The Last Boat Home (22 page)

‘Fucking hell. But you’re better now?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Fucking hell.
Skål!
’

Lars drank again and Petter and Rune did the same. Else’s eyes swept the field for Valentin. When she did not find him, she sank onto a corner of Petter’s crate.

‘Don’t you want a drink?’ Lars asked.

‘No,’ she said. She held her hands out to the fire, grateful at least for the heat that stroked her body and thawed the night’s chill. She shut her eyes. The glow beat the inside of her eyelids.

‘Go on,’ said Lars. ‘Have a drink.’ He thrust a mug into Else’s palm. With a sigh, she swirled the liquid that was as clear as water. It burned her throat when she swallowed, making her gasp.

She saw Valentin then. He sat some distance from the others, alone on one of the rocks that bordered the north end of the paddock. He was almost out of the firelight’s reach, but she could still distinguish the broad heft of his shoulders. She remembered him as he had been on that first night in the circus ring, when he had hoisted the animal towards the ceiling of the Big Top. His veins had stood clear of his skin like a pattern of ropes that spanned from arm to arm, winding around his neck and over the muscles of his stomach.

‘
Skål!
’ said Lars and sipped. His forehead creased when Else refused to drink. She passed her mug to Petter.

‘Have two,’ she said and got to her feet.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Lars.

She set off along the edge of the bonfire, heading the long way round so as to avoid Yakov.

‘Else!’ shouted Petter. ‘Where are you going?’

‘
Skål!
’

‘Else!’

‘
Skål!
’

‘
Skål!
’

The boys’ voices merged into a single, drunken bleat. Else retreated to the trees at the paddock’s rim. Their needles brushed the fingers of her outstretched hand as she trudged through the mud. She cried out when Yakov pounced on her from the shadows. He snatched her up in his arms.

‘Dance with me,’ he said.

His mug spilled onto her chest, dousing her in homebrew. The smell filled her nose and mouth.

‘Get off!’ she said and kicked his shin.

Yakov stumbled back. He laughed. He lifted his mug, shaking it at her in a question. His lips peeled away from his teeth in a leer. Else plunged into the murky light between the forest and the fire, her blood loud in her ears as she fled. With every step, she
braced herself for the moment when he would tackle her into the mud. Instead, his laughter faded behind her.

On the other side of the meadow, she found Valentin on his rock. He looked up when she stopped in front of him.

‘Else,’ he said.

His gaze settled again on the bonfire. While Else worked to catch her breath, he raised his cup and sipped. The corners of his eyes crumpled like paper. He sucked air through his teeth.

‘I didn’t think we would see you again,’ he said.

She lowered herself onto the rock next to his. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘I need your help.’

A shout exploded behind the trailers. Valentin glanced towards it and turned back to the fire. ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he said.

‘I can’t go home. You know why. You’ve seen what my father is like.’

He said nothing. The line of his jaw was tight.

‘When you leave,’ she said, ‘take me with you.’

‘Else,’ he said.

‘Please, Valentin.’

‘Else …’

‘I can’t stay here. I’ll cook and clean …’

‘Else,’ he said. ‘Enough!’

The rest of her sentence snapped off between her teeth.

‘I’m going to a circus,’ Valentin said. ‘Do you know what that means? It’s no place for you.’

‘I’ll do anything,’ Else said.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but it’s too difficult.’

A barrage of cheers fell about them from the sky. Else felt panic tear loose in her chest. She saw her father again in the moments before he had shut her in her bedroom, the whites of his eyes shot through with colour like cracked eggshells leaking their yolks. She remembered the pain that rose in bruises to the surface of her skin, the sour smell that tainted the air even after
he had left. She heard the key in the lock, remembered the walls pressing down, closing her in, burying her alive.

‘I can’t go back,’ she said and meant to continue, but instead closed her mouth and bent her head to hide her tears. A touch made her start. Her hand had vanished under three long fingers. Valentin was peering at her. His dark eyes were fierce.

‘Take me with you,’ Else said. ‘I’ll do whatever you say.’

His nostrils flared. He blew a heavy breath. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Here, have a drink.’

Valentin passed her his mug and turned back to the fire, but he did not let go of her hand.

Else sat with him long after pins and needles had begun to nip at her feet. She did not stamp them away, but focused instead on staying quiet. She matched the rhythm of her breathing to his. She blinked with trepidation, fearing a reversal of his good will if she appeared too nervous, or too impatient. If she displeased him he might decide that she was more trouble than she was worth, so Else strove not to draw attention to herself. The prickle travelled from her toes up to her calves, but she would not move to slap the life back into them. Meanwhile, the bonfire popped and fizzed across the paddock. Its heat washed over her in gentle ripples that did nothing to relieve the cold.

When his mug had been drained, Valentin pushed himself off his rock, pulling her to her sleeping feet as he did.

‘Come,’ he said.

He was still holding her hand when he lumbered off towards his trailer. Else hurried along beside him, her eyes darting around the clearing. She searched for faces in the dark even as she prayed that they would get by unnoticed. She saw Yakov first. He had returned to his crate. When he spotted Else with Valentin, his lips distorted in a sneer. He jabbed Oleg with his elbow as, one after another, the boys came to meet them from their side of the fire.
Rune swayed like a sailor, his knees locking and unlocking underneath him.

‘What in hell?’ he said. ‘Would you look at that? Else and the strong man. Do you see that? They’re
holding hands
! Lars, do you see that?’

Petter followed. He looked from Else to Valentin and his jaw dropped. Else knew how it must look. She knew what they would think – what they would say. It was all she could do not to wrest back her hand. She gritted her teeth and carried on walking. Valentin was going to help her. She could not risk unsettling him now.

Lars limped into sight at the rear of the group. ‘What are you doing?’ he called and ran to cut them off. ‘Else, what in hell are you doing with him?’

He stopped in front of her, his hands on his hips. Else felt her insides scooped hollow.

‘Lars, don’t.’

‘What’s going on?’

She shook her head. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘just go away.’

He flinched as if she had struck him. He grabbed her arm. His body tensed when Valentin’s hand settled on his shoulder. The strong man leaned towards him, stooping low until their foreheads were parallel. The blood in Lars’s face turned to milk.

‘It’s none of your business,’ Valentin said and steered Lars out of his way. He resumed his walk to the trailer with Else in tow. She told herself not to think. She closed her eyes and her feet carried her over the mud. Valentin climbed the stairs to her new home, yanking open the door before stepping inside. Here, Else resisted. She spun around to look at Lars one last time.

In the orange firelight, his face was puckered with hurt. He stared at her, hands clenched, lips thin. Else tried not to think about kissing those lips. She saw him pressed against her that first time behind the bus depot, his eyes skimming shut as his mouth found hers.

Lars at the market. Lars buying sugar peas. Lars being Lars, even though she had disappeared.

Else pressed her lips together. She turned her back on her friends and followed Valentin into the caravan. As the door swung shut, Yakov fired a cheer into the night.

For several moments she remained by the entrance, listening to the noise that leaked through the walls of the trailer from outside. The smell of paraffin pervaded the darkness like fumes from a paint tin. Else’s head felt thick. She reached out a hand to steady herself, recoiling when her fingertips dipped into something cold and wet.

A spark showed Valentin crouched on his haunches beside a table, almost within touching distance. He shook out a match with one hand while the other replaced the cover of an oil lamp. It cast a dim light over the space between them. Apart from the table, there was precious little in it: a bench, a neat stack of crockery, carrots and potatoes in a crate. On the shelf in front of her, an empty drying rack kept company with an upturned washbasin and a single-hob gas cooker. A water barrel stood on the floor. Else saw the ladle hooked to the top and wiped her fingers on her trousers.

‘It’s late,’ Valentin said.

She nodded. She tried to smile but her mouth was dry. Her eyes pulled away from the oil lamp’s reach to the opposite corner of the room, where she could make out a bed. It was smaller than her bed at home; surely, this would never bear Valentin’s bulk. She imagined a leg hanging over the side, a mighty arm falling to the floor, slack in sleep. She saw herself wedged between his body and the wall and looked away.

‘Shall I make us some coffee?’ she said. Her hand wobbled when she reached for the water ladle. Then Valentin was beside her. He stood as near to his full height as the roof would allow. His palm brushed her arm.

‘I’m tired,’ he said.

He drifted off and Else caught the ledge of the kitchen counter with her fingers. A new light glimmered by the bed and Valentin’s shadow waltzed over the ceiling and walls. She could sense him moving. His body was too close. Her hands gripped tighter and she blinked at her whitening knuckles.

‘Else.’ This time, his voice was impatient. ‘Come on. It’s time for bed.’

She joined him where he waited for her at the other end of the kitchen shelf. The ceiling bore down like a free weight on his neck and shoulders. Else stepped into him. She tilted her head, bringing her lips to rest against his jawbone. His skin was rough. His muscles twitched. She dropped her eyes and hoped that it would be over quickly.

‘Is that what you thought?’ Valentin murmured. He pushed her gently away. He shifted to the side, revealing a mound of clothes on the ground by his feet. It had been placed at one end of a blanket. He gestured to the bed.

‘You sleep there. I’ll stay here. That’s all,’ he said and eased himself to the floor.

Valentin knelt beside the blanket, smoothing out its wrinkles before lying down and gathering his limbs inside its borders. With his back to the bed, he closed his eyes. A stream of conversation trickled in through the walls while Else watched him from the middle of the room. His breathing grew dense, but a scratch of his armpit told her that he was not yet asleep. In the distance, she heard the sound of engines. She knew what it meant: Lars was gone. So, too, were Petter and Rune.

Else slipped off her plimsolls in an effort to keep her tread light and ventured towards the bed. She crawled onto the mattress, where she rolled off the wet socks that had marked the floor behind her with footprints. She pulled the sheet over her clothes as far as her chin. When she faced the wall, she saw a handful of
photographs had been pinned to the padding. A woman smiled next to her pillow. Her edges were blurred, as if she were a ghost trapped inside the square. Else imagined Valentin lying in her place, falling asleep each night haunted by that smile.

The next picture was of Valentin himself. He was younger here, but Else had no trouble recognising him. There was his face, the size of a tree stump, his hair like wood shavings curling away from his scalp. He beamed at her from behind the photo’s gloss and held out a medal in the palm of his hand. One foot was cocked on a dumb-bell on the ground. A flag was draped around his shoulders.

Else glanced to where Valentin lay on the floor. He was looking at her. She unpicked the picture from the wall and showed it to him.

‘What did you win?’ she asked.

‘I didn’t win,’ he said. ‘Try to sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.’

He turned onto his side once again and Else considered the last photo, where a church stood at a slant, its stone carved and topped with angels. It was strange to her, too elaborate to be a church but a church nonetheless – the cross above its entrance left her in no doubt. She reached out a finger to trace the two converging lines before closing her eyes. Pastor Seip lurched at her from out of the darkness. Else snatched back her finger and blinked. The oil lamp spluttered, sending a shiver through the glow that it threw onto the ceiling. When she looked again at the church, she did not need to close her eyes to picture the minister. She saw him standing on his pulpit, palms clasped, his voice dripping over the congregation.

‘
Our Lord in heaven
’ – she heard the words as if they were whispered into her ear – ‘
we pray for the soul of Else Dybdahl, that she may not have strayed too far for redemption.
’

The families in the first pews muttered to each other in a rising grumble of disapproval. Behind them sat her mother, her face
collapsing under a burden of humiliation. Her father chewed his teeth beside her, biding his time until the moment they arrived home, when he would be free to vent the full extent of his fury.

Else replayed the scene in her mind and felt her body wilting with exhaustion as the last of her strength drained away. The image of her mother stayed with her now: she could no longer defeat her nervous look, nor dismiss the memory of her neck mottled with bruises. Else prodded her arms where her father had squeezed them black on the night he had locked her in her bedroom. In the days that had passed since, she had sat by her window and monitored their recovery. Had her mother’s bruises healed just as well?

She lay motionless, imagining unspeakable deeds until, all at once, she realised the chatter outside had stopped. Only the hiss of burning paraffin disturbed the silence. Else sat up in Valentin’s bed. She kicked off the sheet and slid to the end of the mattress, retrieving her socks and shoes and folding herself up in the bedspread from home before retracing her steps to the caravan’s exit. Behind her, Valentin adjusted his position on the floor. He did not speak when she pushed the door open.