In Search of Mary (7 page)

By the time I have emerged from under the rucksack and released Will from the buggy to crawl straight up the nearest rock, Ingvild has brought out the best tray I’ve ever seen. White bread and poppyseed bread, butter, fresh slices of raw salmon, a pot of apricot jam and two mugs of steaming black coffee. I’m starving. I set to, while Ingvild hovers over Will, singing to him in Norwegian as he tries out some rock climbing. I cradle the coffee cup, breathing into it and letting the steam blur my vision. This is going to be a good place to stay.

Ingvild and Per are generous hosts. Wollstonecraft would’ve loved this: staying in real people’s houses rather than inns and hostels. We eat fish and talk about Norway. Per is director of the National Maritime Museum in Oslo. Again – the watery theme. He tells me how Kragerø used to provide the wider world with ice.

From the 1820s, tons of pure Norwegian ice were shipped abroad to be stored in ice wells, and used for medical and food-preservation purposes. Eventually Kragerø’s finest came to the attention of one of London’s most life-enhancing immigrants.
Carlo Gatti was the granddaddy of ice cream: his penny ices gave a taste of previously unimaginable joy to the ordinary people of London. I smile and ruffle Will’s head. Londoners were lapping up Kragerø long before we got here.

There’s a slight pause in the aquatic chat, and I’m suddenly sleepy. Using Will as an excuse for an early night, we head upstairs. Ingvild has kindly pushed two beds together in the attic room, but there’s no cot. Despite being hobbled by the faded-pink sleeping bag handed down from his sisters, Will begins to romp. This free-range set-up is a novelty for him: he clambers all over, pulling my hair, tapping the walls, chuckling. In the middle of the night I despair and tie a blanket round his middle, then tuck both ends firmly in between the mattresses. He battles this cruel anchor at some length before we finally sleep.

Early the next morning I’m walking back down the steep hill, half-dragged by Will in his weighty vehicle, to get nappies from the shop. After a rough night, Will is now embarking on a high-maintenance morning. He keeps shaking his head from side to side and looking affronted. “I’m the one who should be affronted, mate.” I refer him to the nappy containing a monstrous poo that I’ve just disposed of in Ingvild’s polite wooden house. Such an unruly beast that I had to double-bag, then bury it at the bottom of their bin. We continue down the hill in an atmosphere of mutual resentment.

The tyranny of Will means I still haven’t brushed my teeth, showered or had breakfast. It’s a big and important day – the long-awaited day of the boat trip, and my first meeting with Gunnar. And I’m starting it with a headache, dry eyes and tetchy feelings. These extend to Wollstonecraft. Won’t she just
once mention what a monumental pain in the neck children can be? It’s all “blessed darling babe” this, and “rosy cheeks” that. Why? Because she’s got a maid. She has Marguerite. I do not have Marguerite. I catch my reflection in a fish shop window, scowling.

On our return, Ingvild offers to take Will while I gratefully shower and get dressed. I join them for a miracle fry-up. A few fried eggs later things are looking up in Kragerø and we’re raring to go. Wollstonecraft herself never came here, but a house that she stayed in did. Norwegian houses apparently travel around in the most light-hearted way. I find this funny, coming from a land of sturdy bricks, with our tales of pigs who build straw houses. And look what happened to them. “But it’s simple!” says Ingvild. “You just pack it up. You take the house down plank by plank – they’re numbered. And then you put it all back up somewhere else.” Well, there’s the global Scandi phenomena of Lego and Ikea explained.

Shortly after breakfast, Gunnar Molden arrives. Here at last: the great Wollstonecraft detective. I hadn’t put a face on him in my mind – perhaps someone wizened and wispy-looking. But he’s younger than I expected, and quite solid. He looks like a boy scout on a day trip, carrying two plastic bags and a rucksack, with a baseball cap pulled down firmly over his eyes. He has a determined expression and he’s not very talkative.

Ingvild’s husband Per joins us, and we set off to look for the Wollstonecraft house that moved from somewhere else to here. We knock on the door. The owner is an attractive yoga teacher. She has never heard of Wollstonecraft, nor had any idea that anyone of great historical importance lived in her
house. She kindly offers to hold Will while we look around inside. No way! He’s coming right in with me.

We stand around inside the house, looking at the wooden planks. Gunnar and Per chat to each other, while I roam eagerly about, examining her stairway, trying to get a vibe, like some hapless Ghostbuster – a hint, an echo, a
feeling
of anything that could tell me that Wollstonecraft was truly here. It doesn’t happen. Yoga Lady’s house is style-magazine trendy, with art books and vases just so. By the time I catch myself poking around in her bathroom cabinet, it’s clear that this is not working, and I trundle back downstairs, Will on my hip, to rejoin Per and Gunnar.

They’re still standing there, talking in detail about the house’s wooden panelling. On top of the failed ghost-busting I confess I’d expected a more immediate bond with Gunnar, given our shared passion. I slyly observe him talking, and he’s so low-key he’s hardly even there. What could possibly have drawn him to one of history’s most shouty women? I resolve to find out. This may take time. Not least because Norwegians talk so slowly.

After years working in radio I can’t help but to hear this kind of speech with a sinking heart: “This will take ages to de-umm.” De-umming is a self-explanatory part of a radio producer’s job. A bad ummer means your interview can be minutes shorter once it’s been de-ummed. Of course you mustn’t get carried away, you don’t want someone to sound completely different. And on rare occasions an umm is a powerful signifier of deliberation or discomfort. This should never be de-ummed.

But despite the deliberate slowness (new layers of rudeness here, on top of Wollstonecraft’s centuries-old ones), the Norwegian language itself is delightful. It sounds like German being spoken in a Welsh accent. Norwegians have a strange vocal tic: they say “ja”
inwardly
. It’s a small gasp of incoming breath, designed for agreeing politely or filling a pause. The first time I notice it is with Gunnar, and I wonder if he’s suffering a respiratory difficulty. I soon begin trying it out when no one else is around.

We say goodbye to Yoga Lady, impressing on her, one last time, how her house is truly blessed by the greatness of its possible former inhabitant. She nods patiently. We head off down towards the harbour, and on the way we bump into a distinguished whiskery old chap who is greeted by Per and Gunnar with some degree of reverence. He is a retired historian. Per and Gunnar introduce me as a person from London who is writing a book.

“What’s it about?” he says peering into my face.

“It’s inspired by the life of Mary Wollstonecraft,” I say.

“Ah yes – that Wollstonecraft. I’ve read her and I didn’t like her,” he says. “She’s one of those feminist types, all her writing is just a load of emotions.”

I’m stunned. I know of course that people don’t like her. In history she has been despised, slandered, rejected from all sides. I know this. But after so much fan-club action I’m unprepared, and too slow to gather my wits in her defence:

“But – but, there are lots of, you know, facts too!”

Afterwards I’m ruffled, I’ve let her down. As we walk away, the indignation grows. After all, she writes about Reason
all the time. But even so, should there really be no emotion? Emotions have their uses: “We reason deeply, when we forcibly feel!” And anyway, who wouldn’t get emotional, surrounded by dismissive entitled old farts LIKE YOU? I retrospectively crack my mind’s knuckles. Yeah. He got off lightly.

Gunnar and I say goodbye to Per and continue down to the harbour to find Mick. He is the skipper of the boat we’ll be travelling in, and a well-known local figure. He’s originally English, but moved to Norway decades ago. Mick has a stripy maritime top and a cockney accent; he’s tall with white bristles all over his face and head. He has crinkles around his eyes from staring at distant blue horizons. He is the most perfect specimen of a sea captain you could ever wish for. He also plays bluegrass banjo and has a broken heart, I discover within a few moments of meeting him.

“This boat is a Colin Archer!” Gunnar announces while Mick beams with pride.

“Ah, a Colin Archer,” I say politely.

“A Colin Archer, yes, a genuine Colin Archer,” they repeat with joy. It turns out that Colin Archer was a nineteenth-century Norwegian shipbuilder of Scottish descent who became a national hero. He designed the nation’s fleet of lifeboats and built the mighty
Fram
, sailed by both Nansen and Amundsen on their legendary polar expeditions. The same Nansen who invented the Nansen Passport for stateless refugees. As a quietly huge gift to the world, this almost beats Kragerø’s ice cream.

“You are safer in a Colin Archer than in any other boat!” shouts Mick, as we hoist my rucksack and Will’s buggy on
board. I have a fleeting recollection that the same was said of the
Titanic
, but this is indeed a powerful-looking boat. “This is my girl!” he booms. “After my wife left me, the boat is all I have. She’s thirty-two foot long, weighs eleven tons, and her average speed is five to six knots depending on the wind.”

She is called
Anjava
, and we’re finally all aboard her sturdy deck. I freely adopt the gendered sailor-speak, now that I can talk about Colin Archers with confidence. I feel positively seaworthy. The engine roars into life, then settles to a steady chug, and there’s the satisfying smell of diesel. And off we set: Mick the skipper, Gunnar the detective, and me and Will, on the soaring wooden decks of the redoubtable
Anjava
.

This is the most anticipated day. We are hot on the trail. This part of the journey was huge for Wollstonecraft: she had left Tønsberg and was making her way by sea to Risør. So far she has been doing all she can to gather support for her cause, but at Risør she will actually meet the captain, face to face, in a showdown that could change everything. Her fortunes are in the balance. The wind is in my face. I’m gulping down the excitement of joining her, here, and in the lines of the book.

Chapter Five

“In a Little Boat upon the Ocean”

The sun is dazzling, the whole sky is bright. The joy I feel as we slice through the clear waters is irrepressible like laughter. I am smiling away like an idiot. “Wow!” I shout, pointing out a large jellyfish. The muted response from the others indicates that this is a common and uninteresting sight. But I remember Wollstonecraft writing about them, I whip out the book and find the reference. She confusingly calls them starfish, adding:

Her love of wildness and nature is clear. But I can’t help laughing at the idea of the great founder of feminism hoiking a jellyfish out of the sea and prodding at it like a kid.

Leaving the harbour, we look back to Kragerø, and can just make out the figure of Ingvild behind the house we stayed in
last night. She waves from high up on the rocks. We wave back. I feel so intrepid I keep catching my breath. Gunnar brings out a paper bag full of cinnamon buns, spiralled with sugar, and we stuff them greedily into our mouths.

Leaving Kragerø is not plain sailing. You keep going for miles, past more and ever more islands, unsure which is mainland and which is not, at sea but not properly out at sea. Finally there is the last island, Jomfruland. In full factual mode and using no emotions whatsoever, Wollstonecraft reports, translating its name:

No farms there today, just seagulls. I look one in the eye and wonder if its ancestor saw her pass by. With this stern outpost of land behind us, we are finally out and away from the reaches of the rocky coastline. It feels different. The swell is much deeper, the spray flies higher.
Anjava
is properly at work now, her gleaming sides dominate the water. Will is still in the buggy, wrapped up warm and dozing. I realize I’d completely forgotten about him, and guiltily sniff him to check the state of his nappy. All clear.

There is so much to see in every direction – the wind chasing the birds along the skyline, the myriad rocks and islands rising all around. The idea of these being the peaks of some dark, undersea mountains makes my guts lurch. I feel vulnerable, even in a Colin Archer, and I wonder what Wollstonecraft’s
vessel was like, as she sailed these spiky shores, past “straggling houses” on “shivering rocks”. She writes:

Always unconventional, Wollstonecraft is celebrating the wildness here: this land untamed and unaltered by mankind. She then adds herself to the picture:

Here she has something in common with Mick, who’s moved from examining the map to telling tales of love gone wrong. Mick keeps correcting himself: “My wife… my
ex
-wife” – about how they fell in love, they lived on boats, they travelled the world, they were together for twenty-three years. But she grew away, she wanted something else. “She said she wanted some time out. I should’ve noticed, I should’ve seen it coming.” But he didn’t. “I was totally gutted. I’m gradually getting back on my feet, after six years.”