Out of the Ice (26 page)

‘Did he have children?’ I tried to keep a lid on my excitement. Right here in this warm kitchen sat a woman who’d known Erling. It was more than I could have hoped.

‘Of course, my dear. Sons and a daughter. The boys moved to Boston but Helen stayed on the island. Lived here all her life.’

My heart missed a beat. ‘Is she still here?’

‘Right around the corner. Helen’s one of my oldest friends.’

Blood rushed to my face.

‘What’s wrong, darling?’ Nancy reached across.

‘I would so like to meet her,’ I said.

‘Why don’t I ring and see if we can go round? Or I could have her here for dinner.’ Nancy rose. ‘Let’s see what suits.’ My pulse was racing as I listened to the gentle babble of Nancy’s voice from the next room.

Within minutes she returned, chuckling. ‘Helen’s going to make coffee. Thought you’d probably had enough hot chocolate. And she’s putting out her best cookies – but don’t you tell me they’re better than mine or you’ll be sleeping by the harbour.’ Nancy smiled broadly and went into the hallway to shrug on her coat. I followed and hurled on mine, wrapping a scarf around my neck. We marched outside, Nancy as keen as I was to get on with the conversation.

Helen Halvorsen lived in a gracious sea-captain’s house on top of the hill, with cedar shingles weathered a silky grey, large white colonial windows, and two attic windows jutting out like friendly eyes from the slate roof. As Nancy knocked on the front door, the colour of deep blue sea, it flung open. The woman standing in the entrance – early seventies, tall and lean – had the same pale eyes as her ancestors. In real life they were grey with a touch of blue, like a far-flung ocean, and almost transparent. A mane of blonde hair perfectly framed a face that was generous and vibrant; full lips had just a hint of pink lipstick. Helen was a beauty like her grandmother Ingerline. They could have been sisters, but Helen was much more relaxed. Time had not worn her down. She was dressed immaculately in a soft blue jumper, camel trousers and matching stylish leather pumps with discreet gold buckles.

Nancy’s introduction was short, as she only knew my name and nationality.

Helen reached out and shook my hand with a firm grip. ‘So lovely to meet you, Laura,’ she said, in a gentle rhythm that echoed Nancy’s. I was enjoying the elegance of the Nantucket accent, its soft vowels and tunefulness; the uniformity of the women’s voices struck me, after having been around such a cultural mix in Antarctica. ‘Come right on in. I’ve a hot brew on the stove.’ Helen led the way down a long, wide passage.

A heavenly mix of cinnamon and almond wafted to meet us. Had Helen managed to whip up a batch of cookies in the minutes it had taken us to walk around?

We entered the kitchen: through huge old windows the manicured lawn fell away, revealing a vista of the entire Nantucket harbour. Sailing boats bobbed about. The
Sankaty
was heading out to sea again.

Helen ushered me to a chair at a long, cherry-wood table in the middle of the room where three mugs were neatly set. Nancy sat up one end while Helen went to the stove nestled in a giant old fireplace, plucked up the coffee and brought it over.

‘Nancy tells me you want to talk about my father?’ Helen’s pale eyes shone.

‘I’m doing an environmental study on Fredelighavn—’

Helen gasped and sat down opposite me. ‘Fredelighavn? I haven’t heard that name in a very long time.’

‘I’ve been down there for the past few weeks. It’s a beautiful village.’

‘It is.’ She nodded but didn’t seem certain.

‘I found a book in the library written by your father on the history.’

‘He was mighty proud of that book.’ Helen smiled.

‘Have you been down there yourself?’ I asked.

‘Indeed I have.’ She fell silent.

‘It’s extraordinary to think all those people went each summer. It must have been bustling,’ I said.

‘Oh yes, my word. It was a bustling settlement.’ Helen paused, then sat forward. ‘I was eight when I first went. Daddy took me and my two elder brothers while Mama stayed home with little Peter, who was one year younger than me. Being the baby of the family, Mama over-protected him. He was so dark about not going.’ She blinked and I caught the trace of a tear. ‘We were a long time at sea. It was an adventure, all right.’ Helen glanced at Nancy, who smiled back gently, reassuring.

‘I’ll never forget crossing the Drake Passage,’ Helen continued. ‘Waves so high I thought we were gone. My brothers nearly died of seasickness but I managed fine. Uncle Olaf and Granny Inga looked after us like we were the Norwegian royal family itself. But the sight of the poor whales.’ She stood abruptly, and moved to pull a tray of golden cookies from the oven. ‘Better get these out before they ruin,’ she said.

‘Ooh, they smell good,’ said Nancy. ‘But remember what I told you.’ She winked at me.

‘What’s that, Nance?’ Helen arranged the cookies around an old creamware plate.

‘She’s not to like yours better than mine.’

Helen laughed, her skin crinkling. She offered me a cookie. ‘Take two.’

I willingly obliged.

‘You saw the whales?’ I said.

‘Yes. It was awful. I knew it was how Daddy and Uncle Olaf and Poppa Lars had made us rich, so I didn’t dare say a word. I’ll never forget my first whale. I ran away to the pigpens and hugged the little piglets and cried my eyes out. Then I went with the chickens and kept crying. Finally I went back to Daddy’s house and Granny Inga put me on her lap and rocked and rocked. She knew exactly why I was upset and said I’d understand when I was older.’

‘And now you do,’ said Nancy.

Helen drew in her breath. ‘I respect it but I never liked it. And I never let that get in the way of my love for my father. Sometimes you just have to let people be who they are.’

‘This whole island’s descended from whalers,’ said Nancy, looking me firmly in the eye. ‘Men who risked their lives for our prosperity. And they were true-life explorers, heading out over the oceans. My great-great-grandfather was one of the first to get down over your way, Laura, into the Southern Ocean. How far was that! The other side of the earth. They were explorers, all right, with the American spirit. They made our country great and all from this little sandy spit of an island.’ She glowed with pride.

‘And I don’t disrespect them,’ Helen emphasised again as she passed me more cookies. I took three, they were so delicious, and it was also my way of trying to show her support.

‘My mama’s family were Quakers here from way ago,’ Helen continued. ‘All sailors. Four whaling captains among them. Mama had two brothers taken by the sea.’ Again Helen stopped. ‘Anyways, tell us more about Fredelighavn. How’s it stood up after all these years? I heard they turned it into a place no one could go.’

‘That’s right, in the seventies,’ I said. ‘And it’s stood up just fine. It was incredibly well built.’

‘Norwegians know how to do that,’ said Helen, smiling. ‘And the houses were pretty, weren’t they?’

‘They still are. Magical, actually.’

‘Colours like the rainbow in a soap bubble. I went there four times, you know. Daddy and Granny Inga thought it was good for our constitution, and Granny loved having us with her.’ This time Helen’s eyes did tear up, I figured from nostalgia. I could see that she was growing tired, so I thought I’d better seize the moment and ask what I really needed to know.

‘Helen, I was wondering – did you ever go in tunnels under the ice?’

She frowned, her blonde brows knitting together. ‘Tunnels? No. Where are the tunnels?’

‘I don’t know exactly,’ I said.

‘Well, that’s strange,’ she replied and looked suddenly so frail and gloomy I wondered what I’d done. ‘Laura, why are you asking about tunnels?’

‘It’s just . . . I wondered if I saw a chamber behind an ice cave.’

Helen looked at me almost knowingly. I fell silent, thinking how unlikely it would sound to say I thought I’d seen a boy in that chamber.

Helen was paling to the colour of porcelain as she gazed at me intently. She met my eyes, willing me to speak.

‘I thought there was a boy there,’ I stuttered, against my better instincts.

Helen tensed. ‘A boy? What sort of boy?’

To my astonishment Helen didn’t seem to think I was making things up.

‘How old?’ she demanded.

‘About twelve. Dark-haired.’

She let out a yelp. I couldn’t work out what was happening.

‘Why are you coming round saying things like that?’ asked Nancy sharply.

Helen pulled out a handkerchief and blew her nose, her pale eyes drilling into me. ‘I lost my little brother down there, but you seem to know that already,’ she said.

‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t.’ I leaned over and touched her arm, which was as cold as if she were dead. In his book Erling had made no mention of his children.

Helen sat glaring. Nancy did the same. All the warmth had drained from the room. I kept quiet – desperate to know more but cautious not to upset her further.

‘It was on my last trip down in 1955,’ said Helen. ‘I was thirteen and Peter was twelve. There was a whale in port and they were stripping its blubber. I stayed with Granny Inga and read a book. Peter hated what they did to those whales as much as I did and he slipped away. They always said he fell through a hole in the ice and drowned. Died of cold.’ Her eyes held a fire beneath their shiny pale blue. ‘Now you’re telling me there were tunnels. That he fell into a tunnel. That you’ve seen his ghost in the ice.’ She blew her nose again, loudly, furiously. ‘What am I meant to believe?’

‘No, no, that’s not what I’m saying.’ I leaned forward but she pulled her arm away. ‘The boy I saw. He was alive.’ As soon as the word left my mouth I knew it was the wrong one. ‘It wasn’t your brother.’

‘Obviously it couldn’t be my brother, he wouldn’t still be a boy after more than sixty years,’ she snapped. ‘Where exactly did you see him?’ She blew her nose a final time and slipped the handkerchief up her sleeve.

‘I swam in from the ocean, he was in an ice cave. But he must have got down there some other way. We don’t know who he is or why he was there.’ A pang of emotion swept through me as I remembered the boy.

‘Why didn’t he swim into the cave like you?’

‘He was behind a wall.’

‘A man-made wall?’

‘No, an ice wall.’

‘Where was this again?’

‘Up near Alliance Point. Below the cliff.’

Helen’s shoulders sagged. ‘My little brother fell in the town. Near the bakery. The new bakery, not the old bakery – that was up near the pigs and chickens and wasn’t used any more by then.’

It was strange to hear it talked about like a living village.

‘Do you think there could have been tunnels?’ I asked directly.

She sat back and traced a nod. ‘I never believed he fell through the ice. There wasn’t that much of it around that summer in the streets. And when Peter and I had explored around those dreadful sheds where they boiled the blubber and made the guano, there were all sorts of nooks and crannies that could have gone underground. Well, there were trapdoors. But we opened a couple and they didn’t seem to go anywhere.’

‘When you say near the bakery, do you mean by the cinema?’

‘That’s right. Straight opposite. In the street between the cinema and the bakery, that’s where they said he fell through. Froze to death in the icy water, they claimed.’ She turned even paler, and her breathing quickened.

A chill crept up my spine. ‘Helen, did you ever play around the stage in that cinema?’

‘Around it? No. On it, yes. I fancied myself as a bit of an actress and Granny Inga indulged me.’

‘Could there have been a way underground beneath the stage?’

‘Well, anything’s possible, isn’t it, but no one told me anything.’ Her breathing was growing coarser. I’d taxed her. It was pitch black outside.

‘We must be on our way,’ said Nancy protectively, rising. I did the same.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ve kept you too long.’

‘Come back tomorrow, dear,’ said Helen, softening. ‘You just gave me a fright but I can see you didn’t mean to.’ She stood stiffly, and Nancy and I followed her out of the room. In the passage I noticed a table of family photographs.

‘Peter’s not there,’ Helen said, catching me looking. ‘My mama never got over it. She wasn’t in Fredelighavn, see? Didn’t like the rough ocean journey even though she came from generations of sailors. Blamed herself, didn’t she? It’s not natural for a mother to outlive her son, not in this day and age, she’d say. Not in the 1950s.’ I felt an awful bond –
a mother who’d lost her son
– as I gazed at the photo of the thin, sad woman, pale-skinned, dark-haired, a thick knot forming in my throat. But Helen was moving away towards the front door and I had to follow. ‘Buried all the photos with her. It was Mama’s way of being with him.’

I wanted to hug Helen as she opened the sea-blue door, but she stood proud and upright. She looked into the distance as we said goodbye.

‘Come back tomorrow, Laura. I’ll let you see some things. Maybe you’ll find those tunnels if you know where to look.’ She shut the door gently and we made our way through the freezing cold back to Nancy’s house. I forced myself not to dwell on Hamish – the terrifying emptiness that robbed my own will to live, on the day I buried him. I couldn’t afford to lose myself in memories or it would be impossible to think about anything else.

I didn’t feel like sitting and eating; I wanted to be alone, to make notes about what I’d just heard. But Nancy insisted, heating up leftovers – an aromatic beef stew. Home-grown carrots, green beans and baby potatoes glistening with butter were dished on the side. They were the first fresh vegetables I’d had in months, and even though I was distracted my mouth watered with every bite, savouring each morsel after such a long absence. We sat in front of television, both only pretending to watch the news. As soon as we’d finished, we went upstairs. Nancy stopped on the landing; her room was opposite mine.

‘I know you didn’t mean any harm. I just hate to see my old friend like that. Erling never talked about it, you know, the loss of that poor little boy. I’m a year younger than Helen. I was in his class at school.’ Nancy went into her room and shut the door.