“Was it a surprise? When she dead?”
“Died. When she died. Yes, it was. Very much so. The poor boys. Aleksey especially.”
“Why Aleksey?”
“Oh, he tried to find her. Swimming out to sea for her. Hours every day. He was such a good swimmer. They couldn’t stop him. He almost drowned, too. He was so little. Eight? Maybe younger, I don’t remember.”
“Ten. He was ten.”
“So old? He was very small. Is he still small?”
“No. Taller than me. A little.”
She smiled. “Is he a good man?”
Ben was tempted to say define good, but he didn’t know the word for define. He shrugged. “Sometimes. Sometimes no.”
“So, you’ve been here a month. How do you think your Danish is coming along?”
Ben sat back and closed his eyes to the sun for a moment. “My Danish is almost perfect.”
She giggled like a schoolgirl and then slapped him lightly on the leg. “Not yet. You’re very arrogant, but that’s to be understood.”
“Me? Why?”
“Ah, so modest, too. Come, beautiful, bad boy, my garden doesn’t dig itself. Did you get everything on the list?”
“Yes, Mother…” He grumbled it in jest, but she paused in picking up her handbag.
“Mother. Yes. I like that. In that case, son, let’s get back into that very silly car of yours and go home.”
§ § §
Later that evening, while Ben was drinking some wine after his swim, Ingrid came out of the house with an album. She set it down and proclaimed with a flourish, “I’ve found Nikolas and Aleksey, would you like to see?”
Ben just nodded. Yes. He would.
She opened it to a picture familiar to anyone who’s ever been to primary school. Clearly, the yearly photo of children was an international thing. She pointed. “Here they are in their first year. Five years old. Look, that’s me in the front. I didn’t teach the very young ones then.”
There was a row of children sitting in the front on the ground cross-legged. Side by side were the identical Nikolas and Aleksey. Their hair was exceptionally blond, and they were very thin, even then, bony knees and elbows in their shorts and short-sleeved shirts. Ben couldn’t tell them apart. She turned to the next photo, aged six. They were now standing, but, other than that, there was no difference. Aged seven was missing, as was aged eight, but then, there they were, aged nine. They were still smaller than the other boys in their row but wiry and agile looking. One of the twins was smiling at the camera nicely. One was staring up, as if he’d just seen something in the sky that interested him more than standing there and being good. Ben smiled. He was fairly sure now which twin was which. Ingrid then turned to the next photo. They weren’t in it. “I think this was taken the summer after they left. They were very lucky their father came for them. We all thought them so lucky after what had happened. But we missed them. Well, we missed Nikolas.” She chuckled.
Lucky
. Ben blew out a small breath and turned away. He couldn’t bear it.
It didn’t get dark until almost eleven at night now, being the peak of the summer, and Ben took every moment of daylight to work on his Danish, reading in the garden or occasionally watching television with Ingrid. He could understand the news quite easily. Shows left him struggling occasionally, but gradually, he could even understand most of what was being said in those.
Texts from Nikolas were very sporadic now. They were travelling in places without good connections. Ben didn’t mind so much. It was worse, somehow, being reminded, having to lose him each time when their short communications were done. Last time, he’d asked his hopeful
how is he
and Nik had replied
very sick
.
§ § §
Missing Nikolas began to resemble missing his mother in Ben’s mind. There was a similar sense of desolation and loneliness to not having Nikolas around as there had been for the first few months when he’d been unable to accept his mother’s desertion. He refused to give into the feelings, however. He wasn’t eight. If his frantic attempts to keep busy sometimes resembled a small boy running to the moors and living rough, searching desperately for unconditional love, then he ignored the similarities and told himself that at least keeping busy improved his language skills. Once he’d made a first foray into reading, he found this the easiest way to avoid thinking about Nikolas at the same time as becoming really proficient in Danish. He became an almost daily visitor to the library. Gabby was as good as her word and took him under her wing. She seemed to sense his wariness of the other, younger librarians (if not the provenance for such caution), particularly Amy, and always looked after him herself. Ben found her almost motherly presence completely restful and reassuring. It actually amused him to think of telling Nikolas, when asked, that yes he’d had girlfriends on Aeroe—an elderly widow and a spinster librarian.
§ § §
Ben noticed the change in the sea first. One evening, walking in to start his swim, the cold hit him. He did his usual distance but getting out was unpleasant, and he jogged back to the house and into his room, glad to get into a warm shower.
Ingrid mentioned it next, picking up some leaves from the lawn and saying wistfully, “We must think about getting wood in for the winter. It comes along every year more quickly.”
Ben straightened, did a calculation in his head, and realised he’d been on Aeroe for three months. It was October. He hadn’t heard from Nikolas since the end of September.
The days continued to pass in his simple routine. If he wasn’t running or swimming, he was working on his Danish, always Danish, reading, writing now, listening to the television and chatting with Ingrid. The Red Shoes were long forgotten. Now, following Gabby’s recommendations, he had a roomful of books. He’d rented some audio books as well and listened to them as he fell asleep, anything not to have to think about Nikolas.
One day, Ingrid came up to him in the garden, watching him for a while. The days of just wearing shorts were well over. He was warmly dressed and working on raking the leaves. “Would you like to visit the Mikkelsen summerhouse? I’ve contacted the caretaker, Hans, and he offered to show us around it this afternoon. Of course, I taught him. Very silly boy, and he didn’t marry well. Dreadful Swedish woman—Agna. But one mustn’t speak ill of foreigners, I suppose.”
Ben straightened and nodded. “I heard it was empty.”
“Oh, yes. Quite. I don’t believe anyone has lived in it since Nina and her babies. But it’s well cared for. Too well, some say. God alone knows what Agna will do if anyone from the family ever wants to live there again. She seems to think of the place as hers. Which I suppose she would after so long.”
§ § §
They drove over that afternoon. The estate was at the top of the island. They passed through forests and then emerged back again at the coast, and there it was, a large villa perched on a headland with formal gardens running down to the sea. The caretaker was waiting for them, introduced himself as Hans, apologised that his wife was home in Sweden visiting family, and began to chat to Ingrid as he led them through the courtyard to the door.
Inside was like a scene from an old movie. Everything was covered in dustsheets and seemed to have a timeless quality to it as if the owners had just stepped out for a moment. Ben could understand Hans’s chatter quite well, but he wasn’t listening. He wandered around touching things Nikolas had touched, walking where he’d walked. He wondered whether, if he’d been here alone, he’d hear an echo of a young boy’s voice, high pitched, excited, running through his life with a zest for living until all the joy was taken from him.
In one room, in a bay window, there was a grand piano. He pulled the sheet off and sat at it. He tapped a note. It was all he could do; his childhood hadn’t included piano lessons. But then it hadn’t included vicious sexual assault either. He closed his eyes. Everything ached for Nikolas now. Not just the physical things, which ached continually despite his extreme regime, but everything, his heart, his thoughts, his
soul
. With a clench of his jaw, he closed the lid and pulled the sheet back.
“Spirit of place. I have felt it in places also
.
”
If anywhere held the spirit of the Nikolas he loved, then this was the place.
CHAPTER EIGHT
October turned seamlessly into November as it always does. One day, running in the woods, Ben smelt woodsmoke. He had to stop, hands on knees. He was almost sick at the overwhelming memory of another run, another smell of woodsmoke—and then a fire. Nate. He hadn’t thought about Nate for many months, but it was a year ago he’d died in Ben’s cottage. A year. Ben was thirty years old, but, at that moment, he felt defeated by age.
Soon they had the first snowfall. Ben had spent the last few weeks chopping wood, a job he enjoyed, stacking the cords neatly under the eaves of the house. He had a fireplace in his room, and now evenings were spent reading Danish in front of the fire with Radulf and wine. It was safer this way. One evening, he’d foolishly accepted an invitation from Amy to her birthday party. It hadn’t gone well. Why could he not stay, indeed? She was single; he was single. She was offering. He was…desperate. He wondered later, when he’d made his pathetic apologies and left, whether if she’d been a
man
he’d have weakened or not. With men it was so much easier, both understanding the unspoken. Women, in his limited experience, didn’t. If he’d stayed and slept with her, she would expect more.
The following day, in the library, he was very glad he’d been strong. She seemed relieved as well, and when Gabby wasn’t looking offered him a leftover slice of birthday cake. All his new girlfriends in the library seemed to think he wasn’t eating enough. He craved the attention and allowed their concern. He’d even let Gabby measure him up for a sweater she was knitting.
§ § §
Toward the middle of November, while he was fixing shutters to the windows around the house, his phone buzzed. He yanked it out.
Hello Ben
His fingers were too cold to text, so his reply came out as
where uck r u?
He had to think for a while to remember the English.
The reply came back very swiftly:
not with u and that’s all I think about
He groaned and sat down on the ice-covered chair.
How is he?
The inevitable question.
He’s dead
Ben sat back, hardly believing what he saw. He wasn’t sure what to text but decided to send
I’m sorry. For you. Honestly
Thank you. I kept promise. That all that important no?
Keep one now and come home
Soon. Have things must do first. Home 1st week December?
December? No. Now!
Maybe u have missed me?
If u want 2 no how much have missed u come home.
Irritating child. I c u soon.
Ben tipped his head back and caught a stray snowflake on his cheek. It was time to go home. He couldn’t bear to tell Ingrid, so he didn’t. He continued to cut wood for the next few days so she’d have enough to last for a small apocalypse.
On the third day after Nikolas’s message, he went back to the Mikkelsen summerhouse. He called in to see Hans, but he wasn’t there so he talked to his little daughter for a while about mermaids and then about Radulf. At a suitable moment, he asked her where the keys to the house were kept. He wanted to say good-bye—to what, he wasn’t sure. But as someone who believed in fate, he also believed in omens. Something about Nikolas’s last communication had set the hairs on the back of Ben’s neck rising and had caused him sleepless nights. He couldn’t shake the terrible feeling he wouldn’t see Nikolas again, that the vast and awful country which had once swallowed the little boy had finally taken the man.
The house was slightly different than he remembered from their earlier visit. Some of the timeless quality had gone. Hans had taken the dustsheet off the piano and lit a fire to keep the damp of the bitterly cold day out. Ben wanted to see the bedroom. Here again, some of the sheets had been pulled off the bookcases. He wandered around, looking at fossils and globes, models and books. Now he could read the titles. Above one bed, someone had thrown knives at the wall toward a hand-drawn target. It was not as accurate as the throwing he’d seen on a T-shirt in another time and another place. He guessed Nikolas had had some practice since he was a little boy named Aleksey.