Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [104]
Around the house, she seemed placid and content. Two of Harold’s sisters were married and away by then, but his remaining sisters got on with her well enough. No one had any complaints. His own duties, apart from joining in whatever entertainments the girls devised for themselves in the evenings, were to take her riding from time to time. Once he had shown her round Dyflin. More often they would ride out or walk along the sandy shore. On these occasions, she would talk to him in her strangely detached yet easy way about the farmstead, the cheese they were making, the shawl that she and his mother were weaving for his aunt. She would ask him his likes and dislikes, nodding calmly and saying, “Ja, ja,” as she elicited each piece of information so that, he began to think, if he had told her his favourite pastime was cutting people’s heads off, she would probably have nodded and said, “Ja, ja,” just the same. But the process was still very pleasant.
When he questioned Helga about her own life, she told him about her uncle’s farmstead and also her early life in the north. What did she miss, he asked. “The snow and the ice,” she told him, with a hint of real enthusiasm greater than any he had seen before. “The snow and ice is very good. I like to fish through the ice.” She nodded. “And I like very much to go in boats on the sea.”
Once, in order to take her in a boat, he had rowed her out on a sunny day from the beach to the little island with its high, cleft rock, opposite the headland. She had been pleased. They had sat on the beach together. And then, to his great surprise, she had calmly remarked, “I like to swim now. You also?” And stripping off all her clothes as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she had walked into the sea. He hadn’t followed her. Perhaps he was shy, or ashamed of his body. But he had looked at her slim body, and her small, high breasts, and thought to himself that it would be a pleasant business indeed to possess them.
It was a few days afterwards that his father and mother had called him into the house when the girls were all busy outside, and his father with a smile had asked him, “How would you feel, Harold, if Helga were to be your bride?” And before Harold could formulate an answer he continued: “Your mother and I think she would do very well.”
He stared at them hardly knowing what to say. The idea was certainly exciting. He thought of her body as he had watched her coming back out of the sea, and of the water running down her breasts in the sun.
“But,” he stammered at last, “would she want me?”
His father and mother gave each other a warm, conspirational smile, and it was his mother who answered, “She does indeed. She has spoken to me.”
“I just supposed …” He thought of his leg. His father cut in.
“She likes you, Harold. This all comes from her. When her uncle asked me to have her here, I dare say he may have desired a match with our family; but you’re young and I hadn’t considered it was time to think of such things for you yet. But we like this girl. We like her very much. And so when she came to talk to your mother …” He smiled again. “It’s up to you, Harold. You’re my only son. This farmstead will be yours one day. You can have the pick of the girls, and you certainly shouldn’t marry one you don’t like. But this one, I have to say, isn’t bad.”
Harold looked at his happy parents and felt a great warmth run through him. Could it really be that this girl had chosen him? He knew that he was physically strong, but with this wonderful knowledge, he experienced a new, thrilling sense of strength and excitement unlike anything he had ever known before.
“She has asked for me?” They nodded. His infirmity was not of consequence, then? It seemed not. “You think I should?” What would it mean to be married? He wasn’t sure. “I think,” he began, “I think I should