‘Look at this. Look.’ Anders loomed over me, his shirt crumpled in his fist, pushing it into my face as I shrank away from him against the wall. His breath was still pungent with the fumes of the Akevitt he’d been drinking the evening before, his face twisted and purple with fury. ‘What will people say?’ he growled. Before I could answer him – before I could even draw breath – he went on: ‘I’ll tell you what they’ll say. They’ll say, there goes the man whose wife is too lazy to mend his shirts! She lets him go out on the streets with holes in his clothes so that everyone will laugh at him!’
He shook the shirt out. ‘Look at that!’
I saw a tiny hole near the elbow, no more, really, than a snagged thread I’d somehow failed to notice when I’d washed and pressed the shirt earlier that week.
‘I – I’m sorry,’ I stammered, finding my voice at last. ‘I didn’t see it.’
‘“I didn’t see it,”’ he mocked me in a whining, sing-song voice. ‘You stupid bitch. Can’t you do anything properly?’
I shrank back again. Despite the fact that he had never hit me, I felt sick and panicky, my heart racing. My husband used words, not his fists, but each one was as brutal as a physical blow and he knew exactly where to land them. Even though I was taller than him, his presence filled any room he walked into; almost fifteen years my senior, he was a manager at the Sydvaranger iron ore company at the western edge of Kirkenes, an important man, and well-respected in the town. People thought him handsome; I had once, too, with his thick, golden hair, his piercing blue eyes the colour of a midsummer sky and his compact, wiry body that didn’t have an ounce of spare fat on it. He had a mania for exercise, no matter what the weather, and would tell people, patting his flat stomach proudly, ‘I will still be skiing across the mountains at seventy – just you wait and see!’
I, meanwhile, was nothing – nobody. And none of the people who admired Anders for his status and physical prowess saw the man he became behind closed doors – the one who drank and turned more and more spiteful and cruel with every mouthful he took. He even blamed his drinking on me, saying I drove him to it.
I wish I’d never married you, I thought, a familiar litany, as I turned my head away, keeping my body tensed and my eyes trained on the floor, feeling his breath hot against my cheek as he continued to rail at me about all the ways I failed him as a wife. I prayed Eirik would not come in and see us; I knew he would be listening. How naive I’d been, to think marrying Anders might be the start of a new life for me! But when I was sent to Finnmark by my father to hide me away with an elderly aunt, I’d been nineteen, pregnant, cut off from the nursing career I’d dreamed of having for so long, and my aunt made no effort to disguise how little she thought of me. Anders had offered me an escape from her, or so I’d thought. It wasn’t until after my aunt died that I discovered she’d agreed to leave Anders all her money – not an inconsiderable sum – if he took me off her hands and saved my family the shame of having an unwed mother in their midst. I had been nothing more than a transaction.
Anders finally ran out of insults. He flung the shirt down at my feet and stalked out of the kitchen. I slid down against the wall, my arms hugged around my knees, trembling as I listened to him storming around the house that had once been his mother’s, and where he had brought me to live after we were married: a narrow, semi-detached dwelling up on the hill called the Haugen, with dark, oppressive rooms and heavy, old-fashioned furniture that took hours to clean and dust.
Only once the front door had slammed behind him did I hear smaller, lighter footsteps coming down the stairs. Quickly, I stood, smoothing my skirt and snatching the shirt off the floor. By the time Eirik came into the kitchen, I was at the sink, running water to wash the dishes as if nothing had happened.
‘Mamma?’ Eirik said. Although he had turned six two months ago, like so many of the children in Kirkenes these days he was small for his age – there simply wasn’t enough for them to eat. Breakfast that morning had been half a piece of bread each with a smear of unsweetened jam, and even Anders’ barely concealed rage at this meagre fare could not make our food ration stretch any further.
‘Hello, my angel,’ I said, stroking Eirik’s hair as he leaned against me, wrapping his arms around my waist. Neither of us spoke of Anders; the few precious hours ahead without my husband’s brooding presence stretched ahead like a lifeline. ‘Are you ready to go next door to Tante Ingunn’s?’
‘I want to come to the shops with you, Mamma,’ he said.
‘Not today,’ I told him. ‘There’s too much to do. Besides, Marianne will be waiting for you.’
Marianne was Ingunn’s granddaughter, and Eirik’s best friend. At the mention of her name, his face lit up. With school – such as it was – not starting again until next week, they spent a lot of time together at my neighbour’s house. Ingunn was a kindly widow in her seventies, and always glad to see Eirik.
‘Fetch my basket,’ I said, pointing to where it sat in the corner, by the dresser, ‘and then you can go. Don’t forget your gas mask!’ I called after him as, depositing the basket by my feet, he raced out into the hall.
‘I’ve got it, Mamma!’ he called, and I heard the front door open and thump close again.
I let out a breath I didn’t realise I’d been holding and quickly finished the dishes. Then I lifted my basket onto the table and, glancing behind me at the door to make sure Eirik had really left, lifted the cloth folded neatly inside. Underneath was a false bottom, and underneath that was the small bundle of messages I had collected from Mette Simensen at the telegraph station last night. They were from the families of teachers who were being held at the camp nearby, and it was my job to deliver them.
I wasn’t part of the resistance – not officially. I couldn’t risk being arrested and taken away from Eirik, leaving him alone with Anders. But neither could I stand by and do nothing, not when these men had invaded our town, turned our world on its head and now walked around like they had a God-given right to the place. There were many in the town who took part in daily acts of civil disobedience, keen to defy the Germans in any small way we could, and I was among them. Some even wore paperclips on their lapels as a symbol of non-compliance, although I didn’t go that far – Anders was no sympathiser, but would have been furious with me for risking unwanted attention from the occupiers. My tiny part in resisting the Germans was a secret I kept close to my chest. The pre-war Hedda would probably have been shocked that I even agreed to get involved, but when it came down to it – when Mette asked if I would take the messages for the first time – I knew I had to do it. ‘And after all, Hedda,’ she said, ‘as Doctor Johannessen’s assistant, you have a better reason than most to be walking all over town during the day.’
Even then I’d hesitated, still thinking of the danger I could be putting Eirik in if I was caught. ‘Please, Hedda,’ Mette begged me. ‘You are one of the few people who can help. There is no one else who can do this – the Germans will be suspicious of anyone else. If anything happens to you, I promise I will make sure that Eirik is all right.’
I’d taken a deep breath, and thought about how I wasn’t able to stand up to Anders – how helpless and useless it made me feel. Did I really want to feel the same way about the Germans as well? I’d taken a deep breath and said, ‘I'll do it,’ and Mette had smiled, relieved.
Once the dishes were done, I wrapped a shawl around my shoulders and left the house, walking quickly. I had a lot to do. Before I delivered the messages, I needed to go to the shops and see what I could find there for our dinner that evening; if I went down to the docks with an empty basket someone might see, and question it. And after I delivered the messages, Doctor Johannessen needed me to call in on a few people who were unwell and check how they were getting on.
I didn’t have high hopes of getting much at the shops. Since the Germans had come to Norway almost everything was rationed, or ‘on the card’ as we called it: food, the bitter-smelling tobacco Anders smoked, clothes, even curtains and bed linen. Meanwhile, the Germans swanned around town, never having to worry about getting enough to eat, or whether they’d be able to stay warm when the winter snows arrived, and keep the lamps burning when the sun no longer rose above the horizon. I hated them as much as I hated Anders; perhaps more.
I hurried through the streets, head down. When I’d first arrived here, Kirkenes had been a true melting pot with people settling here not only from other parts of Norway but from Finland, Russia, Sweden and even Germany, drawn by the promise of work at the iron ore company; every time you went into town you’d hear different languages being spoken. It had always been a hard place to live due to its location and the long, dark, harsh winters, but despite the hardships, people thrived. Now the Germans had taken over, there was a palpable atmosphere of anxiety everywhere. From some buildings hung the Nazi flag with its ugly swastika slashed across it; many other buildings were in ruins, bombed by the Soviets who kept up a relentless campaign to chase the Nazi menace away from their borders, with raids occurring almost daily. I often wondered, if this war ever ended, whether there would be anything of the town – or its inhabitants – left.
At the shops, I was lucky: I managed to get a bag of greyish flour, some pieces of salted fish, even a small skein of yarn I could use to make Eirik some socks for the winter. I packed them neatly in my basket, the cloth arranged over the top.
As I was about to leave, I was cornered by Agnes Pedersen, a woman whose husband worked for Anders at Sydvaranger, and who had twin girls the same age as Eirik. ‘Hedda!’ she said. ‘I am so glad to see you! Reidun and Ruth both came down with terrible sore throats last night and I was hoping you might be able to give me some advice – I can’t get medicine anywhere and I’ve not been able to get hold of Doctor Johannessen either.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said, my outward demeanour calm even though, inside, I was desperate to get to the docks and drop off the messages hidden in the bottom of my basket as soon as I could.
Only a few weeks after I married Anders, I was shopping and witnessed a young girl stray too close to a horse. Startled, the horse reared up, lashing out with its back hooves and striking the girl on the side of the head. There hadn’t been time to think; even though I‘d only worked in a hospital for a few months after qualifying as a nurse, my medical training kicked in automatically as I rushed over and fell to my knees beside the girl, rapidly assessing the deep wound at her temple and trying to work out what to do. By the time Doctor Johannessen had arrived, summoned by a nearby shopkeeper, I’d managed to stop the bleeding and the girl was beginning to regain consciousness.
That day I went from being a lonely outsider, known only by the townspeople as Hanna Larsdatter’s grand-niece and then Anders Dahlström’s new wife, politely acknowledged when I went into town but nothing more, to being accepted as one of their own. Word soon got around about what I’d done, and before I knew it people were stopping me in the street to ask for advice on their headaches, their painful knees, their children’s sore throats and colds. Not long after, Doctor Johannessen mentioned to me that he could use a trained assistant. Kirkenes wasn’t a large town – at that time the population was around eight thousand – but the winters were always hard and long and dark, and brought with them many illnesses, especially among the young and the old, meaning that he was often overworked.
At first, Anders had refused to let me, scoffing and saying I would be useless, but Doctor Johannessen was insistent, even coming to the house to speak to my husband personally. He was one of the few people who didn’t seem to be scared of Anders; I listened from the kitchen as he argued passionately with him, telling him, ‘For God’s sake, man, finding a trained nurse up here in the middle of nowhere is like your workers finding a seam of gold in the iron ore mine!’
‘You’re mad,’ Anders retorted. ‘She’s barely qualified! She’ll kill every patient she touches!’
But Doctor Johannessen had persisted, until there wasn’t any way Anders could refuse without losing face. Grudgingly, he agreed to let me become Doctor Johannessen’s nurse, although I paid for it for weeks afterwards with his hissed, vicious insults and insinuations. What nonsense! It’ll all be well and good until you slip up – then they’ll see you for what you really are! But, scared as I was that he was right, I tried not to let his words get to me. After falling pregnant and having to leave the hospital, I’d thought I would never work as a nurse again; this unexpected opportunity gave my life a new purpose and meaning that – outside of Eirik – I’d assumed was lost forever.
And now, since the invasion, I was needed more than ever: with the supply of good food becoming increasingly scarce, there was more and more sickness, especially among the town’s children. However, there was always a small part of me that was scared Anders was right, and that I wasn’t as competent as Doctor Johannessen thought me; that one day I’d harm, or even worse, kill someone with my ignorance.
‘Are you able to get a little honey from somewhere?’ I said now. ‘Or brandy?’
Agnes’s forehead creased in a frown. ‘I don’t think so…’ she said. Then her expression darkened. ‘Unless I ask Solveig, I suppose.’
Solveig, her sister, was seeing a German officer. He had moved in with her last year and they were living as husband and wife, although rumour was he had a family back in Germany. Many people in the town would no longer even speak to Solveig, but Agnes had not been able to bring herself to shun her own flesh and blood completely.
‘If you can get it from somewhere,’ I said diplomatically, ‘mix a little honey with the brandy and some hot water, and give the girls a few spoonfuls three times a day. They’ll soon feel better.’
Agnes gave me a sad smile. ‘Thank you, Hedda. I’ll try. I do not know what this town would do without you!’
‘It’s nothing,’ I murmured.
At last, I was able to escape. I stepped out onto the street again just as a group of German soldiers marched past, their boots tramping in unison against the hard surface of the road, guns held upright against their shoulders. I averted my gaze so I did not have to look at them, anger burning like dull fire in the pit of my stomach. Swines. How dare you come here.
I’d never forget that terrible day in April 1940 when we heard on the radio that Norway had fallen, seemingly overnight, or the tension and fear as we waited for the German army to reach Kirkenes. At first, Allied troops had tried to help Norway fight back, and there had been a tremendous battle at Narvik, five hundred miles or so west of here, but they had soon been overwhelmed. At the same time, our King, Haakon VII, and his family had to flee to Britain after refusing the Germans’ demands to legitimise Vidkun Quisling’s fascist government and install him as Prime Minister.
After that, it felt as if all we could do was wait as the enemy spread like a slow but relentless cancer across our country.
On the street ahead of me, the soldiers had gone. I took a deep breath and pulled my shawl tighter around my shoulders. It was time to deliver the messages.