The Ribbons Are for Fearlessness Page 3

  What the hell had I got myself into?

  When I’d told people I was going to busk to Nordkapp and see the midnight sun, most of them had thought I was joking. Especially when I said it was Andrew’s idea, and I was doing it for him. Something told me not to mention that it was also Jack’s idea, and I was also doing it for him, to prove something, in the desperate hope that he would fall in love with me again and we would live happily ever after. Although it was hard to believe in happily ever after now that Andrew was dead.

  Occasionally someone muttered excitedly about fjords, although nobody knew what a fjord actually was. Everyone had always wanted to see one anyway, but nobody ever had because it was too expensive. In short, I knew nothing about Norway and I knew nobody in it. Apart from a friend of a friend of a friend, that I had never met or spoken to, called Aase Gjerdrum. Aase lived in Oslo and worked for a Norwegian publishing company. I wondered what she would think if she knew that her phone number was taped to my dashboard, that I thought of her as some kind of guardian angel, and that I had nothing else to fall back on. I had no credit card, no AA membership, no Bank of Mum and Dad. Aase Gjerdrum was the sum total of my safety net.

  The kettle boiled and I made a cup of tea from my stash of Yorkshire tea bags and carried it outside. I leaned against the side of the van, hating myself. If only I had actually tried busking before I left, like any normal person would. Instead I had listened to a very stoned Ben read out loud from Wikipedia. Apparently busking started in ancient Rome, although it was unclear exactly what the ancient Romans did, apart from wear flip-flops. “Busker,” according to Ben, originally meant “flip-flop wearer.” I looked down at my own flip-flops, what was left of them, which wasn’t much. Later, the Spanish verb buscar came to mean “to seek or wander.” Ben rolled his eyes, but I liked that. Jack would have liked that. The French version busquer, on the other hand, means “prostitute.” In English, in my experience, busking usually meant sitting wearily on the pavement in the rain with a recorder, a dog, and a can of Special Brew.

  I had convinced myself it would be easier in a foreign country with absolutely no chance of seeing anyone who even vaguely recognized me. Now, leaning against the van by that lonely fjord, miles from anywhere, I knew that it would not. It didn’t matter if I was in England, Norway, or Timbuktu, I was the worst candidate for busking the world had ever seen. It’s not that I couldn’t play. Apart from at school, where the endless repetition of scales in front of teachers who were clearly bored out of their minds made me want to scratch my own eyes out with the bow, the trauma of music exams made me physically sick, and the humiliation of dragging the thing on to the school bus and having to sit with it in the front seat made me want to curl up and die, I had always loved my cello with the deep and lasting love you might have for a sibling. But my relationship with my cello was personal, and playing it was something I did alone, with my eyes closed, in darkened rooms, when I was absolutely certain nobody was listening. And what I played were elegies and requiems. Things that made me cry. Which would probably go down quite well at a funeral. But less well in a shopping center. I couldn’t play anything else, either, because I didn’t know anything else off by heart and I hadn’t brought any sheet music with me. Ben had said it was naff to busk with a music stand. I emptied what was left of my tea on the ground and climbed back into the driver’s seat. I put one of Jack’s tapes in the tape player. Instead of playing, it chewed itself up and spat itself out.

  6

  The diesel warning light had been on for about 30 miles by the time I was relieved of half my life savings, about five pounds, by a man whose job it was to collect tolls from people wishing to enter Oslo, a practice I thought had died out in the Middle Ages. At least the man was kind. I enquired about places to park for the night and he told me about a lake called the Maridalsvannet, which doubled as an informal campsite for migrant workers. I arrived at dusk and they came in pairs with cans of beer to lean on my van and stare at me until I closed the door and lay down in my sleeping bag on my makeshift bed.

  The man in the orange overalls had been right about the weather. I woke up in a much hotter country. I drove toward the center of the city and spent some time trying to find a place to park that wasn’t ferociously expensive. In the end I left the van on a side street in front of a sign I didn’t understand and hoped for the best. I had worse things to worry about. Unable to eat, sick with dread, I hauled my cello out of its cupboard and onto my back. They make cello cases out of carbon fiber now, light and shiny. Mine was made of plywood. The straps had long since broken and been replaced by leather belts that dug into my shoulders like an old-fashioned instrument of torture. I had a wooden stool with a hole in the top that could just about be carried in one hand. In the other hand I carried a red woollen beret. At the last minute I stuffed Aase Gjerdrum’s telephone number into my back pocket.

  Apart from a suprising number of girls in bikinis, Oslo was deserted. All the shops were closed and everyone was sunbathing—frantically, it seemed—stocking up on vitamin D after an unimaginably long and depressing winter. I wondered if there were public holidays for that kind of thing in Norway. There were sunbathers everywhere; on the pavements, on the grassy centers of major roundabouts, on flat roofs, on wooden benches, draped over stone statues. They propped themselves up and stared at me curiously as I shuffled past with my load, desperately wishing that, instead of the cello, I had learned to play something small and easy to hide, like the violin, or the kazoo.

  I finally came to a halt by a big fountain at the entrance to the Nationaltheatret underground station. I found a shady corner and sat down on the stool. There were crowds of people milling around. I couldn’t think of a single thing in the world I wanted to do less than unpack my cello in front of them, let alone play it. But if I didn’t want to spend the rest of my days in Oslo, slowly starving to death, that is what I had to do. I tightened the bow and let the spike out. Some of the people had stopped milling around and were looking at me. I wondered if busking was illegal in Norway. I took out the cello, dropped the hat on the ground and tried to smile. Nobody smiled back. There was a noise in my ears like the sea.

  I decided to play the Minuet from the first Bach Suite, because it was easy, because it was famous, and because it was the only thing I could remember in a major key. Major keys are the ones that sound cheerful, as opposed to minor keys, which sound mournful. Needless to say, almost everything I knew by heart was in a minor key.

  It didn’t go well. There are no frets on a cello, and finding the right place for my fingers on the strings when my hands were sweating and shaking from adrenaline was virtually impossible, even if I had remembered to tune up first, which I hadn’t. Somehow I made it to the end, then I dropped the bow, reached down to pick it up and was nearly sick on the floor. I spotted a phone box on the other side of the fountain. I thought about calling Ben and asking to borrow the money for a ferry ticket home.

  Two children came and stood in front of me, giggling and pinching each other. Their mother came and smacked them and put two coins in the hat. I tried to say thank you, but when I opened my mouth no words came out. I began to wonder if I was clinically insane. I got up off the stool, put my cello back in its case, stuffed the two coins, which amounted to twelve kroner, about one pound twenty, into my back pocket, picked up the stool and the hat and walked toward the phone box. Twelve kroner wasn’t enough to call Ben and ask to borrow the money for a ferry ticket home. I focused on trying to unlock my jaw, which was clamped shut so hard my teeth were beginning to hurt.

  I walked and walked, oblivious to my surroundings. I walked until I found myself on the edge of what I later found out was the Oslofjord. I sat down under a huge poster of The Scream by Munch. I tried to gather my thoughts, while yachts tugged at their moorings and huge cruise ships drifted at anchor like floating blocks of flats, and people ate ice cream and other people drank cold beers at cafés with colorful umbrellas. I realized that I was hungry. A dark-ski
nned boy with several missing teeth handed me a piece of paper with his telephone number on it. I wondered if twelve kroner was enough for an alcoholic drink.

  Twelve kroner was not enough for an alcoholic drink, but it was enough for a phone call to Aase Gjerdrum. I almost cried when she said that I had chosen the right time to call. It was Sunday (which explained all the closed shops and sunbathers), she was not at work, and she had time to come and meet me at the Oslofjord. We went to one of the cafés with colorful umbrellas. Aase ordered two bottles of Arctic beer and some salmon sandwiches, then she spread a big map of Norway out on the table.

  “So that we can pore over it,” she said, her handsome face lighting up.

  I knew that Aase was married to a famous Norwegian author. I didn’t know that her son, Erling Kagge, was a famous Norwegian explorer. The first man in history to make it to the North Pole, the South Pole, and the summit of Everest.

  “He has sailed across the Atlantic, around Cape Horn, to the Antarctic and the Galapagos Islands.” Aase smiled brightly. “When he went to the South Pole he did not even take a radio.”

  I hid behind my salmon sandwich.

  “He has just written a book. It is called Philosophy for Polar Explorers.”

  I picked up my Arctic beer.

  “Where are you staying?”

  I mentioned the Maridalsvannet. Something told me not to mention the migrant workers.

  “You are camping?”

  I had emailed Aase before I left. She knew about my plan to busk to the midnight sun. Maybe she had thought I would be staying in hotels.

  “I have a van. A bright yellow van.”

  “You are driving?” She shook her head. “I hope you have plenty of time. The roads are not so good in the north and the distances are very vast.”

  I took a large gulp of Arctic beer.

  “Do you know much about Norway?”

  “I know there are hardly any people.”

  “Yes, that is true, and more than half live here in the south-east. Stavanger and Bergen are also important cities. In the north, after Trondheim, there is practically no one.”

  On reflection, it didn’t seem like the ideal place to launch a busking career.

  Aase spread the map out on the table and pointed to things as if I were a wealthy tourist instead of a homeless beggar who had undertaken an impossible task.

  “The fjords are a must, of course, and the national parks are wonderful. I have never been to the Polarsirkelen myself. It is too far.”

  I said nothing.

  “Would you like some more food?”

  Aase ordered three slices of cake and two more bottles of Arctic beer. It was a relatively new thing, she said, being able to buy beer in a café. The prohibition lasted well into the 1950s.

  “We were still a very drunk country, though,” she said, encouragingly. “People simply made illegal distilleries in their houses.”

  According to Aase, Arctic beer was brewed in the northernmost brewery in the world in the northernmost university town in the world. Tromsø.

  “We call it the Paris of the north.”

  “Why?”

  “You will see!”

  I swallowed.

  “How far is Tromsø from here?” I said.

  “About two thousand kilometres.”

  I took a huge gulp of beer.

  “You know what. I don’t actually think I’m …”

  My voice trailed off.

  “Do you know what the other name for Erling’s book is?”

  “No,” I said.

  “All the things they do not teach you in school!”

  She patted my hand.

  “You see, Erling was not top of the class. Or even the best at gym. He was just a dreamer. And that is what they do not teach you in school.”

  “To be a dreamer?”

  “To believe in your dreams.”

  Aase left. I wrapped the spare piece of cake in a napkin and stuffed it into my cello case. I drank the last of the Arctic beer and carried my cello onto one of the wooden boardwalks that ran alongside the fjord. I put the stool down and sat where I could see the water. I put out the red woollen beret, even though the boardwalk was entirely deserted, and too far from the cafés for anybody there to be able to hear me. That’s why I had chosen it. I needed some time alone with my cello. I tuned up and launched into the Minuet again, eyes closed, rehearsing it for the next time I went out onto the street. By the third rendition it sounded almost like music. Halfway through the fourth I heard a cough. I opened my eyes.

  “You need money?” said a pig-like man with gold rings on his fat fingers.

  He stank of aftershave and had a thick accent that could have been Russian. I nodded. I pushed the beret toward him with my toe. The man laughed, showing a small, pink tongue and several gold teeth. He felt in his pockets and pulled out a great big handful of coins, which he threw in the beret. I stared at him.

  “I am rich man,” he said.

  I tried to smile. He leaned in close. Too close.

  “I have boat. You spend twenty-four hours with me on boat I give you ten thousand kroner.”

  I gasped. Ten thousand kroner was a thousand pounds. A thousand pounds was enough to get me all the way to Nordkapp. And back, probably. And drink Arctic beer at cafés with colorful umbrellas, and eat smoked salmon sandwiches and cake. No busking, in other words. Ever again. The man was drumming his fingers together.

  “But what would you want me to do,” I asked, stupidly.

  He stuck his face right next to mine.

  “Eversing,” he whispered.

  7

  The great big handful of coins amounted to three hundred kroner, about thirty pounds. Not enough to get to Nordkapp and back but enough, thankfully, to get out of Oslo. I was in such a hurry to do this that I ended up on the wrong road and found myself traveling not north, as I had originally planned, or even west, back to Bergen, but south, toward a town called Kristiansand. As far away as you can get from Nordkapp, in other words, without actually leaving the country. By the time I realized what I had done it was too late to turn around.

  I spent my second night by the sea, parked above a sandy cove. I arrived late but it was not dark. Instead the sky was an inky blue and the air was heavy with the scent of roses and pine needles. The water looked so clear and clean it inspired in me a profound longing to wash. My skin felt sticky and uncomfortable, as though the events of the past days and weeks had attached themselves to it like burrs. My feet were black with dirt from tramping around Oslo in flip-flops. My hair was lank and greasy.

  The water was freezing, much colder than Cornwall, but in spite of this I stayed in for ages, scrubbing my skin over and over with handfuls of sand. Afterward I ate pasta and tinned tomatoes that I had brought with me from England, sitting on the bed and watching the sky finally turn from an inky blue to a kind of dusky blue. I liked the cove, and I allowed myself to consider the possibility of not going to Nordkapp. Instead I would stay in the south, live on pasta, and slowly busk my way back to Bergen, where I would save the money for a ferry home. If I even managed that it would be a miracle, but at least if I wasn’t racing to the midnight sun I could take as long as I liked. I tried not to think about Andrew, or Jack, or telling Ben that I’d only made it as far as Oslo.

  One night turned into seven. The cove was called Galgebergtangen, which means Gallow’s Point in English. Each morning a squad of old ladies wearing rubber swimming hats plunged like seal pups into the icy water. I ate pasta for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I watched the longest day of the year come and go, only this time it was the longest day of my whole life, with barely two hours of darkness, and even then it wasn’t really dark, just sort of dusky. I read all the books I had brought with me and practiced the first sixteen bars of the first movement of Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C, which I could just about remember and which, like Bach’s Minuet, was in a major key. I couldn’t remember the rest of that movement. The second movement I kne
w all the way through, because it was a heartbroken, minor key adagio. Much too melancholy for busking.

  On the third day I forced myself to drive to Kristiansand, about a mile away, and set up on the Strandpromenaden. I’d like to tell you that it went better this time, but I would be lying. My hands were still slippery with adrenaline and I kept losing my place in the music, because every time I opened my eyes there were people staring at me. At least they couldn’t hear it. Nobody could hear it. I couldn’t even hear it. Kristiansand is a noisy town and the cello is a quiet instrument. I made about a hundred kroner a day, the equivalent of ten pounds, from people who obviously felt sorry for me.

  When I wasn’t busking I was worrying. I worried incessantly. Mainly I worried about money. It’s not that I wasn’t used to having no money. I’d grown up with no money and I’d had no money ever since. It was one of those things about Cornwall. Nobody ever had any money. But it’s one thing to have no money in the place you grew up where there are friends around the corner to lend you some if you are actually starving, and quite another to be alone with no money in a strange Norwegian town with nothing apart from one Minuet and the first sixteen bars of the Haydn Cello Concerto in C. When I wasn’t worrying about starving to death, I was worrying about breaking down or breaking my cello. I worried about breaking myself, fatal van accidents, and having no busking licence. I worried about not knowing enough Norwegian to even find out if I needed a busking licence. I worried about Jack falling off some cliff somewhere on the other side of the world and I worried about Ben going stir crazy all alone at Broadsands. I worried that I would give myself a heart attack from worrying. And then, just before that happened, I met Jan Erik.