Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

The sudden silence as she turned off the engine took me by surprise. I knew instinctively that silence had to be filled with something, because it was more charged than anything I could think of to say. I – who was already a killer – didn’t dare to either move or look at her.

‘So tell me, Roy. Have you met any girls since the last time we spoke?’

‘A few,’ I said.

‘Anyone special?’

I shook my head. Glanced from the corner of my eye. She was wearing a red silk scarf and a loose-fitting blouse, but I could see the outlines of her breasts clearly. Her skirt had glided up and I could see her naked knees.

‘Anyone you’ve… done it with, Roy?’

I felt a sweet surge in my stomach. I thought of lying, but what had I to gain by that?

‘Not everything, no,’ I said.

‘Good,’ she said and slowly pulled off the silk scarf. The three top buttons of her blouse were undone.

I was hard, felt it straining in my trousers and laid my hands in my lap to hide it. Because I knew my hormones were so disturbed right there and then that I couldn’t be sure I hadn’t misinterpreted the situation completely.

‘Let’s see if you’re any better at holding a woman’s hand,’ she said and put her right hand on top of mine in my lap. It was as though the heat radiated straight down through the hand and down into my sex, and for a moment I was afraid I was going to come right there.

I let her take my hand, pull it towards her, saw her loosen her blouse slightly and draw my hand inside it, onto the bra over her left breast.

‘You’ve waited a long time for this, Roy.’ She gave a cooing laugh. ‘Take firm hold of me, Roy. Squeeze the nipple a bit. Those of us who aren’t young girls like it a bit harder. Easy, easy, that’s a little too much. That’s it. You know what, Roy, I think you’re a natural.’

She leaned over towards me, held my chin between her thumb and forefinger and kissed me. Everything about Rita Willumsen was big, including the tongue as it coiled itself rough and strong like an eel round mine. And there was so much more taste to her than the two girls I had French-kissed with before. Not better, but more. Maybe even a bit too much – my senses were electrified, overloaded. She ended the kiss.

‘We’ve still got some way to go there.’ She smiled as she slid a hand under my T-shirt and stroked my chest. And even though I was so hard I could have broken stones with it I felt myself growing calmer. Because not much was being asked of me, she was the one at the wheel, she was in charge of the speed and where we were going.

‘Let’s take a walk,’ she said.

I opened the door and stepped out into the intense shrill chirping of birds in the quivering summer heat. For the first time I noticed the blue trainers she was wearing.

We followed a track that curved upward over a hill. It was the summer holidays, fewer people in the village and on the roads, and up here the chances of meeting someone were minimal. All the same she asked me to stay fifty metres behind her so I could slip behind a tree if she gave a signal.

Near the top of the hill she stopped and beckoned to me.

She pointed down at the red-painted cabin below us.

‘That’s the sheriff’s,’ she said. ‘And that one there…’ She pointed up at a small summer farmhouse ‘…is ours.’

I wasn’t sure whether by ‘ours’ she meant hers and mine, or hers and her husband’s; but at least I knew that was where we were going.

She unlocked the door and we stepped inside a sun-warm and stuffy room. She closed the door behind me. Kicked off her trainers and put her hands on my shoulders. Even without shoes she was taller than me. We were both breathing heavily, we’d walked the last stretch quickly. So heavily we panted in each other’s mouths when we kissed.

Her fingers unbuckled my belt as if that was all she’d ever done, while I dreaded loosening the fastener on her bra, which I figured would be my job. But apparently it wasn’t, because she led me into what had to be the main bedroom, where the curtains were drawn, pushed me down on the bed and let me watch as she undressed herself. Then she came to me and her skin was cold with dried sweat. She kissed me, rubbed herself against my naked body, and soon we were sweating again, slipping around each other like two wet seals. She smelled good and strong and moved my hands away when I was being too intimate. I veered between being too active and intolerably passive, and in the end she got hold of me and guided me in.

‘Don’t move,’ she said, sitting motionless on top of me. ‘Just feel it.’

And I felt it. And thought that now it’s official. Roy Opgard is no longer a virgin.

‘I thought it was tomorrow,’ said Uncle Bernard when I got back that afternoon.

‘What was?’

‘That you were taking your driving test.’

‘It is tomorrow.’

‘You don’t say? Judging by that grin on your face I thought you must’ve gone and taken it now.’

UNCLE BERNARD GAVE ME A Volvo 240 for my eighteenth birthday present.

I was speechless.

‘Don’t look at me like that, lad,’ he said in embarrassment. ‘It’s second-hand, no big deal. And you and Carl need a car up there, you can’t be riding your bikes all through the winter.’

The thing about the Volvo 240 is that it’s the perfect car for tinkering about on, the parts are easy to come by even though they stopped production in ’93, and if you look after it nicely you can keep it all your life. The bearings and the bushings on the front suspension were a little worn, as was the spider joint on the intermediate shaft, but the rest of it was in great condition, no trace of rust.

I sat behind the wheel, put my newly acquired driving licence in the glove compartment, turned on the ignition, and as I glided along the main road and passed the sign with Os on it I realised something. That the road went on. And on. That a whole world lay in front of that red bonnet.

It was a long, hot summer.

Every morning I drove Carl down to the Co-op where he had a summer job before heading on to the workshop.

And in the course of those weeks and months I became not just a useful driver but also, according to Rita Willumsen, a satisfactory if not expert lover.

We usually met in the late mornings. We each drove our own car, and I parked in a different farm track from her so that no one would connect us.

Rita Willumsen made just one condition.

‘As long as you’re with me, I don’t want you going with other girls.’

There were three reasons for her condition.

The first was that she didn’t want to catch any of the sexually transmitted diseases that she knew from working at the surgery were rife in the village, and the girls people like me have it away with are always tarts. Not that she was scared stiff of a dose of chlamydia or crabs, that could be quickly sorted out by a doctor in Notodden, but because now and then Willumsen still demanded his conjugal rights.

The second reason was that even tarts can fall in love, and analyse every word the boy says, take note of every evasion, ask questions about every undocumented trip to the woods, until they end up knowing things they shouldn’t know, and suddenly you’ve got a full-blown scandal.

The third reason was that she wanted to hang on to me. Not because I was in any way unique, but because the risk of changing lovers in a little place such as Os was too great.

In simple terms, the condition was that Willumsen mustn’t find out. And the reason was that Willumsen – like the canny businessman he was – had insisted on a prenup agreement, and fru Willumsen owned nothing beyond her physical attributes, as people say. She was dependent on her husband if she wanted to go on living the life she had become accustomed to. And that was fine by me, because suddenly I had a life that was worth living.