Lost Girls (16 page)

Freya said it
was best if she not to come around in the morning as they had other
things to do. Instead she arranged to collect Anne from her hotel
at 5 pm and bring her with them to the train.

Next day Anne
spent sightseeing as there was nothing further she could do
regarding her search for now. She was waiting back at the hotel at
the due time and within half an hour they were settled into their
sleeper compartment.

Anne went to
pay them for the fare but Freya shook her head. “You have travelled
across the world to help us find Elin. The story you have given us
tells us it is so. Now for this final part of your journey you are
our guest. As we travel I will tell you more of my sister.”

Soon the train
was sliding smoothly across the northern countryside. As it rolled
away Freya pulled out a folder of clippings and postcards, Elin
arrested confronting the Russians; Elin in an inflatable
confronting the a Japanese whaler and being hosed with water canon;
Elin on the Antarctic Peninsula amongst penguins, and the final
postcard she had send from Adelaide. Across the back were scrawled
some Swedish words which Freya translated.

“
On my way
across the bottom of Australia.

Heading for
Albany and Perth.

Hoping to
discover the Australian Outback.

Love to you
all. Eli”

As they slid
into night Freya told her of this girl and her endless series of
brief liaisons, never finding anything beyond one night stands, sex
just a biological act without any deeper meaning. She also heard of
her sense of fun and fearlessness, ever searching but never finding
whatever it was she was looking for.

Anne found a
real person slowly emerging from the pages and faces. Now she felt
as if she could hear her voice and tell her story.

They talked for
hours, until finally the yawning overtook Anne.

Just before she
went to bed Freya said, “My father found his great love in my
mother, Elle. I have found a great love in my husband and children
and joy in my ordinary work and life.

“As we read of
Elin, the person who we saw forever searching, we knew she had
finally found a great love. Even if it was short and not in the
place and way we would have chosen for her, we are glad for her
that it happened. In the end she found what she was searching for.
We only wish it could have lasted longer, that we could have met
him and that we could have seen her again. But we know she died
happy. For that we owe you a great debt.”

In the morning
they came to the town where they left the train and collected a
hire car which they drove through the countryside. Anne wondered if
they were going to visit their childhood house or something of that
sort. Instead they drove to a graveyard. They came to a patch of
ground many times the size of an ordinary grave. On the ground
small white stones formed the shape of a boat.

Anne walked
over to the headstone and looked at it. It had a picture of a boat,
a faded photo behind glass and a symbol carved in the shape of an
old Viking boat. Underneath was writing. She could not read the
writing but Freya and Axel came and explained it.

Axel spoke,
with Freya adding the odd word which he could not find.

“Here is the
place where is buried my Elle, love of my life. We knew each other
as children in the village school and as adults we married and had
our children, Theodor, Elin and Freya. Most of our courtship was
spent in a timber boat I built, sailing the lakes and fiords of
this land. Then when our children came they sailed with us too.
Those are the happiest memories of my life and they were the
happiest memories of my Elle. There is an old Norse custom, passed
down from our ancestors, that when a great sailor dies they are
buried in their boat so that it can forever carry them to the new
and promised land. When my Elle died I dug the hole below where we
stand and buried my wife in our boat as befits a great sailor. For
more than a day I dug until I had made this hole. I would let none
other help me. It was only for me to do this, as the man who loved
her. Now the boat carries her ever onward until one day I join
her.”

He continued,
“When my beloved daughter died the man that she loved buried the
boat he had made and they had sailed in together. He placed her in
it in the same way as I placed my wife in our boat. Now my daughter
too makes her journey to the next world.

“This man who
did this must have loved her as she loved him. What he did was a
great deed and is good. If he was alive I would have liked to thank
him. Now you can tell his story and that of my Elin. Tell the story
of my daughter, the Viking Elf Queen, and of the man who loved her,
her desert warrior king.

“Such a story
will live long after we are gone as do the stories of our heroic
ancestors. It is enough and for this I thank you with all my
heart.”

Isabelle’s
first memory was of following her goats walking in the hills of the
Languedoc, in a small village in the mountains far away from the
large and prosperous cities of Toulouse and Montpelier. Their
family and those of her cousins were poor hill farmers, each with a
small herd of sheep and goats from which they made a rich creamy
cheese which they sold in the markets. Otherwise they subsisted on
the meat and milk, along with vegetables from their garden and the
occasional food they traded with each other and those who lived in
towns nearby.

As a child
Belle had few friends her own age and therefore had formed a close
bond with the farm animals and with this land of rough and broken
hills, particularly liking to go out with her goats and sit on a
rock, dreaming as she surveyed the vast and barren vistas. She so
loved to run with the goats, jumping from rock to rock, nimble and
sure footed, imagining she was one of them, someone who could go
anywhere they could, leaping from crag to crag.

She also loved
to go to the village church. Despite the poor life of the
villagers, somehow they had built this beautiful place. It was not
large but it was a work of art. She loved to sit in there and look
at the statue of the virgin, the windows with pictures of the
Christ child glowing in the light, the muted colours of the marble
floor and the finely carved timber work of the posts and nave. At
those times she would talk to God and it seemed he answered her
back.

Belle was a
bright child so, despite her humble beginnings, she excelled at
school. She had a natural ear for music and languages. She readily
picked up both Italian and Spanish which she learned from an early
age in the local village, with its Italian and Spanish farm
labourers, and then, as she reached high school, at the nearby town
school.

Her musical
talent was nurtured by her parents. By the age of ten she was a
competent player of both the aboès, the traditional oboe, which her
mother loved to play and the bodega, a goatskin bagpipe, which was
her father’s favourite. She learned as a child at their knees as
she watched and listened in rapt fascination. Over time they taught
her simple tunes and encouraged her efforts.

Later she
graduated to also playing the guitar which she used to accompany
her voice. It had a deep rich timbre, a few people joked that she
was the new Piaf. She knew she was not in that class but it
inspired her to sing some Piaf songs when giving impromptu
performances. She particularly loved, “Je Ne Regrette Rien”. It
suited her rich throaty voice.

Both her mother
and father were talented musicians who played their instruments in
a group which performed traditional French baroque music in the
local towns and villages. Often she would go with them and it time
she too played alongside them on occasions.

So, despite the
family’s relative poverty, Belle had grown up with an insight into
a much wider world beyond her home. When she finished school she
won a scholarship to the Sorbonne, where she studied, Geography and
Languages while she also continued to progress her music performing
in a local group which mainly played the music of the south of
France in the Latin quarter of Paris.

She was a top
student at the University and gained top marks in her Geography
Degree. In her studies she developed a fascination for the French
sailors of the Pacific and the colonies they had founded.

So the
following year she applied to study in the University of French
Polynesia, based in Papeete. With outstanding marks she was awarded
a scholarship which paid for travel along with tuition and living
costs to study there for a year, as an early part of a research
doctorate.

Isabelle had
never travelled beyond the bounds of her country. Paris had seemed
exciting enough as a student and, in her free time, she had come
home to her family with whom she was still close.

But now she had
caught the travel bug and was off to see the world, going to its
furthest opposite side. She felt really excited as she flew across
the world to discover this new land was both familiar and yet so
different. The language and the French culture had crossed the seas
and still lived strongly in this place. But alongside it was a new
people and new culture, where France and Polynesia partly existed
side by side and partly fused into something else again where, in
the fusion, a thing that was new and unique was created, a warm and
embracing new culture.

The year passed
in a blur of fascination, as she imbibed and absorbed the
Polynesian lifestyle and customs like a sponge. She had kept a
strong religious conviction, loving the Polynesian singing at the
local church. She joined in with gusto, bringing her guitar to
accompany their singing and teaching them new songs. She soon was
part of the island music scene.

She gained
great joy from this year of her life but knew by the end that this
place was too small for her and that the wider world beckoned. Part
of her wanted to return home to France to see family and friends,
another part had caught the travel bug and wanted to see more of
the world far from France.

She tossed up
various options. She did not have a lot of money, she had saved
very little of her small allowance here and her parents had none to
spare. But she had enough saved to support herself while she
travelled for a couple months on a low budget. She thought she
could always get some jobs to add to her store along the way.

So in the end,
rather than returning straight home, she decided she would like to
spend some time in Australia. After all, but for a few days, La
Perouse would have founded the first colony there and then, instead
of speaking English, they would now speak French.

She was also
drawn by the idea of improving her English language skills; she was
fluent in French, Spanish and Italian and her German was more than
passable. But her English was still weak and she knew the only way
for it to get good was to live for a while in an English speaking
country. Australia and New Zealand were both nearby choices. Canada
also appealed, but with the bilingual status she thought it may be
a bit too easy to revert to French there.

So she applied
for and was granted a twelve month working Visa to Australia. She
flew via Noumea then on to Brisbane. All her friends said Sydney
was the place to see, but rather than encouraging her to go there
she found it motivated her to go elsewhere.

It was June
when she arrived and having spent a year in the tropics the idea of
going to the south of Australia in winter was not appealing. So she
drifted north and found herself working in a backpackers lodge in
Cairns. This gave her a way to see the country, stay cheaply and
meet people from across the world.

Her
multilingual skills helped her get this job as she could talk
fluently to many European visitors in a passable form of their own
languages. In addition, when she did bar work at night in the
backpacker bar, she would often bring out her guitar and sing a few
songs and the extra tips added to her wages, so she found she was
now saving money at a steady rate.

One visitor who
stuck in her mind was a man named Mark Brooks. He arrived after she
had worked in Cairns for two weeks with a pretty little girl in
tow. She had an accent that could be Canadian. They stayed there
for two nights before the girlfriend caught a bus on to Sydney.
They were obviously lovers, but in the casual way of travellers who
meet and join together briefly before they go their different
ways.

There was
something in this man which exuded sexuality, a sort of wild devil
may care look. She could not help looking at him as he danced
closely with his girlfriend, clearly with one thing on their minds.
The first night they stayed there together until late but the
second night it was not long before the level of passionate
intensity between them needed to be consummated and they left. As
they walked out, hand in hand, it brought to mind for Isabelle her
own limited experience of that sort. She found herself remembering
it in detail for the first time in the three years since it had
happened.

Isabelle was
not that sort of girl. She had only ever had one man with whom she
had become intimate. It had happened on a summer holiday in her
village. This man, Francois, had known her since they were
children. They had found themselves both home from Universities in
different cities for a few days. He was two years older than
her.

She remembered
feeling a childish crush for him when she was about twelve and he
was a much more grown up and muscular fourteen year old. But he had
not noticed her then and she was too shy to give any clue. Then
their lives had gone separate ways. Then, that summer, when she was
twenty one, in the second year of her four year degree, they had
re-met at a village party and both were on their own.