In Search of Mary Read online

  Will and I are to be hosted by Norway’s only communist mayor: Knut Henning Thygesen. Despite everything she says about the place, the mayor of Risør is a Wollstonecraft enthusiast and has offered us a place to stay for a few days. But he’s away on holiday. Will and I will be on our own among the looming cliffs, where the “tremendous bulwarks enclosed” her “on every side”, so that Wollstonecraft feels she can scarcely breathe. My expectations are low.

  What a surprise, then, to sail into a town so dazzling it’s as though it’s been scrubbed with salty water and dried in the bleaching sun. It’s early evening, and the late sun is dipping low. The houses are wooden, of course, and perfectly white. It’s so white my eyes ache. I gratefully touch Anjava on my way back onto dry land. With sadness, Will and I fondly say goodbye to Mick and Gunnar, our captain and our shipmate.

  Knut Henning Thygesen’s house is up high, right on top of the cliffs that Wollstonecraft found so oppressive. It’s next to the Risørflekken, a bungalow-sized white chalk circle marked onto the rocks. This is visible for miles out to sea and is used as a navigational landmark. Our new Norwegian home is a tiny studio flat at the bottom of Knut’s tumbling garden. A cherry tree sweeps over it. Waist-high flowers, spilling yellow daises and bursting lilies lean into Will’s buggy as we push through on the stone path.

  I get Will ready for bed. We share my last squashed sandwich and before long we are both completely unconscious. To quote the great woman: “I sunk into the most luxurious rest; it was more than refreshing”. Waking up in a new, unknown place is something wonderful. And if that new place is surrounded by flowers, has sunlight and birdsong streaming in and a view down to a blue sea, then you can feel pretty pleased with yourself. I open the fridge and find breakfast for Will and me: blueberry jam, soft brown bread and cheese.

  To add to the profound joy, these wonderful strangers left not only a cot for Will but also a large plastic caterpillar, with flashing lights and big buttons that sing. Not the sort of thing I’d ever buy, let alone bring on a trip – but what, it turns out, do I know? The caterpillar is a piece of magnificent fortune. Will is entranced by it for at least forty minutes. During which time I have a slow shower, make a second coffee, and then sit blankly on a chair doing nothing at all. I haven’t done this for ages.

  It’s pretty amazing.

  Eventually we head down into town. It’s steep. Will, the buggy and I gather momentum as we zip down to sea level. Bright boats are moored in the clean harbour, their masts jangling and clanging in the wind. Modest yet stylish shops sell linen clothing and white wicker baskets. It’s a White Company catalogue come to life. The people are good-looking. The sea is bluer than a ’70s postcard. Has the entire place been Photoshopped? It’s almost too much. Can a place be this tidy, this stylish and still have humans in it? I put on my sunglasses. Only at the far end of the harbour do I spot a small dog poo near a bush, and a shopping trolley in the sea. I try not to smirk.

  But what of the dark smoky houses, looming shadows and depraved, filthy people? Why does Wollstonecraft see so much ugliness here? I’m beginning to feel faintly disloyal for loving Risør when it was the scene of such misery for her. These cliffs don’t torment my soul in the least. I fail to meet any scheming brown-toothed inhabitants. I do my best, but it’s very hard to be unhappy here.

  On top of it all, the people of Risør don’t even seem to hold a grudge about Wollstonecraft’s harsh words. I meet up with two of them: a retired history teacher, Kjell Arthur Paulsen, and the town’s watchman, John Thomas Axelsen. Kjell Arthur has swept-back historian hair and impressive gravestone teeth. He has given lectures about Wollstonecraft’s writing on the region. John Thomas, in his scarlet watchman’s outfit with brass buttons, has a red leering face and a Sid James chuckle. “I was born in Risør and I thank almighty God for it,” he announces.

  “Right… but the place isn’t quite how I expected it, as you can imagine,” I begin.

  “Ah, but do you know about the fire?” Kjell Arthur asks. “On the night of 6th June 1861 was the biggest fire in Risør’s history. All our houses are made of wood – this is why we have a watchman, to go around at night looking out for fires. But 248 houses burned down that night. The men were out at sea. The women of Risør saved the church: they stood in a row passing buckets of water, while their own houses burned down. The church was built in 1647: it’s the same one that Wollstonecraft mentions, and you still see it there today. Then town planning was changed, with wider streets to prevent fires, and this changed the whole aspect of Risør. This was the end of those dark alleys.”

  I describe the regularity of a terrace of English houses, and remark on the striking individuality of Norwegian houses. Kjell Arthur replies: “Yes! That is the Norwegian character. Wollstonecraft says that we are one of the freest, most liberated people in the world. We are separate from Europe, and we like being separate. When Britain was great, then they were separate too. Then they lost their status, and that’s when they wanted to connect to Europe.”

  John Thomas chuckles again, and I smile to show that I’m totally OK with coming from a low-status country. Then I ask about the silver.

  Kjell Arthur continues with increasing emphasis: “Mary knew that Ellefsen had the silver. It was she who wrote him the receipt. She was there when he took it on board. Ellefsen’s mother was very rich, she owned the Egeland Ironworks. But even so, I think that it was Ellefsen who took it – it didn’t disappear at the bottom of the sea, as some believe.”

  John Thomas leans forward and croaks “Lots of people dived for it. I knew a man called Charlie – he searched the islands here in the area for more than forty years. He came here from America, read all the history and spent forty years on diving expeditions, seeking that silver. He’s dead now. But every week I teased him: “Have you found the silver yet?” – and he’d say: “No, not yet.” He kept seeking it until his death.”

  “I love this kind of optimism,” I say. “Doesn’t part of you wish the silver was still out there somewhere, just glinting there, waiting to be hunted and discovered?”

  “Well, a lot of people still sit watching at the side of Loch Ness too!” says Kjell Arthur, and they have a little guffaw together. Then, with an air of preventing further such nonsense, he continues:

  “Wollstonecraft was well known. When she came on her travels, she was hailed because of her writing. She was well known in Paris too. And she was so sturdy.” He swipes and pounds the table with his hands: “She had ideas about freedom and virtue. Virtue was at that time thought to be something that only men had – but this is nonsense, and I believe that this is why she almost killed herself twice, because she knew what this was all about. She’s amazing for her time. She brought the discussion: what about the rights of woman, but also the rights of man – by this she means human rights.”

  John Thomas interrupts: “But she fell in love during the Revolution – she was in love with a man, and she forgot all about the rights of man and the Revolution.” He’s somewhat jeering now. “She left it all behind – for a man!” It’s becoming clear that this particular citizen of Risør may not be quite as forgiving as the others.

  “Actually, John Thomas,” I smile at him, steely, full beam, “she wrote a book about the Revolution during this time. As well as becoming a mother. The fascination of her life is that there’s so much to interpret. So people impose their own ideas and bring their own problems to her story.”

  As I hold forth it doesn’t occur to me that this is what I’m doing too. But John Thomas is not the only critic to hold Wollstonecraft’s passions against her – as though the act of falling in love deletes all her political arguments. And what’s so wrong with love? If she’d never been in it, they’d all say what a dry old man-hater she was.

  Kjell Arthur backs me up: “I’m very impressed by her, and I used to teach my students about half of the world’s population and their lack of rights for the last several thousand years.” Kjell Arthur has an eagerness, almos
t an impatience, when speaking that must have made him an outstanding teacher. “When I read about Mary I was impressed by what she did.”

  I notice that he calls her Mary and wonder why I have always called her Wollstonecraft. A sneaking envy creeps into me, even though it would be weird to change now, at the idea of this casual intimacy. I swallow the feeling, because at least he’s a co-fanatic, and there aren’t nearly enough of us after all. Changing the subject, I mention the encounter with the historian back in Kragerø. The one who said: bah, that feminist, she’s all about the emotions.

  “We-e-ll,” says Kjell Arthur, “in her meetings with people when she was angry – perhaps you could have said to her: calm down. Talk quietly when you meet Ellefsen. Calm down and talk to him quietly, and then perhaps you will reach your goal. But she was fierce. She was filled with all the injustices facing women: she saw this in France, she saw it in her girls’ school in England, she saw it in her father, a drunk man behaving badly towards her mother, and all of this collected up. She saw so much, and she understood, and that’s why she behaved like this.”

  “Calm down and talk quietly” sounds rather a Norwegian piece of relationship advice. Not quite Wollstonecraft’s style, though. What if the whole thing was a fool’s errand? Was Imlay deploying her but hiding all the facts? Or simply trying to distract her after the suicide attempt? Kjell Arthur insists not:

  “No. She understood. She is too intelligent not to know why he pushed her away: she knew why he pushed her away, but she said OK, this trip might be good for me, I want to do this, and then perhaps I will win him back. And of course she was in love too.”

  “Yes,” I get animated, “she was in love and also a believer in people’s ability to change, in the perfectibility of mankind – so she must have thought that he would change.”

  “Ha – every woman wants to change a man!” shouts John Thomas. “It’s the same old story! We all know it!” And even Will joins in the cackling as hilarity breaks out all round.

  Chapter Six

  Obvious Progress

  The next morning we make a discovery, Will and I. Behind Knut’s house, past a laburnum tree in yellow bloom, full of bumble bees, is a small pathway leading into some woods. We wander in, in the early sunlight. There are trees, both evergreen and deciduous, all around. Thick mosses cover the ground. Moving further into the woods is a lake. It is in fact the perfect lake. It’s hidden, quiet and clear, and there’s a wooden diving board sticking off the end of a huge rock. I have a surge of missing Justin and the girls – they would run completely wild here.

  The winding path continues beyond the lake, coming out abruptly onto a viewing point high in the air above a wealth of scattered islands. It’s sheltered from the wind, and sunny. This is my new favourite place, my equivalent of Wollstonecraft’s Tønsberg hilltop. The air catches the sounds of boats from far below and lifts them up to me. I look down on the backs of birds swooping out from the cliffs below. There are bushes covered in tiny roses, and the smell mingles with the pine.

  I take some photos, try to record the sound of a bumble bee, and wish I could store the smell of the air. I sit down and take out the book to read out loud:

  What, indeed, is to humanize these beings, who rest shut up, for they seldom even open their windows, smoking, drinking brandy and driving bargains? I have been almost stifled by these smokers. They begin in the morning, and are rarely without their pipe till they go to bed. Nothing can be more disgusting than the rooms and men towards the evening: breath, teeth, clothes and furniture all are spoilt…

  But reading on a bit, she doesn’t hate for too long. Quite the opposite. Even here she sees people’s future potential. Even in hated Risør, she sees

  the first steps of the improvement which I am persuaded will make a very obvious progress in the course of half a century; and it ought not to be sooner, to keep pace with the cultivation of the earth. Improving manners will introduce finer moral feelings.

  Fifty years? She reckons the human race only needs another fifty years to mature morally, to pull up its collective socks and become worthy of her love. Fifty years of cultivation. Humanity as an orchard or wheat field. So we should have had it all sorted by 1845? I imagine showing her the world of today. Would she capsize us all in a towering storm of indignation? Or would her “ardent affection” persist? I believe that it would. And that it doesn’t matter if she’s wrong to believe in human perfectibility. She is also right to believe in it.

  My vague desire was that something would rub off on me on this journey – that I too would undergo some of her “cultivation”. But everything is so smooth and contented – how can this lead to “improvement” and “progress”? Some churning discovery was supposed to emerge from her words, a kick in the shin directly from 1795 to this moment, alerting me to… something. Maybe even delivering up a few of those “finer moral feelings”. But instead she’s suffering away like she bloody well invented it, and I’m smelling the flowers. Does this make me one of those inward-looking “smokers” who never opens the window?

  A jogging woman suddenly pops out of the bushes and runs past, turning her head in a laughing greeting as she goes. I laugh too, and gather up my stuff. The shin kick will come when it’s ready. As we walk back into the gentle pine-smelling woods, a crowd of blue tits rushes by, ruffling the air.

  Will is asleep, lying in an oddly polite way, his legs tucked in, his hands folded. I lean in as close as possible, watch his chest rise and fall, look at the small dimples on the backs of his hands. I lightly trace the back of his hand with my finger. Without waking him, I want him to know that this is one of the best days of my life and he’s in it too.

  When Knut, in whose garden we’re so genteelly residing, comes back to town, he invites me round for a plate of mackerels in yogurt and a bowl of fresh salty prawns. Will gobbles these as quickly as I can peel off their extremities. Surely the Mayor of Risør shouldn’t be allowed to like Wollstonecraft, after all she said? Knut laughs. “For about ten years I was indignant, then I discovered much more about her, and now I’m glad – I’m proud that she was here.” We discuss her excitedly, like proper Wollstonecraft geeks. Our mackerels in yogurt go cold in the slanting evening sun.

  If you could choose a family to be an advert for Norway, it would be Knut’s family. They are outdoorsy, they tease each other, they eat freshly baked bread together for breakfast. And they are so impossibly attractive that you get embarrassed looking at them. Knut has wild bushy hair and leaves his shirt open. His wife, Tina Bang, has high cheekbones, large eyes and the best name ever. Their son Espen is handsome, studious and interested in the world. There are also two beautiful daughters whose photos adorn the walls. Like their hometown, they are a vision of wholesomeness. They have, after all, invited a complete stranger and her baby to live in their garden while they were away on holiday.

  Will and I join them for breakfast, coming up the stony path from our garden home. All of the food in the house is placed onto a groaning wooden table. Within my immediate reach I find eggs, several cheeses, fish, meat, butter, bread, jams, berries, juice, coffee and some strange things in jars. They might be baby octopuses. “So you’re writing a book? What’s it about?” says Tina Bang. “It’s about travelling with a baby,” I say, as Will thrashes in my arms by way of asking to be put on the floor. She smiles fondly as he crawls away towards some tomato plants.

  I want to know more about how Wollstonecraft’s reaction to Risør might have been influenced by the events in her life at the time. “She was here looking for Ellefsen,” says Knut. “But the most interesting thing is how the psychological effects come out, how this determines what you will write. She was extremely disappointed here. I think that explains what she wrote. If you read the Bible or history from thousands of years ago, people are writing their own subjective version.”

  “I think so too,” I join in, “but that’s just my subjective version of her subjective version.”

  “But, you know,
Risør could have been a bad place,” adds Tina, the first person to voice this possibility. “And maybe the people weren’t so nice. Strange things happen here in Risør. It was a rich town, but the people were getting rich in a bad way: there were smugglers and a lot of monkey business. My family has been here in Risør since 1780; my ancestor had a brandy distillery.”

  I recall Wollstonecraft describing the smelly people of Risør pushing the brandy bottle around all day. Espen interrupts: “They still do. That was probably our great-great-great-great-great-grandfather pushing that bottle of brandy.”

  “People drank a lot,” Tina adds. “It’s a harbour, of course – because of this, I think it’s true what she wrote; I think it was not too nice when she was here. Every tree was chopped down back then. For fuel and shipbuilding. It wasn’t good: no green, and a lot of people drinking.”

  “If a place like Risør used to be like that, then there’s hope for us all,” I say. “How else has it changed, compared to back then?” “Today it’s much more equal,” says Knut. “But Risør still has problems, especially in the summer. You see it when the rich people come from Oslo. The local people are happy to have guests, but we are afraid that they will buy up holiday homes. There is a law about second homes, but people know how to get round this: they give it to their children, and still keep the place empty, while the local people cannot buy. We want to protect houses by making people live here all year round if they buy a place.”

  “Is it true that you’re a communist?” I ask.

  “No he’s not!” says Tina.

  “Let him answer!”

  Knut laughs: “She decides, of course! No, really – I’m not like a Soviet Communist – that was a horrible civilization I think. But I dream about a society where all people are equal. The right wing is gaining influence here: they talk of freedom, of individual politics. But this isn’t about freedom: it’s only freedom for the few. A hundred years ago we were one of the poorest countries in Europe, and then we found the oil, and today we are the richest. But when a country becomes rich so quickly—”