‘Ach, you should have seen Fiskersay at Christmastime before the war,’ Elizabeth sighed as I finished laying the table, and she lifted the chicken – one of the Sinclairs’ own hens that they’d fattened up especially for Christmas Day – out of the oven in a cloud of fragrant steam, setting it down on the dresser to rest. ‘The celebrations we’d have! And at the end of January there would be the Up Helly Aa festival where the island’s young men would parade through the streets with burning torches. There would be a squad dressed in full Viking regalia with the Guizer Jarl – the man in charge – at their head, and all other guizers in different costumes. Every year Laurie Moar, the carpenter, would build an enormous Viking longboat out of wood, and on parade night it would be carried to the harbour where the squad would set it alight.’ She shook her head, looking wistful. ‘That’s all had to stop now, though, thanks to Mr Hitler and all the men going off to fight. Donald, do you remember the year they asked you to be the Guizer Jarl?’ she added, looking fondly at her husband, who was adding peats to the fire.
‘Aye, I remember. Those were good times,’ Donald said in his deep, rumbling baritone. ‘Of course, I was a lad then – I couldnae run round like dat now. And I certainly couldn’t carry dat big bloody ship!’
‘It sounds wonderful,’ I said.
‘He had to dress up as Ullr that year,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I had to sew everything for him myself, and it was quite the job, I can tell you!’
‘But Ullr is a Norse god,’ Eirik piped up from the corner, where he had been prodding a promising-looking pile of gifts wrapped in brown paper stacked beside Donald’s armchair. ‘Mamma, he is, isn’t he? He was in that storybook Tante Ingunn gave me for my birthday last year.’
‘Well, Vikings were some of da first people to come to Shetland,’ Donald said. ‘Didn’t you know dat?’
‘Are you a Viking?’ Eirik asked him.
He laughed. ‘I might be, somewhere along da line.’
I laughed too. I could believe it; he was certainly built like one.
‘Eirik, leave those parcels alone and come and help me,’ I said sternly.
‘But Mamma, there is one here with my name on it!’
‘Yes, and it will still have your name on it after we have eaten. Come on!’
Reluctantly, he came over to the table. ‘Would you like to light the candles?’ I asked him, and his face brightened. ‘Be careful!’ I warned as he dashed over to the stove for the matches. I arranged the last of the six places laid around the table and stood back with my arms folded, looking at my handiwork with satisfaction. The cottage’s main room was cosy and festive, with paper decorations hanging from the ceiling, candles on the windowsills and table, and a peg doll nativity arranged on the mantelpiece that had been made by Elizabeth’s mother when Elizabeth was a little girl. Seeing it all made me think about my friends back in Norway, especially Ingunn, Marianne and Mette. What were they doing today? Were they all right? Did they have enough to eat? I wished so much that they could be here; I missed them dreadfully, and I was scared for them too. I knew how hard life must be in Kirkenes now the Arctic winter had arrived, plunging the town into perpetual darkness. And I worried there might have been repercussions from the Germans for them because of what I’d done – after all, I’d run away while I was with Mette, and Ingunn had helped me escape. What if the Germans thought they had something to do with me killing the officer, too? It might sound ridiculous, but I knew the Germans only needed the smallest of pretexts to punish people. Mette and Ingunn could be imprisoned by now – or dead. I even found myself recalling my parents, who I hadn’t seen or heard from since I was sent away to Kirkenes before Eirik was born and hardly ever thought about any more, remembering the Christmases we used to have when I was a child. Where were they now? How was the war affecting them?
Don’t, I told myself sternly. Not now. Not today.
As Elizabeth put various dishes of vegetables on the table and went back over to the dresser for the chicken, there was a knock at the door. ‘Ah, here they are,’ Donald said, and my heartbeat sped up a little.
Eirik ran to open the door. ‘Mr Bill!’ he cried as Lewis Harper and Bill, both wearing their RAF uniforms, ducked into the cottage. Elizabeth and Donald had invited them to spend Christmas with us a few days after the party up at the station, when Bill and Lewis helped rescue the Sinclairs’ cow from a bog.
‘Merry Christmas, Elizabeth,’ Bill said. ‘Merry Christmas, Donald. Thank you for having us.’
As Lewis greeted the Sinclairs too, Bill turned to ruffle Eirik’s hair. ‘Merry Christmas, buddy! And Merry Christmas, Hedda,’ he added, smiling at me.
I smiled back and dipped my head, wondering why I was blushing. ‘God jul – Merry Christmas. I am glad you could both come.’
‘I’m glad Elizabeth invited us,’ Bill said. ‘Having lunch here makes the thought of being on watch all night bearable – almost.’
‘We bear gifts,’ Lewis said once the two men had hung up their coats and taken off their boots, lifting a bulging canvas bag for us all to see. ‘This is for you, I believe, young man…’ He handed Eirik a parcel wrapped in green and red paper.
‘Put it with the others, please,’ I said, shooting Eirik a stern look. He made a face at me, but did as he was told.
‘And this is for you, Elizabeth…’ Lewis gave her something large, soft and squashy, also wrapped in Christmas paper and tied with a ribbon.
‘Ach, you shouldn’t have,’ Donald said as Lewis passed him what was clearly a bottle, but his eyes were sparkling.
‘Hedda, here you are.’
Lewis gave my parcel to Bill, who passed it to me. As I took it, our fingertips brushed and I felt myself blush again. What on earth was wrong with me today? ‘Thank you,’ I said, trying to hide my embarrassment.
‘And finally…’ With a flourish, Lewis lifted out a small, round muslin bundle with string around the top. ‘This was liberated from the camp kitchen by Sergeant Gauthier when our cook was otherwise occupied. You might like to open it now.’
He and Bill grinned at each other as Elizabeth untied the string. She gasped when she saw what was inside: a dark, rich-looking Christmas pudding, stuffed with dried fruit. ‘Oh, my, will you look at that!’
‘It even has sugar in it,’ Bill said.
‘We will have it after the chicken,’ Elizabeth said, putting the pudding down in the middle of the table and beaming at him. ‘Thank you.’
‘Mamma,’ Eirik said as I turned the little rectangular parcel over in my hand, wondering what it was. ‘You must put your present over by the chair too!’ He frowned at me, his hands on his hips. ‘And you, Tante Elizabeth and Onkel Donald.’
Pressing my lips together to hide my amusement, I collected everyone’s gifts and placed them with the rest of the presents. Then we sat down to eat. Lewis had one more surprise in his seemingly bottomless knapsack: a box of paper hats, which he handed out for all of us to wear. ‘Did you liberate these as well?’ I said, laughing at Bill whose hat was too big and kept slipping down over his eyes. He laughed too and pushed the hat to the back of his head.
‘If I had, I’d’ve made sure I got some that fit,’ he said.
‘So, Hedda,’ Lewis said when, at last, all the food had gone, and he and Bill had cleared the table and were washing and drying the dishes, shooing Elizabeth away whenever she attempted to help. ‘How does this differ from Christmas in Norway?’
I leaned back in my chair, lacing my hands across my stomach. ‘Well, when I was a child, my parents would always have a big party for all our family and friends on Julaften – Christmas Eve – with dishes such as risengrynsgrøt, a hot rice pudding with sugar, cinnamon and butter. Afterwards we’d dance around the Christmas tree and hold hands. It’s a tradition of ours in Norway to have a tree – a real tree my father would cut from the forest near our home, which we’d decorate – and all the children would be terribly excited wondering what Julenissen, our version of Santa Claus, would bring us to put under it. We’d have a meal on Christmas day too, but it was always a much smaller affair, for family only, and we would go to church.’
I didn’t tell him, of course, that my parents had disowned me, although I felt a pang as I remembered my father dragging the tree into the house, snow still clinging to its branches. And I didn’t tell him that in Kirkenes, Christmas had just been another day for me. Anders loathed it, and forbade me or Eirik to go to any of the parties thrown by neighbours and friends. Instead, he would skulk around, muttering about how I was spoiling ‘the child’ by buying him presents. We did not put up any decorations or a tree, and there was no Julaften meal, only my husband getting progressively drunker and me and Eirik creeping around the house like scared mice.
Don’t think about that, I told myself. He is not here. Looking around the room at the smiling faces of my newfound friends, I could not remember the last time I had felt so content and at peace. I was so glad that, at last, Eirik was able to have a proper Christmas, even if I had no idea what our futures held right now.
‘Mamma, please can I open my presents?’ Eirik begged me in Norwegian once the dishes were all put away.
‘You may, if you hand the others out first,’ I said. He nodded and raced over to the pile by Donald’s chair.
We let Eirik open his parcels first. From the Sinclairs, he had a tin of colouring pencils, and from Bill and Lewis, a toy tank that Lewis had made from a piece of driftwood. Elizabeth’s gift from Bill and Lewis was a brand-new military-issue woollen blanket; Donald’s, a bottle of rum.
For me, Elizabeth had knitted a beautiful pair of gloves in an elaborate pattern she called Fair Isle, and the parcel from Lewis’s knapsack turned out to be an exquisite tooled leather writing case. ‘Thank Bill,’ Lewis said as I exclaimed over it. ‘I had nothing to do with it.’
‘I thought it might come in useful for your work,’ Bill said, and when I looked up at him I noticed the tips of his ears had gone pink.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I love it! But wherever did you manage to find such a thing?’
‘Ah, now that would be telling,’ he said with a small, mysterious smile.
My own gifts – a new pincushion for Elizabeth that I’d found in Sutherland’s Stores, a small bottle of whisky for Donald and cigarettes for Bill and Lewis – felt rather mean in comparison, but they all seemed thrilled with them. For Eirik I had managed to purchase the annual Beano Book, which had arrived from the mainland just in time. He curled up happily on the end of the couch with it and was soon absorbed.
‘Will you have a drink?’ Donald asked the adults, holding up the bottles of whisky and rum. Lewis accepted, but Bill and I both shook our heads. Elizabeth said she would make us a pot of tea instead.
‘It must feel strange, being so far away from your family at Christmas,’ I said to Bill as I sat down beside him on the thick woollen rug in front of the fire and tucked my legs underneath me; there weren’t enough chairs for everyone.
He shrugged, stretching his bad leg out in front of him. ‘I’m used to it by now. My parents have plenty of relatives they can spend time with, and my fiancée has a large family too. I doubt any of them are even missing me.’
‘I am sure that’s not true,’ I said.
‘How about you?’ he asked. ‘You’re pretty far from home too.’
I glanced at Eirik, who was still absorbed in his book, wondering what to say. ‘It is different,’ I admitted at last. ‘But we are much safer here than we were in Norway. It is a relief not to have to worry about German patrols every time we set foot out of the house, or about the Soviets dropping their bombs on us. Kirkenes felt like a prison sometimes.’
Even before the Germans came, I thought but didn’t say out loud. Then Elizabeth brought us our tea, and I used the distraction as an opportunity to steer the conversation towards safer subjects.
At three o’clock, Donald turned on the wireless and we all stood, Lewis helping Bill to his feet, to listen to the King’s speech. ‘We still have tasks ahead of us,’ his voice crackling through the speaker said, ‘perhaps harder even than those which we have already accomplished. We face these with confidence, for today we stand together, no longer alone, no longer ill armed, but just as resolute as in the darkest hours to do our duty whatever comes…’
I glanced out of the corner of my eye at Bill and saw he was gazing at the floor, his expression pensive. I was thinking about Ingunn, Marianne and Mette again, and all my other friends in Kirkenes, and I knew Elizabeth and Donald would be thinking of their son, Willie, who was in the army and posted somewhere overseas. Who was Bill thinking of?
When the speech finished, they played the British National Anthem, and Donald, Bill and Lewis saluted. Then we sat down again and Bill and I resumed our conversation, although we were slightly more subdued than before.
At last, Lewis, sitting beside Eirik on the couch, glanced at his watch. ‘I suppose we’d better get back, Bill, old chap,’ he said. ‘We’re on watch in an hour.’
Bill groaned. I stood and reached down so he could hang on to my hand while he pulled himself to his feet again.
‘Thank you,’ he said, brushing off his uniform. Our eyes met and yet again, I felt that little jolt inside me.
For goodness’ sake, Hedda! I thought. I looked quickly away, swallowing. ‘You’re welcome.’
He kissed my cheek, taking me by surprise. ‘Well, I guess I’ll see you at the next dance if we don’t bump into each other before then.’ Then he went to say goodbye to Elizabeth, kissing her on the cheek too. Lewis did the same with both of us, shook Donald’s hand and pretended to pull a penny out of Eirik’s ear, much to his amazement, and the two men left.
‘Mamma?’ Eirik said as we drifted off to sleep that night, drowsy and warm.
‘What is it, lille vennen?’ I asked, resting my chin on top of his head.
‘I don’t want to go back to Norway. Can we stay here in Shetland?’
I sighed. ‘We’ll have to wait and see.’
‘I hope we can,’ he said. ‘I like it here.’
‘So do I,’ I murmured into his hair. My only answer was a soft snore; he had fallen asleep.
I lay awake for a while longer, replaying the day in my mind. I could still feel the place on my cheek where Bill had kissed me, and I remembered the way his gaze had met mine after I helped him up.
Don’t be a fool, I told myself. There is nothing between you. There can’t be. Even if you were free to fall in love again, it is not worth the pain.
I made myself think of other things and, eventually, managed to drift off to sleep too.