Getting ready took longer than they had anticipated, I had time for two beers before we went to wait for the taxi to take us to the registry office. The sky was overcast and it was cold. I could feel the effect of the alcohol, it lay like a thin membrane over my thoughts, a canopy of mixed feelings. Yngve and Kristin had their arms around each other. I smiled at them, lit a cigarette and gazed down at the river, which also seemed heavy beneath the sombre sky, but the taxi arrived before I had even taken the first drag. We couldn’t all fit in, no one had considered that. Dad said he could walk, it was only round the corner. No, Unni said, not on your wedding day.
‘We can walk,’ Kristin said. ‘Can’t we, Yngve?’
‘Of course,’ he said.
And so it was decided. I went with Unni and dad to the registry office, where the witnesseses were waiting. I vaguely remembered them from the party at our house the summer before. A small bald man and a large buxom woman with a mass of hair. I shook hands, they smiled, we stood waiting in a room, dad looked at his watch impatiently, soon it would be their turn, but it would be quite a few minutes before Yngve and Kristin arrived.
They came rushing in through the hall, red-cheeked, ready for anything. Dad stared at them blankly, we went in, they stood in front of the official conducting the ceremony with a witness on either side, both said yes, passed each other the rings, after which dad was married again. They chose a name which was new to both of them, or rather two names, each of which was fine and elegant on its own, but in combination sounded ridiculously stilted and pretentious.
On our way to the Sjøhuset restaurant, where we were going to have lunch, dad said that one of the names, which was originally Scottish, had some connection with our family as actually in the distant past we had come from Scotland. Unni, for her part, said that the name existed in the ancestral past of her family. I could believe that, but what dad had said was just rubbish, that much I did know.
Yngve shared my opinion, for our eyes met when dad started talking.
We were shown to a table at the back of the maritime-themed restaurant and ordered shrimps and beer. Dad and Unni smiled and skål-ed, this was their day.
I had five beers there. Dad noticed, he told me to take it easy, not in a particularly unfriendly way, and I said I would, but I was in control. Yngve had flu, so he wasn’t going at it like me. Besides, Kristin was there, he kept turning to her, they sat there laughing and chatting about something or other.
I was alternately flying — that must have been because of the alcohol, at least I was able to take the initiative and talk to everyone with ease in that lofty manner that occasionally but not very often took hold of me — and alternately completely on the fringes, when everyone around the table, Yngve too, appeared alien to me, indeed not only that, but also totally irrelevant.
Kristin must have spotted this for she often broke out of her twosome with Yngve and said something to draw me into the conversation. She had done that ever since they got together, she had become a kind of elder sister to me, someone whom I could talk to about everything, someone who understood. Yet she wasn’t much older than me, so the elder-sister role could vanish without warning and we would face each other as equals in age, almost as peers.
Eventually we left Sjøhuset and went back to dad’s. The witnesses didn’t join us, they would be coming to the dinner in the evening, which had been booked at the Fregatten restaurant in Dronningens gate. I continued drinking at dad’s place and was starting to get quite drunk, it was a wonderful feeling and slightly odd as it was light outside and all the passers-by on the street were pursuing their everyday activities. I sat there, getting more and more pie-eyed, without anyone noticing, as far as I could judge, since the sole manifestation of my drunkenness was that my tongue was looser than usual. As always, alcohol gave me a strong sense of freedom and happiness, it lifted me onto a wave, inside it everything was good, and to prevent it from ever ending, my only real fear, I had to keep drinking more. When the time came dad ordered a taxi, and I staggered down the stairs to the car that would take us the five hundred metres to Fregatten, and this time there was no question of there not being enough space. Once there we were shown to our table, close to the window in the big room, which was otherwise completely empty. I had been drinking since ten o’clock, now it was six, and it was only by the grace of God that I didn’t fall through the window as I went to pull out my chair and sit down. I barely registered the presence of the others, no longer heard what they said, their faces were blurred, their voices a low rustle as though I was surrounded by faintly human-like trees and bushes in a forest somewhere, not in a restaurant in Kristiansand on my father’s wedding day.
The waiter came, the food had been pre-ordered, what he wanted to know now was what we were going to drink. Dad ordered two bottles of red wine, I lit a cigarette and gazed at him through listless eyes.
‘How’s it going, Karl Ove? Are you all right?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Congratulations, Dad. You’ve got a lovely wife, I have to say. I really like Unni.’
‘That’s good,’ he said.
Unni smiled at me.
‘But what should I call her?’ I said. ‘She’s a kind of stepmother, isn’t she?’
‘Call her Unni, of course,’ dad said.
‘What do you call Sissel?’ Unni asked me.
Dad looked at her.
‘Mum,’ I said.
‘Then you could call me mother, couldn’t you?’ Unni said.
‘I’ll do that,’ I said. ‘Mother.’
‘What nonsense!’ dad snapped.
‘Was the wine good, Mother?’ I said, staring at her.
‘Indeed it was,’ she said.
Dad fixed his eyes on me. ‘That’s enough of that now, Karl Ove,’ he said.
‘OK,’ I said.
‘Where are you going on your honeymoon then?’ Yngve said. ‘You haven’t told us.’
‘Well, there’ll be no honeymoon straight away,’ Unni said. ‘But we’ve got a room booked at this hotel tonight.’
The waiter came and held a bottle in front of dad.
Dad nodded, not interested.
The waiter poured a soupçon into his glass.
Dad tasted it, smacked his lips. ‘Exquisite,’ he said.
‘Excellent,’ the waiter said and filled all the glasses.
Oh, how welcome that warm dark taste was after all the sharp cold bitter beers!
I knocked it back in four long gulps. Yngve sat with his head supported on one hand staring out of the window. He must have had his other hand resting on Kristin’s thigh, judging by the crook of his arm. The two witnesses sat silent on either side of Unni and dad.
‘We’ve ordered the food for half past six,’ dad said. He looked at Unni. ‘Perhaps we should inspect the room in the meantime?’
Unni smiled and nodded.
‘We won’t be long,’ dad said, getting up. ‘You just relax and enjoy yourselves.’
They kissed and left the room hand in hand.
I looked at Yngve, he met my gaze, then turned away. Dad’s two colleagues were still silent. Usually I would have felt responsible for them and asked them some trivial question in the hope that it might interest them, if not me, but now I couldn’t care less. If they wanted to sit there ogling us, let them.