Shannon crossed to the window and looked out. She’d kept her coat tightly buttoned up. She probably thought the house was cold. In September. It didn’t bode well for the winter. I heard Carl come thudding up the narrow staircase with the cases.
‘Carl says you aren’t rich,’ she said. ‘But you and him own everything you can see from here.’
‘That’s right. But it’s just outfield, all of it.’
‘Outfield?’
‘Wilderness,’ said Carl, who stood in the doorway panting and smiling. ‘Grazing for sheep and goats. There’s not a lot you can cultivate up on a mountain farm. You can see for yourself, there aren’t even many trees. But we’ll get something done about the skyline here. Ain’t that right, Roy?’
I nodded slowly. Slowly, the way I had seen the old farmers nodding slowly when I was just a lad and believed so many complex thoughts went on behind those wrinkled brows that it would just take too long and maybe be impossible to express them all using our simple village dialect. And they seemed to have a telepathic understanding of each other, those grown-up, nodding men, the way the slow nodding of one would be answered by the slow nodding of the other. Now I gave that same slow nod, though I hardly understood any more now than I did then.
Of course, I could have asked Carl about all this, but I probably wouldn’t have got the answer. Answers yes, plenty of them, not the answer. Maybe I didn’t need one either. I was just glad to have Carl back and had no intention of bothering him with the question right now: why the hell had he come back?
‘Roy is so kind,’ said Shannon. ‘He’s giving us this room.’
‘Figured you didn’t come back just so you could sleep in the boys’ room,’ I said.
Carl nodded. Slowly. ‘Then this won’t seem like much in return,’ he said, holding up a large carton. I recognised it at once and took it from him. Berry’s. American moist snuff.
‘Dammit, it’s good to see you again, brother,’ said Carl, his voice choked. He came over to me and put his arms round me again. Gave me a real hug this time. I hugged him back. Could feel his body was softer. A little more padding there. The skin of his chin against mine a bit looser, I could feel the rasp of his beard even though he was clean-shaven. The woollen suit jacket felt like good quality, tightly knitted, and the shirt – he never wore a shirt before. Even the way he spoke was different, he talked the city talk him and me used sometimes when we were imitating Mum. But that was fine. He still smelled the same. He smelled of Carl. He stepped back and looked at me. Eyes that were as beautiful as a girl’s glowing. What the hell, mine were glowing too.
‘Coffee’s boiling,’ I said, my voice not too choked up, and headed for the stairs.
In bed that evening I lay listening to the sounds. Did the house maybe sound different now people were living here again? It didn’t. It creaked, coughed and whistled same as always. I listened out too for sounds from the master bedroom. The walls are thin, so even with the bathroom between the two bedrooms I could still hear voices. Were they talking about me? Was Shannon asking Carl if his big brother was always this quiet? If Carl thought Roy had enjoyed the chilli con carne she had made? If his silent brother really had liked the gift she had brought with her, which she’d had so much trouble getting hold of through relatives, a used licence plate from Barbados? Didn’t his big brother like her? And Carl answering that Roy was like that with everybody, she should just give him time. And she said that maybe she thought Roy was jealous of her, that Roy was bound to feel she’d taken his brother from him, the brother that was all he had. And Carl laughing, stroking her cheek and telling her not to worry about things like that after just one day, that everything would work out. And she buried her head in his shoulder and said she was sure he was right, but anyway she was glad Carl wasn’t like his brother. That it was strange how, in a land almost without crime, people go around scowling as though in constant fear of being robbed.
Or maybe they were getting it on.
In Mum and Dad’s bed.
‘Who was on top?’ I should ask at breakfast in the morning. ‘The oldest?’ And see those gaping faces. Head out into the clear morning air, get into the car, release the handbrake, feel the steering wheel lock, see Geitesvingen coming up.
A long, lovely sad note coming from outside. The plover. The mountain’s lonesome bird, skinny and serious. A bird that accompanies you when you’re out walking, looking out for you, but always at a safe distance. As though too afraid to make a friend, and yet still needing someone to listen when it sings of its loneliness.
2
I GOT TO THE SERVICE station at five thirty, half an hour earlier than usual on a Monday. Egil was behind the counter. He looked tired.
‘Morning, chief,’ he said in a flat monotone. Egil was like a plover, he only had the one note.
‘Good morning. Busy night?’
‘No,’ he said, without seeming to realise it was, as people say, a rhetorical question. That I knew it was never busy once the flow of cabin visitors heading back to the city had eased off on Sunday night. That I was asking because the area out round the pumps hadn’t been tidied and cleaned. The rule at other all-night stations is that night-duty attendants working alone don’t leave the building, but I hate mess and with the boy racer gang in their custom cars using the place as a combination fast-food shop, hangout for smokers and a lovers’ lane there’s always a lot of paper, butt ends and, yeah, even the odd used condom. Since the frankfurters, the cigarettes and the blobs all come from the station I don’t want to be driving my boy racer customers away, they’re welcome to sit in their cars and watch the world drive by. Instead I get my night guys to clean up when they get the chance. I’d pinned a notice up in the staff toilet that stares you straight in the face every time you sit on the throne: ‘DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE. EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON YOU. DO IT NOW.’ Egil probably thought it was something to do with having a shit. I’d also mentioned this about cleaning up and taking responsibility so many times you would think Egil would get the little joke about a busy night. But then again, Egil wasn’t just tired, he was a simple lad of twenty who’d been the butt of jokes so many times in his life that it didn’t bother him any more. If you want to get by with the minimum of effort then pretending to understand less than you do is not the stupidest tactic to employ. So maybe Egil wasn’t so dumb after all.
‘You’re early, chief.’
A bit too early for you to have cleaned up around the pumps so I would think the place had been shipshape the whole night, I thought.
‘Couldn’t sleep,’ I said. Crossed to the till and punched in the till-shift command. That ended the night and I heard the printer in the office start grinding away. ‘Go home and get some sleep.’
‘Thanks.’
I went into the office and began looking through the takings while the paper was still being spewed out. It looked good. Another busy Sunday. Maybe our main road isn’t the busiest in the country, but with thirty-five kilometres to the next service station in both directions we’d become a bit of an oasis for motorists, especially those with young families, on their way home from the cabin. I’d installed a couple of tables and benches by the birch grove with a view across Lake Budal where they could sit with their burgers and buns and Cokes. Sold almost three hundred buns yesterday. I had less of a guilty conscience about the CO2 emissions than all the gluten intolerance I was causing the world. I let my eye run down the page and noted the number of frankfurters Egil had thrown away. Fair enough, but there were – as usual – a few too many compared to the sales figures. He’d changed now and was on his way out the door.