‘I need to talk to my mother. I know his name and everything.’ The nurse did not react. She quickly returned and put four white tablets in Tinna’s mouth, lifting her head from the pillow and pressing the glass of water to her lips. She poured the cold liquid in and held Tinna’s chin until she was certain that the girl had swallowed everything. Tinna coughed weakly as the last mouthful of water got caught in her throat. ‘We can find out what his name is. The note fell out.’
‘All right, sweetheart,’ said the woman with a smile. ‘Now you should sleep for a while, and when you wake up your mother will be here.’
A while later her mother came, but Tinna was still under the influence of the drugs and was groggy all through visiting hours. Every time she forced her eyes open she saw the same thing – her mother crying. ‘I can find out his name, Mum,’ she mumbled. Her voice was as thick and fuzzy as her tongue. She wanted water, but it was more important to tell what she knew. She had to do it. ‘He’s called Hjalti,’ she said.‘I couldn’t read his last name, it was so poorly written.’Her mother stroked Tinna’s forehead, still crying. ‘The bad man. He’s called Hjalti, Mother.’
Her mother wiped her eyes. ‘Shhh, my Tinna. Sleep. Just sleep.’
Tinna gave up and closed her eyes. We know best.
Chapter Thirty-six
Even though not everything had been cleared up, the events from long ago were starting to take shape. Thóra couldn’t remember the last time she’d talked for so long -not sober, anyway. Despite the aching in her jaw and the dryness in her mouth, she was happy with her monologue, since her words appeared to have had the desired effect. Stefán and the police department lawyer were on the verge of coming to the same conclusion as her – that Markus was innocent. The three of them sat in Stefán’s office, where Thóra had rushed after leaving Alda’s mother in the church. Though there was an hour to go before they were due in court, Thóra was fairly sure the custody request would be dropped. Officers had been sent to fetch Alda’s mother, but her formal questioning had been delayed because of the funeral. Stefán had settled for speaking to her for long enough to confirm Thóra’s story. A plain-clothes policeman would accompany her for the rest of the day, in the unlikely event that she should try to get away. Thóra watched as she was brought to the police station. She walked bent over, her face set hard.
There was no way to put yourselfin her shoes. How did a woman feel, faced with the knowledge that she had made a terrible mistake in bringing up her child? Thóra was unable to comprehend how she could have sent her daughter with strangers to the Westfjords and forced her to carry a child for another woman; a child that had been created in such an abominable way. Alda’s mother had told her how Valgerdur and Dadi wanted Alda to have the child under Valgerdur’s name, since they had no chance of adopting a child the traditional way. They had tried before, but had been refused.
At the time there had been no option to adopt children from abroad. And Valgerdur had tried and failed to carry a pregnancy to term herself. For them, this was their only hope of having a child.
In order for the deception to work, Dadi and Valgerdur had to move to an isolated place with Alda and see to it that she had contact with as few people as possible, which meant limited medical check-ups. On the few occasions that she was around other people, Alda had to pretend to be much older, so as not to arouse suspicion. According to Alda’s mother that wasn’t that difficult after the rape; it was as though all the light in Alda’s eyes had been extinguished, and she didn’t care about anything. In the west the three of them settled on an abandoned farm owned by Valgerdur’s relatives. The couple made sure to visit friends and relations in the surrounding area several times with Valgerdur claiming to be pregnant, to back up their story. No one suspected a thing. However, things became more complicated when it came to the actual birth. The plan was for Alda to deliver at home with Valgerdur’s assistance, but when it turned out that the placenta was blocking the birth canal they had to rush Alda to the hospital in Isafjördur. There the child was delivered by Caesarean section.
Alda had been bedridden longer than was usual, to recover from the Caesarean section but also because the site of the incision had become infected. In that time, no one had commented on how young the mother was, or expressed any misgivings as to whether she really was Valgerdur Bjolfsdottir. The staff at the hospital did notice how peculiarly the new mother behaved towards the child, appearing to care little for it and refusing to suckle it. However, it seemed as if progress was starting to be made by the time mother and child were released. The midwife who visited them in Holmavik after they’d been discharged informed the hospital that the mother’s behaviour had improved greatly, although she still refused to breastfeed. This woman was not on the hospital staff, so did not realize that the reason for this change in behaviour was that the ‘mother’ was a different person. Dadi had had no trouble keeping visitors away from the hospital, since the couple weren’t any more popular in the west than they had been in the Islands. Alda was released just over two weeks after the birth, with Dadi accompanying her and a newborn male child in her arms. She went to the farm to get her things, then left; the boy remained behind with Valgerdur and Dadi. The hospital in Isafjördur had therefore made no mistake in its drug prescription when Valgerdur was admitted there more than three decades later. In a cruel twist of fate, Alda had been given penicillin for her post-operative infection – an antibiotic to which the real Valgerdur proved severely allergic many years later.
Alda’s mother said that Alda had never spoken about the baby, not wanting to know his name or hear anything about him. Thóra did not blame her for that. The child was not welcome in this world in Alda’s eyes, and it had never really been ‘hers’. It was understandable that she had shut out the whole experience and looked past it. Mind you, Thóra could well imagine that as the years passed her outlook might have changed, especially when it became clear that she wouldn’t have another child. She didn’t know if Alda had found out Adolf’s name before Halldora Dogg pressed charges against him for rape, or whether she put two and two together when she found out his surname and age. Either way it must have been a great shock for Alda to discover that her only child, the son of a rapist, was as much of a brute as his father. It must have opened up old wounds. Alda must have harboured some feeling for her son, and may have suffered from guilt over giving him away. This would explain the phone calls to Adolf; first she was accusatory, then pleading. Alda had judged him severely. And when she realized who he was, she must have thought she’d failed him. Thóra wondered whether that had made her want to come clean, to give Adolf the information that proved his innocence and even tell him about his origins. Adolf, on the other hand, had turned a deaf ear and refused to meet her; he thought she would jeopardize his chance of a quick buck from the hospital compensation. Now that he realized he stood to inherit from Alda, everything looked different. But it was too late for Alda.
Thóra had learned while practising law not to judge others by their actions. They had all made disastrous mistakes – Alda’s parents, Dadi and Valgerdur, Adolf, even Markus himself – and none of them had realized the consequences until it was too late. Thóra had seen so many inconceivable things in her work that this didn’t surprise her. Most of the missteps her client had taken could be put down to pure stupidity, but the others arose from bad choices, made more often than not in haste or desperation. Alda’s fate had been determined by people on the edge of despair, who had reacted the wrong way at the crucial moment. Thóra could only pity those who were left behind and who were now staring their old sins in the face. She felt particularly sorry for Alda’s mother, who was actually a victim of circumstance. Her husband Thórgeir, Markus’s father Magnus, and Dadi and Valgerdur bore the greatest responsibility, but none of them had been given the chance to repent or atone for what they did. So that left an aged mother who many years ago had become entangled in a sequence of events beyond her control, and now had to bury her daughter.