In Search of Mary Read online

  But you will say that I am growing bitter, perhaps personal. Ah! Shall I whisper to you that you yourself are strangely altered since you have entered deeply into commerce?

  Is Wollstonecraft complicit? No one knows how much she knew. But you can bet she knew enough. Such business would be a betrayal, would compromise her completely. In Gunnar’s discovered letter, where Wollstonecraft pleads her case to the Prime Minister, she proudly invokes her character as “a moral writer”. Has she put her credibility at stake, and compromised her beliefs for Imlay? While he’s just gone and dumped her again? I chase away a small dog that’s come over and is sniffing Will’s leg. All three of us stare silently over the grey water for a while.

  “What about France?” I ask. “She still wants to return and live there, but some of the violence has a profound effect on her. Do you think Wollstonecraft fell out of love with the Revolution after what she witnessed? Doesn’t she call Robespierre a monster?”

  “Yes, she fell out of love with the bloody part of it. She basically kept the same opinion about all things, but was disappointed by what she saw, and when she came here to Norway she was shocked by people supporting Robespierre. She had the first-hand experience that they did not. The people who began the Revolution, they had no idea how it would go. It’s part of the human experience to watch how it goes without knowing. Look what’s happening in Arab countries now.”

  “Another reason we should learn from Wollstonecraft today.”

  “Yes. That sense of uncertainty: we think it’s a good thing, but we’re not sure. This is the ideal moment to reflect on her times, as we’re in huge shifting times now ourselves. But Revolutions like this become very doubtful when they start using weapons.”

  “But you can’t just ask a dictator to step aside, can you?” I say.

  “No, but you should wait as long as possible.”

  “That’s all very polite, but if you were Syrian right now you might be arming to protect your kids. And don’t you think Syrians have waited? They’ve waited and waited and waited…”

  “Ok, it’s inhuman to expect them to wait for ever,” Gunnar replies, “but I think the results are better without violence. I hope for change in Iraq, Afghanistan, but of course we have to be lucky.”

  “Do you believe in luck?

  “I don’t know.”

  “How about God?”

  “I don’t know. I hope there’s a God.” He laughs. “This goes on the list of things I need to prove.”

  The wind blows a paper bag onto Will’s buggy wheels. A seagull swoops, then lands nearby and looks at us sideways. We look out to sea.

  Chapter Seven

  “To Achieve That Moral Improvement within Half a Century”

  The correct antidote to dusty boxes full of despair is to go out on a boat. We meet up with some of Gunnar’s family and friends, and all head out for a picnic on the island of Merdø. Lucky I’m not French, I snigger. Gunnar’s daughter Jenny joins us; she’s ten and reminds me of my daughters. We sit together and I resist the urge to hug her in an act of surrogacy – I miss my girls so. The picnic includes fishcakes. Will and I set to, and I keep him on my lap as a pretext for eating a few more, while Jenny practises her English on me. Afterwards, as we step back into the boat to set off, Gunnar turns to me with a quiet smile.

  “There’s one more place to show you.”

  We moor up on a jetty belonging to an elegant house in Sandviga. A dashing man is standing there waiting, with tweeds and slicked-back hair like a matinée idol. He is called Terje Bodin Larsen, and he has a very large handshake. This is his house, and it’s the last known place that the silver was ever seen.

  “They unloaded the silver from the ship right here.” Gunnar points out an iron hook sunk deep into the rock, to which they would have moored. “After that, nobody knows.”

  Terje tells me that a survey was done along the coast in 1738 placing these mooring arrangements by issue of decree. The hook has been there ever since, he adds, “but I still haven’t seen any silver!”

  After that, nobody knows.

  Then the silver trail stops here. This is as far as we can go. A yellow sun streams all around us. It’s that mad hour of sunlight – it beams down into the water, shining clear right down to the bottom. There’s a diving board sticking off the jetty over the bright water. It’s salt water, but it looks as clear as the purest river. It’s the same buttery light that welcomed us when we first arrived in Norway, and it makes me feel drunk. It’s the same exhilaration I could barely contain on board Anjava. The same purity that dazzled me in Risør.

  This place and moment are of such significance, they deserve some kind of ritual. A solemn dedication. I look around for an accomplice, and there’s one right here. Gunnar’s daughter is playing with my phone. “Jenny, do you want to jump in with me?” “Yes!” A girl of action, like my daughters. I pause for a second – Will is being adored by people while working his way through a bowl of gleaming strawberries – then strip to my T shirt and knickers. Laughing, Jenny and I hold hands and leap off the jetty diving board together.

  Cold water closes over us as we plunge deep. Time freezes for a split second as I look up into the swirl of bubbles, trapped laughter, silver air, rising above my head. This is it! I say to myself, not knowing what it means, then we burst back up, panting. We immediately do it again to make sure it was real, limbs scrambling in the chilly water. One last breathless go – I can’t resist. And then I creep into Terje’s house to dress, stuffing my soggy things into my jacket pockets. My breath, my skin, the hairs on my skin – everything’s heightened. I go commando, and feel invincible.

  Terje hands out wine in heavy goblets, the sun streams through the liquid. The wine hits me right there. At the same euphoric instant, absurdly, a small orchestra warms up and begins to play, sitting outdoors just two jetties away. It’s altogether too much. Violins – you must be kidding. In a climactic finale, this sensory overload collides with my private mixed-up feelings of an ending; the trail’s ending. Like the rainbow trailing into the pot of gold. The music floats over to us like a spell, the golden sun is in my eyes, and the silver trail ends.

  What treasures have I gathered? My mind greedily amasses a wealth that I can roll in and let cascade through my fingers. I’ve gathered up times of joy and adventure with Will to save – to store life-long. The water, the bubbles of light in the water, sunbeams, strawberries, the music. Me and the boy, already I can see us as if from afar. I’ve collected a luminous string of people who have welcomed and helped us. And I’ve trodden in her footsteps, walked and sailed and scrambled right behind her, and read her words aloud.

  As Wollstonecraft’s journey gets darker, mine keeps on gathering light.

  She was so brave. I knew she was brave before, but I hadn’t seen those spiky rocks jutting up out of the sea, and hadn’t launched myself among far-off strangers with my baby. I feel disloyal at what a relief it is, getting out from between her darkening words for the last few days of our Norway trip. Sometimes I think I’m just too happy to hang around with Wollstonecraft. She’d think I was a bit of a lightweight, no doubt. In the couple of days we have left, Will and I meander slowly and easily to Oslo.

  As we leave Wollstonecraft’s trail behind us, there’s more time to think about Norway, and how it’s my new favourite place. This is a country that includes and celebrates children by design. I’ve seen a strange contraption that turned out to be a pram on skis, allowing babies to join in the snowy winter action. I’ve seen street signs showing that a child playing football has priority over a car. And in a strange twist Norwegian children, the wealthiest in Europe, have a closeness to nature and wilderness that’s more often the preserve of impoverished children. It’s not uncommon to see a seven-year-old child fishing or managing a small boat with an outboard motor on her own.

  Wilderness is precious, and Norwegians value it. Space is common. Garden fences are rare. They have a cherished law: allemannsret – the right of e
veryone to roam freely in Norway’s open spaces, as long as nothing is disturbed. Not to mention the equality, the Peace Prize and all that. Wollstonecraft praised Norway back then; nowadays I reckon she’d queue up for citizenship. Will and I have felt safe and welcome, everywhere. Of course, we’ve spent the whole time in rural Norway, in the summer. It can’t all be wild cloudberries and fairy-looking children. There must be a dark side. What about that famous alcoholism, the winters, those violent crime thrillers?

  Will and I stop over in Oslo. The city is obviously more edgy than where we’ve been, but there’s still no sign of a shocking underbelly. It’s increasingly clear that the Norwegians have it all worked out, that civilization thing. Wollstonecraft would not be disappointed by this city. Oslo seems to lack that desperate urban drift, the expanses of poverty that hover around cities like a smell that people learn to ignore. The rudest thing we’ve seen so far is still that shopping trolley in the sea back in Risør. And even that had been tidied away by the next day.

  Behind the station is an immigrant market. I buy a samosa from a stall. The man is from Pakistan. He tells me in perfect English that he also speaks Norwegian. I go into a corner shop for water, and fall into conversation with the owner about Snus. Snus are extremely popular Scandinavian tobacco pouches. They look like a wrong teabag. You put them inside your cheek and they make your teeth go bright brown. “Here – take one,” says the shop owner, proffering his own Snus stash. “It’s healthier than smoking a cigarette.” I try one. It’s more villainous than burnt rubber. I attempt to thank him, and he laughs. Will and I trundle on through Oslo, looking round shops full of things we can’t afford.

  We end up at a Diversity Festival on a university campus. There’s music by the Afro-Norwegian band Queendom, stalls promoting cultural tolerance and blonde kids running around dressed in turbans. Will and I tuck into some falafel. How adorable, I muse – but is it really necessary? It’s so right-on, so advanced here in Norway: surely they must be post-diversity by now? I sigh irritably. Don’t you simply live with diversity, and the point is that finally you stop even seeing it as such?

  Will totters around in front of some drummers while I examine my private dissent from the celebrations. I can’t yet tell if I’m just choking on the wholesomeness of it all, or if there’s a proper argument for not celebrating diversity. This, after all, is why I live in London – I see different sorts of people every day, and that’s just normal and how it should be. I don’t feel the need to burst into song about it. “Festival of Diversity,” I sneer, in my urban wisdom. “What’s the point?”

  The answer comes much sooner than I expect.

  Three weeks later is the massacre. A Christian fundamentalist blows up eight people and then shoots a further sixty-nine people, mostly children. It’s his way of showing that he doesn’t want any more Muslims in his country. I’m back at home, frozen, unable to leave the house. I can’t stop myself watching the story as it breaks. How could it happen here, of all places? Norwegians, my newly beloved friends, are all over the news in the shape of innocent children fleeing a lone gunman. He is armed with a rifle and a handgun, to which he has given names from Norse mythology. And he is carrying “dum-dum” bullets, designed for their expanding rounds. These cause greater internal tissue damage and leave a large exit wound.

  Two hours earlier he had set off a car bomb in Oslo that killed eight people working in a government building. He intended to kill as many journalists as possible, but settled for government workers. He couldn’t get the right parking spot either, and was upset about the angle at which he parked, because it diminished the impact. Another hitch was the delivery of his “manifesto” to other extremists. He’s been getting this ready for a decade or so, but now that he tries to send it out, the repeating “error” messages of the Outlook mailing system cause a delay in his plans.

  But once he heads north to the island of Utøya, his luck changes. Utøya is a holiday island owned by the ruling Labour Party’s youth wing. They host summer camps here for bright young things who want to make the world better. The Norwegian police are miles away, concentrating on the Oslo attack, and their boats are out of order, and the helicopter team is on holiday. He can really take his time here.

  The man is dressed as a police officer. News of the Oslo attack has reached the island and everyone’s relieved to see a policeman. He calls the children to come and gather round, and they obey. He puts down his bag, and pulls out his guns, and he starts killing them. He strides along the beach as they scream and run away. Some beg for their lives, and are shot at close range. Some are paralysed with fear and just stand there, motionless. He kills them too. He pursues them methodically, firing round after round, and going back to make sure he hasn’t missed. Those who have fallen and are injured are shot in the head. He shouts, “You will die today, Marxists!” He has brought drinking water, so as not to get a dry throat.

  Children run into caves, toilets, behind rocks, bushes and trees. Some are given away when their mobile phones ring, and they are shot dead. In the canteen, some plead with him and are shot at point-blank range. He combs the woodland and beaches of the tiny island, ending young lives as he goes. Many try to escape into the water, struggling to swim to safety. One victim drowns, another dies fleeing off a cliff. The man goes about his work, undisturbed for around ninety minutes. He aims at them, one by one, sometimes using the handgun and then the rifle too. He steadily reloads as they flail in the blue Norwegian water.

  The collapsing feeling I get inside rips away at the light tissue of my golden trip. Closing my eyes, I can’t stop seeing the children in the water and the corpses on the beach. I think about my Norwegian friends – their children and my children – and I cry. I see Wollstonecraft, dreaming of her daughter’s tiny footsteps on the sand. Dreaming of a time, soon, when civilization would be complete. Perfectibility, she believed. We’ve got a long way to go.

  Chapter Eight

  Baby, You Can Drive My Career

  How to write about motherhood? Step into the ever-expanding blogosphere and before you even get to “mommy wars” you’ll find that mothering is nothing less than a human rights conflict, and as a mother you’re on the front line. It starts with some pungent nappy talk: nappies leaking, nappies smelling and changing nappies every moment of the night and day. Screaming is the next key ingredient. Your baby screams like no baby has screamed before. Don’t forget how knackered you look, how no one fancies you and even if they did you’ve lost your sex drive: you can actually see your own eye bags, and your breasts feel offended.

  There should be sick on your T-shirt of course, and snot and milk on your remaining clothes. These clothes are stretchy and drab, and probably smelly. The buggy that you push around is like a ball and chain, a visual reminder of your enslaved status. Your hair should be a mess. Mums with good hair or make-up are bitches, trying to make the school run even worse than it already is.

  A comedy moment is helpful, especially if it includes a useless dad. Useless Dad always forgets something vital, like milk or nappies, and then just goes back to work. So selfish. Another source of hilarity is how your once-sacred handbag now includes a dummy and some Calpol. Unbelievable. How about accidentally pulling out a baby-related item, under circumstances that will cause maximum awkwardness? Perhaps in front of people who have proper jobs and have never seen such a thing as a baby’s toy before.

  You might pause and think back to your own mum, and wonder how she did it. Or all the other mums throughout history and around the world. How do they manage? It’s simple. They’re not as tired or as busy as you. It all boils down to the injustice that no one told you it would be like this. So it’s your duty to lift the lid on it. You may mutter, and we’re going off-road now, that you don’t even like your own baby. In fact you hate him and think he’ll end up a psychopath. Sisters around the world will salute you for saying the unsayable. You may even get a film deal.

  There’s another unsayable: you’re basically too
clever for this. Sitting in a room full of mums singing ‘Wind the Bobbin up’? Pushing a swing for an hour? That’s OK for some people, but frankly, you used to have a PA/be creative/do proper things for actual money. There may be a class element here that you don’t feel you have to explore too deeply, as there’s no point wondering how poor people make it work. They probably get their mums to help or something.

  Do not admit that there is smugness in the relief that you feel when you hear about someone’s fertility struggles. Or that you can’t understand women who don’t want babies: what can it really be, what’s wrong with them? You feel superior to them in your motherhood, despite everything that you’ve said about it.

  Do not say that your children are people in their own right, that they can’t help that you’re their mum, and that their journey into the world is as valid as yours. Don’t describe the smallness of their feet. It’s not worth lingering on any new connections that kids forge between you and the rest of the world. Or the fact that, despite everything, your children like you, however your clothes look and smell. In fact they like you a lot more than your colleagues or even your friends ever have. But this may not last.

  I once sat down to write in this vein, inhaling the indignation alongside the furious detractors and lid-lifters. I hadn’t even advanced to the pay gap: my principal motivation was seeing that working mothers still do all the laundry. I have four kids and work part-time. Is it even possible, I wailed, at a lump of chisel-proof Weetabix, to be a mother and also write a book? How to battle the constant interruptions and the splintering of time, concentration and even your very own self?