Travelling Light Read online

  Lars was not yet at the monolith. With deep reluctance Kristine stared up at it, a granite column fifty feet high carved with a writhing mass of naked human forms, life upon life, full of hunger, struggle, pain, and vitality. All the connections of one human being with another, she thought painfully. For not one of the figures was separate from the rest.

  She felt tears prick her eyes. You can’t travel light, she thought. It’s not possible. I’m denying the human condition to do so.

  There was a roaring in her ears and a block of ice seemed to have lodged itself in her midriff. Pulling her eyes away from the column, she saw Lars coming up the steps, his tall body superimposing itself on the seething bodies on the column. With all her will-power Kristine fought back her tears, wishing she were anywhere in the world but here.

  Almost clumsily Lars took her in his arms. Surrendering to a pain she had scarcely known was hers, Kristine buried her face in his shirt and wept.

  Her crying spell was short-lived but violent, her frame shaking, her arms wrapped tightly around his waist; and then she quietened. Lars pressed a couple of tissues into her hand, and dimly she became aware of other visitors tactfully skirting them, of a little girl staring up at her and asking a question of her mother. ‘I c-could scarcely have chosen a more public p-place in all of Oslo,’ she hiccuped.

  ‘Let’s find somewhere to sit down.’

  He kept an arm around her as they went down the steps. At the foot she was confronted by a granite sculpture of a man and a woman, leaning in towards each other and enclosing between them the child they had made. She said bleakly, ‘It was never like that in my family. I—I’ve never seen my father hug my mother. And I looked after the four boys—they didn’t.’

  Lars said harshly, ‘No wonder you travel light.’

  They were crossing the mosaic floor by the fountain. ‘Are you angry with me?’ Kristine whispered. ‘I know I must sound self-pitying.’

  ‘No, Kristine, I’m not angry with you. With your mother and your father, yes. With you, no.’

  She found a handkerchief in her pocket along with her Swiss army knife and blew her nose as they walked over the bridge. Lars led her down a slope into a small circle of statues that were encircled by bushes near a pond. ‘I didn’t come here,’ she quavered.

  ‘The children’s corner, they call it.’

  He sat down on one of the benches while she went from one to the next of the bronze statues of babies and small children, memories of her brothers crowding her mind. When she finally sat down beside him, she leaned her head back on the bench and closed her eyes; she felt very tired.

  ‘Tell me what it was like for you,’ Lars said.

  Not looking at him she began to talk, and slowly there emerged the portraits of an angry father, of a mother who bore five children in as many years and coped by taking to her bed, and of a young girl, the only daughter, relegated to responsibilities beyond her years. ‘I didn’t feel I had any choice,’ she said. ‘If I didn’t look after the boys, no one would. Yet I loved them; of course I did.’

  ‘Loved them and resented them,’ Lars said. ‘Because they robbed you of your childhood.’

  ‘I suppose they did...I sure didn’t have much time to play with the other kids. My brothers all left home as soon as they were old enough, and who could blame them? I stayed until Paul turned sixteen—he went to live with Carl in Manitoba—and then I left. My mother wept when I left,’ she finished in a dead voice.

  ‘She expected you to stay although it was all right for the boys to leave?’

  ‘That was the assumption.’

  ‘You had to get out in order to survive,’ he said trenchantly.

  While he was telling her nothing she did not already know, to hear him say it was an immense relief. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  The violinist was playing again. A sparrow flew over her head in a whirr of wings and at one end of the bridge a child was crying. Because she had wept in front of Lars, and because his embrace had comforted her, Kristine said with absolute honesty, ‘I decided years ago I never wanted to get married or have children, Lars. Love dies, and anger and depression take its place. Children eat up your life and leave you nothing for yourself. So that’s why I travel light.’

  He was silent for a long time, his steel-blue eyes resting on her face, which was still streaked with tears. Then he said, ‘This whole park is about love and the lack of love, about the joys and costs of love. But it doesn’t advocate closing yourself off from love—for that truly is death.’

  The monolith had given her exactly the same message. She said stringently, ‘I know how I feel about marriage and children—I grew up with a bad marriage and I raised four children.’

  ‘Someone else’s marriage and someone else’s children.’

  ‘That’s all I’ve experienced,’ she said wildly. ‘I don’t know anything else!’

  ‘Your own children will show you it can be different.’

  His voice was implacable and his eyes bored into hers. ‘I’m in no hurry to find out,’ she retorted.

  ‘Let me come with you when you leave Oslo,’ Lars said softly. ‘We’ll travel together and I’ll show you how a man and a woman can have fun and be happy.’

  ‘I travelled with Bill in Thailand, and Andreas in Greece, and Philippe in Turkey and France—and we had fun.’

  ‘And did you sleep with them?’ he rapped.

  ‘I told you I didn’t!’

  ‘You and I would sleep together, Kristine—we would be together in all senses of the word. Day and night. Like a marriage.’ He ran one finger down the curve of her cheekbone to the corner of her mouth, tracing the fullness of her lower lip.

  She said tautly, ‘That’s not fair, what you’re doing.’

  ‘It’s called honesty. We want each other, why should we pretend otherwise?’

  She dragged her eyes away from his. ‘I won’t travel with you, Lars. I won’t.’

  He said inflexibly, ‘Two years ago you did what needed to be done—you got out of your parents’ house. Now the next step is in front of you. Take it, Kristine.’

  Honesty was the word he had used. ‘I’m afraid to,’ she said.

  His lashes flickered. After a noticeable pause, he said, ‘Afraid?’

  ‘Yes, afraid. Terrified, frightened, scared...you don’t like me using those words, do you? But they’re true.’

  ‘You may be afraid, and with good reason,’ he replied with painful exactitude. ‘But you’re not a coward, Kristine. There’s a big difference.’

  Her eyes fell on the long red line on his arm. Ten clowns would be easier to face than Lars, she thought, and remembered the blatant sensuality of the waltz they had shared last night. ‘You don’t let up, do you?’ she said shakily.

  ‘No. Because I’m fighting for myself as well.’

  Unconsciously she moved away from him on the bench. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked in a hostile voice.

  There was another of those long moments of brooding silence before he spoke. ‘I don’t normally pursue women who make it clear they don’t want me around. Certainly I’ve never before wanted to tear the clothes off a woman on a dance-floor. I don’t like chasing you if you really don’t want—’

  ‘Then stop,’ she interrupted.

  ‘I can’t help myself.’

  Lines of tension were scoring his cheeks. Kristine hardened her heart. ‘I don’t want marriage and I’m not into affairs,’ she said roundly, getting to her feet. ‘So there’s no point in chasing me.’

  He too stood up. ‘Do you think I like feeling like this?’ he said savagely.

  ‘I can see that you don’t,’ she answered, her nails digging into her palms. ‘I’ve been so confused since I met you that I’ve given you mixed messages and led you on, I know—I’m sorry about that. And I’m grateful you were so kind to me by the monolith. But there’s nowhere for us to go, Lars. Let’s end this now, before we begin anything we’ll—’

  ‘We began the minute you ran i
nto me in the park.’

  ‘Then I’m sorry I ever did!’

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ he said.

  She fought down the memories of his kisses and his laughter and the strength of his arms. ‘Yes, I do.’

  His body went very still. ‘Kristine, you’re living out your parents’ life—you’re choosing fear over passion.’

  She clapped her hands to her ears. ‘I don’t want to see you any more, and I have a perfect right to make that decision. Besides, I’m saving both of us grief further down the road.’

  ‘You’re denying us any possibility of joy!’

  ‘That’s how you see it.’

  ‘You and me together—it feels so right.’

  ‘Stop it, Lars,’ Kristine begged. ‘I hate what you’re doing to me.’

  All the expression drained from his face. ‘Hate’s a strong word.’

  ‘You must leave me alone,’ she said in a quiet voice more convincing than any tirade. ‘I mean that, Lars. I’m not playing games or being hard to get—I just don’t want to see you any more.’

  ‘We’ll both regret this, Kristine.’

  ‘I know I’m doing the right thing,’ she said stubbornly.

  His eyes were shuttered, like those of a stranger. ‘Then there’s nothing more I can say, is there? Except goodbye...goodbye and good luck.’

  He gave her a brief nod, turned away and began walking up the path towards the bridge. As he disappeared among the crowds, Kristine sat down hard on the bench, gazing unseeingly at a bronze sculpture of a little boy.

  She had not wanted Lars chasing her. And now he was not. Why then this empty hollow in the pit of her stomach, this sense of having murdered something new-born and vulnerable?

  * * *

  Kristine sat on the bench for the better part of an hour. She then walked back to Harald’s flat, the exercise making her feel minimally less unhappy. A long black car was parked near the entrance of the building, and as she approached a uniformed chauffeur got out. For a crazy moment she thought it must be a message from Lars, and her heart clenched.

  The chauffeur looked old enough to be home with his great-grandchildren. He said in heavily accented English, ‘Fru Bronstad wishes to speak,’ and opened the back door of the car. The car looked just as old as he, but better preserved.

  Kristine bent, saw Lars’s grandmother sitting on the far side of the car, and got in with an unwillingness she did not try to mask. ‘Good afternoon,’ she said as pleasantly as she could.

  Marta Bronstad inclined her head. Today she was wearing a linen suit with a lace-collared blouse, diamonds sending sharp-edged sparks from her ears and her fingers. She said coldly, ‘I won’t take much of your time, Miss Kleiven. I want you to leave my grandson alone.’

  Wishing she could find this funny, Kristine said, ‘You could have saved yourself the trouble, Fru Bronstad. Because I’ve just finished giving him exactly the same message.’

  ‘I have difficulty believing that.’

  It had been a long day and Kristine was not in the mood for social niceties. ‘I really don’t care whether you believe me or not.’

  Marta Bronstad sat up a little straighter. ‘Sigrid is a very suitable match for him, and a delightful girl. The marriage will join the two estates, and she will give him healthy sons.’

  The thought of Sigrid holding Lars’s child lanced Kristine’s body with pain. Aware at some level of the total irrationality of this response, she retorted peevishly, ‘Heaven forbid that she should give him daughters.’

  ‘I wish the Bronstad name perpetuated!’

  Kristine drew a deep breath. ‘Fru Bronstad, you’re wasting your time and mine. I’m leaving Oslo tomorrow, and I’m not coming back. I’ve already said goodbye to Lars.’

  Marta Bronstad’s voice was fraught with suspicion. ‘When I die, he will be a rich man.’

  ‘There’s obviously no point in me saying I don’t give a damn about his money or his estate or his big stone house—I’d stifle in that house! Because you won’t believe me, will you? But that’s what I’m saying. And I’ll say something else—Lars, unless I’m very much mistaken, will choose the woman he is to marry—the woman to bear his sons. Lars. Not you.’

  ‘Sigrid would never speak to me like this!’

  Exasperated, Kristine rejoined, ‘Neither would I, if you’d stop interfering in my life and telling me what to do.’

  Marta Bronstad leaned forward, agitatedly twisting the diamond rings on her gnarled fingers. ‘I don’t understand you, Miss Kleiven.’

  ‘You haven’t tried to.’

  Some of the fire faded from the pale blue eyes that were glued to Kristine’s face. ‘I suppose that’s true,’ the old woman acknowledged with rigid fairness.

  Kristine cast discretion to the winds, for what did it matter? After today Lars’s grandmother, like Lars, would be gone from her life. ‘You saw me as a poverty-stricken tourist of dubious morals doing her best to snag your admittedly handsome grandson from under your nose,’ she said. ‘I may not have much money, but I don’t operate that way. And the last thing I want to do is settle down on an estate in Norway. I don’t want to settle down anywhere—with anyone.’

  The diamonds flashed their cold white fire. ‘I am beginning to think you are a most unusual young woman...and that I may have misjudged you.’

  A compliment, Kristine thought dazedly, and said with the utmost sobriety, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Most unusual.’

  For the first time since they had met there was something approaching respect in the glance Marta Bronstad levelled at Kristine; and for the first time Kristine felt a twinge of liking for her adversary. She was not, Kristine would be willing to bet, a woman who often admitted she might have been wrong. ‘Well,’ she said inadequately, ‘I’d better be going.’ Searching for the word for goodbye, she held out her hand and said, ‘Farvel, Fru Bronstad.’

  Marta Bronstad shook her hand. ‘Goodbye, Miss Kleiven.’

  Kristine slid across the seat and the ancient chauffeur stood to attention as she got out. She ran for the door of Harald’s building.

  The last tie with Lars had been cut. And she knew precisely what she was going to do next. She was going to leave Oslo as soon as she could pack and load up her little car. Fond as she was of Harald, she did not want to be the third party to his weekend with the generous Gianetta. And the sooner she removed herself from the vicinity of Lars the better.

  Practising a determinedly bright smile as she ran upstairs, she girded herself to meet Harald’s protestations and rang the doorbell.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  TWO hours later Kristine was on her way. Harald had packed a substantial picnic for her supper, and Gianetta, a luscious black-eyed beauty, had insisted Kristine include the sea-green jumpsuit in her backpack. ‘It takes no room and with your eyes—bellissima!’

  Harald said bluntly, ‘What about Lars?’

  ‘I’ve dealt with Lars,’ Kristine replied repressively.

  ‘And are you going to Fjaerland?’

  ‘I expect so. Eventually. But please don’t tell them I’m coming, Harald.’

  He rolled his eyes to the ceiling in frustration, kissed her on both cheeks, and told her to phone any time in case of emergency. He then drew a map to guide her out of the city, and waved goodbye from the pavement as she drove away.

  She took the E18 south. It was, she realised, the opposite direction to Fjaerland, but she needed time to absorb the loss of Lars before she faced her grandfather and all the family history that visit might involve. She drove steadily, her battered little Fiat eating up the miles; she wanted to put as much distance as she could between her and Oslo before she stopped for the night.

  The countryside was very pretty, grain ripening in fields dotted with red barns, the farmhouses set among low hills. She camped past Larvik, by the sea, eating half her picnic for supper and then wandering along the shoreline, picking her way over the rocks. Although she was beyond Lars’s reach now, s
he couldn’t get him off her mind. Over and again her brain kept replaying every minute they had spent together.

  She had a lot of memories of him, an astonishing number considering how brief a time they had known each other. But, she thought unhappily, she actually knew very little about him. She had had to get away from him to see that.

  She watched a tern hover over the water and then plunge for a fish. Where had Lars learned such good English? What did he do for his living? Was he just hanging about Oslo waiting to inherit Asgard? She had asked him none of these questions. Because she hadn’t wanted the answers? Or because she had wanted them too much?

  He knew about her parents and her four brothers, and the way she felt about marriage. He must be thirty, yet he had not married. Why not?

  Had he ever been in love?

  She stooped and picked up a flat rock, skipping it across the surface of the water with absent-minded expertise. Had her lack of curiosity hurt his feelings?

  She would never know the answer to that question, or to any of the rest, she thought, gazing at the massed grey clouds low on the horizon. For she had chosen not to ask them. She had turned her back on any possibility of a relationship with Lars, a man as different from her four brothers as a man could be, because she was afraid of what might happen.

  She walked back to the campsite and climbed into her sleeping-bag, and the rhythm of the waves lulled her to sleep. In the morning the rest of Harald’s picnic served as breakfast, eaten under a shelter because of the fine misty rain.

  The rain worsened as she headed south again; she spent the afternoon in Kristiansand, then camped that night near Mandal. There was a beach at Mandal, and according to the tourist bureau it would be a sunny day tomorrow; perhaps a swim in the ocean would help ease the dull ache that seemed to be accompanying her wherever she went.

  There was no reason for her to feel unhappy, she thought irritably, wrestling with the zip on her sleeping-bag. Lars had done one thing, and one thing only: he had awakened her latent sexuality. That was all. She was a normal young woman and sooner or later somebody had to stir her hormones to action. Lars had succeeded where Bill, Andreas and Philippe had not. But that didn’t mean she had to keep on thinking about him all the time. Or feel as if the weight of the world was sitting on her shoulders.