‘We’ll see,’ she said again, but not without a smile, not without a glint in her dark eyes.
Oh, dear God, please let her say yes! Please let her come along!
The band started up again. Eric Clapton’s ‘Cocaine’.
I applauded when they had finished, couldn’t take much more, staggered out into the cold, saw Tor Einar chatting with two girls in the ninth class with a big smile on his face, a couple further away snogging in a car, the school at the other end of the football pitch looking like an embankment in the darkness, lit a cigarette, drained the vodka, turned and glimpsed Hege on her way over. My intuition told me I shouldn’t say anything about Ine to her, otherwise she would be sure to come along too and the situation would be impossible.
‘Are you OK?’ she said.
‘Can’t complain,’ I said.
‘So you’ve been chatting to my sister?’
‘Yes, you kept her well hidden. I didn’t even know you had a sister.’
‘We’re only half-sisters. Same dad, but we didn’t grow up together. She lives her own life.’
‘Does she live in Finnsnes?’
‘Yes. She opted for the motor mechanics course. She likes motorbikes. And motorbike riders!’
‘Oh yes.’
Vidar appeared in the doorway. His eyes scoured the people standing outside. And stopped at us. Held us in his gaze, then he came in our direction. He was drunk, I could see that by the way he was concentrating on walking properly and in a straight line. Broad and powerfully built, his shirt open at the chest, a gold chain visible, he stopped in front of us.
‘So this is where you are,’ he said.
She didn’t answer.
He looked at me. ‘We don’t see much of you any more. You should drop in. Or perhaps that’s what you do when I’m away?’
‘It has happened,’ I said. ‘We had a little get-together there for the teachers a couple of weeks ago, for instance. But mostly I stay at home and work in the evenings.’
‘What do you think about Håfjord actually?’
‘It’s nice here,’ I said.
‘Are you happy?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘It’s important that teachers are happy.’
‘Shall we go in?’ Hege said. ‘It’s beginning to get cold.’
‘I’ll stay here for a bit,’ I said. ‘Have to clear my head.’
They went in side by side, next to him she was extremely slight. But she was tough, I thought, and looked out over the village again, it was so quiet and peaceful compared to the hubbub of vying personalities and wills in the clubhouse behind me.
Some time after the band stopped playing, the music was also switched off, and as people began to drift away the lights came on, harsh and quivering, and the magic veil in which the darkness had wrapped everything was torn aside. The dance floor, which moments before had been the scene for the sweetest and hottest dreams, was now bare and empty and covered with dirt and gravel from all the boots that had stomped around on it during the course of the evening. The space beneath the ceiling, which as if underwater had pulsated in hues of red, green and blue except when it had sparkled like a starry sky, was empty apart from a light rig with some light cannons and an idiotic cheap shiny disco ball hanging from the middle. The tables, where people had been sitting and enjoying themselves in what resembled a wall of human warmth, were strewn around, beneath them a sea of empty bottles and scrunched-up cigarette packets, here and there shards of broken glass and the odd trail of toilet paper someone had unwittingly brought with them. The tabletops were stained with all sorts of sticky mess and covered with small burn marks from forgotten cigarettes, on top of the tables there were overflowing ashtrays, piles of cups and glasses, empty bottles of all descriptions, cheap Thermos flasks with long rivulets of coffee under the spouts. The faces of those who had not yet gone home were tired and lifeless, bone structures covered with skin, white and creased, eyes two lumps of jelly, bodies either rippling with fat and folds of skin or so bony and lean that your thoughts were led to the skeletons beneath, which would soon be lying picked nice and clean under the ground in some windblown graveyard with saline soil somewhere by the sea.
No, under the lights this room was nothing special. But then in came six girls wearing football kit to tidy up, they scurried around with their trays and cloths and it was as though life had come to chase away death. I would have loved to stand watching them, but now it was important to give the right impression, not to be a pest and stare and harass, so I went for a walk outside, chatted to people and tried to plan the next phase of the evening, that is, to discover where people were going to drink in case she didn’t want to join me.
A quarter of an hour later the crowd outside the community centre had thinned and I ventured in. With another girl she was carrying a table across the floor to the corner below the stage. After they had put it down she ran one hand across her forehead, rested the other on her hip and looked across at me.
‘After all this hard graft you deserve a break,’ I said. ‘I know a house with a great location by the water. You can relax and recover there.’
‘And no one will come and bother me?’ she said.
‘No,’ I said with a smile.
She held her index finger against her cheek, supported her chin on her thumb and regarded me with raised eyebrows. God, she was so attractive.
Five seconds passed. Ten.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll come with you. We’ve finished here anyway. I just need to change first.’
‘I’ll wait outside,’ I said and turned so that she couldn’t see I was smiling so much my mouth was in danger of splitting open.
A few minutes later she came down the steps zipping up her dark blue Puffa jacket and straightening her white woollen hat in a way that was making my heart thump as I waited in the darkness.
She stopped in front of me and put on her gloves, also white, and shifted the bag she was carrying from one hand to the other.
‘Shall we go then?’ she said, as though we had known each other for years.
I nodded.
All the light-headedness vanished as we set off down the hill. Now it was just her and me. And oh, how aware I was of her movements and facial expressions as we walked down the snow-covered road.
She was tall, slim, her nose was small like a child’s, her hips were beautifully rounded, her feet small, yet there was nothing of that dainty grace about her, she wasn’t someone you wanted to protect, someone you wanted to take care of, and her strength, which was also a coldness, was what perhaps I found most irresistible about her.
When her eyes didn’t flash with life they were dark and calm.
This had been my initiative, she had waited for me, I had set this in motion.
We had already reached my old flat.
‘Where do you stay when you come here?’ I asked.
‘At mum’s,’ she said, pointing down to the right. ‘She lives down there.’