‘Do you want me to carry you over the threshold?’ I say to her when the cab has dropped us off outside her front door.
‘Do you want to?’
‘It would be kinda nice,’ I say.
‘Go on, then.’
She’s as light as she was a year ago. I kiss her as I carry her in. I kick the door closed behind us, and carry her to her bedroom.
‘So what exactly is for sale at this auction?’ I ask her the next morning when she tells me there’s an Amundsen auction at Christie’s in a week.
‘You know Amundsen’s last lover, Bess Magids?’
‘Only as a footnote to his story,’ I say.
‘She went over to Norway from the States expecting to marry him, but he’d already gone missing trying to rescue some Italian general from an ice floe in the Arctic.’
‘And?’
‘His family gave her lots of his things – silver trinkets, things he’d had with him on the Pole trip, and a load of cash, and then she went back to the States.’
‘And that’s what’s being sold at the auction?’
‘Some of it.’
‘And you reckon it could be of some significance.’
‘Yes. The more we know, the better.’
‘You’re right.’
‘And we can’t stay in bed all the time.’
‘Isn’t that what honeymoons are for?’ I say, laughing.
‘Not very long ones.’
‘Will you ever learn to rest?’
‘Not until I’ve done what I need to do.’
She wins the auction, of course. I never doubted that, not once she’d got it into her head that she wanted to get under Amundsen’s skin. And two days after the auction, four wooden packing boxes arrive. I carry them into the factory, put them down in the middle of the floor.
She empties the boxes, her face like a child’s at Christmas, puts everything on the floor, still wrapped. She’s so careful it takes an age just to do this and, by the time she’s finished, there’s no room to move on the studio floor.
‘OK,’ she says. ‘Let’s do this systematically.’
‘Systematically? Us?’
‘Yes. Us. I’ll unwrap, and you can write it down.’
‘Isn’t it all documented?’
‘Yes, it is, but there’s always something new in these things that someone’s not picked up on when they’ve been cataloguing it.’
‘Like what?’
‘When it’s a private sale like this, of heirlooms I suppose you could call them, folks haven’t always turned small containers upside down or gone through books to see if there’s anything in them.’
‘There always has to be a mystery for you, doesn’t there?’ I say.
‘Life’s boring without a mystery,’ she says. She looks up at me. ‘People will say it’s a mystery how a girl like me managed to get a man like you.’
‘Don’t be silly. The other way round, more like.’
‘I’m not arguing, and neither should you.’
I grunt.
‘Don’t fret, Adam, please,’ she says. ‘I just want to get this done.’
I open my notebook. ‘Come on, then.’
She opens the first package. ‘Dear God,’ she says. ‘It’s a matchbox holder, like the one of Scott’s we saw at the RGS.’
The next package is a silver spoon, the one after that a bayonet. There’s even Amundsen’s sledging medical kit, with an English provenance. And so we go on, and the number of packages on the floor seems never-ending.
‘You had enough yet?’ I say.
‘No. Have you?’
‘It doesn’t look like we’re going to find anything interesting, does it?’
‘Be patient,’ she says.
‘That’s rich.’
‘You know what I mean.’
She unwraps what must be a couple of hundred photographic slides; the note with them describes them as glass lantern slides. They’re of various Amundsen expeditions, including some from the Pole, in which he looks totally and utterly wasted.
‘His book says they put on weight when they got back to Framheim from the Pole,’ I say.
‘Perhaps he did, after the photo was taken,’ she says.
‘But he looks dreadful, and the trip back can’t have been much easier than the one getting there.’
‘Perhaps he lied,’ she says. ‘Perhaps he just pretended to be a hero.’
I shake my head. ‘Weird. Hasn’t anyone told the truth, ever?’
‘Have you? All the time?’
‘I suppose not,’ I say. ‘Although I always try to. And I always will to you.’
‘You don’t always have to qualify things just because we’re married now,’ she says. ‘It’s understood we’ll be honest with each other and that the past doesn’t matter.’
She’s automatically unwrapped the next thing that came into her hands.
‘Sydpolen,’ she says. ‘It’s a first edition by the look of it. And it’s got his signature in it.’ She stands up, picks up the book, one hand at either end of its spine, and begins to shake it.
‘No, I won’t,’ she says. ‘This is the only way to make sure there’s nothing in it.’
‘How about just going through it carefully, page by page?’
‘Too long-winded,’ she says. She keeps shaking it. Nothing. ‘Dammit,’ she shouts, and stamps her feet. She drops the book on the floor.
‘Hang on,’ I say. ‘Do that again.’
‘Which bit? Throwing it onto the floor?’
‘No. Just shake it again.’
She picks it up and shakes it again. ‘Now what?’
‘Give it to me,’ I say.
‘What is it?’
‘Something odd about it.’ I put the book flat on the floor, closed, and flick the pages through my fingers. Once, twice, three times. Yes, I’m right. There are a couple of pages that don’t flick properly, where the thickness sliding through my fingers is denser than all the others. I do it one last time, and stop when I feel the resistance. ‘Here,’ I say. ‘Two pages stuck together or not cut.’ I show her. ‘I told you we should leaf through it. Good job I’m such a bore.’ I start laughing.
‘Bastard.’ She laughs with me.
‘I’ll get a knife,’ I say. ‘Let’s do this slowly.’ I hand her the knife. ‘Go on.’
‘I think the pages are stuck together,’ she says. ‘Not uncut.’ She carefully loosens them from each other.
‘This is crazy,’ I say as she lays the book on the floor, a yellow rectangle of paper now visible on the white paper. ‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says, and picks up the rectangle. It’s folded sheets of paper. ‘A letter?’
She unfolds the paper, stiff with age. There are two sheets, covered in tight lines of tiny black scribbles. She turns them over and over.
‘Can you make any of it out?’ I say.
‘Only that it’s dated the sixteenth of June 1928. That’s the day he left Oslo for Bergen, two days before he disappeared. And his signature.’
‘What about the rest?’
She shakes her head. ‘Do you know anyone who speaks Norwegian?’ she says.
‘No. Do you?’
‘I do, as it happens.’
I’m intrigued, but she’s giving nothing away.
‘We’re going to church,’ she says.
‘What are you going on about?’ I say.
‘There was a man, once. I thought I loved him. But I didn’t, really. He was Norwegian.’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘I went to his church with him a couple of times. The Norwegian Church in Rotherhithe. The vicar there’s really nice.’
‘How long ago was that?’
‘Long enough.’
‘So how d’you know if the vicar’s still around?’
‘I check the website now and again.’
‘And the bloke?’
‘No idea. Does it matter?’
‘I s’pose not.’
‘We’re married now.’
‘I’d gathered that.’ I pull her towards me. ‘Won’t it hurt you? Going back there?’
‘Why should it? I’m happy now.’
‘And you weren’t then?’
‘No, I wasn’t,’ she says. ‘I was torn in too many directions, too young to understand about love and lust and the things lust makes us do.’
‘And now?’
‘Now? I love you and I lust for you. And most of all I’m greedy for knowledge.’
‘I’ll teach you.’
‘I’m sure you will.’
‘Come on, then,’ I say. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
‘Won’t you teach me some more before we go?’
‘Do you want me to?’
‘Oh, yes, please.’
The inside of the church is all wood and coffee scent, warm after the damp rain outside. It’s not like an English church. The nave starts halfway into the building, and before it is a wide hall with low tables and chairs. It’s more like a community centre than a church. And in the left-hand corner, there’s a sort of shop selling Norwegian food and newspapers, a young girl behind the counter.
Birdie walks across to the girl. ‘Hello,’ she says.
‘Can I help you?’ the girl says.
‘Is Helge here today?’
‘Yes, he is. Is he expecting you?’
‘No, I don’t think so, but I’d love to be able to see him if he has time.’
‘Does he know you?’
‘From some time ago.’
‘I will go and ask him. Can you tell me your name, please?’
‘Henrietta Bowers,’ Birdie says. ‘I don’t know if he’ll remember.’
‘Please wait. I will be back in a few minutes.’
We sit down. I like this place. There’s an intent to its silence, a purpose to its warmth. I might almost start believing if I had a church like this to come to. One that’s welcoming, not spartan and puritan like our cold English churches where we go to be punished rather than forgiven.
‘Henrietta,’ a voice echoes through the room. ‘I thought I’d never see you again. What a lovely surprise.’
He’s all in black, dog collar scraping against his five o’clock shadow, and probably ten years older than me. His black hair is flecked with grey and, behind his glasses, his eyes are kind and inquisitive.
Birdie gets up, ready to shake his hand. Instead, he envelops her in a bear hug, pats her back.
‘And who is this?’ he asks.
She laughs. ‘This is Adam. We were married a few days ago.’
‘Congratulations.’ He pumps my hand. ‘You’re a very lucky man.’
‘I know.’
‘How can I help you?’ he says.
‘I’d like your advice on something important,’ Birdie says.
‘We’d better go through to my office, then. Although I cannot, of course, promise I can help you.’
On the way through a side corridor he grabs a silver kettle and some cups. ‘Norwegian coffee,’ he says to me. ‘We brew it in the kettles. I’m sure you’ll like it.’
His office is small. There’s a modest cross on the wall behind his desk.
‘Sit, sit,’ he says, pours the coffee. ‘Now, talk to me.’
Birdie gets Amundsen’s note out of her bag.
‘We found this,’ she says. ‘I don’t think anyone else knows it exists.’
‘So why bring it to me?’
‘We’d like to know what it says.’
‘Can’t you read it?’
‘It’s in Norwegian.’ She hands the papers to him.
Helge raises an eyebrow, turns the pages over in his hands. ‘Where did you find this?’
‘In a book I bought,’ she says.
He unfolds the sheets. His voice falters. ‘Amundsen. What is this?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘Can you translate it?’
‘And then?’ he asks. ‘What then? This belongs to the Norwegian people.’ He looks up. ‘I thought everything that could be found about him had been found.’
‘The Norwegian people shall have it back,’ she says. ‘But first I need to know if it tells me something I need, something I’ve been trying to find out since before I first came here.’
‘I will do my best, Henrietta. And I will tell no one of this until you give me your permission.’
He starts to read in Norwegian, aloud, into the gloom of the late afternoon. He has a melodic, calming voice. I can’t understand him, but his voice makes me think I can. After a few paragraphs, he stops, coughs, and begins again in English.