The Journey Home: A Novel by Olaf Olafsson Page B

even ask for it, removed a basil leaf from a slice of tomato when I thought it unpresentable and replaced it with another one, all without my needing to say a word. We worked as one and I can confidently claim that we felt comfortable in each other’s presence.
    But just when everything was going swimmingly the storm broke. It had long been my habit to greet the new day in the conservatory on the eastern side of the main house. The view over the meadows and the fields rolling off into the distance is lovely and I’ve even gotten used to seeing the two shacks on Helmsdale’s property across the brook, with their gray corrugated roofs and half-open doors into darkness. I hadn’t been sitting there for long that morning when Marilyn appeared in the doorway and took a seat beside me. It can’t have been more than quarter past six. The light settled like a thin dusting of snow across the landscape and we sat in silence side by side, enjoying the peace. I poured a cup of tea for her. It was then that she dropped the bombshell: “I’ve decided to get married.”
    Naturally, I was completely dumbfounded by this news. It was all I could do not to drop my cup on the floor. I had never seen her with a man and hadn’t thought it odd, since she seemed to stay at home when she wasn’t in the kitchen. She read, went for walks, tended the plants in the greenhouse. But now her voice sounded odd in my ears. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her. In my agitation I blurted out, perhaps more harshly than I had intended: “You can’t be serious? You’re not pregnant, are you?”
    She was stunned and speechless, and realizing it would probably be sensible to change my tone, I tried to do so, adding: “Who is the man?”
    “William Thomson,” she replied curtly—actually, I think it was: “
Mr.
William Thomson.”
    Well, well, my dear, I said to myself. Next you’ll be calling him “sir.” But I bit my tongue and merely asked what he did. She explained that he was a market gardener from Windermere in the Lake District who had earned a good reputation for his produce. Marilyn had read about him in an article by Elizabeth David in the
Spectator
and got in touch with him shortly afterward when we urgently needed green peppers and other vegetables following a mishap in my greenhouse. Apparently they got on well together on the phone and talked regularly after that, until little Marilyn eventually went up north to Cumbria to visit him. For some reason I had been under the impression that she was going to stay with relatives.
    “Do you really think it’s a good idea? Do you think it’s sensible to marry a man you hardly know and move away to a place where you’ll be a complete stranger?”
    At that point she said she loved him.
    I couldn’t prevent myself from rolling my eyes at that and saying, “And you have a lot of experience in that field, do you?”
    She stood up. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears and her voice broke when she said, “I thought you would understand me. Of all the people I know, I thought you were the one I’d always be able to rely on.”
    Then she turned on her heel and left.
    “Marilyn!” I called after her. “Marilyn!” but she didn’t look back.
    The newly risen sun was beginning to warm the conservatory, but the tea was cold.
    When she took her leave of us a month later, I asked Anthony to give her a necklace which I had inherited from my maternal grandmother. I was in bed with a cold at the time and couldn’t bring myself to go down and see her off.

7
    9 Gardast.
October 17, 1935
    Dearest Mother,
    We’ve been back at school for one and a half weeks now. Our new classroom
is sunnier and warmer than last year. It’s on the top floor and there’s a view out
of the window from where we sit. We’re learning the same subjects as last year
with the addition of commodities studies. It is unbelievably boring, but I don’t
want to burden you by saying any more about that or about