‘You’re all bad,’ I said. ‘Come on then!’
He really was bad! If I passed the ball to him he could barely kick it. But he was trotting around now with a smile on his face, and then fortunately the bell rang a couple of minutes later.
‘You take the ball, Jo, and put it in the staffroom. OK?’
‘Yes!’ he said and headed off with the ball under his arm. I quickly followed, hoping to catch a brief glimpse of Liv, the girl in the ninth, before she went in.
And I did. She was walking beside Camilla as I arrived, and she sent me a stolen glance as she turned into the corridor. I eyed her slim firm backside, formed to perfection, and a kind of abyss opened inside me.
After the last lesson I remained in the staffroom waiting for the others to go home, partly because I longed to be alone but in a different way from how I was in my flat, and partly because I wanted to use the phone.
Eventually only Richard’s car was left in the car park. He was in his office but could come into the staffroom at any moment, so I sat leafing through an encyclopedia as I waited for him to pack up and go home.
In the last few hours the clouds had slowly darkened, and while I was sitting there the first raindrops began to pitter-patter on the windowpanes. I turned and watched them hitting the tarmac at first without leaving a mark, as though it wasn’t really happening, then a few seconds later the dark wetness spread as the heavens opened. It poured down, stripes of rain cut through the air and with such force that I could see the raindrops bouncing off the tarmac. The water gushed out of the drainpipes from the gutters and down the hill along the side of the building opposite. A hard drumming sound came from the windows and the roof above me.
‘Now that’s what I call a storm!’ Richard said from the door with a smile. He was wearing his green anorak and had a knife on his belt.
‘It’s no passing shower,’ I said.
‘Are you doing some overtime?’ he said, coming in.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘I was planning to at any rate.’
‘How has your first week been?’
‘It’s gone well, I think,’ I said.
He nodded.
‘Next Friday you can talk to Sigrid. The mentor, you know. Wouldn’t be a bad idea to write down all the questions and thoughts you have before you meet her. So you can make the best use of the opportunity.’
‘OK, I’ll do that,’ I said.
He chewed his lower lip and he looked like a goat again.
‘OK then,’ he said. ‘Have a good weekend!’
‘You too,’ I said.
Half a minute later he appeared outside running towards his car with his briefcase over his head.
Keys out, door open, in.
The car lights came on, shivers ran down my spine. The rear lights shone red against the wet black tarmac and the headlamps cast two shafts of yellow light against the wall, which seemed to diffuse them as it was lit up.
The pattering rain, the broad Vs of water running down the hill, the overflowing gutters.
Oh, this was the world and I was living in the midst of it.
What should I do? I felt like hammering my fists on the windows, running round the room and yelling, tossing tables and chairs aside, I was full to the brim with energy and life.
‘IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT!’ I sang out at the top of my voice in the staffroom.
‘IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT!
‘AND I FEEL FINE!
‘AND I FEEL FINE!’
Once Richard’s car was out of sight I went for a walk around the school building to see whether anyone might still be there. The caretaker, for example, could have been pottering about fixing things. But it was deserted and after I had made sure this was the case I went into the little telephone cubicle and dialled mum’s number.
She didn’t answer.
Perhaps she had been working late and had popped into a supermarket on the way home, if she wasn’t eating out, that is.
I rang Yngve. He picked up at once.
‘Hello?’ he said.
‘Hi, this is Karl Ove,’ I said.
‘You’re in Northern Norway, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, of course. How are things?’
‘Fine. Just got back from lectures. Going to chill first and then I’ll be off out.’
‘Where to?’
‘Hulen nightclub probably.’
‘Lucky sod.’
‘You’re the one who chose to go to Northern Norway. You could have moved to Bergen, you know.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘How are things up there? Have you got a flat and stuff?’
‘Yes. It’s nice. Started teaching on Tuesday. Actually it’s quite a lot of fun. I’m going out tonight as well. But not to Hulen exactly. It’s a local community centre.’
‘Any nice girls up there?’
‘Yeees. . There’s one I met on the bus. That might develop into something. Otherwise they’ve all left home. Seems like they’re either schoolgirls or housewives.’
‘It’ll have to be schoolgirls, then, eh?’
‘Ha ha.’
There was a brief silence.
‘Did you get my short story?’ I said.
‘I did.’
‘Have you read it?’
‘I have but only quickly. I skimmed through it. I was going to write to you about it. Bit hard to do that on the phone.’
‘But you did like it, didn’t you? Perhaps it’s not easy to say.’
‘Yes, I did. I liked it well enough. It was nice and lively. But let’s talk about it later, as I said, OK?’
OK.
Another silence.
‘What about dad?’ I said. ‘Heard anything from him?’
‘Nothing. And you?’
‘No, nothing. Thinking about phoning him now.’
‘Say hello from me. Save me having to call him for a few weeks.’
‘I will,’ I said. ‘I’ll write to you in the week.’
‘You do that,’ he said. ‘Catch you later!’
‘OK,’ I said and rang off, went into the staffroom and sat on the sofa with my feet on the table. Something about the conversation with Yngve had depressed me, but I didn’t know what. Perhaps that he was going to Hulen in Bergen with all his friends while I was going to a party in a village in the middle of nowhere and didn’t know anyone.
Or was it the well enough.
Yes, I did. I liked it well enough, he had said.
Well enough?
I had once read a short story by Hemingway, it was about a boy who accompanied his father, who was a doctor, to an Indian reservation — a woman was giving birth, it didn’t go so well, as far as I remembered, perhaps a woman had even died — anyway after they had been there they went back home and that was that. All very straightforward. My short story was just as good, I knew that. The context was different, but that was because Hemingway wrote in a different era. I wrote in today’s world, and that was why it was as it was.
But what did Yngve know, actually? How many books did he read? Had he read Hemingway, for example?
I got up and went back into the telephone cubicle, took the slip of paper from my back pocket and dialled dad’s number. May as well get it over with.
‘Yes, hello?’ he said. Brusque voice. The conversation was going to be brief, no doubt about that.
‘Hi, this is Karl Ove,’ I said.
‘Oh, hi, son,’ he said.
‘I’m all set up here now,’ I said. ‘And I’ve started working.’
‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘Are you getting on OK?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s good.’
‘How are things with you?’
‘Well, same as always, you know. Unni’s at home and I’ve just got back from work. Now we’re going to eat. But it was nice you rang.’
‘Say hello to Unni!’
‘Will do. Bye.’
‘Bye.’
The deluge had eased when I trudged down the hill from school to my flat, but it was still raining enough for my hair to be soaked by the time I opened the door. I dried it in the bathroom with a towel, hung up my jacket, put my shoes by the stove and switched it on, fried some potatoes, some onions and a sausage, which I chopped up into pieces, ate the lot at the sitting-room table as I read yesterday’s paper, then went to bed, where I fell asleep within minutes, swathed by the comforting pitter-patter of rain on the window