that.
'Hope to, naturally. Course it's not easy. You have to speak the lingo, of course, and take a local name.'
'After your father?'
'That's right. And since my old man was called Christopher too. I'd have one of these names with a built-in echo. A bit much, I think. How about you, Sam? What was your father's name?'
'Oddly enough, I don't know.'
I'm so used to it that I forget it sometimes makes other people uncomfortable. After a second's silence, Christopher decided not to pursue that one, and started talking about his plans for a sales drive in the morning. I was sorry to hear that. I'd been hoping he might come as interpreter when I went to s e Solrun's mother.
'I'll come,' Ivan volunteered. 'It will be just like being a real reporter. I shall wear a Bur berry and look terribly louche.'
20
When I come to think about it, I've never actually known a woman who rushed off home to mummy in moments of emotional crisis. My wife used to rush out and spend. To her, the cheque-book was a weapon of retaliation: it gave her a strike-back capability that was awesome.
All the other women I'd known used to go to the hairdressers.
Some of them- I'll swear it- used to seek out emotional crises if they'd got word of a classy new crimper.
But I liked the home-to-mummy theory, and I was encouraged by the glint of doubt in Hulda's eyes when I suggested it. Shaking her head like a terrier with a mouse, she said Solrun would never go to her mother's. Since Hulda seemed to be the chairman of the Solrun Defence League, that was good enough for me. I went.
Asta Arnadottir lived in a small flat-fronted terraced house, painted black, in what they call the Stone Village- Grjotathorp -in the old centre of the city. We had to park at the top and walk down. I climbed the three stone steps and gave the heavy brass knocker a bang.
'Hardly Knightsbridge, is it?' Ivan said, in his snobbiest voice.
Actually, it's got a lot of character. Two dozen or so houses, mostly old-style with steep-pitched roofs, dotted around a slope where you could still see some of the boulders that gave the place its name.
Across the road, a skinny woman in a floral pinafore came out and pretended to sweep the pavement so she could have a look at us. There's one of those in every street: self-appointed sentries.
I knocked again. 'It's no use,' Ivan said. 'Empty houses have a definite aura about them. This, I have to tell you, is an empty house.'
'So it is,' I said in mock gratitude. As he spoke, there'd been a noise from inside the house.
I called out 'Hello,' and this time used my knuckles on the dark paintwork. In the silence that followed, I put my ear up against it to listen. You couldn't say quite what sort of noise it was- a series of stifled sounds, somewhere between a whimper and a wail.
'Oh, let's go,' Ivan said, moving a step or two up the street.
He'd wanted to come in the afternoon. He kept insisting it was too early, meaning, no doubt, too early for him.
'No, there's someone there.' If there was, they weren't opening any doors. I spent fifteen minutes knocking and calling, while the street-sweeper watched in silence, before I gave up and walked back to the jeep.
'You don't think that could've been a child, do you?' I asked.
Ivan was adamant. 'Definitely not. It was a puppy. She won't open the door because she has a dog in there and you know what they're like about that round here. They mow them down in the streets.'
'I'm surprised at you,' I said, as I picked my leisurely way through the morning traffic. 'You mustn't believe what you read in the
'Hope to, naturally. Course it's not easy. You have to speak the lingo, of course, and take a local name.'
'After your father?'
'That's right. And since my old man was called Christopher too. I'd have one of these names with a built-in echo. A bit much, I think. How about you, Sam? What was your father's name?'
'Oddly enough, I don't know.'
I'm so used to it that I forget it sometimes makes other people uncomfortable. After a second's silence, Christopher decided not to pursue that one, and started talking about his plans for a sales drive in the morning. I was sorry to hear that. I'd been hoping he might come as interpreter when I went to s e Solrun's mother.
'I'll come,' Ivan volunteered. 'It will be just like being a real reporter. I shall wear a Bur berry and look terribly louche.'
20
When I come to think about it, I've never actually known a woman who rushed off home to mummy in moments of emotional crisis. My wife used to rush out and spend. To her, the cheque-book was a weapon of retaliation: it gave her a strike-back capability that was awesome.
All the other women I'd known used to go to the hairdressers.
Some of them- I'll swear it- used to seek out emotional crises if they'd got word of a classy new crimper.
But I liked the home-to-mummy theory, and I was encouraged by the glint of doubt in Hulda's eyes when I suggested it. Shaking her head like a terrier with a mouse, she said Solrun would never go to her mother's. Since Hulda seemed to be the chairman of the Solrun Defence League, that was good enough for me. I went.
Asta Arnadottir lived in a small flat-fronted terraced house, painted black, in what they call the Stone Village- Grjotathorp -in the old centre of the city. We had to park at the top and walk down. I climbed the three stone steps and gave the heavy brass knocker a bang.
'Hardly Knightsbridge, is it?' Ivan said, in his snobbiest voice.
Actually, it's got a lot of character. Two dozen or so houses, mostly old-style with steep-pitched roofs, dotted around a slope where you could still see some of the boulders that gave the place its name.
Across the road, a skinny woman in a floral pinafore came out and pretended to sweep the pavement so she could have a look at us. There's one of those in every street: self-appointed sentries.
I knocked again. 'It's no use,' Ivan said. 'Empty houses have a definite aura about them. This, I have to tell you, is an empty house.'
'So it is,' I said in mock gratitude. As he spoke, there'd been a noise from inside the house.
I called out 'Hello,' and this time used my knuckles on the dark paintwork. In the silence that followed, I put my ear up against it to listen. You couldn't say quite what sort of noise it was- a series of stifled sounds, somewhere between a whimper and a wail.
'Oh, let's go,' Ivan said, moving a step or two up the street.
He'd wanted to come in the afternoon. He kept insisting it was too early, meaning, no doubt, too early for him.
'No, there's someone there.' If there was, they weren't opening any doors. I spent fifteen minutes knocking and calling, while the street-sweeper watched in silence, before I gave up and walked back to the jeep.
'You don't think that could've been a child, do you?' I asked.
Ivan was adamant. 'Definitely not. It was a puppy. She won't open the door because she has a dog in there and you know what they're like about that round here. They mow them down in the streets.'
'I'm surprised at you,' I said, as I picked my leisurely way through the morning traffic. 'You mustn't believe what you read in the
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