The two boys are called Benjamin and Jørgen, they are sixteen and seventeen, and say they can’t stay long on Barrøy, for they have been told that their parents and siblings have been found and are in a camp outside Harstad waiting for the authorities to give them permission to return home, they will meet them in the camp.

Daniel tells them Ingrid will find someone to take them north and pay them for their work if they delay their departure by a month.

They give it some thought. Arne says:

“What about us?”

“You, too,” Ingrid says, and adds – although she doesn’t know – that Barrøy II will be arriving from Lofoten within the next few weeks, it can take them to the nearest port of call.

They look at each other, also at Daniel, and nod, but not one of them says an audible “yes”.

Benjamin and Jørgen have brought along all sorts of clothes and some worn-out tools, which they were given by Jakob, and Jadviga fits into Barbro’s old clothes and also old Martin’s bed in the closet off the sitting room, she can go there under her own steam. She whiles away the days in the rocking chair in the kitchen with Barbro, whom she surprises, in between naps, with small, absurd memories of a world no-one has ever heard of, she also asks how many children Barbro has.

“One.”

Jadviga has five. She holds up her hand and shows her five fingers. Barbro asks where they are.

Jadvika closes her eyes.

~

At the beginning of September three of the nine gardens not only look like newly ploughed fields, but also as though they have been created by love. They transport the sheep over to Gjesøya and get to grips with the next garden while Barbro bakes and cooks for the whole crew, and Ingrid hands over more and more of the responsibility to Daniel and Arne, and picks berries, makes jam and juice and calculates how many sheep she can afford to feed with the coming harvest, counts loads of hay and animals, including the cow they don’t yet have, and concludes it may be enough, this maybe, which is a mantra in every fisherman-cum-farmer’s deadly serious attitude to life.

As no boat has appeared on the horizon by the time the fourth garden has been finished, she accepts Daniel’s suggestion that they start on a new plot, he likes it on Barrøy, which Ingrid suspects has something to do with Suzanne, she too works with ardour and a bent back in the fields alongside the boys, pulling up tufts and picking up stones without a whimper, and then they have to barrow out the muck from the cowshed, lots of that here, not much else, Daniel laughs.

~