculatively all the way to the SAS gate. It was a three-hour layover, so we waited in the business-class lounge. I pulled out an Iain Banks novel but every time I looked up she was watching me.

Eventually I put the book away. “Give me your ticket.”

“Why?”

“I want to check something.”

To my surprise she didn’t argue but handed it over. I wandered out to the concierge, who was very helpful and did a lot of telephoning on my behalf.

Julia contained herself until we were aboard and tightening our seat belts. I made sure she had the window seat this time. “Okay. I give in. What were you checking?”

“The flight path. That we were seated on the left-hand side of the plane. That we could get our luggage sent on to the hotel at the other end so we don’t have to wait.”

“I didn’t know you could do that.”

“They don’t offer, but if you ask, and pay, they can be persuaded.” Another of those clubs that you have to know exists before you find out how to join.

The plane taxied for takeoff. The pulse in Julia’s neck beat faster. “And what about the flight plan, and seats?” The plane jerked a little as the pilot braked. The huge Rolls-Royce engines turned now in earnest and one of the overhead bins began to rattle. It was an old plane. The rattling got louder and faster. Julia’s nostrils were pinched and white.

“Just after takeoff, there’s something I think you might like to see.”

The engines suddenly roared in release and we lumbered down the runway. A bump, a lift, and we were airborne, the pilot hauling back on the stick so hard I thought he was trying for a loop-the-loop. Julia’s fingers dug into her armrest.

“Look down now. It’s Windsor Castle.”

We flew just a few hundred yards above the now-gracious showpiece of robber barons turned monarchs: the cathedral-sized chapel; the huge hall built by Edward III to bolster his new order, the Knights of the Garter; the vast outer ward.

The plane groaned. Julia breathed very fast. “Edward rebuilt everything in stone, starting about 1350,” I said. “Trouble is, that was just after the great plague. There weren’t really enough stonemasons, carpenters and other artisans to go around, so Edward scoured the whole country and brought them all to Windsor. They demanded bigger wages because now demand outweighed supply. Edward outwardly railed against it, but privately paid them what they asked. Medieval inflation.”

We were leaving the castle behind. Julia’s breathing had evened out a little. “I’ve never seen a castle before.”

“We’ll have a couple of days in London on the way back. While I see my mother, you might like to visit Windsor, and there are numerous cathedrals, ruined abbeys, manor houses….” We were up among the clouds now. She still had not let go of the armrest. I sighed. This could be a long journey.

“When I first started living in the U.S., I would drive along interstates and country lanes, along highway and freeway, and I would constantly scan the countryside. Every time there was a ridge or a hilltop or a bluff, I found myself looking up, expecting to see…something. It was years before I realized what I was searching for: evidence of the hand of humankind. In England, every hill is topped with the weathered remains of some Iron Age fort, of ruined manor houses, or abbeys staring naked and roofless at the sky. Sometimes it’s just the faint outline of ancient earthworks, but there’s almost always something, some indication that people once lived there. You can look out of the window of a plane and see fields and hedgerows that were first laid out in the ninth century. The hills have been smoothed, the rivers banked, the woods coppiced for thousands of years. And then I moved to Georgia. To Marietta, where a railway that’s barely a hundred years old is trumpeted with huge signs demanding that the poor motorist visit the Historic Railroad. To Duluth, where I lived in an apartment complex called Northwoods Lake Court, surrounded by old-growth pine forest, but where an eleven-year-old child now might go and look around and ask her mother: ‘Why did they call this place Northwoods, because there aren’t any trees?’ To Atlanta, Atlanta which they say Sherman burnt to the ground, but which is really destroyed every ten years by greedy developers who rip down beautiful buildings that have stood for decades and replace them with tissue-walled condominium boxes not even built to code. In Georgia, you drive ten miles outside the city and all you see is bare red clay and huge signposts declaring ‘Land For Sale’ to the highest bidder. It feels cold, sometimes, inimical and empty.”

“So why do you stay?”

“Because despite everything developers are trying to do, there is still a lot of natural beauty. For instance, there’s a park near Duluth. It has a lake with geese and ducks and fish, and it’s fringed with duckweed and cattails. The woods are full to bursting with birds. Cardinals and three different kinds of woodpecker, nuthatches, warblers, bluebirds…Have you ever seen a bluebird? They’re extremely sensitive to pollution. They’re always the first to go. But this park has bluebirds—they’re the colour of blue powder paints in the sunshine. In the woods are salamanders, lizards, mice, voles. There are yellow iris and tiger lilies, trumpet honeysuckle, swamp oak and white pine. And no one is ever there. It’s always empty.”

“You sound angry.”

“I’ve lived most of my life in London and Leeds, in Bergen and Oslo, and most of the time in those cities the only birds are sparrows that cough themselves awake on phone wires in the morning, and if you see a squirrel it’s a big nature day. Americans have no idea how lucky they are.”

She was quiet for a while. “I was brought up in Massachusetts,” she said, “with winding country lanes, blackberries that have grown along the mossy walls for three hundred years, the occasional Cape Cod that has weathered storms off the Atlantic for a hundred and fifty. I had no idea I missed them until now.”

And so for the next two hours, I told her about Yorkshire—the towns there with Roman walls; the pubs in the Dales that were built as farms in the fourteenth century—and she talked about the private school she attended in Boston.

As the western coast of Norway drew near, I glanced out at the sea every few minutes. The captain announced we were beginning our preliminary descent. Then I saw it.

“Look down there,” I said.

We were about two miles out from the coast but the North Sea below us, usually a steely grey, looked like an estuary: huge currents and swathes of what looked like mud.

“Oh, the assholes! What caused that?”

“It’s not pollution.”

“Then what is it?” She was quite belligerent.

“Herring, on their way north, lay so many eggs and release so much milt that it clogs the water.” I imagined their cold, muscular bodies glinting silver in the freezing water, thrashing and ecstatic with the urge to procreate, releasing their vast, living milk tide. “There are so many eggs that they wash up on the rocky northern shores like snowdrift. Then massive flocks of birds dive in to feed. It used to be that massive flocks of people would appear to bring down the birds. Puffins are very tasty. But that doesn’t happen much anymore.”

“Much?”

I just smiled.

The plane turned southeast, the captain struggled bravely with the intercom but remained incomprehensible, and we made our final approach. Beneath us, at the head of the swan-shaped neck of water that is Oslofjorden, Oslo glittered in the spring sunlight like a broken-open geode.

International airports usually smell of jet fuel and stale clothes but at Fornebu, on the peninsula that pokes into Lysakerfjorden just six miles west of Oslo, those scents are swept aside by sharp sea air and the fragrance of pine trees. The scents of home.

The immigration officers were courteous and efficient and spoke English. The people striding past us on the concourse all wore bright sweaters and swung their arms as they moved.

“Why do they all walk so fast?”

“Because they’re healthy. Because they don’t work ten hours a day. Because it’s not ninety degrees outside.” It was odd, after being swaddled in Southern languor for years, to be surrounded by so many white smiles that were not strained, people moving at speed because they liked it, not because they were late or afraid. We walked past an Avis desk.

“Aren’t we going to hire a car?”

“Not while we’re in the city. We can take a taxi to our hotel, and everything you want to see is walking distance from there.”

She looked at the striding natives. “Norwegian walking distance, or American?”

Then we were outside in the taxi line. Like everything else in this country, it moved forward efficiently. The sea breeze fizzed on my tongue like sherbet.

“It’s colder than it looked from inside.”

“It’s sixty degrees,” I said, surprised. “Warm for the season.” Winter had lasted a long time this year. It seemed that nature had turned up the thermostat in an effort to make up for the late start. But Julia was from Atlanta, where sunshine on the first of May meant ninety degrees. Her eyes and her skin were telling her different things.

The driver of the cab that pulled up in front of us had the smooth cheeks and tilted eyes of someone with Sami blood. “Where to?” he asked in English.

“Hotel Bristol,” Julia said. Telling him the street address would have been like telling a New York native how to get to the Empire State Building.

We drove east along Drammensveien. Julia was quiet. As Drammensveien crossed Bygdoy Alle, I pointed north to the park. “Three blocks that way to Vigeland’s sculpture park. What kind of art do the glass corporation want?”

“Whatever it is, it’ll have to resist the elements. How far to the hotel?”

“Another mile.”

But it took a long time to get there. The streets were full of parades, people holding banners and placards, men and women marching along behind bands.

“It’s May the first. Labour Day.” I had forgotten. “A public holiday when trade unions and political parties hold rallies. All very dignified when compared to the seventeenth of May, National Day, when everyone runs the flag up the pole and parties to celebrate the anniversary of the Norwegian constitution.” By the seventeenth we would be by the still green waters of Lustrafjord, two hundred miles from the crowds of screaming children waving their flags, smearing their best clothes with mustard from their pølse and spilling fizzy brus on innocent passersby.

The driver, who had been nosing his cab patiently through the crowds, sighed, pulled on the brake, and told us he could go no farther, and that would be a hundred thirty krone, please. We climbed out and Julia shuffled through her money, trying to decipher the unfamiliar notes. She found hundred-Nkr and fifty-Nkr notes but I leaned forward and said quietly, “Give him more. Another twenty-Nkr.”

She did. He smiled. “Takk skal du har.”

“Ingen arsak,” I replied.

He drove off slowly through the crowds. “I thought Norwegians didn’t believe in big tips.”

“He was Sami. What Americans would call Lapp. The fare from the airport should be at least a hundred fifty-Nkr. Perhaps he charged less because he couldn’t get us to our exact destination, but perhaps it’s because he expects to be treated badly.”

“So Norway isn’t perfect.”

“Just cleaner. The hotel is that way.” Out in the early afternoon sun, I could see that her skin was stretched and tight, and the circles under her eyes had darkened from tobacco to charcoal.

Inside the doors of the Bristol, Julia stopped and stared. Jet lag, a strange country, and now the exotic cinnamon and gold arches of a Moorish-style lobby.

“I’ll check us in.” I left her on an ottoman recovering her poise.

The Bristol is one of the few good hotels left where getting two rooms with a connecting door is possible without breaking the bank. I asked for two keys to each room, two for the connecting door. The clerk obviously thought I was eccentric but given the amount we were paying, he didn’t seem inclined to argue. I told him to send our luggage up when it arrived.

Julia smiled at me as I approached, still looking tired but now as relaxed and unfazed as though she had spent her life sitting on Turkish couches in Moorish lobbies in Norwegian cities. Such a relief after babysitting Beatriz. I sat next to her. “This is the key to your room, this is the key to mine, here’s the one that fits the connecting door, though I think we should keep that unlocked.” I handed them over. “I have a complete set, too.”

“Just in case?” She smiled but sounded more fatigued than amused. “God, I need to sleep.”

The elevators were small, and elegant with brass and mahogany. Julia peered at the buttons, which appeared to be made of ivory. “I just hope my room’s not got out like a harem or something.”

It wasn’t. It had a slate blue carpet with rosewood armoire and escritoire dating from the 1880s. The headboard was beautifully inlaid. Simple, elegant, warm. She opened the connecting door to my room, which was carpeted in moss green, with walnut furniture. “Very nice.”

I checked the windows, then went into her bathroom. Huge tub, shower stall with faux nineteenth century hardware. Mounds of white towels. A second phone. I brought the robe out with me.

Julia was sitting on the bed, bouncing lightly. “The mattress, at least, is new. What’s that for?”

“Our luggage won’t be here for an hour or two. If you want to sleep, you might like a robe handy.”

She held out her hand for the robe. “If I’m not stirring by five, will you wake me?”

“Five,” I agreed, and left her to it.

In my room, I called the front desk to make sure they delivered both our bags to my room. Just in case they processed my request with less than usual Norwegian efficiency, I took my DO NOT DISTURB sign, went out into the corridor and hung it on Julia’s door. My bathroom was blue and gold. I unwrapped the bandage around my ribs, dropped it in the bin, and looked at my ribs in the mirror. The skin was clear, not red, and when I touched the hard scab the pain was minimal. It didn’t need to be wrapped up again. I dressed and went back to my room of tasteful moss and polished walnut.

From the chaise longue by the window I could see clouds scudding over the harbour. The sea would be beginning to chop, the temperature dropping by the minute. The crowds would soon start thinking about going home to eat middag. By five I would have the pavements to myself. I could taste the air, listen to the gulls, reacquaint myself.

There were trees throughout the city, scattered here and there on the streets, lining the harbour walk, gathering in dense growth in the parks. From up here, Slottsparken, surrounding the Royal Palace, looked like lime-green felt, fresh and vigorous with new foliage. It seemed all wrong. It should be autumn, with a gale whipping leaves from the trees, swirling them underfoot, so my strides would crunch gold and russet and brown, scenting the air with the pungence of loss and regret. But it was spring, late spring that was trying with a vengeance to become summer, and my solitary walk would have to wait for a while, because Julia was asleep and I had promised to wake her at five. And I was uneasy.

I made a phone call. I read Iain Banks.

At five, I knocked on the connecting door. A murmur. I knocked again. Nothing. I went through.

She had pulled the thin curtains closed but not the heavy drapes. The room was in light shadow, just enough to bring the richness out of the wood and make the blue carpet deep and mysterious. She slept on her back, arms over her head, mouth open, shoulders showing bare. Her breath was short and fast and cross. How easy it would be to step closer and put a hand over her mouth, pinch shut her nostrils. She would struggle, of course, but under the duvet and hotel-tight sheets, under the slippery silk bedspread, she wouldn’t stand a chance. Her heart would beat under her ribs, frantic as a bird, and her muscles would bunch like tight little apples.

All that stood between her and death at the hands of a stranger was a door, but all one had to do was bribe the desk clerk, or trick a chambermaid, or pick the lock, and then all her training would be for nothing.

But this was Oslo, not Atlanta. Honeycutt had no idea she was here. Nor had his blackmailer.

“Julia.”

She turned away. The scent of sleepy, warm woman drifted from the bed.

“Julia.”

“Mmmn.” She turned back towards me, face soft and unfocused. Still asleep.

“Julia. It’s five o’clock.”

The essential Julia flowed back into the body on the bed, reanimating the flesh, sharpening the face, focusing the gaze, and I understood why some people believe in possession.

“It’s five o’clock,” I repeated. “Our luggage arrived. I’ll go get yours.” I also went back out into the corridor and retrieved the DO NOT DISTURB sign. Then I waited an extra minute or two.

She was standing by the window in her robe, curtain drawn back. Her skin looked soft and warm and alive against the white towelling. “It all looks so fresh and clean, as though people here don’t even sweat.” Her hair fell forward over her eyes. She tucked it back behind her ears. “What time do people eat in Oslo?”

“Early, though not as early as they used to. But there’s someone I should visit before dinner. You are welcome to come with me, unless you prefer to stay in the hotel and rest.”

“Someone who takes precedence over dinner?” She studied me. “A relative.”

“My great-aunt, Hjørdis.”

“A relative…. Yes, I’d love to meet her. But I need to shower, then work out my travel kinks. How about a walk?”

“Norwegian or American?”

“Norwegian. I’ll dress appropriately.”

“I’ll be in my room.”

When I looked up forty minutes later she was standing in the doorway, wearing stretch twill pants, light boots, and a thick sweater the swirling colours of sunset over the sea. “Nice room,” she said, then: “I’m not a vampire. If you invite me in you can always get rid of me later.”

I stood. “I’m sorry. Please, come in.” It sounded wooden and overly formal. Her boots made deep imprints on the carpet. Walnut and moss, not raspberry and Viking gold. I wondered how long they would be visible.

Ulleval Hageby, where Tante Hjørdis lives, is almost three miles from the centre of the city. I walked between Julia and the road. It was a beautiful evening. The sky, cloudless now, arched overhead like a fragile eggshell painted blue so long ago it was beginning to fade, and the sun slanted across the pavement like a glass sword. Trees absorbed the traffic fumes and the world smelt deliciously of green sap and distant ozone. I walked fast, letting my blood pump through veins and wash away the travel toxins and rush oxygen to my scalp and fingertips and retina, and all the time scanned the trees automatically, listened for following footsteps. Nothing. This was Oslo. Julia kept up, moving easily, alert, enjoying herself. She seemed to have shed her city skin, or perhaps just a layer of armour. Red squirrels jumped from tree to tree ahead of us. “It’s like walking through a garden.”

“Hage means garden, and by is town. Hjørdis has lived here ever since I can remember.”

“Do you like her?”

That surprised me. “She’s my aunt.”

“But what’s she like?”

I thought for a while. “Older than she seems.”

Julia laughed and picked up the pace and for a while we swung along in opposite step, hip to hip, her right leg moving out with my left, so I could feel her boot hit the ground, feel it through the soles of my feet, up my calves, in my pelvis. It didn’t last, of course. My legs are longer.

Tante Hjørdis’s house is made of wood, in a row of wooden houses painted bright colours. Hers is red. We climbed a short flight of wooden steps and I lifted the brass knocker. I’d always loved its tidy, bright rat-tat-tat sound as a child.

The door opened so fast Julia took a step back and there was Tante Hjørdis, still tall, still with that iron-grey hair in a short bowl cut. The sweater was brighter than usual. There was no Hello, no Aud, how lovely to see you!, but her eyes were bright, and she said, “You’re the only person these days who doesn’t try hammer that thing through the wood.” She turned to Julia and said, in English this time, “Everyone else thinks I’m going deaf.”

She held out her arms and we hugged. I remembered when she used to engulf me. Now I was an inch or two taller, though her bone and muscle still felt like granite.

I stepped out of the embrace and spoke in English. “Tante, this is Julia Lyons-Bennet. Julia, this is my great-aunt, Hjørdis Holmsen.”

Julia held out her hand and they shook heartily. Hjørdis nodded approval. “Come in. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

The vindskap was dry and tidy now, nothing like the muddy, wet and cold room of my childhood winters when my mother and I pulled off boots, down jackets and sealskin hats, and leaned skis up against the wall. Even though it was dry outside, I wiped my boots carefully on the mat and Julia copied me. There was a large mirror on the far wall. I ran my fingers through my hair, more because it was expected than necessary. Julia shook her hair loose, combed it with her fingers, and tied it back again. Like Hjørdis, she looked impossibly young.

The vindskap led into a hallway whose walls were lined with family photographs; a painted wooden staircase lay at one end and a single door in the middle.

The sun would be up for another two or three hours but the living room blazed with candles. I smiled at the familiar warm scent of beeswax.

“It must run in the family,” Julia said, pointing at the polished wooden floor and big French windows in the dining area that led to the back garden. The dining table was draped with a linen cloth and sparkled with three places of crystal and sterling flatware. I sighed.

We nearly ran into Hjørdis in the kitchen doorway. She was carrying an enormous tray. “You take this one,” she said to Julia—in Norwegian, but her intent was perfectly clear. “Aud, you come in here and help me carry the rest.”

I had told her we were on our way out to dinner, but she had laid out plates of geitost and crackers, home-cured ham and rømme and lompe, salmon and cucumber salad…. I followed Julia to the dining room table. Hjørdis brought homemade wine and fresh, very strong coffee.

“When did you get here?” In English, this time, directed at Julia.

“About four hours ago.”

She handed her a steaming cup of coffee. “You don’t look tired.”

“Aud persuaded me to take a nap.”

“She’s good at that.” They both turned to look at me and I wondered how a person could become the outsider so fast. “So you want the key to the seter.” It was still in English but this time addressed to me.

“Yes.”

“When will you be there?”

“Julia will be doing some business in the city tomorrow and perhaps the day after. Then we will go on to Lustrafjorden. If Julia likes it, we’ll stay for a week or two.”

“Or longer.”

Julia smiled and said, “No, I can’t take too much time away from my business.”

“Oh, people always say that, then they see the fjord for the first time, they smell the sloping fjell and taste the water, and suddenly their very important job in the city fades to meaninglessness, and I nearly have to send in the army to evict them. So let’s say four weeks, just in case, and then I won’t have to be cross if you stay longer than you intended. Now, Aud, why don’t you explain to your polite friend what all this food is and I’ll go get the key.”

We watched her stride out of the room. Julia smiled. “Better do as she says or she’ll eat you.”

“A few years ago I believed she could. So. Pass me that plate with the cheese on it. This is geitost, goat’s cheese. You can put it on these crackers. It has a toasty, caramel flavour. I think you’d like it. The salmon you eat with the cucumber salad. You might find that a bit sweet. This ham you can wrap in lompe, which is that soft flatbread over there.”

“And this?”

“Gravadlax, buried salmon. A great delicacy.” Only Hjørdis would serve it along with geitost. “Try it if you feel brave.”

“And this?” She lifted a dish of little, pale round things.

“Rolled cod’s tongues.”

The dish went back on the table with a bang, but then she picked it up again. “How do you eat them?”

“With one of these.” I held up a long-handled silver fork with three tiny tines. “Pass the pickle castor. That crystal and silver thing on wheels.” She trundled it over. I used the tiny silver tongs to transfer a few of the silverskin onions to my plate, then skewered one with the fork, then a cod’s tongue and popped them in my mouth. I savoured the texture and bite. “You dip them in rømme, that sour cream there.”

She spooned some onto her plate and was just dipping a tongue when Hjørdis came back. Julia, wearing her poker face, put the whole thing in her mouth and chewed. After a second or two, she looked relieved. Hjørdis laughed. “Such a pleasant surprise to see an American enjoy good, wholesome food. Now. Aud.” Julia heard the suddenly formal tone and sat up straight. “Here is the key. You’re lucky. Your mother phoned up yesterday and told me you might be wanting it. I phoned Gudrun at the farm and she will be airing everything out for you, so you will be comfortable, but next time try give me a little more notice.” She handed it over. It was big and made of black iron, and very cold. She probably kept it in the cellar. The business of the key to the family seter was purely ceremonial—the back door and windows did not even have locks—but Hjørdis took her duties as eldest family member quite seriously. “Now, eat, and Aud can tell me why she has stayed away so long, and you, Julia, can tell me all about this business of yours.”

We never did get out to dinner. I listened for hours as Julia talked about art; about Atlanta and how she had come back to the city, where her mother now lived, from Boston. I watched Hjørdis absorbing Julia with those bright eyes; agreeing with sharp nods and the occasional emphatic ha! when Julia talked about discrimination against women in business in the South. We drank homemade tyttebaer wine with the meal, and Hjørdis’s face flushed, and Julia relaxed and talked with her hands. As the sun went down and left candlelight wavering over brow and throat, wrist and mouth, it seemed for a moment that they could be almost the same age: two women, enjoying a conversation.

We walked back to the Bristol, but slowly. There was very little traffic, and a sharp breeze blew in from the fjord. No unusual sounds, no unusual scents. “You were quiet tonight,” she said.

“Yes.”

Sound of breath and boots. “I liked Hjørdis. And she seems to mean a great deal to you.”

“She’s my aunt.” Hjørdis had always been part of my life, always there in her wooden house when my mother was busy and my father out of the country. When I was in England, I wrote to her every week, and every week she wrote back. “My father told me once that she had fought in the Resistance during the Second World War.”

“You’ve never asked her?”

“If she had wanted me to know, she would have told me.”

“Is everything in Norway left so…unspoken? I’m glad you’ll be with me tomorrow when I go to Olsen Glass. You can tell me afterwards what each particular silence really meant.”

“Nothing is unspoken in business. It’s all very straightforward. Telling the truth, and nothing but the truth, is the cardinal rule.”

“What about the whole truth?”

“That, too.”

A momentary silence. “And do you believe in that, Aud Torvingen?”

“It depends on who I’m talking to.”

“You’re doing it again. I don’t think you’ve lied to me, exactly, but you keep information back.”

“What do you want to know?”

“You’ve been tense all the time we’ve travelled. I hadn’t even realized that until this evening when I saw you relax at Hjørdis’s house. Do you think I’m in danger even here, in Oslo?”

“I don’t know.” And that was what filled me with deep unease. “Reason tells me you are safe.”

“But you don’t believe it, do you?”

I had no idea how to explain that behind every tree, looming beyond every building I sensed the shadowy outline of Honeycutt’s puppet master, the blackmailer.

We were walking a little faster now, and Julia’s shoulders were hunched. “Ever since Honeycutt’s house, you’ve been different. I’ve seen the way you eye the doors, gauging their sturdiness, the way you check shop windows as we pass to make sure we’re not being followed. I’ve noticed that you always walk on the curb side of the sidewalk, and you make sure cars have fully stopped before you cross a street. Especially here, even though you told me I’d be safe in Norway.”

Reason dictated that I say, You are, but what came out was, “I’ll protect you,” which puzzled me, because it was not the same thing at all.