The House by the Fjord

Anna had read a great deal more of the journal by the time Alex came to take her to Molde. She was quite dazed to realize that the painting that had been Johan’s, and was now hers in the bedroom at Steffan’s house, was surely the most important of all Magnus Harvik’s work since it depicted the meeting between two very remarkable people.

Alex had won his case and she had read details about the trial in Aftenposten. She congratulated him when he arrived to spend an evening with her before they set off for Molde the following morning. She had cooked dinner and they had a quiet evening with music from the radio making a background to their conversation. He was interested in everything and they had lively discussions as well as laughing a lot, for he had a dry sense of humour that appealed to her. She was very aware of being intensely attracted to him physically, not only for his good looks but by the athletic strength of him in the breadth of his shoulders and the overall maleness of him.

As they sat talking together, his arm around her, his conversation took a serious turn, ‘I do love you, Anna,’ he said softly, his arms tightening about her as he bent his head to brush his lips in a kiss on her throat. ‘I know there will never be anyone else for me.’

She knew he wanted to make love to her and she wished she could respond and speak of her own feelings for him, but she did not want their first intimate moments to happen here. She had never managed to clear from her mind her experience with Karl. When she made love with Alex – and she knew it to be inevitable some time soon – it would have to be in a different location altogether. She straightened her spine away from him and he sensed her present rejection.

She knew he had drawn the wrong conclusion, thinking it was still Johan holding her back. Yet she was coming to terms with her memories. Johan would always occupy part of her heart and nothing could ever dislodge him. Yet she was learning to love Alex too. She thought of Ingrid, abandoning herself with such joy, and she wished she could be similarly unrestrained, but that was not possible under this roof.

He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s getting late and you have to be up early tomorrow morning. I’ll be here at six o’clock to pick you up. The weather forecast promises a fine day.’

At the door he kissed her long and hard. She watched him go off down the stairs and wished she could have called him back, but it was all too soon, even though he had come to mean a great deal in her life.

They set off just before six o’clock the next morning. It was a perfect day, and the countryside everywhere was fresh and sweet and green with orchards in full bloom, everything being a little later here than it had been for Anna in the south of England. Over ten days before, she had let Steffan and Gudrun know that she was returning and had received the promise that a warm welcome would await her. It gave her the feeling of being part of a family at last, something she had always wanted so much as a child. As they drove along, she told Alex how she felt and he listened with understanding and compassion. Although his parents had gone, they had given him and Ivar, his brother, a happy childhood with a united family background. At present Ivar, an architect, was working in northern Norway where the Germans had burned down whole towns and villages, but Alex was looking forward to introducing Anna to him.

Anna had brought a picnic with her as she always did for these journeys, for as yet public places to eat were still far apart in the countryside, although there were plenty of picnic areas with wooden tables and benches, almost always set by a picturesque view. Today Alex stopped the car by a spot from which they could look down into a lush valley. It was on a grassy promontory that was almost circular in shape.

‘Do you think we are sitting on the flat top of a troll’s head?’ she asked on a laugh as she set the food out on the picnic table. ‘He has his back against the cliff below us.’

‘Most certainly,’ Alex replied in the same vein, his grin wide, and he looked over the edge. ‘Yes, I can see his feet. He has chosen this spot to sit with his knees drawn up to admire the view. But he will not object to us being here. Trolls like to be friendly when they get the chance.’

She laughed again, her eyes dancing. ‘Then let’s hope he does not decide to move before we have finished our picnic or else everything on this table will fly all over the place and us as well!’

She loved the Norse legends and had said one day to Alex that there were times when she had seen the faces of trolls in the mountains, for the crags and hollows and sharp precipices often gave the look of grotesque faces. He agreed that it was most surely how the legend had first come into being. Yet, although the trolls were always spoken of with a grin or an amused twinkle in the eye, she had never heard a Norwegian deny that they existed and that sense of fun pleased her.

When they reached Molde, she could see that much progress had been made since her last visit. Then, as promised, Gudrun greeted her with warm words of welcome when they arrived at the Vartdal home. ‘How good to have you back again! I know Steffan has been counting the days ever since we received your letter.’

Anna went through to him. He was dozing in a basket chair, one hand resting on the head of his cane. He had not heard her arrive and she was aware for the first time that a deep fondness for him had formed in her, making her glad that she was bringing him good news. She spoke his name and his eyes opened instantly. She saw such pleasure come into his face that she was deeply touched.

‘Just a few items.’ He gestured for her to take the basket chair beside him, and she brought it nearer him as she sat down. ‘As soon as we knew you were coming, Gudrun wanted to take her domestic help with her and scrub the whole place clean for you, chasing away all the spiders that have probably taken up residence there. But I stopped her. I said I thought it best that you see it much as Ingrid saw it the first time.’

‘Do not expect it all to be just as Ingrid described, because I happen to know that after her death her children naturally shared out the items that they wanted from their childhood home.’

‘I did not want to rush a single word. By taking the journal slowly, I’ve been giving myself time to think over all that Ingrid has written and in that way I believe I have really come to know her.’

Anna felt she could hardly wait to see it, but she also had another matter on her mind. ‘There is something I want so much to ask you. Why are you so against the American relative claiming Ingrid’s house?’

He smiled, shaking his head. ‘I have nothing against her personally. She is a very pleasant woman – indeed, she visited me with her husband and sister-in-law before the war – but I could tell that having viewed her roots she would not be interested in returning for any purpose linked to the house. After all, she had been born in the United States and she enthused about all that was new there. Her husband had Italian roots and so there would be no call on him to encourage her links with Norway. In any case, she’s now too unwell to travel any distance and has no daughters to whom she could pass on such an inheritance.’

She did not want Harry anywhere near her when she visited the house. She felt he had downgraded it too often to be in harmony with her links to it. Although he had had the journal printed for Steffan and had therefore read its contents, it was clear that Ingrid herself had made little or no impression on him.

‘I’m afraid that was a misjudgement. In fact, I’ve become too impatient to await his return. I’d like to go tomorrow morning.’ Her voice was firm, showing that her mind was made up and she would not be deterred.

‘I recognize your tone,’ he answered drily. ‘It is one that Gudrun uses on occasions, as did my dear wife, and so I’ll not try to persuade you otherwise, especially since you will be fulfilling my long-held wish for you to visit the house.’

‘Then I should like to phone Alex and fix a time for meeting.’ She had discussed a visit to the house with him on the journey. He had given her an outline of his work for the next few days and so she knew he could get away from his office after ten o’clock the next morning.

‘Then make the phone call now,’ Steffan said, pleased that the house was to be viewed so soon, it not being important to him as to whether it was Harry or Alex who took her there. He was so impatient to know what her ultimate decision would be.

The phone call settled that Alex would be with her as soon after ten as he could make it. She went early to bed that night, both Steffan and Gudrun believing that she was tired from the journey. But that was not the reason. She wanted to read more of the journal before the next day, when at last she would enter Ingrid’s home.

Before leaving Gardermoen she had read Ingrid’s description of the wedding and the feasting, all of which had been blessed by wonderful weather. Magnus’s bedding of Ingrid on their wedding night was the only entry over which she had drawn a veil.

Our first night as a married couple was so joyously passionate and intimate that I cannot share those ecstatic memories even with these pages or with my pen. Yet what is not written will stay in my heart and mind forever. It is enough to say that ever since that night I have felt as if I am floating in happiness, my feet scarcely touching the ground. Today Magnus is starting a portrait of me before he puts his painting brushes to anything else. I wanted to wear my best silk dress, but he insists that I put on the blouse that I was wearing when I went running down the path to him at Geiranger and even the same skirt, although that will not be shown. He has framed the painting he was working on that day of our meeting and it is hanging in our living room. I am only an orange blob of paint, which does not please me. I wanted him to paint in more of me, but he says that would change the whole balance of his picture.

I know he is annoyed with himself for not having insisted at the time that we stay longer in Geiranger, where we could have enjoyed ourselves just as fully, but I have promised him that we shall make a return trip before long and then he will be able to paint the views that still linger in his mind. This time I am determined that I shall appear in more detail. Meanwhile, he has had a studio built that stands a little higher up the mountainside where he can paint undisturbed.

It had soon become clear to Anna in the next few pages that the marriage, although a love match, was a stormy relationship. They quarrelled over many things and made peace again by making love wherever they happened to be, whether it was in the mountains or at the house, and once in the snow, making an indentation that remained until the next snowfall.

Ingrid was to become Magnus’s model for many of his paintings. He painted her both nude and clothed, at work in the house or in some local terrain, and once when she was tending her two beloved sheep. One day he made her sit so near the waterfall, wanting to capture the mist of spray around her, that inevitably her garments became damp and cold.

It was probably due in some part to her earlier illness having left her with a weakness in her chest that she caught a chill from sitting so near the waterfall and an inflammation went to her lungs, which then developed into pneumonia. She was seriously ill and Magnus was in a panic that he would lose her. Marie came forward to care for her again, with the aid of a retired nurse from the valley. Eventually, Ingrid began to recover, although her convalescence was likely to take some time. Privately, Marie believed that she and the nurse had saved Ingrid’s life by sponging her down with cool water and constantly changing cold compresses on her forehead when the fever was at its height.

‘Ingrid is going to take much longer to recover her strength than last time she was ill,’ Marie said coldly to Magnus. ‘So when she is well again, you’ll not make her sit by the waterfall or anywhere else that could be dangerous to her health.’

In the days that followed, when Ingrid was still lying weakly in bed, Magnus tried to think what he could do to make amends for being the cause of her illness. Then he remembered her love of rosemaling and immediately knew what he would do. A carpenter made him an easily erected platform on trestles and, lying on it, he began a great task, which was to cover the whole ceiling of the large living room with the old traditional designs. He thought to himself that he was like Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel, except that he did not put himself in the same category.

On the day that he carried Ingrid downstairs at the beginning of her convalescence, she looked up in amazement at the ceiling, and tears of joy trickled down her cheeks at what he had done for her. She put the palm of her hand against his face as he lowered her into a chair before tucking a rug over her knees.

‘Now this is truly a house of beauty!’ she said quietly, her weakened voice catching emotionally in her throat. ‘I’m going to live the rest of my life under a bower of roses!’

When she was fully recovered and Magnus felt able to leave her again, he selected some of his paintings and took them with him to Bergen, travelling from the nearby port of Alesund on the hurtigruten, which was the coastal steamer service that plied the length of the west coast. He had given the first of the many paintings in which Ingrid featured the title The Quiet Woman, which was the very reverse of her nature. It was a private joke, which they both shared, she being only too aware that her exuberance was overwhelming at times. He kept to this secret joke in all subsequent paintings of her, never anticipating that over the years these Quiet Woman works of art would become extremely collectable and eventually fetch astronomically high prices at the world’s auction houses, even when she was sometimes reduced again to a speck of oil paint.

She never did get back to Geiranger with him. When a trip was all arranged for them to travel by coastal steamer to the port of call at the village, she found that she was pregnant for the first time and so she sent him off to paint on his own. When he had captured on canvas all he wanted from Geiranger, he had gone direct to Bergen and the gallery that sold his work, making it a long time before he returned home.

Ingrid soon began to hate the times when he was away. Early in their marriage, she had made two trips to Bergen with him, mainly to see his rooms and his studio, but he was so busy during their stay that she hardly saw him while she was there. Although she walked all over Bergen, lingered in the fish market, went to a service in the ancient Stav Church and managed to get tickets for herself and Magnus to hear Ole Bull give a violin recital, she was soon impatient to be home again. What finally made her decide never to go to Bergen again was that she was horribly seasick on both voyages almost as soon as she stepped on to the coastal steamer’s deck.

She gave birth to a fine son in the summer when she was nineteen. It took place the day before Magnus returned from one of his Bergen visits. She had been attended in her labour by Marie, who was always on hand in any kind of crisis, and also the local midwife. Before the birth, Ingrid had tried to talk to Magnus about a choice of names for their child, but when he had a project on his mind, or a painting that was not going exactly as he wished, he scarcely listened to what others were saying, completely preoccupied. Ingrid finally made the decision by herself. If the baby should be a boy, he would be called Haakon after her late father, and also this had been the name of a brave Viking king, which she thought was also in its favour.

He gave a shout of joy and rushed upstairs to kiss Ingrid heartily, and then went to the cradle and pick up his child. He loved his son on sight, carrying him around the room while she sat back against her pillow and watched him contentedly. She knew him so well that after telling him her choice of the baby’s name she could see that he would have liked his firstborn to be named after him. So on the day of the christening their first offspring became Magnus-Haakon.

In order not to create any confusion, the child was always addressed or spoken of by his full name. He grew strong and fearless, climbing the mountains at an early age with or without his parents, and becoming a fast skier of champion potential on the slopes before he was twelve years old. By then he had a sister, named Liv, who was born a year after him. Emma arrived a little too soon and spent her first three months in hospital, but she thrived and Ingrid always had an especially soft spot for her. Nils, unexpectedly copperhaired, was next to arrive and brought his own sense of fun into the family. Following him was Anders, who was to become a keen sportsman. Then came the twins, Christofer and Erik, who had arrived just eighteen months later. Then came Kurt, who even as a toddler hero-worshipped the twins, always following after them whenever possible.

Ingrid had always ignored the discomfort of her pregnancies, thinking only of the new baby she would love as she loved the others she had borne, but now it seemed as if her family was complete. Yet a surprise was still in store for her, and out of the most difficult birth of all she had endured another daughter came into the family, who was named Sonja. She loved music from an early age, attemtping to sing when she was still very little.

Magnus-Haakon, as the eldest, always felt himself to be in charge of his siblings and intervened swiftly if any one of them was in trouble. He was particularly good with the twins, who would never have been parted in their play or on any expedition if he had not made them carry out separate tasks.

‘Now listen to me, Christofer and Erik,’ he said sternly to them when they were still very young. ‘We are a family and we all belong to one another. You two must share yourselves with the rest of us and not go off on your own to play.’

His death in a terrible fall, trying to save one of the twins stuck behind a high crag, shocked the whole valley and devastated his parents. At times of joy and sorrow, all of the farming families in the valley became as one family. So many came to the funeral that not all could be accommodated in the little church and the crowd of mourners in their best black clothes gathered outside in the rain. They parted to allow an avenue to form when the casket was borne from the church to its resting place. Anna felt tears come into her eyes as she read the account of the tragedy, and Ingrid’s own grief was marked on the page in tear stains that had smudged her ink. She had also drawn a little diagram, showing where in the churchyard her seventeen-year-old son was lying at peace.

By this time, art dealers had long since discovered where Magnus lived and frequently toiled up the slope to his studio, hoping to get the next Quiet Woman painting before anyone else. Norwegians were drawn strongly to the new school of painting created by the French Impressionists, many buyers already influenced by the work of their own Norwegian artists, Munch and the sculptor Gustav Vigeland. Magnus’s paintings became even more in demand. Always the art dealers took away whatever paintings he had done, not knowing there were a good number that he kept out of their sight. These were mostly of his children, as well as his own favourite paintings of Ingrid, which were displayed in rooms where the dealers never entered, for he always received them in his studio.

As Magnus became more and more prosperous, he began to talk of buying a fine house in Bergen and keeping the old house for holidays. It led to a quarrel with Ingrid of such magnitude that it almost tore them apart. He went off to Bergen in a fury and did not reappear for eleven weeks, during which time she felt she must surely die of heartache. When she saw him coming up the slope again, she ran to meet him. Then they fell into each other’s arms.

While Magnus had been away, he had purchased a fine house, mainly as an investment, and had transferred his Bergen studio there, but he was never to live in it beyond a few weeks at a time and then it was entirely for business. He and Ingrid were both satisfied with the compromise.

Ingrid had recorded meticulously the names of her children, their weight at birth, their following accomplishments, as well as their scholarly progress at the little school run by a retired clergyman and his wife in their own home, before they went on to a bigger school nearby. She had also sketched the faces of each of her children. It was clear to Anna that these drawings portrayed a distinct likeness of each child and she wondered if Magnus had ever known that his wife had considerable talent.

Most of what followed in the journal were accounts of family events, including mountain trips and skiing outings, picnics and other social activities, a highlight being when all the Harvik children were in a group photograph taken outside the house by a friend who was a professional photographer. It was taken shortly before Magnus-Haakon’s fatal fall, and after the tragedy Ingrid mentioned in her journal that the photograph had been hung in the living room where Magnus-Haakon would always be within the family circle.

Magnus was away when, during the school summer holiday, the children talked about a bear they had named Erik the Red after a Viking king, because although he was dark-brown the bright summer sun gave his fur a reddish tinge. Ingrid paid little attention to their chatter about the bear as they sat for their meals, for they were imaginative children and were always thinking up new games. There had not been bears in the local forests for some years. It was more of a concern to her that a wolf had slain several sheep. She was keeping Klara and Ida safely penned in for the time being and the children had been instructed to keep near the house.

Then one day, when the children were out playing and the front door stood open for a cooling breeze, Ingrid came from the kitchen to see a brown bear on the threshold, looking into the room. She went cold with horror to think that the children had been at the animal’s mercy and their talk of a bear had not sprung from their imagination. It was a young bear, but this was the slayer of the unfortunate sheep. Clearly it was making up its mind about entering, probably lured by the aroma of food, and Ingrid backed slowly away into the kitchen until she could just reach out to where a tin tray lay on a cupboard by the door. Seizing it, she sprang back into the living room and with her fist she banged the tray and shouted as she ran forward to confront the bear.

Startled, it backed away and turned tail, but at the same time there came a distant clamour from the valley. The bear was to face a still more bewildering noise as all but the old and infirm were coming to chase it back over the mountains, hopefully over the border into the forests of Sweden from which it had probably come. Cooking-pot lids were being crashed together, tin trays banged and whistles blown, and the local musicians were thundering drums and playing trumpets. Some field guns were fired, but only into the air to add to the noise. Nobody aimed at the fleeing bear. There was an inborn respect for wild life and unnecessary killing was not to be considered except in an emergency.

It was at that point sleep began to overtake Anna. She put aside the journal and it seemed as if it was only a moment before she opened her eyes to a brilliant day, the very one during which she would enter Ingrid’s domain for the first time.