The wine hadn’t been Hulda’s idea. After finishing his coffee, Pétur had asked if she happened to have a drop of brandy, and she apologized but said she did have a couple of bottles of wine knocking about somewhere.
‘I like the sound of that. Good for the old ticker,’ he’d said, and who was she to question the word of a medical man?
‘It strikes me as a bit unusual,’ Pétur remarked warily, feeling his way, ‘that you don’t have any family photos on display.’
The observation took Hulda by surprise, but she tried to sound casual: ‘I’ve never been one for that kind of thing. I don’t know why.’
‘I suppose I understand. I probably have too many photos of my wife around the place. Maybe that’s why it’s taken me so long to get over her. I’m stuck in the past, quite literally.’ He heaved a sigh. They were on to their second bottle now. ‘What about your parents? Your brothers and sisters? No pictures of them either?’
‘I don’t have any brothers or sisters,’ Hulda said. She didn’t immediately go on, but Pétur waited patiently, sipping his wine. ‘My mother and I were never particularly close,’ she said eventually, as if justifying the absence of photographs, though there was no reason why she should have to make excuses.
‘How long ago did she die?’
‘Fifteen years ago. She wasn’t that old, only seventy,’ Hulda said, conscious of how scarily soon she would be that age herself: in just over five years. And the last five years had gone by in a flash.
‘She can’t have been very old when she had you,’ Pétur remarked, after doing some quick mental arithmetic.
‘Twenty … though I don’t think that would have counted as particularly young in those days.’
‘And your father?’
‘Never met him.’
‘Really? Did he die before you were born?’
‘No. I just never knew him – he was a foreigner.’ Her thoughts wandered back. ‘Actually, once, years ago, I did go abroad to try and trace him, but that’s another story …’
She smiled politely at Pétur. Though she tolerated these personal questions, she wasn’t keen on them. No doubt he expected her to respond in kind, by asking about his family and past life, to bring them closer. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not yet. She felt she knew enough about him to be going on with: he’d lost his wife and lived alone (in a house that was far too big for him), and, more importantly, he came across as a decent, kind man; honest and reliable. That would do for Hulda.
‘Yes,’ he said, breaking the silence, sounding a little tipsy now. ‘We’re two lonely souls, all right. Some people take the decision early in life … to be alone, I mean. But in our case, I think it was fate.’ He paused. ‘My wife and I made a conscious decision to put off having children – until it was too late for us to change our minds. Towards the end, we often discussed whether it had been a mistake.’ After a moment, he added: ‘I don’t believe in having regrets: life is what it is, it plays out one way or another. But having said that, I really wish I weren’t so alone at this point in mine.’
Hulda hadn’t been expecting this level of candour. She didn’t know what to say, and after a brief silence Pétur went on: ‘I don’t know how you two ended up childless, and I don’t mean to pry, but that sort of thing, decisions like that, they have a profound impact on our lives. They matter, really matter. Don’t you agree?’
Hulda nodded, glancing discreetly at the clock, then at the bottle, and Pétur got the hint: it was time to say goodnight.
XI
No matter how busy she was, she always turned up punctually to visit her daughter. Twice a week without fail, never missing a day. However heavy the snow or fierce the storm. Not even illness could deter her, since the glass dividing them ensured that she couldn’t infect her baby. Twice now these visits had landed her in trouble with unsympathetic employers, and on the second occasion she had handed in her notice. Her daughter came first.
Physically at least, the little girl appeared to be thriving. Her second birthday was rapidly approaching and she was healthy and tall for her age, but there was a faraway look in her eyes that made her mother anxious.
Perhaps, deep down, she knew that too long had passed: that her visits weren’t achieving anything; that the invisible thread connecting mother and daughter had snapped at some point during these two years of separation. Maybe it had happened at the very beginning, on the day when, against her will, she had relinquished her daughter into the hands of strangers. Her parents, ashamed of their daughter for having a child out of wedlock and wishing to hush up the affair, had considered it for the best. They had presented her with a stark choice: either give the child up for adoption – something she would never dream of doing – or place her in an institution for infants ‘to start off with’.
She had been living with her parents when her baby was born and couldn’t afford to move into a place of her own, so for her the choice was simple: since giving up her baby for good was out of the question, the second option had seemed the lesser of two evils.
After finishing her compulsory schooling, she hadn’t taken any further qualifications, and felt it was too late to make up for that now. In any case, her parents had never encouraged her to get an education, placing all their expectations instead on the shoulders of her younger brother, who was now at Reykjavík College.
But things were about
