Chameleon People

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It was the year that the referendum on Norway’s potential membership of the EEC nearly caused my parents to divorce after forty-two years of happily married life. On Saturday, 18 March 1972, the day’s talking point was the demonstration that took place in the centre of Oslo, drawing several thousand protestors who were against membership of the EEC. As many as thirty extra policemen had been drafted in, in case of disturbances which, in the end, never happened. The demonstration broke up peacefully around eight o’clock in the evening.

As a detective inspector, I was exempt from demonstration duties, which was a particular relief now, as my private life had changed.

My fiancée, Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen, had agreed to come by for an early meal at around half past four. She arrived with sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks, having come straight from tobogganing with her much younger niece, and it has to be said, it was not easy to tell who had enjoyed it most. I had gently but firmly declined her cheerful invitation to join them. I found it embarrassing enough that someone I knew might meet the young, female master’s student whizzing by on a sledge, let alone if she then had me, a detective inspector, in tow. Her childlike joy at the arrival of winter was a side of Miriam’s complex nature that still perplexed me, although I did find it refreshing and charming.

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