Hanna
Thankfully, the crossing back to Norway was a good deal less eventful than my previous Bus journey had been.
The fishing boat took me as far as an island off the coast near Bod?, where the bulk of our cargo was unloaded.
The herring barrels filled with TNT and the beer crates, whose false bottoms concealed handguns and bullets, were quickly spirited away to hiding places, like the one beneath my fishing hut, I supposed.
Then I boarded the mail boat that could take me back to Svolvaer.
As we sailed slowly northward, calling at the many little towns dotted along the coast, I made sure the suitcase containing the wireless set never left my side.
I was exhausted by the time the milk boat carried me into the fjord on the final leg of my journey, and my injured shoulder ached from the effort of carrying the heavy case.
I sent a note on with the boat’s skipper to let Liv know I was back safely and hoped I would see her soon.
At last, I was home. I opened the door of the hut and set the case down with a sigh of relief.
I felt a little disoriented, being back in Norway again after months away, but my time in Shetland now seemed no more than a dream.
The first thing I did was to add the sliver of sea glass Euan had given me to the collection on the shelf, a reminder that I really had been there with him. Next, I took stock of the hut.
Liv and Erik must have been in and out during the summer: a few things had been rearranged, and the floor looked as if it had been swept quite recently. In the kitchen, the cupboards were stocked with bags of coffee, oatmeal, and flour, and some new jars of cloudberry jam sat on the shelf.
Once I’d lit the stove, I unpacked my bag, unwrapping the Morse key and the headset from the woolen scarf. I’d been told the other items I’d need were to be delivered to the hut, so I fished out the key from the sea urchin shell, pulled back the rug, and unlocked the trapdoor.
In a wooden crate marked with a fish merchant’s stamp, I found several batteries.
I took just one, leaving the others in their hiding place, then lifted a sizable fishing reel from the box.
At first glance, it looked as if it might simply hold fishing line, but the wire was a little thicker than usual.
There was another item in the box, too. In a burlap flour sack, I found a pistol and some bullets.
I’d been told they would be provided and had been shown how to use them during my stay at Lunna.
I knew that if the Direction Finders located my position, it would be better not to be arrested.
This pistol was a solution. I loaded it, being careful to keep the safety catch on, and wrapped it again in the sack.
Once I’d locked the trapdoor and covered it with the rug, I gathered up the gun, the reel, the battery, and the other parts of the OLGA set and went out to the sea barn.
I hid the pistol behind the heap of coal in the far corner of the shed, then moved a few tools from Pappa’s workbench and set down the suitcase there.
Next, I took the reel of wire and went outside again.
I glanced around, making sure no one was out in the fjord to see me, hitched up my skirt, tucking it into my belt, and climbed up the fish frame.
It was high enough to act as a support for the aerial, and I ran the length of wire along the edge of the top rung, keeping it flush with the wood, continuing down one of the legs of the A-frame to the ground next to the sea barn.
From there, it was an easy job to slip the end through a knothole in the barn wall and run it under the workbench.
I stood back to admire my handiwork. The wire was well camouflaged by the drying frame, invisible to the casual observer.
Even if you looked more closely, it appeared simply to be an innocent part of the frame’s construction.
Back inside the barn, I opened the suitcase.
The interior was lined with a wooden casing to protect the OLGA wireless’s three sections—the power unit, receiver, and transmitter, linked together by their looping wires.
Once I’d set everything up and connected the aerial and the battery, I turned the dial to the agreed wavelength and flipped the receive/transmit switch.
Night was falling over the bay, the water a dark mirror for the crescent moon that rose above the horizon.
I checked my watch, and when the minute hand ticked round to the appointed hour, I began to tap on the Morse key, sending a stream of bleeps out into the ether.
The little light on top of the set flashed in its accompanying rhythm as I repeated my coded message three times: ALAMOOTIE IN THE NEST. Even if it were to be intercepted by the enemy, they’d never know what an alamootie was.
Then I flicked the switch back and immediately, through the crackle of static, came a distinct stream of bleeps, acknowledging safe receipt of my message.
I smiled as I scribbled the letters into a little notebook.
Because those signals meant something. They meant there was a new link in the hidden network of wireless operators stretching from fjord to mountaintop, from hut to town.
They meant orders given and messages passed to the shadowy figures waiting in the mountains as to the whereabouts of caches of supplies.
They meant we were not alone: a whole secret army, spanning an ocean, was on the move.
Those bleeps meant Norway was fighting back.
*
I was expecting Liv’s visit on my first weekend at home. I’d packed away the wireless equipment, disconnecting the aerial and pushing the suitcase well back underneath Pappa’s workbench, covering it with a piece of old sailcloth.
I was digging up potatoes in the vegetable patch when I heard the whoop and turned to see the rowing boat coming between the skerries and into the bay.
I flung aside my fork and ran to the jetty to help pull in the dinghy, Liv scrambling out and almost capsizing it as Erik maneuvered with the oars.
Then we were hugging and laughing and crying all at once, the emotions spilling over at being reunited after the longest time we’d ever spent apart.
“I thought you were never coming back!” she exclaimed. “Oh, have you hurt your arm?” she asked, noticing me wince a little as she grabbed my hand.
“It’s nothing, I just pulled a muscle while I was digging,” I replied. “How are you both? Thanks for filling the larder.”
“We’ve brought you some apples and plums,” Erik said, holding up the cardboard box he’d lifted from the boat. “And some wild mushrooms we picked in the forest.”
“And we caught mackerel on the way over, too,” chimed in Liv. “We’ll cook a feast to celebrate your return.”
I was grateful that neither of them asked any questions about where I’d been.
I’d prepared a vague story about getting a job in a hotel in Troms? for the summer, but it turned out not to be needed.
I’m sure they were aware I wasn’t going to tell them the truth, in any case.
In those days, there were many things it was safer not to know.
We sat up late into the night, while Liv and Erik told me all the news from Fagernes.
Erik’s face was lined with worry as he said, “The schools have started back, although it gets harder with every week that goes by. We’re being ordered to teach a curriculum set by the new administration, which includes all sorts of rubbish about the new rules…
. The headmaster refused to implement it last term, so they arrested him.
We hear he’s been sent to a work camp at Grini. And many others have, too.”
“They’ve appointed a quisling to take his place,” Liv chipped in.
“He’s a horrible man. He snoops outside the classroom door, listening in to make sure we’re toeing the line.
I still manage to read the children the old stories, though.
I think they understand when I tell them that trolls and evil giants still exist today, and we must do all we can not to be bullied by them. ”
Later in bed, I set aside the book of sagas I’d been rereading and lay awake long into the darkness, listening to Liv’s quiet, regular breaths and Erik’s gentle snoring from the other side of the curtain.
The autumn wind whispered around the walls of the hut, and I shivered, pulling the eiderdown quilt a little more tightly about my shoulders, even though the stove still radiated a gentle warmth.
I’d imagined our schools would remain safe places and had taken comfort from the belief that my sister’s work there kept her out of harm’s way.
But the tentacles of war seemed to have gained a grip in every corner of the land, spreading fear in even the most out-of-the-way places.
In just one year, things had changed beyond all recognition.
How could there be a prison camp on Norwegian soil, where good Norwegian citizens were kept?
How could our government be swept aside, the will of the vast majority of the people ignored and trampled upon?
Winter was coming, and it would be a hard one this year.
Perhaps the hardest one we had ever known.
I thought of the suitcase hidden in the sea barn, and the compartment beneath the hut where a new stash of barrels had appeared in my absence.
One night soon, a fishing boat would pull into the bay and draw up beneath the trapdoor to remove them or to deliver more.
I tried to reassure myself with thoughts of the ways in which we were resisting.
But a lump of unease had lodged in the pit of my stomach, making me feel a little sick.
I reached out a hand to touch the leather-bound book, brushing my fingertips across its tooled cover for reassurance. The tree of life was shaking in the winds of this cruel war. We were fighting trolls and giants. How could mere mortals like us ever win against such might?
*