The Kingdom Read online

  That really was a signal that she didn’t want the standard just-fine-thanks answer, but that she cared, she wanted to know. And I think she really meant it. By nature Mari was friendly and helpful towards people. But still she gave this impression of looking down on you. Of course that might be on account of the fact that she was 180cm tall, but I do remember one time when the three of us were in the car driving home after a dance – me driving, Carl drunk, Mari angry and pissed off – and her saying, ‘Carl, I can’t have a boyfriend who drags me down to the level of everyone else in this town, you do see that?’

  But even if she wasn’t happy about the level, it was obvious that it was here she wanted to be. Though she’d been even smarter than Carl at school, she didn’t have the same drive as him, that burning desire to head on out and be somebody. Maybe because she was already up there, floating around on the surface in the sunshine. So it was mostly about staying there. Maybe that was why – after it was over with Carl – she’d just taken a short course in political science – or poshlitical science as the locals called it – and then come straight back home with Dan Krane and an engagement ring. And while he started work as editor of the local Labour Party newspaper, she was apparently still working away on a final paper she was clearly never going to finish.

  ‘Doing OK,’ I said. ‘Did you come alone?’

  ‘Dan wanted to look after the boys.’

  I nodded. Knew that the grandparents next door would have been delighted to help out with the babysitting but that Dan had insisted. I’d seen his expressionless, ascetic face at the service station when he pumped up the tyres on the costly-looking bike he was going to use in the Birken long-distance race. Pretended he didn’t know who I was but his animosity was palpable, simply because I shared a lot of DNA with the guy who’d slept with the woman who was now his lawful wedded wife. Oh no, Dan probably didn’t entertain any burning desire to come up and celebrate the return of a home-town boy who was also his wife’s ex.

  ‘Have you met Shannon?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said Mari, scanning the already packed room where we’d shoved all the furniture to one side and everyone was standing. ‘But Carl is so fixated on looks she’s bound to be so pretty you can’t mistake her.’

  From the way she said this it was obvious what she thought of all talk about appearances. When Mari gave the speech on behalf of the school-leavers for her year the headmaster had introduced her by saying that she ‘wasn’t only intelligent but also a striking beauty’. Mari had started her speech by saying: ‘Thank you, headmaster. I wanted to say a few words of thanks for all you’ve done for us these past three years, but I didn’t know quite how to express myself, so let’s just say that you have been remarkably lucky in your appearance.’ The laughter had been isolated, the line delivered with a little too much venom, and as the daughter of the chairman it wasn’t really clear whether she’d been kicking upwards or downwards.

  ‘You must be Mari.’

  Mari looked round before she looked down. And there, three heads below her, Shannon’s white face and white smile smiling up at us. ‘Punch?’

  Mari raised an eyebrow. Looked as though she thought this slight-built figure had challenged her to a boxing match until Shannon lifted the tray higher.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Mari. ‘But no thanks.’

  ‘Oh no. You lost at rock paper scissors?’

  Mari looked blankly at her.

  I coughed. ‘I told Shannon about the custom of driving and the—’

  ‘Oh that,’ Mari interrupted with a thin smile. ‘No, my husband and I don’t drink.’

  ‘Aha!’ said Shannon. ‘Because you’re alcoholics or because it’s not good for your health?’

  I saw Mari’s face stiffen. ‘We aren’t alcoholics, but on a worldwide basis alcohol kills more people annually than wars, murders and drugs put together.’

  ‘Yes, and thank goodness for that,’ said Shannon, smiling. ‘That there aren’t more wars, murders and drugs, I mean.’

  ‘What I’m trying to say is that alcohol isn’t necessary,’ said Mari.

  ‘I’m sure it isn’t,’ said Shannon. ‘But at least it’s got the people who’ve come here tonight talking a bit more than when they arrived. Did you drive up?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Mari. ‘Don’t the women drive where you come from?’

  ‘Sure they do, but only on the left.’

  Mari gave me an uncertain look, as though asking if there was some joke here she didn’t get.

  I coughed. ‘They drive on the left in Barbados.’

  Shannon laughed loudly, and Mari smiled tolerantly as at a child’s embarrassing little joke.

  ‘You must have put a lot of time and effort into learning your husband’s language. Did you never consider him learning your language instead?’

  ‘That’s a good question, Mari; but English is the language of Barbados. And of course, I want to know what you’re all saying behind my back.’ Shannon laughed again.

  I don’t always understand what women are saying when they talk, but even I could see that this was a catfight, and my only job was to stay well out of the way.

  ‘Anyway I prefer Norwegian before English. English has the worst written language in the world.’

  ‘Prefer Norwegian to English, you mean?’

  ‘The idea behind the Arabic alphabet is that the symbols reflect the sounds. So when for example you write an a in Norwegian, German, Spanish, Italian and so on, then it’s pronounced a. But in English a written a can be anything at all. Car, care, cat, call. ABC. And the anarchy just goes on. As early as the eighteenth century Ephraim Chambers was of the opinion that English orthography is more chaotic than that of any other known language. While I found out that without knowing even a single word of Norwegian I was able to read aloud from Sigrid Undset – Carl understood every word!’ Shannon laughed and looked at me. ‘Norwegian ought to be the world language, not English!’

  ‘Hmm, maybe,’ said Mari. ‘But if you’re serious about sexual equality then you shouldn’t be reading Sigrid Undset. She was a reactionary anti-feminist.’

  ‘Well, I’m inclined to think of Undset more as a sort of early second-wave feminist, like Erica Jong. Thanks for the advice about what not to read, but I also try to read writers with some of whose viewing points I don’t agree.’

  ‘Viewpoints,’ corrected Mari. ‘I see you spend a lot of time thinking about language and literature, Shannon. You’d probably be better off talking to Rita Willumsen, or our doctor, Stanley Spind.’

  ‘Instead of...?’

  Mari gave a thin smile. ‘Or perhaps you should think about doing something useful with your knowledge of Norwegian. Like looking for a job? Contributing to the community here in Os?’

  ‘Fortunately I don’t need to look for a job.’

  ‘No, I’m sure you don’t,’ said Mari, and I could see she was on the offensive again. That contemptuous, patronising look, the one Mari thought she kept so successfully hidden from the other villagers, was there in her eyes as she said: ‘After all, you do have a...husband.’

  I looked at Shannon. People had taken glasses from the tray as we stood there and she moved the ones that were left to restore the balance. ‘I don’t need to look for a job because I already have one. A job I can do from home.’

  Mari looked surprised, and then almost disappointed. ‘And that is?’

  ‘I draw.’

  Mari brightened up again. ‘You draw,’ she repeated in an exaggeratedly positive way, as though someone with a job like that would naturally need encouragement. ‘You’re an artist,’ she announced with a pitying derision.

  ‘I’m not too sure about that. On a good day maybe. What do you do, Mari?’

  Mari suffered a moment’s disorientation before she composed herself enough to say: ‘I’m a political scientist.’


  ‘Brilliant! And are they much in demand around here in Os?’

  Mari gave the kind of quick smile people do when they feel a pain somewhere. ‘Right now I’m a mother. To twins.’

  ‘No! Really?’ cried Shannon in enthusiastic disbelief.

  ‘Yes. I wouldn’t lie ab—’

  ‘Pictures! Do you have any pictures?’

  Mari gave a sideways look down at Shannon. Hesitated. Maybe those vulpine eyes thought for a moment about resisting. A scrawny little one-eyed fledgling of a woman; how dangerous could that be? Mari pulled out a phone. Tapped away. Held the picture up to Shannon who gave vent to one of those long-drawn-out aahhhs that are supposed to express how adorable something is, before handing me the tray with glasses so that she could take hold of Mari’s phone, the better to feast her eyes on the twins.

  ‘What d’you have to do to get two like that, Mari?’

  I don’t know if Shannon was just flattering her, but if she was, it was a brilliant bit of play-acting. Good enough anyway for Mari Aas to drop the hostile look on her face.

  ‘Any more?’ asked Shannon. ‘Can I look?’

  ‘Er, sure.’

  ‘Can you serve the guests, Roy?’ Shannon said, without taking her eyes off the screen.

  I made a circuit with the tray, pushing my way between guests, but the glasses disappeared without my having to get involved in small talk. When the tray was empty I returned to the kitchen where it was just as crowded.

  ‘Hi, Roy. I saw you had your little silver tin of tobacco out – can you spare me a wedge?’

  It was Erik Nerell. He stood leaning against the fridge with a beer in his hand. Erik pumped iron and his head was so small on his thick, muscular neck you could hardly see the join; it looked like a tree trunk that just grew out the top of his T-shirt. On top of it all was a yellow crew cut, tight as a bundle of uncooked spaghetti, with shoulders sloping down the sides towards two biceps that always looked as if they’d just been inflated. And who knows, maybe they had been. He’d been a paratrooper, and now he ran what was actually the village’s only real bar, Fritt Fall. It had been a cafeteria and he’d taken the place over and turned it into a bar with a disco, karaoke, bingo every Monday and quiz every Wednesday.

  I fished the tin of Berry’s snuff out of my pocket and handed it to him. He stuffed a wedge under his upper lip.

  ‘Just want to see what it tastes like,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen anyone else using American snuff. Where d’you get hold of it?’

  I shrugged. ‘Here and there. Get people who are going out there to bring some back.’

  ‘That’s a neat tin,’ he said as he handed it back. ‘Ever been in the States yourself?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Something else I’ve always wondered about,’ he said. ‘How come you put the snuff inside your lower lip?’

  ‘The American way,’ I said in English. ‘That’s the way Dad did it. He always used to say only Swedes put it under the upper lip, and everyone knows how the Swedes chickened out during the war.’

  Erik Nerell laughed, his upper lip bulging. ‘Nice bit of stuff your brother’s picked up.’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘It’s almost freaky how good her Norwegian is.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to her?’

  ‘Just asking if she danced.’

  ‘You asked if she danced? Why?’

  Erik shrugged. ‘Because she looks like a ballerina. Tiny dancer, right? And then she’s from Barbados. Calypsos and that...what d’you call it again? Soca!’

  There must have been something in the look on my face that made him laugh.

  ‘Take it easy, Roy, she was cool with it, said she’d teach it to us later on tonight. You ever seen soca? Fucking sexy stuff.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, and thought that was probably pretty good advice. Take it easy.

  Erik took a swig from his bottle of beer and belched discreetly into his hand. I guess that’s what living with a woman does to you. ‘Know if there are a lot of rockfalls in Huken at the moment?’ he said.

  ‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘Why d’you ask?’

  ‘Has nobody told you?’

  ‘Told me what?’ I felt a chill, like cold air wafting through the rotting window putty.

  ‘The sheriff wants us to check the wall with a drone and if it looks OK we’re going to rappel down to the wreck. A few years ago I’d’ve done it like a shot, but now, what with Thea sitting at home with a bun in the oven, things look a bit different.’

  No, not just a breath of cold air. An injection, a hypo dispensing ice-cold water. The wreck. The Cadillac. It had been lying there for eighteen years. I shook my head. ‘Well, it probably looks OK, but then I do hear stones falling. It happens all the time.’

  Erik gave me a sort of calculating look. I don’t know whether it was the danger of the falling stones or my own trustworthiness he was wondering about. Maybe it was both. He must have heard the story of what happened when they were going to recover Mum’s and Dad’s bodies from Huken. Two men from the mountain rescue team climbed down there and when they started hoisting up the stretchers with the bodies, the stretchers banged against the rock face, but no stones came loose. The accident happened as the men were on the way back up themselves. A rock dislodged by the person on the rope struck the man below securing it and crushed his shoulder joint. Me and Carl had been standing on Geitesvingen, behind the ambulance, the rescue crew and the sheriff, and what I remember most clearly are the screams through the cold, still evening air of the climber who was out of sight. They were tossed back and forth between the rock faces down there. Slow and controlled, almost as if they were measuring the pain, like the raven’s calm cry of alarm.

  ‘Hey, come on, speech!’ exclaimed Erik.

  I heard Carl’s voice coming from the living room and saw people pushing their way in. I found somewhere to stand in the doorway. Even though Carl was a head taller than most people he’d still clambered up onto a chair.

  ‘My dear, dear friends,’ his voice boomed. ‘It’s just so fucking great to see you all again. Fifteen years...’ He let it hang there for us to savour. ‘Most of you have been seeing each other every day, so you haven’t noticed the gradual changes, that we’ve actually got older. So let me just make one thing very clear, that when it comes to you guys...’ He took a breath, looked round with his cheeky, teasing smile. ‘I seem to be wearing a lot better than you.’

  Laughter and loud protests.

  ‘Oh yes, oh yes!’ Carl shouted. ‘And it’s even more remarkable when you realise I’m the only guy here who had any looks to lose.’

  More laughter, whistles and jeers. Someone tried to pull him down off the chair.

  ‘But,’ said Carl, as someone helped him stay steady on the chair, ‘when it comes to the ladies, it’s the other way round. You look a lot better now than you did back then.’

  Cheers and applause from the women.

  A man’s voice: ‘Watch it now, Carl!’

  I turned and looked for Mari. It was automatic, I had never got out of the habit. Shannon was sitting on the worktop in the kitchen to get a better view. Her back arched. Erik Nerell was standing by the fridge studying her. I left the room and headed up the stairs to the boys’ room, closed the door and lay down on the upper bunk. Heard Carl’s voice in through the kitchen and up through the hole around the stovepipe. I couldn’t hear every word, but I got the gist of it. I heard my own name, and then a pause.

  A man’s voice: ‘He’ll be in the bog.’ Laughter.

  Shannon’s name. Heard her deep, masculine tone. A sparrow with the song of an owl. A few words, then polite and restrained applause.

  I took a swig of beer, stared at the roof. Closed my eyes.

  When I opened them again, it was quieter. And I realised I had slept through the party, that the last of the gu
ests were leaving. Engines starting, revving up. The chatter of gravel beneath tyres. Red lights on the curtains as they braked heading into Geitesvingen.

  And then the silence was almost complete. A few padding footsteps and low voices coming from the kitchen. Adult voices in normal, everyday conversation, about small, practical matters. The sounds I had fallen asleep to as a child. Safe sounds. A safety you think will last because it feels so right, so good, so unchanging.

  I had dreamed. About a car that for an instant floats off into the air and looks as if it’s heading on into outer space. But then gravity and the real world get hold of it, and slowly the heavier front end, with the engine, starts to dip downwards. Into the darkness. Into Huken. There’s a scream. It’s not Dad’s. And not Mum’s. And not the climber’s. It’s my scream.

  I hear Shannon giggle and whisper ‘No!’ outside my door, and then Carl’s drunken ‘Roy just thinks it’s cosy. Now I’m going to show you what it was like for us.’

  I stiffened, even though I probably realised he wouldn’t do it. Show her what it was really like for us.

  The door opened.

  ‘You asleep, bro?’ I felt Carl’s boozy breath against my face.

  ‘Yes,’ I answered.

  ‘Let’s go,’ whispered Shannon, but I felt the bed shake as Carl lay down on the lower bunk and pulled her down with him.

  ‘We missed you at the party,’ said Carl.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I needed a little timeout and then fell asleep.’

  ‘Takes some doing to sleep through the racket from that rånergjengen.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I answered.

  ‘What’s a rånergjengen?’ asked Shannon.

  ‘A boy racer gang. Noisy bastards with simple pleasures,’ sniggered Carl. ‘Burning up tyres in their souped-up cars and sleepers.’ I heard him take a swig from a bottle down there. ‘But the ones who were here tonight, their old ladies don’t let them do it any more. The ones who keep the tradition going are the kids who hang out at Roy’s station.’

  ‘So then a råne is a what?’ asked Shannon