But there didn’t seem to be anyone in town today.
‘Where did mum buy the records at Christmas?’ Yngve said. ‘Do you remember?’
For Christmas Yngve had been given The The’s debut album by mum while I got Script of the Bridge by the Chameleons. I had never heard of the Chameleons, but they were absolutely fantastic. Yngve thought the same about The The. We couldn’t work out how she had managed this. There was hardly anyone here in town who followed the pop scene more closely than Yngve and I. Well, she said, she had gone into a record shop and then she had described first Yngve, then me, and the assistant had pulled out these two records.
I asked which shop it was, she told me, and over the Christmas period I popped in. Harald Hempel was behind the counter. So now I understood. He played with Lily and the Gigolos, and what he didn’t know about good music wasn’t worth knowing.
‘It’s in Dronningens gate,’ I said. ‘Shall we head down there?’
‘Do a little tour?’
As we drove away from the last shop I pointed to a building in the next block.
‘That’s Nye Sørlandet. The paper I was talking about.’
Yngve glanced up as we passed. ‘Looks small,’ he said.
‘Well, it’s the second biggest newspaper here. Like Tiden in Arendal, more or less.’
I cast an eye up and down Elvegaten, where dad lived now, to see if I could see him. But I couldn’t.
‘What’s better, do you think?’ I said. ‘Writing an application or going to speak to them?’
‘Going to speak to them.’
‘OK. I’ll do that then.’
‘Have you heard that Simple Minds are coming, by the way? To Drammenshallen.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. It’s not for a while yet, but the tickets are on sale soon. You should go and see them.’
‘OK. And you?’
‘It’s too far away and too expensive. But for you it’s only a train ride.’
‘OK,’ I said and leaned back in the seat. As we drove I tried to imagine what it would have been like here without a road, without the housing estates, as it must have been once. Untouched bays and coves, vast, perhaps impenetrable, forests. The beach at Hamresanden no more than a strip of sand along the riverbank and the sea inlet. No caravans, no tents, no cabins, no stalls, no people. No shops, no petrol stations, no houses, no chapel, nothing. Just forest, mountain, beach, sea.
It was an impossible image.
‘Let’s drop Hamresanden, shall we?’ Yngve said. ‘Mum’ll probably have dinner ready soon anyway.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Feel like listening to the Church record anyway.’
I was never upset when people left in the way that mum always was. Except when it was Yngve. And then I wasn’t upset, there were no strong emotions at play, it was more a kind of melancholy.
So I didn’t join mum when she drove Yngve to Kjevik, instead I cycled down to see Jan Vidar and went with him to the river, where we swam and stayed for an hour. We paddled across the rapids, then we slid down over the smooth algae-slippery overhang into the current beneath, which it was impossible to fight, all you could do was let yourself be carried along, swim a couple of strokes and steer patiently towards the bank.
Afterwards we lay on a rock, our arms down by our sides, drying in the sun, our trainers beside us, Jan Vidar’s folded glasses in one of his.
On this particular day Merethe and Gunn were there too. They lay on the bare rock in the middle of the rapids, both in bikinis. It excited us that they were there, our pulse rates shot up sky-high, even though we were lying quite still. The effect was contrary to nature. At least that was how it felt to me.
Merethe was wearing a red bikini.
She was two years younger than we were, still in the eighth class, about to start the ninth, but what did that matter?
I couldn’t go out with her, but what did my body care about that?
Oh, how unbelievably frustrating it was to lie there ogling her. Seeing her thighs, which spread as she lay on the rock, seeing that little area between her thighs, the red material nestling against her, just there. And, oh yes, her breasts.
When we got up we hoped they would see us and perhaps be thinking the same as we were. But they were so blasé, so worldly-wise, that not even we, Jan Vidar and Karl Ove, were good enough for them.
We climbed up the waterfall above them, swam into the current, were carried down into the rapids and into the broad deep river beyond.
They didn’t bat an eyelid.
We were used to that though. We had spent three summers like that now. My insides ached and I presumed the same was true for Jan Vidar. At any rate, like me, he was squirming on the rock where we lay.
We could no longer tell each other that our chance would come because we didn’t believe it would.
Why had they ruined my opportunity in Denmark?
What a dirty trick that had been. They had got so little out of it, an extra little chuckle maybe, while what they had ruined for me meant everything.
I told Jan Vidar about it.
He laughed.
‘You had it coming to you. How could you be so daft as to tell Bjørn and Jøgge?’
‘It was all planned,’ I said. ‘Absolutely everything! It was perfect! And then. . nothing.’
‘Was she good-looking?’
‘Yes, she was. Very good-looking indeed.’
‘Better-looking than Hanne?’
‘No, no, no comparison. Like apples and pears.’
‘What?’
‘It’s impossible to compare Hanne with some Danish girl I want to fuck. Surely you can see that?’
‘What are you going to do with Hanne?’
‘Well, I’m not going to talk about her in this way for starters.’
He smiled and closed his eyes.
The following afternoon I went to dad’s. I had put on a white shirt, black cotton trousers and white basketball trainers. In order not to feel so utterly naked, as I did when I wore only a shirt, I took a jacket with me, slung it over my shoulder and held it by the hook as if it was too hot to wear.
I jumped off the bus after Lundsbroa Bridge and ambled along the drowsy deserted summer street to the house he was renting, where I had stayed that winter.
He was in the back garden pouring lighter fluid over the charcoal in the grill when I arrived. Bare chest, blue swimming shorts, feet thrust into a pair of sloppy trainers without laces. Again this get-up was unlike him.
‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Hi,’ I said.
‘Have a seat.’
He nodded to the bench by the wall.
The kitchen window was open, from inside came the clinking and clunking of glasses and crockery.
‘Unni’s busy inside,’ he said. ‘She’ll be here soon.’
His eyes were glassy.
He stepped towards me, grabbed the lighter from the table and lit the charcoal. A low almost transparent flame, blue at the bottom, rose in the grill. It didn’t appear to have any contact with the charcoal at all, it seemed to be floating above it.
‘Heard anything from Yngve then?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He dropped by briefly before leaving for Bergen.’
‘He didn’t come here,’ dad said.
‘He said he was going to, see how you were getting on, but he didn’t have time.’
Dad stared into the flames, which were lower already. Turned and came towards me, sat down on a camping chair. Produced a glass and bottle of red wine from nowhere. They must have been on the ground beside him.
‘I’ve been relaxing with a drop of wine today,’ he said. ‘It is summer after all, you know.’
‘Yes,’ I said.