Ingrid turns to Magnus, who has also come onto the quay, and allows him a glimpse of her child, so that he can see there is no more to be said about that matter.

He is polite and pleasant and makes a few comments that, to her annoyance, cause her to blush. She turns to the other woman, who says her name is Selma and is married to Lars, she is as short as he is, but delicate, soft and cheery, with thick, tousled, golden yellow hair. Selma reaches out her hand, and tells her two boys to do the same, Hans is nine and Martin five, and Ingrid can say, well, well, at last we have a Hans and a Martin back on Barrøy and it is only by the skin of her teeth that she manages to prevent her resolution not to shed any more tears from going up in smoke.

However, Barbro has not stopped crying, she interrupted her baking day the second the sounds of the Salthammer reached her keen ears in the kitchen, and she has stood still with flour in her hair and on her face and up her bulging arms ever since the bureau was unloaded, staring down at her son, who is operating the windlass and hasn’t time to look at her; she has to yell his name through her tears. He answers as a monster of a rust-red armchair swings over her head and lands as softly as a cat beside a dining table:

“Shame on tha, Mother.”

Barbro hasn’t seen her son for nine years, now she waits patiently until everything has been unloaded, including a great number of interesting items, flour, sugar, three sacks of carrots plus two catering tins of sausages, which Ingrid hasn’t seen since before the war, and not least, a pig, cut up and salted in a barrel.

Lars finally comes onto the quay, so Barbro can stand next to him and listen to him talking in irritated tones to Ingrid, talking about something he actually hadn’t intended to mention, he claims, but the letter said they would have accommodation ready and waiting for them, and as far as he could see, from where he was standing, there was only a shell of a building with a roof, over in Karvika, and half a boat shed.

Ingrid again feels the ambivalent nature of her relationship with her cousin, the threat combined with the sense of security, but laughs and says it wasn’t her who wrote the letter.

“Hva?”

“It war our Suzanne. An’ tha mother.”

“Felix said nothin’ abou’ that.”

“He war likely heimsick.”