Sandra Field - Travelling Light

Although his change of subject threw her, her recovery was almost instant. ‘Flat, too,’ she said agreeably. ‘I made the mistake of pouring it.’

‘Your cousin isn’t coming back tonight, is he?’

Her lashes flickered. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not until the weekend.’

‘Yet you invite me—a stranger—up to his apartment. Do you go around looking for trouble?’

‘I asked you here to make amends—not to be insulted!’

‘You haven’t answered my question.’

She gave him a mocking smile. ‘You didn’t have to accept the invitation, Lars.’

‘A fighter, indeed,’ Lars said, balancing lightly on the balls of his feet, and holding her gaze with his own. ‘I want to see you again. Tomorrow why don’t we go to the Viking museum at Bygdoy?’

Normally there was nothing Kristine liked better than to tour a city with one of its inhabitants. ‘No, thank you,’ she said firmly.

‘Every visitor to Oslo should go there.’

‘In that case I shall do so. On my own.’

His jaw tightened infinitesimally. ‘How long are you staying in Oslo?’

‘Not long.’

‘Then what’s the harm in one outing?’ he asked, his smile deliberately high-voltage.

Fighting against his charm, she said, ‘I travel light.’

‘I’m not asking you to bring your cousin.’

In spite of herself her lips quirked. ‘Earlier you called me foolish. I think it would be extremely foolish of me to accept your invitation.’

‘Merely high-spirited.’

‘You have an answer for everything and I need that beer,’ Kristine said feelingly, and marched into the kitchen. There she perched on a stool by the counter and launched a determined discussion of Ibsen’s plays. Lars obligingly followed her lead. They moved to Grieg’s music and drank one beer each. Then Lars stood up. Moving towards the door, he said, ‘What time will I pick you up tomorrow?’

‘You’re taking it for granted that I’m going with you!’

He leaned against the doorpost, his body a long, lazy curve. His blue eyes were laughing at her again. ‘That would be very foolish of me,’ he said.

If she were sensible, she’d say no and oust this man from her life as violently as he had entered it. ‘I’ll go,’ she said crossly. ‘Ten-thirty.’

‘Good.’ Lars pushed himself away from the door and crossed the hall to the main entrance. Pulling one of the tall double doors open, he said, ‘Lock this behind me, won’t you? I hope you sleep well.’ Then the door shut and he was gone.

Kristine, who had been pondering what she would do were he to try and kiss her goodnight, gaped at the gleaming wood panels, said a very rude word, and hoped she wouldn’t behave as atypically during the rest of her stay in Norway as she had on the first day.

KRISTINE slept poorly. She got up early the next morning, washed out some clothes and hung them on Harald’s balcony, and soaked in the jacuzzi with a gloriously scented bubble bath that she suspected must belong to the owner of the négligé. She then dressed in her blue shorts with her favourite flowered shirt, breakfasted on the less dubious remains in the refrigerator, and went out to buy some groceries.

She had woken with Lars very much on her mind. But in the bright morning sunshine his effect on her last night began to seem the product of fright and an over-active imagination. He was only a man, after all. She would visit the Viking museum with him, there was no harm in that, and then they would go their separate ways. Jauntily she crossed the street to the market.

On her way back she dropped into the post office, finding to her delight that there was a letter in general delivery from Paul, her youngest and favourite brother, to whom she had mentioned the possibility that she might go to Oslo. Kristine sat down in the sun on a stone wall near Harald’s street and tore the letter open.

Paul at eighteen was in love with basketball and women, in that order; he was putting himself through university on athletic scholarships and was now at a summer training session that happily was co-educational. After a two-page description of a centre-forward called Lisa, he reported on the duty visit he had made to their parents recently. Mum was the same; Dad was suing the next-door neighbour for building a fence that infringed on his property.

Kristine let the closely written pages fall to her lap and stared blindly at the ground. She had done the right thing to leave the farm two years ago; as far as her family was concerned she had more than paid her dues. Yet not a letter came from home that she didn’t feel guilty...

A shadow fell across the letter and a deep male voice said, ‘Bad news?’

Kristine gave a nervous start. Raising her eyes, she was presented with a close-up view of long muscular legs, navy shorts, and a shirt clinging to a flat belly. Lars. The gouge in his arm looked worse in daylight than it had last night. More guilt, she thought wildly, clutching at the thin sheets of airmail paper.

Lars sat down beside her on the wall, put an arm around her and said, ‘What’s wrong, Kristine?’

His solicitude unnerved her almost as much as the warm weight of his arm. She shoved the pages of Paul’s letter back into the envelope. ‘Nothing. Just a letter from one of my brothers...I haven’t seen him for two years.’

Lars glanced at the stamp. ‘You left Canada two years ago and you’ve been travelling ever since?’ She nodded, her head bent. ‘Are you running from something—is that why you travel light?’

She was conscious of an irrational longing to pour out the whole sorry story to him. But that would be breaking a self-imposed rule she had never before been tempted to break. ‘I’ve already told you my private life is off-limits, Lars,’ she said more sharply than she had intended. She got to her feet, moving from the protection of his arm to stand alone. It was, she supposed, a symbolic action. Despite a father, a mother and four brothers, she had been standing alone most of her life.

And glad to do so, she thought fiercely. Stooping, she picked up the groceries. ‘Once I’ve put these away, we can go.’

Lars leaned forward and neatly took one of the bags from her. Then he said in deliberate challenge, ‘Now you’re really travelling light. Because you’re letting me take some of the weight.’

‘That’s not what I mean by it,’ she flashed. ‘I travel alone, Lars— that’s what I mean.’

‘Not with me, you don’t! When you’re with me, we travel together.’

The wind was playing with his hair. He looked as if he had slept as little as she, and on what was only their second meeting he was pushing his way inside boundaries that Philippe, Andreas and Bill had never once breached. ‘Then we won’t travel at all,’ Kristine announced, her blue eyes openly unfriendly.

‘Yes, we will. Because you know as well as I do how we met—we met because you screamed for help.’

She glared at him, visited by the mad urge to scream for help again. ‘That’s all very clever,’ she snorted, starting off down the street, ‘but you can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do!’

‘I never thought otherwise,’ Lars said mildly.

She stamped her foot in exasperation. ‘For goodness’ sake let’s talk about something else. Tell me about the Vikings, since we’re going to this museum. A good honest Viking with rape and pillage on his mind would be a lot easier to cope with than you, Lars Bronstad.’

He stopped dead on the street and gave her a comprehensive survey from her over-bright eyes to her slim, tanned ankles. ‘You certainly bring out the Viking in me,’ he retorted, and watched as the flush in her cheeks deepened.