you.’ In his early twenties, Ragnar Borchmann had married a girl from a very good family who was also at the start of a promising academic career. The couple always appeared to be happy and harmonious, but they remained childless. A sorrow settled on them, which seemed to weigh more heavily on him. By 1948, Ragnar Borchmann was forty-four years old and had amassed an impressive legacy of books, property and money, but he did not have an heir, and it seemed had no prospect of getting one.
My childhood was spent in a decidedly upper-class home where strong emotions were seldom displayed in public. I can only remember seeing Mother and Father cry on one occasion – and then it was with tears of joy. One day in July 1949 I came home from school to the news that the forty-three-year-old Mrs Caroline Borchmann was expecting a baby. It was only then that I understood how heavily their childlessness had weighed on the Borchmanns and their immediate circle. I have never seen joy and anticipation emanate more than it did from the middle-aged couple that summer. I went to their daughter’s christening together with my parents in January 1950, as did around 250 other ‘close friends’ from the capital’s cultural, financial and intellectual elite. It was jokingly said that Oslo had never seen the like since the crown prince’s christening in 1937, but then that also seemed fitting, as we were, after all, talking about an emperor’s daughter. Choosing a name for their only child was obviously no easy task for two parents with such illustrious names on both sides. In the end, they settled on Patricia Louise Isabelle Elizabeth Borchmann.
‘The Borchmann girl’ had been reading books from the age of four, if my parents were to be believed. She was eight when she read her first Ibsen play. At the age of ten, she appeared on the front page of one of the national newspapers, without wishing to do so, under the headline ‘Super-Intelligent Director’s Daughter Challenges Single-Stream Comprehensive Schools’. The problem was that the school principal, with backing from the Ministry of Education, would only agree to move her up one year, whereas her parents and the teachers believed that jumping three would be more valuable. The following year, Patricia Louise I. E. Borchmann appeared in the newspapers again, but this time on the sports pages, under headlines that ventured ‘The New Sonja Henie?’ The reports also mentioned that she was one of the nation’s rising stars in shooting, having achieved several high scores in the national youth championships.
One winter day in 1963, my mother and I met Patricia Louise and her parents on our way home from the skating rink. Professor Borchmann dominated the conversation, as always. However, in the course of his analysis of the day’s news – the future of the new Gerhardsen government following the Kings Bay Affair – the impossible occurred. Not only was he corrected in his review of the facts, he was also challenged in his analysis. And what was even more astonishing was that he took it with good humour, admitted his mistakes and even patted his critic happily on the head several times. This made a deep impression on my mother and me. ‘We’ll be hearing more about that girl,’ my mother said, as we watched them continue on their way.
Unfortunately, I only remember the episode and my mother’s words in light of the tragedy that would colour it forever. That was the last time that we saw Mrs Borchmann alive, and Patricia was never to skate again. A few days later, one of the Borchmann cars skidded on the black winter ice at a crossroads, resulting in a full-frontal collision with a spinning articulated lorry. The driver and Mrs Borchmann, who was in the front, were killed instantly, and the passenger in the back seat, Patricia Louise, was still in a coma five days later, fighting for her life. I have been told that two nights in a row the doctors declared that she was not
My childhood was spent in a decidedly upper-class home where strong emotions were seldom displayed in public. I can only remember seeing Mother and Father cry on one occasion – and then it was with tears of joy. One day in July 1949 I came home from school to the news that the forty-three-year-old Mrs Caroline Borchmann was expecting a baby. It was only then that I understood how heavily their childlessness had weighed on the Borchmanns and their immediate circle. I have never seen joy and anticipation emanate more than it did from the middle-aged couple that summer. I went to their daughter’s christening together with my parents in January 1950, as did around 250 other ‘close friends’ from the capital’s cultural, financial and intellectual elite. It was jokingly said that Oslo had never seen the like since the crown prince’s christening in 1937, but then that also seemed fitting, as we were, after all, talking about an emperor’s daughter. Choosing a name for their only child was obviously no easy task for two parents with such illustrious names on both sides. In the end, they settled on Patricia Louise Isabelle Elizabeth Borchmann.
‘The Borchmann girl’ had been reading books from the age of four, if my parents were to be believed. She was eight when she read her first Ibsen play. At the age of ten, she appeared on the front page of one of the national newspapers, without wishing to do so, under the headline ‘Super-Intelligent Director’s Daughter Challenges Single-Stream Comprehensive Schools’. The problem was that the school principal, with backing from the Ministry of Education, would only agree to move her up one year, whereas her parents and the teachers believed that jumping three would be more valuable. The following year, Patricia Louise I. E. Borchmann appeared in the newspapers again, but this time on the sports pages, under headlines that ventured ‘The New Sonja Henie?’ The reports also mentioned that she was one of the nation’s rising stars in shooting, having achieved several high scores in the national youth championships.
One winter day in 1963, my mother and I met Patricia Louise and her parents on our way home from the skating rink. Professor Borchmann dominated the conversation, as always. However, in the course of his analysis of the day’s news – the future of the new Gerhardsen government following the Kings Bay Affair – the impossible occurred. Not only was he corrected in his review of the facts, he was also challenged in his analysis. And what was even more astonishing was that he took it with good humour, admitted his mistakes and even patted his critic happily on the head several times. This made a deep impression on my mother and me. ‘We’ll be hearing more about that girl,’ my mother said, as we watched them continue on their way.
Unfortunately, I only remember the episode and my mother’s words in light of the tragedy that would colour it forever. That was the last time that we saw Mrs Borchmann alive, and Patricia was never to skate again. A few days later, one of the Borchmann cars skidded on the black winter ice at a crossroads, resulting in a full-frontal collision with a spinning articulated lorry. The driver and Mrs Borchmann, who was in the front, were killed instantly, and the passenger in the back seat, Patricia Louise, was still in a coma five days later, fighting for her life. I have been told that two nights in a row the doctors declared that she was not
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