Emma Chapman: How to Be a Good Wife

Eventually, Kylan told Hector, and he got it out of me that I had stopped taking my pills. He said it wasn’t good for Kylan to have to do everything himself. Children need order and routine: to be surrounded by stability. That’s when he started to check up on me.

‘Some people just need a little help, Marta,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of.’

And now, Kylan isn’t here again and the silent house makes me want to scream. He isn’t coming back this time, and there’s no reason for me to hold it together. There is even less to do these days. Skipping my pills is like an experiment, one I allow to continue because in my worst moments, I long for something bad to happen. If it does, maybe Kylan will come back and help to take care of me.

And I like the warm, strong feeling I get from fooling Hector. It is better than feeling nothing at all.

Thinking I hear him on the landing, I make myself get up and take out the ingredients for bread. I stand, watching the neat packages of flour, yeast, butter, waiting for the whirr of the bathroom fan, the sounds of the shower. I want to seem busy, but the pressure of Hector above me makes me feel tired and after some time, I put the ingredients away again, into their proper places.

I check my watch: five minutes to one. In the hallway, Hector’s mahogany walking stick is propped against the wall. A recent addition, since his knee operation, a reminder that he is getting old. The doctor said it was only temporary, but I have a feeling Hector likes it, that it makes him feel distinguished.

I pick up the bundle of letters lying on the doormat and dust the front of them. On one of the envelopes there is a faint brown smudge, which I ignore.

The names on the letters do not seem familiar.

Mrs Marta Bjornstad. Mr and Mrs Hector Bjornstad. Mr and Mrs H. C. Bjornstad.

Before I leave the house, I put all the letters, even the ones with just my name, into a pile on the hall table for Hector. Let your husband take care of the correspondence and finances of the household. Make it your job to be pretty and gay.

When my watch reads one o’clock, I pull on my red tartan coat and navy headscarf and leave the house.

I drive into town. The greens rush past the car window: it has been a verdant autumn with plenty of rain. Verdant. I wonder where I picked up that word.

The sun is at its brightest: it is the middle of the day. The road runs along our edge of the valley, and from the slight height I can see for miles. The sky spreads above the curve below, which is marked with patches of denser green where the mossy forest lies. I can see the traces of the roads, white crisscrossed lines in the sunlight, running around the houses and cutting through the fields. The distant mountains rise higher and darker, surrounding us: shadowed blue-green masses capped with white snow.

I make out the beginnings of the fjord, spreading across the bottom of the valley. Whenever I round the bend and see it hanging there, I am reminded of an early tour Hector gave me, just after the wedding. We were on bicycles, though I don’t recall where mine came from or when it appeared in the house. I remember I didn’t have a helmet and Hector had to lend me his: the silver hairs around his temples standing out in the sunlight. He seemed so old to me even then, though he was forty-one when we married, younger than I am now.

As I drive the same road we cycled, I tell myself again what he has always said about that day. About how happy we were. All the way, I could feel him behind me: I listened to the sound of his bicycle chain engaging as he cycled close and then fell back a little. The sun was behind us, and Hector’s long shadow fell over mine as we rode along. I looked at our shadows intertwined on the tarmac. That is my husband’s shadow, I told myself. I am his wife. I remember thinking that having Hector there made me safe.

Continuing through the valley, wooden houses pepper the roadside and spread sparsely across the land. Like Kylan’s old toy houses: reds, blues and yellows, painted garishly to counter the perpetual winter darkness. Further up, on the steep sides of the hills, the houses cling precariously. I imagine the black water of the fjord rising, washing them all away, sending splintered wood travelling through the rocky precipices towards the sea.

Soon, the sky will begin to darken again as the winter looms. Too little to notice at first, until the world is dim and we are wandering around with our eyes half closed.

I drive slowly along the edge of the water as I approach the village. The mirror of water doubles the size of the sky. Something flashes in the corner of my eye, and turning my head I see a child running away from me along the path by the fjord, her blonde hair catching the sun. She moves fast, her arms and legs wild. I look to see if she’s playing a game, if there is anyone chasing her, but she’s alone at the lakeside. Although she must be fifty metres away, I can hear her breaths, in and out, in and out, louder and louder until they fill the car.

A loud noise outside makes me jump. I have come to a halt in the middle of the road, and behind me, a farm vehicle is glaring, its horn willing me to drive on. As I do, I look again, but the girl is gone.

I park near the white wooden church, standing neatly at the water’s edge, surrounded by the flagged cemetery. Sitting in the car, I watch the gravestones standing in the shadow of the trees, grouped together. The annoyance of Hector in the house when he is not supposed to be has followed me across the bright valley. He fills the white walls, shrinking the space until it feels too small. I know it is not my place to ask questions: Hector will have a good reason. Never question his authority, for he always does what is best for the family, and has your interests at heart.

Getting out of the car, I look back just once to check it is still there. The grey spire of the church stands black and clear against the sky, sharp enough to cause a rupture.

I pass the old town hall with its white wooden-slatted exterior, freshly painted every year. On the front of the building, there’s a clock: the gold roman numerals glimmer in the sunlight. One twenty-five. The large yellow doors have been pushed open and the dim lobby gapes, the dusty light shifting into darkness.

The blue post office on the opposite side of the road is a smaller building, less imposing. It is almost like a house with its wooden veranda and white benches where elderly people sit in the summertime. I try to imagine Hector and me sitting there, hand in hand, but I can’t.

Kylan’s old school is beyond the main stretch, an old barn-like gymnasium to the rear. Beyond that are the two hotels: the grand old one right on the water, and the less imposing inn-like one that acts as the village pub. I never go beyond the hotels: I haven’t in the whole time I’ve lived here. These are my limits: the hotels on this side of the fjord, and the doctor’s surgery on the other.

I walk along the narrow road to the market, catching glimpses of the water through the scattered buildings.

Many of the stalls have blue tarpaulin canopies to keep out the rain, casting the people in a strange light. Some of them smile at me, but even after all these years, I am still an outsider. Not like Hector, who has always lived here.

There is a group of women standing by one of the vegetable stalls, chatting with a man who is a farmer and one of the town councillors. He wears the uniform of the men in the valley: a battered all-weather jacket, Wellingtons and brown work trousers. His tough, lined face shifts as he smiles and raises his hand. The women whisper, pretending not to see me. They wear bright practical coats and hiking boots, their hair protruding from woollen hats. Robust women, who help run the farms and bring up hardy families. They saw me, in the early days, a thin girl from the city in her new clothes, and that is how they still see me, though I have lived here now for most of my life.