She gave him a pencil and a sheet of paper. Joel took the directory over to a table and sat down to make a note of all the addresses and telephone numbers. Five of the seven were listed as ‘Miss’. The other two didn’t have a title at all.
Joel wrote them all down. Then he went back to the hatch and rang the bell. He returned the directory and the pencil.
‘Do you know which one it is?’
‘I think so.’
The hatch closed. Joel wondered why he hadn’t told the truth. That he hadn’t a clue which Sonja Mattsson was the right one.
As he left the telegraph office he also wondered why he didn’t go to Ehnströms’ and ask. But he didn’t want to. They’d only start asking questions.
The days were long. But time passed quickly even so. On the Thursday they decided they would in fact take the Celestine as a present for Mummy Jenny. Samuel and Joel helped each other to lift the ship carefully out of her case and wrap her up in newspaper. Joel found a suitable cardboard box. So that was the present sorted out. Earlier in the day Samuel had been to buy rail tickets.
‘I thought we could sleep on the seats,’ he said. ‘It would be unnecessarily expensive to splash out on sleeping car tickets.’
Joel had no intention of sleeping at all. No way was he going to sleep throughout this journey.
Saturday finally dawned. When Joel went into the kitchen in the morning, Samuel was sitting at the kitchen table cleaning up his old suitcase with a damp cloth. It was brown, and the handle had been repaired with apiece of string.
‘I never thought I’d have a use for this old suitcase again,’ he said.
Joel didn’t like the sound of that. Did it mean that Samuel had never seriously considered leaving the place where they lived now, and going back to sea? Joel wanted to ask. But he didn’t. When they were standing at the quayside in Stockholm, looking at the vessels moored there, he would ask his dad that question.
No, he wouldn’t ask. He would plead. Now that they knew where Mummy Jenny lived, wasn’t it time to move away at last from all the cold and snow?
Joel didn’t possess a suitcase. He would have to make do with his rucksack. He didn’t like that idea. People travelling to Stockholm ought to have a proper suitcase. Even if they were only fifteen years old. Samuel would certainly have been able to afford to buy a new suitcase if he’d been working as a sailor.
They weren’t going to be away for long. Four days would soon pass. Joel packed his best clothes. He placed the map of Stockholm on top of everything else. Everything was ready by nine o’clock. That left another eight hours before they needed to go to the railway station. Samuel was getting shaved. Joel made sure he did a thorough job of it.
‘Your chin,’ he said as Samuel started to dry his face.
‘My chin?’ Samuel wondered.
‘You still have some stubble left under your chin.’
Samuel examined his face carefully in the little mirror, then applied the razor once more.
‘Is that better?’ he asked.
Joel nodded. He was satisfied.
It was a quarter past four when they went to the station. Joel felt indescribably happy deep down inside. It was as if he’d only just grasped what was about to happen.
They were going to make a journey.
And they were going to meet Mummy Jenny.
3
Joel was on tenterhooks as the engine lurched and started moving. The journey had begun.
He looked out of the window and saw Stationmaster Knif waving his flag. The train gradually gathered speed. Samuel was holding on to his suitcase. They were approaching the railway bridge. There was their house. The engine thundered onto the bridge. The railings hurtled past. Joel could see the water down below, and the logs floating down to the sawmills at the mouth of the river. Samuel had stood up now and joined Joel at the window. They were over the bridge already. Now came the long curve through the part of the town on the other side of the river. And then they would be swallowed up by the vast forests. Joel had never been as far away from his home as this before, and it was still only the beginning of the journey.
Samuel sat down again. They had found a compartment to themselves.
‘There’s hardly likely to be anybody getting on until we get to Orsa,’ said Samuel. ‘That means we can stretch out and sleep here. Just as good as in a sleeping car.’
Joel sat down in a window seat. It was light and summery outside. They were already in the forest. They were travelling fast now. Tree trunks flashed past the window. There’s no end to the trees, Joel thought. Samuel would never be able to cut them all down. Not even if he kept going for a thousand years.
The door opened and the conductor came in. Samuel handed him the tickets.
‘Change at Krylbo,’ said the conductor.
Samuel put the tickets back in his inside pocket.
‘So, we’ll change at Krylbo,’ he said. ‘But there’s a long time to go before that. A whole night. And the next morning.’
When Joel grew tired of watching all the trees, he decided to explore the train. Samuel had already stretched himself out on the seat, using his suitcase as a pillow.
Joel went out into the corridor. He saw a carafe on a special shelf, and took a drink of water. Then he looked closely at a map attached to the wall. He traced the journey to Stockholm with his finger. First they would come to Orsa: by then the forests would have finished. Next would come Mora, Borlänge, and then a bit further south was Krylbo. They would change trains there. That would mean they had completed over half the trip. But there was still a long way to go to Stockholm. Joel wandered along the train. It was rather full. Quite a few people were standing in the corridor, smoking. He could hear somebody singing in one of the compartments. But his walk came to an end when he reached the first class carriages. The door was locked. He retraced his steps. The passengers who could afford to travel first class didn’t want to be disturbed. Joel almost bumped into a girl as she came out of a compartment. She was about his own age. Joel could feel to his annoyance that he was blushing. He didn’t want to do that. He soon returned to his compartment and found Samuel sitting up and waiting for him. They had packed enough food to last them all the way to Stockholm. Joel felt hungry. He hadn’t been able to eat much earlier in the day as he’d been so nervous. He’d imagined all kinds of things happening that would cause the journey to be cancelled. Samuel changing his mind, for instance. The train failing to appear. Him falling ill. He knew that was childish. Not something a fifteen-year-old ought to be imagining. But he couldn’t help being childish.
That’s the way he was.
‘Shouldn’t we have something to eat?’ he asked.
‘Already?’
‘I’m hungry.’
Samuel opened the bag of food. It contained sandwiches, hard boiled eggs and boiled potatoes. He also had the thermos flask with coffee and a bottle of milk. Joel ate. But Samuel wasn’t hungry. The tree trunks hurtled past outside. The wheels sang over the little gaps in the rails.
Later on, when Samuel had fallen asleep with his head pillowed on his suitcase, it occurred to Joel that a journey can be boring and exciting at the same time. There seemed to be no end to the trees flashing past the window. That was boring. Like a film in which nothing happens. Nevertheless, Joel couldn’t tear himself away from the window. Sometimes there was a glittering reflection from a lake. An occasional house. What was really exciting was that for every minute that passed, for every little gap in the rails the train sang over, he was further and further away from the town he’d grown up in. Doing this had always been his dream.