Ragnar and Beate had a son who got married, became an engineer and worked periodically on a distant oil rig off the coast of Angola. Ragnar had opinions about selling his labour to that sort of business, but he was proud of his son.

It was after Beate had been left alone that the engineer went missing. Malle tom, tom, tom, thudded the heavy iron in 153the background when the call came through on the satellite phone.

The investigation found he’d been on the rig one evening, and next morning he was gone. That was that. There was talk of an accident, speculation about drugs, alcohol and other contraband, that perhaps he’d opened the wrong door at the wrong time. A lot could go missing in the waves on a blind and deaf Atlantic night. It was possible, too, that for some obscure reason he’d run off on the job. Back home there was nothing to go on but rumour, and whatever conclusions people drew for themselves.

It was the age of the ear.

Beate listened to the radio; she listened at the door.

When evening came she put her cheek against the mute, chilly plastic of the telephone. The engineer’s wife listened out for footsteps on the stairs, for the boards in the hallway. She listened in her sleep. At night the bedroom door might open. He might suddenly be standing in the doorway, blue-necked and with seaweed in his beard. But no matter how much she listened, he never said a word.

During the age of the ear, Beate was often seen out by the fencepost.

She whispered with the gull and pointed with her downy white hand across the fjord, towards the sea. They would stand like that together, the gull with its beak in its feathers, Beate in her shawl and with her elbow resting on the wooden gate. 154

A year went by. The engineer’s wife was sent a notice declaring him presumed dead. They held the funeral. Grey and quiet, Beate trudged on the heels of the engineer’s widow. Malle tom, tom, tom, the footsteps echoed round the coffin.

When the wake was over, Beate went home by herself. She fetched the saw from the shed. Then she went to the gull’s terrace. Sawing the dish off the fencepost, she smashed it against the wall and left the shards where they fell. Some time later she sold the house and moved into a nursing home partway up the mountain, which had a view over the lake.

Whether the gull left is hard to say. When it wasn’t sitting on its terrace, it was a gull among gulls.