It was a little bird. Black hood on a white head, light brown throat. Colours so pale it had to be a male. It looked lifeless.
‘A dotterel,’ I said.
‘It was just lying there,’ she said, and pointed to a hollow in the heather where I saw an egg. ‘I nearly stepped on it.’
I squatted down and felt the egg.
‘Yes, the dotterel will stay sitting on the eggs and let itself be trodden on rather than sacrifice the eggs.’
‘I thought birds here hatched in the spring – they do in Canada.’
‘Yes, but this egg never hatched because it’s dead. He obviously didn’t realise, poor thing.’
‘He?’
‘The male dotterel does the brooding and looks after the chicks.’ I stood up and stroked the bird in Shannon’s hands on the breast. Felt its quick pulse beneath my fingertip. ‘He’s playing dead. To distract us from the egg.’
Shannon looked round. ‘Where are they? And where is the female?’
‘The female is probably somewhere having it off with another male.’
‘Having it away?’
‘You know, mating. Having sex.’
She gave me a sceptical look. ‘Do birds have sex outside the mating season?’
‘I’m kidding, but we can always hope so,’ I said. ‘Anyway, it’s called polyandry.’
She stroked the bird’s back. ‘A male that sacrifices everything for the children, who keeps the family together even when the mother’s unfaithful. That really is something rare.’
‘That’s not actually what polyandry means,’ I said. ‘It’s—’
‘—a form of a marriage in which the woman takes several husbands,’ she said.
‘Oh?’ I said.
‘Yes. You get it in a number of places in the world. Especially in India and Tibet.’
‘Jesus. Why …’ I was about to ask do you know that?, but then changed it to ‘do they do that?’
‘Usually it’s brothers who marry the woman, and the reason is so as not to break up the family home.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
She put her head on one side. ‘Maybe you know more about birds than people?’
I didn’t answer. Then she laughed and threw the bird up high into the air. It spread its wings and flew straight ahead, away from us. I followed its flight until suddenly I detected a movement at the edge of my vision. My first thought was that it was a snake. I turned and saw the dark form winding its way towards us down the rocky slope. Lifted my gaze and saw Carl was standing there up at the top, looking out like some statue of Christ over Rio and still pissing. I stepped aside, coughed, and Shannon saw the stream of urine and did the same. It continued to wind its way on downwards towards the village.
‘What do you think of us selling the land up here for twenty million kroner?’ I asked.
‘Sounds like a lot. Where do you think the nest might be?’
‘That’s two and a half million American dollars. We’re going to build a house with two hundred beds in it.’
She smiled, turned and began walking back the way we had come. ‘That’s a lot. But the dotterel was here first.’
The power went just before bedtime.
I was sitting in the kitchen looking over printouts of the most recent accounts. Working out how head office would discount future profits and price the station in the event of a sale. I had worked out that with ten million I would not only manage to buy a ten-year franchise but the whole shooting match, buildings and land included. Then I would really own my own station.
I stood up and looked down over the village. No light down there either. Good, so that meant the problem wasn’t up here. I took a couple of paces in the direction of the living-room door, opened it and peered out into the pitch darkness.
‘Hello,’ I called out experimentally.
‘Hi,’ came the response in unison from Carl and Shannon.
I fumbled my way to Mum’s rocking chair. Sat down. The rockers creaked against the floor planking. Shannon giggled. They’d had a drink.
‘Sorry about this,’ I said. ‘It isn’t us, it’s … them.’
‘Doesn’t bother me,’ said Shannon. ‘When I was a kid there were power cuts all the time.’
I said into the darkness: ‘Is it poor, Barbados?’
‘No,’ said Shannon. ‘It’s one of the richest Caribbean islands. But where I grew up there were so many people cable hooking … what do you call that in Norwegian?’
‘Actually I don’t think we have a word for it,’ said Carl.
‘They stole electricity by connecting up to the mains. And that made the whole net unstable. I got used to the idea. You know, that everything can disappear, at any time.’
Something told me she wasn’t just talking about electricity. About home and family, maybe? She hadn’t given up until she’d found the dotterel’s nest, and then she’d stuck a twig in the ground so we wouldn’t tread on it the next time.
‘Tell us about it,’ I said.
For a few moments the silence in the darkness was complete.
Then she gave a low laugh, as though excusing herself. ‘Why don’t you tell us instead, Roy?’
What surprised me was that even though she never got the wrong Norwegian word or made a mistake in the syntax, her accent still made you think of her as a foreigner. Or maybe it was that meal she’d made. That mofongo, some Caribbean dish.
‘Yeah, let Roy tell us, he’s good at telling stories in the dark. He used to do it for me when I couldn’t get to sleep.’
When you couldn’t get to sleep because you were crying, I thought. When I climbed down into your bed, after it was over, and put my arms around you, felt your skin so warm against mine, and told you not to think about it, just think about the story I’m telling you and let sleep come. And at the same moment as I was thinking that I realised that it wasn’t the accent or the mofongo, it was the fact that she was here, in the dark, with me and Carl. In the dark in our house, the dark that belonged to him and me and no one else.
4
CARL WAS ALREADY AT THE door, waiting to greet the guests. We heard the first cars struggling up the track towards Geitesvingen, change down, then down again. Shannon gave me a quizzical look when I poured more of the strong stuff into her punchbowl.
‘They like it to taste more moonshine than fruit,’ I said and peered out of the kitchen window.
A Passat stopped in front of the house and six people tumbled out of the five-seater. It was always the same thing; they travelled up in a gang and the women drove. I don’t know why guys think they have priority when it comes to drinking parties like this, or why the girls volunteer to drive even before they’re asked, but that’s the way it is. The lads who came along because they were single or because someone had to stay home and look after the kids did a round of rock paper scissors to decide who drove. When Carl and I were growing up, people drove when they were drunk. Take Dad. But people don’t drink and drive any more. They still beat their wives, but no way would they drink and drive.
There was a banner in the living room with HOMECOMING on it. I thought it was a bit strange because I thought the point of that American custom was that it was family and friends and not the homecoming person himself who was supposed to arrange the party. But Shannon just laughed and said if no one else was going to do it then you had to do it yourself.