My Soul to Take Page 37

  Thóra sat in the driver’s seat and started the engine. Just as she backed out of the drive, Sigga shouted out and she slammed on the brakes. Gylfi and Thóra looked into the back. She sighed. She would have to knock something off the price of the SUV, now that the rear seat was awash with amniotic fluid.

  SÓLEY SAT SWINGING HER LEGS. SHE HAD NOTHING ELSE TO DO IN THE waiting area. Thóra was impressed by how good she was being, especially since they’d been waiting in the little room for nearly three hours. Their time there wasn’t made any more enjoyable by the presence of Sigga’s father, who barely spoke, just sent Thóra an impressive range of contemptuous looks, so Thóra was relieved when her phone rang, breaking the oppressive silence. She answered and took the call in the corridor.

  “Hello, Thóra, this is Lára on Snæfellsnes, Sóldís’s grandmother,” said the old lady’s pleasantly modulated voice. “I hope I haven’t rung at a bad time.”

  “No, not at all,” replied Thóra. “I’m so pleased to hear from you. I was going to call you myself, as I didn’t manage to see you before I left.” Five days had passed since Berta and Steini were arrested by the police, and Thóra had been busy tying up the case and working off the backlog that had accumulated at the office. Jónas had fortunately decided not to take legal action against Elín and Börkur, after it transpired that the “ghost” had been Berta all along. “You know they found Kristín, of course.”

  “Yes, that’s why I’m ringing,” said Lára. “There are actually two things I wanted to mention. I’m arranging to have her buried next to her mother, and I was hoping you’d come to the service. It was thanks to you that she was found. I don’t suppose her relatives will be attending en masse, and I feel it’s important that it shouldn’t just be me and the priest.”

  “I’d be honored,” said Thóra warmly.

  “Good,” said Lára. “I’ll let you know as soon as the date is fixed.” She cleared her throat delicately. “Then there’s the other matter. The policeman who handled the case came to see me earlier.”

  “Thórólfur?” said Thóra, surprised. “What did he want?”

  “He brought me a letter, or to be more precise, a copy of a letter,” replied Lára. “A letter that’s taken sixty years to reach me. It’s from Gudný.”

  “Where was it found?” asked Thóra. She was astonished. “Was it in the coal bunker?”

  “It was in Kristín’s coat pocket,” said Lára. It seemed to Thóra that her voice might break, but when she spoke again, she sounded strong and steady. “Most of what’s in the letter is my private business, but I wanted to share one thing with you.”

  “Of course,” said Thóra. “I think it must explain quite a lot.”

  “When Gudný wrote the letter, she knew she was dying. She realized it was her last chance to tell her story. She starts by apologizing for not telling me the truth in her previous letters. She says she didn’t feel able to as she was afraid I would come to visit her, and she or her father would infect me. I’d started a new life in Reykjavík and she didn’t want to unsettle me by complaining about her own problems.”

  “Presumably she meant the tuberculosis,” said Thóra. “It can’t have been the child that she saw as a problem.”

  “No,” Lára replied. “She loved her daughter more than life itself. She calls her ‘a light in the darkness.’ She says she’s such a good little girl, sweet-natured in spite of her unusual upbringing, cut off from everyone except her mother and grandfather. I can’t deny that Gudný seemed terribly ashamed of having had an illegitimate child, but it didn’t affect her love for Kristín.”

  “Children are incredibly adaptable,” said Thóra, thinking of her own little grandchild starting his or her life, possibly by coming out sideways.

  “Absolutely,” said Lára. “Kristín was lucky to have such a loving mother, and she didn’t need anyone else.” Lára hesitated, presumably scanning the letter for something specific. “Gudný states quite clearly that Magnús Baldvinsson is the father,” she said eventually. “They were intimate only once, when he came to meet her father on Nationalist Party business and she became pregnant. She says she has never slept with any other man, neither before nor since, and jokes that there are unlikely to be any more men in her life now.”

  “Does she says whether he knew about the child?” asked Thóra. Even if he did, he could hardly lay claim to inherit from her.

  “She says he went to Reykjavík to study before she was aware of her condition, but she wrote him a letter after Kristín was born. He never replied.” Lára sighed. “It’s clear from her letter that she was very hurt, particularly on her daughter’s behalf. If she had ever loved him, that put an end to it, understandably.”

  “Yes, there are things you can never put right in relationships,” agreed Thóra, “and refusing to acknowledge your own child is one of the worst.”

  “Gudný wrote me the letter to ask me to take her daughter in,” said Lára. “Her father was already dead, and she and her daughter were living with her uncle Grímur. Gudný says she doesn’t trust him, that he’s deranged. She says he looks at her and her daughter with such hatred that she finds it quite frightening, and that she definitely doesn’t want to leave her daughter in his care. She even asks me to find out whether anything can be done for his daughter, Málfrídur, as she’s also concerned about her, although she’s older and more capable of looking after herself.”

  “Well, well,” said Thóra. “Do you suppose he knew Gudný wanted you to be Kristín’s guardian?” asked Thóra. “If Kristín went, he’d lose all his property along with her.”

  “I don’t know,” said Lára. “She doesn’t say so, just that she doesn’t know when the letter will reach me as she doesn’t trust Grímur to post it. She says she’s going to give it to her little girl in the hope that she can pass it to someone. She says she’s talked to Kristín and told her about me, how kind I am, and that maybe she’ll be able to see me soon. Then she adds that she can trust the child to take good care of the letter, although she’s young. She’s so conscientious and good.”

  “She managed to keep the letter a secret, at any rate,” said Thóra.

  “Yes,” said a faint voice at the other end of the line. The old lady was obviously weeping now. “No doubt I’ll speak to you about it again after the funeral,” said Lára through her tears. “I think I should go now.”

  “No problem,” said Thóra. “I’ll be there. You can rely on me.” She said goodbye and hung up.

  She had been pacing up and down the short corridor as she spoke on the phone, without paying much attention to her surroundings. Suddenly she realized that behind most of the doors along the corridor women were busy bringing children into the world. The shouts from Delivery Room C sounded familiar, and she listened, hoping to hear a baby cry. She couldn’t make anything out, and anyway it was unlikely that its little lungs would be any match for the noise coming from its mother. Thóra distinguished a sentence between the howls: “It wasn’t meant to hurt this much!” Mentally agreeing with Sigga, Thóra smiled to herself. The baby was clearly about to arrive.

  She listened at the door, and after a few more groans and shouts the forlorn crying of a baby was heard. Her eyes filled with tears, and she moved away from the door. She hoped that the fact that she hadn’t heard Gylfi’s voice didn’t mean he’d fainted, but then she heard him say, “Ugh, take that horrible thing away!”

  Thóra was taken aback, but Sigga’s mother snapped, “Don’t be silly, boy! She’s only showing you the placenta and caul. Some people dry them to make lampshades.” Thóra could only hope that there wouldn’t be a nasty surprise among her Christmas presents this year.

  The door opened and Gylfi emerged. He hugged his mother, his face glowing. “It was pretty disgusting, but I’m a dad! It’s a boy.”

  Thóra kissed him over and over again on both cheeks. “Oh, Gylfi!” she said between kisses. “Congratulations, my darling boy. Is he adorable?”

  “He’s a
ll, like, covered in white stuff,” answered Gylfi with a little shudder. “And the umbilical cord’s a bit…” Instead of finishing the sentence, he opened the delivery-room door. “See for yourself,” he said, going in.

  Thóra didn’t want to intrude, so contented herself with peeking around the door. She had a vague impression of Sigga’s mother and the midwife at the other end of the delivery table, but the baby in the arms of the new mother captured all her attention.

  She entered the room in a trance. She was a grandmother. She was surprised to realize that once she had seen her grandson, she longed above all else to hurry back to Matthew.

  EPILOGUE

  SATURDAY, 24 JUNE 2006

  IT WAS THÓRA’S turn. She stepped up to the open grave. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” she murmured, sprinkling earth over the little coffin. She made the sign of the cross into the empty air above the polished veneer of the coffin lid and turned away.

  Only a few people had come to the little church and silently followed the coffin out into the churchyard, and now they stood in the drizzle. Thóra had taken Lára’s hand for the short procession. She felt that the old lady appreciated the gesture, and she didn’t let go until Lára walked sadly over to the coffin to pay her last respects to the dead child. Only she and an elderly man among the mourners appeared to be affected by the ceremony. He was a sad sight. It was Magnús Baldvinsson. He had arrived just as the service was beginning, and had quietly taken a seat at the back of the church. In the procession too, he had stayed a few steps behind the others. His hat was clutched tightly in both hands, and whenever Thóra looked at him his eyes were fixed on the ground. She felt sorry for him. She wondered whether she should go over to him, but decided to stay with Lára. She needed her, but Thóra had no idea how Magnús would react if she approached him.

  The pastor closed his eyes and began the prayer, and Thóra followed suit. She had a feeling that Kristín would have approved of his choice:

  Now I lay me down to sleep,

  I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

  And if I die before I wake,

  I pray the Lord my soul to take.

  The mourners stumbled their way through “Abide with Me” before leaving, one by one, with the pastor’s blessing. Finally only three remained: Lára, Thóra, and Magnús. He still stood apart, head bowed.

  “Come with me,” said Lára quietly. “I’ll make you some coffee.” She put her arm through Thóra’s. “I want to show you the letter. Are you in a hurry?”

  “No,” answered Thóra. They walked out of the churchyard, leaving Magnús Baldvinsson standing alone over the remains of his long-dead daughter.

  Thóra smiled to herself as she heard a faint cry from the lava field beyond the churchyard. That damned cat, she thought, but then she remembered that she had spotted the ginger tom when she drove past Tunga on her way to the funeral. He could never have made it all this way in such a short time. The crying grew more piteous and Thóra grasped the old lady’s thin, frail arm more firmly. “Could we walk a little faster?” she asked, shivering. “This place gives me the creeps.”

  About the Author

  YRSA SIGURDARDÓTTIR is an award-winning author of five children’s novels, and her first adult novel, Last Rituals, also featuring Thóra Gudmundsdóttir. She is currently one of the directors of Verkís, one of Iceland’s largest engineering firms, and lives with her family in Reykjavík.

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  ALSO BY YRSA SIGURDARDÓTTIR

  Last Rituals

  Credits

  Jacket design by Ervin Serrano

  Jacket photograph by Rudi Sebastian/Deepol/plainpicture; house by Matthias Clamer/Getty Images

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  MY SOUL TO TAKE. Copyright © 2009 by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir. Translation copyright © 2009 by Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Adobe Digital Edition April 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-186904-4

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