The Ribbons Are for Fearlessness Page 4

  8

  It was another hot and distinctly un-northern day. A couple of policemen, summoned by a shopkeeper who was threatening to shoot me and then himself if he ever had to hear the first sixteen bars of the Haydn Cello Concerto in C ever again, suggested that it might be time for me to leave Kristiansand. They were sympathetic, and they didn’t mention anything about needing a licence. Instead they suggested I went to Stavanger, a couple of hundred kilometers up the west coast. It was Norway’s third city, they said. The center of the oil industry. I’d do well there. Everyone was rich.

  I had managed to save four hundred kroner, about forty pounds, which should have been more than enough to pay for the diesel I needed to travel a mere 125 miles. I chose what looked like the shortest route. I hadn’t bargained for the topography. I was not yet familiar with the fact that roads in Norway are not so much roads as a series of bridges interspersed with boats. Three times the road ground to a halt in front of a large body of water and everyone stood leaning against their cars in the sun while a teenager came along and sold tickets for a clanging white ferry that was chugging slowly across the fjord. It was like going back in time. And there was no way out of it.

  By the time I had driven on and off two ferries I was all out of spare cash. In the queue for the third I was reduced to hunting around on the floor of the van for bits of money I might have dropped. When I started hunting on the tarmac outside the van a long, thin man unfolded himself from the car in front. He said “heck” a lot, introduced himself as Jan Erik, and offered to pay for my ticket. Like everybody else, he wondered why I was traveling alone.

  “I like traveling alone,” I said, bravely.

  “You are on holiday?”

  “Well,” I said. “A working holiday.”

  “Heck, why is that?”

  “Because I have no money.”

  Jan Erik was enthusiastically discouraging.

  “I hope you have got a visa! Norway is not part of the EU. Gray work is not easy to find. Heck, what do you plan to do?”

  “I have a cello. I’m going to busk my way to Nordkapp and see the midnight sun …”

  My voice trailed off. Something inside me gave a hollow laugh. Jan Erik crinkled his eyes again.

  “What does it mean, busk?”

  “Play music on the street.”

  Jan Erik shook his head.

  “Like a troubadour.”

  “Troubadour?”

  I tried to sound nonchalant.

  “You know, one of those guys with a hat and a dog and a guitar with five strings. Only I’ve got a cello instead. Don’t they have people like that in your town?”

  “Stavanger? Heck, no. I have never seen a troubadour in Stavanger.”

  He crinkled his eyes again.

  “You are going to drive all the way to Nordkapp and sleep in your car and play a violoncello in the street?”

  I gritted my teeth.

  “Actually it’s a van.”

  Jan Erik looked at me with barefaced fascination.

  “Did you know that it is as far to drive from Oslo to Tromsø as it is to drive from Oslo to Rome?”

  “I’m not going to Tromsø. I’m going to Nordkapp.”

  “Nordkapp is even further! Do you know how far it is to Nordkapp?”

  “About two thousand five hundred kilometers.”

  He nodded enthusiastically. I wanted to punch him.

  “How much kilometers does your car make in the liter?”

  I had spent lots of time on this.

  “It’ll go about one hundred kilometers on ten pounds which is …”

  “… one hundred kroner so that’s about one kroner per kilometer plus ferries and tolls and mountains, which will be more expensive, so that’s going to be, that’s going to be, at least …”

  Jan Erik did some maths in his head. He looked like the kind of person who enjoyed doing maths in his head.

  “… at least six thousand kroner!”

  “Plus food,” I said, weakly.

  Jan Erik looked horrified. He took a pen out of his breast pocket and a piece of paper from his briefcase and proceeded to write down his phone number next to a map of where he lived in Stavanger.

  “Give me a call,” he said. “Heck, I will feed you.”

  He fed me steak. With it we drank a whole bottle of expensive red wine. I did not normally drink whole bottles of expensive wine in the houses of strange men, but somehow Jan Erik was different. He crinkled his eyes. If he hadn’t been quite so long and thin I might have snogged him when he handed me an armful of soft clean towels and pushed me into a plush bathroom with a shower whose head was bigger than mine. And I would definitely have snogged him when he insisted on pasting a big piece of paper to the windscreen of my van saying, in Norwegian, that it was his and not to tow it away. (All the other vehicles in the car park were made by Mercedes or BMW and under two years old.) Jan Erik said I could sleep outside for as long as I wanted and use his shower. Heck, he said, I could sleep inside if I liked, in a bed, but I’d probably rather be in my car, seeing as I was a troubadour.

  Jan Erik worked for a company that designed industrial computers for oil rigs. Only what he actually did every day was marketing.

  “Heck, all jobs today are basically marketing.”

  “Except busking,” I said, my mouth full of steak and my head full of wine.

  He raised his glass.

  “Except busking.”

  In the daytime Jan Erik wore a suit and worked in an office, selling things to do with oil. The rest of the time he was outside. His apartment was littered with skis. Like Jack, he had climbing ropes hanging from all his coat hooks. Unlike Jack, he never mentioned them. It was Jan Erik who told me that fjords were huge river valleys carved out by glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age. They snaked inland for hundreds of kilometers, often deeper than the sea. Hence the ferries.

  The first evening he fixed my doors. Both of them, so that the back door opened from the outside and the sliding one slid and was not held on with cable ties. Jan Erik liked my van. He liked my red tin teapot and the ancient biscuit tin decorated with brown and orange flowers that I had taken to stashing kroner in.

  “Heck,” he said.

  The second evening he produced a pair of sea kayaks, showed me how to paddle without falling out (not as easy as it looks) and led me up the Stavangerfjord to an uninhabited island where we cooked sausages over a fire he made by rubbing two sticks together. No kidding.

  On the third evening we went to Gamle Stavanger, the old town, which was like walking round a museum-full of flowers in wooden tubs and higgeldy-piggeldy wooden cottages and ancient communal water pumps. Then we went to watch the final of the Grand Slam beach volleyball event.

  “I bet you didn’t expect to find the Grand Slam beach volleyball in Norway.”

  He was right. If I had thought about it, the Grand Slam beach volleyball was probably the very last thing I had ever expected to find in Norway.

  “They make the sand expressfully,” he said.

  I think he meant especially.

  “Real sand isn’t good enough.”

  I expect you’re thinking that I spent my days busking. I expect that’s what Jan Erik thought, too. He gave me a key in the expectation that I would go out and come back. What I actually did was lie in the sun reading his books about other people climbing Everest. I told myself it didn’t matter, now that I had given up on going to Nordkapp.

  Until the fourth evening, when Jan Erik asked if I’d like to use his telephone to call home. He disappeared into the kitchen and left me alone in the hall. I dialed the number for Broadsands. It rang for ages. My heart smashed against my rib cage. Finally Ben answered.

  “Hello,” I croaked.

  “How’s troubadouring then?”

  “Um, I …”

  “Everyone thinks you’re really brave.”

  I was taken aback. That was not the kind of thing I was used to hearing from Ben.

 
“Do they?”

  “Jack called.”

  My knees went weak. I sat down on the floor.

  “Is he okay?”

  “He’s working on some organic farm. Hates it.”

  Ben paused.

  “Told him about Andrew. Says he’s coming back.”

  I nearly dropped the phone.

  “Told him you were busking to Nordkapp.”

  Ben couldn’t keep the note of satisfaction out of his voice.

  “What did he say?”

  “Says it’s as far to drive from Land’s End to Nordkapp as it is to drive from Land’s End to Baghdad. Says you’ll never make it.”

  I could see Jan Erik pretending not to listen in the kitchen. I tried to breathe normally.

  “Did he say anything else?”

  “Said if you do make it he’ll be bloody impressed.”

  9

  Jan Erik owned a sleek yacht he’d bought in Plymouth and sailed across the North Sea single-handed. When Saturday came around again and I was still there, Jan Erik invited me to take part in a race he had entered. The marina was bustling with people. The yacht was so sleek and streamlined there was nowhere to actually sit, apart from the thin metal string that passed as railings and was so close to the water I was sure that if I leaned or sat on it I would fall in and be mashed up by the propeller.

  Crinkling his eyes so much they practically disappeared, Jan Erik introduced me to the other crew. There were six of them, all men, wearing lightweight suits and dark glasses and lounging on the deck, smoking cigars. Jan Erik disappeared into the cabin to fiddle with complicated electronic instruments. One of the men offered me a cigar and told me to sit down. I balanced myself precariously on the thin metal string.

  “Have you been sailing before?”

  “Never.”

  They all laughed, suavely.

  “Then I am sure today will be very interesting.”

  We were late to the starting line. The men rushed around unfolding sails and tying knots while I tripped over ropes trying to keep out of the way. When we were ready to go Jan Erik handed me a life jacket and taught me the Norwegian for now (na) and move (flytte). Flytte na! When I heard either of those words I had to duck so as to avoid being accidentally beheaded by the heavy metal boom as it swung at speed across the deck whenever we changed direction.

  At the crack of the starting pistol Jan Erik turned into a military dictator. He shouted and ran around and the other men shouted back and started fighting with ropes and then one of them got hit by the boom and staggered into the cabin to lie down, holding his head in both hands. Everyone ignored him and carried on shouting and running around and crashing into each other in the tiny space. Everyone took everything very seriously and everyone apart from Jan Erik was smoking a cigar the whole time.

  There were sixty-five boats in the race, all different shapes and sizes. Jan Erik explained that they were judged differently, according to their different speeds. We traveled miles out into the open sea, all sixty-five boats sporting half a dozen people hanging on for dear life, sitting on rails that leaned at an alarming angle. Suddenly a huge orange tanker appeared out of nowhere and plowed straight toward us, dwarfing the yachts, which peeled off in all directions to avoid being mown down. It was chaos, like a scene from a disaster film about the insignificance of man in relation to oil.

  After the race was over, we pulled in the sails and drifted. Although we had lost miserably, Jan Erik cracked open a bottle of champagne. Perspiring foreheads were wiped with clean white handkerchiefs. I asked the men what they did for a living and they told me they all worked in oil, apart from one, who was an investment banker. We raised our glasses to oil.

  “Scholl.”

  “What will you do when it runs out?”

  “They keep finding more,” said the investment banker. “Plus we are making a lot of money from the sovereign investment fund. We have the largest capital reserve of any nation in the world.”

  “Where is it?”

  I glanced at the water, as if expecting it to be liquid gold.

  “It’s in shares and things all over the world.”

  “What if some economy crashes somewhere and you lose it all?”

  They roared with laughter.

  “Norway loses all her money on the stock exchange!”

  “What would happen?”

  The investment banker looked delighted.

  “American invasion!”

  They roared with laughter again and held up their glasses of champagne.

  “Scholl.”

  “To the stock exchange.”

  “What about you?”

  The man who had been hit by the boom had nice eyes. There was a pregnant silence. Unfortunately, Jan Erik spoke up on my behalf.

  “She is going to sleep in her car and play her cello on the street all the way to North Cape.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Why?” someone said, at last.

  I stared at them. Since that long night on the ferry I had managed not to think about it. I had been too busy running away, too busy worrying about busking, wondering how I was going to survive, and how on earth I was ever going to get to Nordkapp. But suddenly, out there on that boat, full of champagne, I knew that no amount of running away was ever going to make any difference. Jack would always be gone, and Andrew would always be dead.

  Jan Erik’s sleek yacht was still drifting on the fjord.

  “How did it happen?” said the man with nice eyes, finally.

  I blew my nose on my sleeve.

  “That’s the worst part. Andrew was an idiot. He’d get drunk and surf the roof of his car while someone drove it through the village, or borrow a rowing boat and take it out in a huge swell and tip it over in the shorebreak. He fell over the railings by the beach once, fell twelve feet on to rocks and just stood up and walked away. Then he went and died doing something we all did every single day. He died walking to the beach. The road’s less than a mile long. There are speed bumps. And he got himself knocked over and killed by a car going at 20 mph. They said at the inquest that it wasn’t the driver’s fault. It was dark. It’s hard to know what really happened.”

  Nobody spoke.

  “Anyway, I’m not going to busk all the way to Portugal,” I said. “That’s ridiculous.”

  Still nobody spoke.

  “But I did want to see the midnight sun.”

  I thought of it again, bouncing around in a sky full of stars. I thought of Jack, propping himself up on one arm in bed and looking at me with his clean blue eyes, and I thought of Andrew and how excited he’d been that day in the bar. The day he died. And the sadness was like a physical thing, like someone had punched me really hard in the stomach. And I knew I couldn’t go home.

  I couldn’t let Andrew down, and I couldn’t give Jack the satisfaction of saying I told you so.

  “I do want to see the midnight sun.”

  The man with nice eyes handed me his handkerchief.

  “I feel like I kind of owe it to Andrew. Which is stupid, isn’t it? He’s dead.”

  Dead.

  I blew my nose. I was vaguely aware of Jan Erik standing in the doorway to the cabin.

  “But it’s too late now.”

  “I do not think it is too late,” said the man with nice eyes. “It is only the twenty-sixth of June. You have until the twenty-ninth of July at Nordkapp.”

  I shook my head.

  “Honestly. You don’t understand. It takes me ten hours to make a hundred kroner. It’s impossible.”

  “You can see it in other places too, that are not so far, but you have less time.”

  I stopped staring at the fjord and looked at him.

  “Can you?”

  “In Bodø [he pronounced it Buddha] you have until the twelfth of July.”

  “How far is Bodø?”

  “One thousand five hundred kilometers.”

  I sighed.

  “Or there is Tromsø. There you have until
the twenty-second of July.”

  I remembered Aase saying that Tromsø was the Paris of the north.

  “But Tromsø is two thousand kilometers.”

  “Two thousand one hundred and ninety five.”

  “How come you know all this?”

  “I always wanted to drive up into the Polarsirkelen and see the midnight sun, too.”

  “And did you?”

  “No.”

  10

  Back at Jan Erik’s house I finally started to get my act together.

  Jan Erik had an album of smooth jazz classics (he was that kind of guy) and I began by learning “Summertime” and “Autumn Leaves.” They were vaguely familiar to me and I was hoping that they would also be familiar to people on the street and that because of this they would give me money. It sort of worked. I’d never played jazz before and I liked the fact that I could just make it up if I got lost and people would assume I was improvising. I’d always thought I’d be crap at improvising, but it was easy. Much easier than having to get every note of Bach’s Minuet exactly right, with the critical voices of childhood teachers running through my head. Every morning, no matter how much I didn’t want to, I caught a bus into the center of Stavanger and set up next to the temporary volleyball courts, where crowds of tourists stood watching muscular men bounce balls over nets.

  Busking didn’t exactly get easier, but the more I did it the less adrenaline I had and the more I was able to relax. And when I was relaxed I played better. Sometimes people would even stop and come close enough to actually listen, at which point I would usually fluff all the notes. But I was learning. I learned to place a few coins in the hat to get things going, and to take coins out when it looked as though things were going too well. I learned to smile real smiles, so that people actually smiled back, and I learned to say thank you without losing my place in the music. A week later I decided I had enough coins in the biscuit tin to make the journey back to Bergen.

  Leaving the safety of Jan Erik’s car park felt like boarding the ferry from Newcastle all over again. He made me a packed lunch of bread and cheese and sausages and gave me a tape he had recorded of the smooth jazz classics, so I could play it in the van. I took a final hot shower.