In the Name of Love (11 page)

‘Present perfumes. At congresses and things.’

‘You mean one of these what they call hostesses?’ The way Ulrika said it, it sounded odd but not uninteresting, like an esoteric function in an oriental brothel.

‘That’s me,’ Lena said. Almost but not quite under her breath she said, ‘Hostesses my ass.’

Ulrika looked at her, the pilot’s jacket and khaki trousers, and said she hoped they weren’t going to run into any combat here on the coast, though no doubt it was always best to be prepared.

Anders told them all he’d booked a table and the restaurant was almost an hour away on foot so they’d better get a move on.

By lunchtime they still had a way to go. Ulrika had long since let the dog off the leash. He was having a field day, running about barking, sniffing every trail in what was left of the snow. Now and then he disappeared. Ulrika called. They waited for him to catch up.

Anders told them again they had to get a move on or they’d be too late to order. Ulrika picked up the dog and carried him in her arms. The dog barked. She put him down. He kept on barking. Lena said the sign said dogs were to be kept on a leash to protect the coastal birds.

‘Where?’ Ulrika asked. She looked around. ‘I don’t see any coastal birds.’

The dog came back and stared up at her expectantly. ‘Do you see them, sweetie?’ she asked. The dog barked.

‘Shut up!’ Lena said.

The dog fell silent. They all did.

‘It’s a wildlife reserve,’ Lena said. ‘Dogs aren’t supposed to run around loose in here.’

Ulrika picked up the dog. ‘The lady thinks we’re not supposed to be here, sweetie,’ she told him.

Lena kept walking. Anders walked with her. For the first time in their long acquaintanceship Dan saw him lose control of a situation he had set up.

‘We need a raft,’ Dan heard him tell Lena, ‘to cross the river.’

‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘You know,’ said Anders. ‘What I told you.’

‘Well, tell me again.’

‘Buddha. Don’t you remember?’

‘Jesus, you can be so instructive. Do you know that? So goddamned instructive.’

They gave up before they reached the restaurant and walked back towards Dan’s car. He drove them to where the two other cars were parked. They did not make plans to meet again.

At home he saw the card Lena Sundman had sent with the flowers. He should, of course, have thanked her when he saw her today. On impulse he crumpled it and threw it in the wastepaper basket. When he saw the crumpled card from the advertising agency he picked it up and looked at it again.

The woman he talked to at the ad agency party wore black silk trousers and a red silk shirt. Their dialogue hovered around separate poles of interest. She wanted to know if he hadn’t once worked with Henrik. Henrik who? he asked her. Never mind, she said, it’s not an experience you’d have forgotten.

People dropped in, dropped off. By two o’clock those who were still there were on first-name terms. A while later the twenty-four-year-old chief executive suggested they all go sailing. Dan looked out. A drizzle of rain fell past the streetlamps. Someone asked the CEO where his boat was. He said he’d just made a new friend who had a yacht. They’d been out last weekend. From Saltsjöbaden. Most people thought Saltsjöbaden was too far away for what was by now three o’clock in the morning. The CEO said that was all right. He’d ring his friend and ask him to bring the boat in on a trailer to Skeppsbron, within walking distance of the office. They’d go sailing all Sunday morning, have Sunday lunch on some island in the archipelago. He rang his friend. When he put down the receiver he stood still. They all waited. Dan thought of charades when he was young. You had to mime something and, at a given signal, freeze until those watching guessed what you were. He always said yes quickly to get it over with.

‘He screamed at me,’ the CEO said. ‘Isn’t it incredible? Screamed.’

They all left. On the street he and the woman in silk found themselves walking in the same direction towards their cars. She picked up their small talk where they’d left it. Dan was relieved that she chatted effortlessly on. At one point, though, she stopped and regarded him under a street light and said grey at the temples gave a man’s face character. Her own hair was red and frizzled, a gauze in the damp air about her head. She walked closely in now, measuring her step to his with clowning acrobatics. As they crossed the street she took his arm. Through the silk blouse he felt her breast slap against him each time she skipped to keep in step. When they reached her car she turned. He kissed her on the forehead. By now it was obvious to both of them that these were ritual movements. They embraced. Then she said to follow her car. But she was going to have to kick him out after an hour or so. That was the phrase she used. Kick him out. She said that Henrik’s plane wasn’t due until nine but he was the type who could turn up hours in advance.

Dan thought briefly of the long drive home, the night ferries, the cold empty house. He said, ‘All right.’

In the lift, going up, they kissed. At the apartment door she told him he’d have to be quiet or he’d wake the children. He asked how old they were. She said old enough to talk.

In bed his mind closed down, his body took over. She gave a cry as she came. He thought of the children she had warned him about and sure enough, a few moments later, there was a noise from the door handle followed by a child’s voice. ‘Mummy, I can’t open the door.’

‘Fucking
shit
!’ the woman muttered. Out loud she said sharply, ‘Go back to bed!’

‘I heard a noise,’ the child wailed. A girl of seven or eight.

‘Go back to bed
now
!’

‘I’m frightened.’

‘The fuck you are,’ the woman muttered. To Dan she whispered, ‘I better go and see. She’s capable of waking her sister.’ And then, out loud, she called, ‘Go back to bed and I’ll come and tuck you in. Go now or else I shan’t come!’ She put a hand on Dan’s scrotum. ‘Hang on, I’ll be straight back.’

When she came back he had dressed.

‘They’re both awake now,’ she whispered. ‘While I’m in there with them you can let yourself out. Close the flat door quietly.’

He nodded.

Down on the street he felt badly about everything – the woman whose name he realized he couldn’t remember, the children, Henrik too. What the hell had he been thinking of, going back there with her?

Drizzling rain filled the street as far as he could see. No sign of life anywhere. Dismal. Black. Five o’clock on a wet Sunday morning.

Driving home he thought of men he had known who had grown old with dignity. Connie’s father among them. His own father too. Clearly he himself was not of their number.

By the time he reached the empty predawn ferry he was telling himself that there was nothing wrong with bodily instinct, even if undignified – shallow, witless, asinine. He sensed a boundary somewhere there that wasn’t easy to see in the dark.

It was nearly seven when he got home. He took a shower, splashed cold water on his face and drank coffee before he settled down to work. At eight o’clock Gabriel Rabban opened the kitchen door, which was never locked, nodded to him as he passed on his way to the little hall and climbed the stairs.

Later that morning Sune Isaksson came.

‘Must have been fun last night!’ was the first thing he said. ‘I hear you drove off the ferry at six thirty. Whoever she is, bring her to my birthday party.’

There was the sound of a slap from upstairs. Fresh plaster being trowelled on a wall.

‘Still working well?’

‘Sure.’

‘You’re getting on with him?’

Dan didn’t answer at once. He was uncertain what to make of Gabriel Rabban. For one thing, the confident manner Gabriel adopted didn’t seem to come naturally. Beneath it he was wary, as though on the lookout for the slightest sign of condescension, let alone disrespect. Dan read this as a street stratagem, a way of showing that he took shit from no one. He had almost certainly seen brutality in Iraq and maybe elsewhere too, brutality of a kind Dan was not likely ever to know. Here, on this quiet island, there was probably no other way for someone like Gabriel to express his defiance except as attitude, using the drab emblems of immigrant assimilation, the low-slung jeans, the huge filthy sneakers.

‘Not as well as I’d like to. I have the feeling he doesn’t quite trust me. I mean we’re both outsiders. We should have more in common.’

‘Don’t fool yourself. His mother’s Swedish, yours isn’t. You have an accent. He doesn’t.’

‘Why is he so defensive then?’

‘Because you may have a foreign accent but you
look
like a Swede. Tall, fit, fair-haired. You disappear in the flock. He stands out, even if his voice is the right voice. On the telephone he’s Swedish in a way you’re not, but one glance at him, at the tan skin, the pitch-black hair and he’s an outsider and always will be, whereas you belong. He won’t take any favours from you, Dan. He’ll regard them as condescension. He’s a Swede in every way except being seen as one. To him you only look the part.’

‘How’s the family regarded here?’

‘All in all respected. They were once farmers themselves. And they’ve lost everything – not only their farm but their daughter, their son-in-law, three of their four grandchildren. All of them had their throats slit. To most people their getting the land over at Bromskär is seen as justice of a kind. Otherwise it’ll go to the state and who will that help? But the will is being contested.’

‘Who by?’

‘You might say by rumours. Rumours that they’re not what they seem to be.’

‘And where are the rumours coming from?’

‘Who knows?’

‘You do, Sune. If anyone does you do.’

‘What do you want me to say? I told you before, you’re not going to get me to add rumours about rumours!’ Sune’s warm laughter filled the room.

‘What is it these rumours are questioning? Whether they’re really refugees?’

‘Oh they’re refugees all right. Christian refugees from northern Iraq. There are thousands and thousands of them in Sweden but in general they’re concentrated in a few places, Malmö, Södertälje and so on. Industrial towns with jobs. The rumour that’s going around is no one knows the Selavas.’

‘You said they saw an ad in the paper?’

‘Through the labour exchange. A widow was looking for a Christian refugee couple with farming experience. The job description suited them and they arrived with their grandchild Jamala. They soon realized they needed help to run the farm so they went to France to visit Josef’s relatives and bring someone back with them. The someone was Gabriel. He’s young, he’s strong, he’ll have a future here.’

‘Is all that true?’

‘Oh yes. A lot of Christians are fleeing from northern Iraq. The only survivor from their daughter’s family is Jamala. She was two at the time. They hid her as soon as the gunfire started. Have you seen Jamala?’

‘Gabriel’s the only one I’ve seen.’

‘Jamala’s a sweet kid. She’s twelve now but she’s still traumatized. She should be in a special school but they don’t want to send her yet. They’re educating her at home.’

‘Is that allowed?’

‘Presumably someone is turning a blind eye for the moment.’

Turning a blind eye sounded so unlike the normal bureaucracy that Dan was about to ask Sune more when the sound of trowelling stopped upstairs and Sune said it was time for him to go.

‘I’ll run you home,’ Dan said.

‘Thanks but Nahrin is at the shop, she’s going to pick up Gabriel and myself there. I’m invited for dinner. Believe me, it’s not something to miss.’

He stopped in the kitchen doorway.

‘How about my birthday party? How many are you bringing?’

‘I told you. I don’t know anyone.’

‘Whoever she was last night she’s bound to have a friend. Get them both to come.’

‘You’re not listening. I don’t know anyone.’

‘You know Lena Sundman.’

‘I don’t know her. And I don’t intend to.’

‘Someone else then. Good-looking guy like you, you won’t even have to try. Just bring a couple of willing ladies to my party and I’ll die a happy man.’

Two days later Sune was back. This time he asked straight off about Lena Sundman.

‘What are you two up to?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You went walking together. Over near Herräng. With another fellow and a woman with a dog.’

‘Jesus Christ!’

‘What do you expect? Her father was born here, she belongs to the island. People know that she’s back.’

‘Nothing to do with me,’ Dan said stubbornly.

Sune sat astride the chair, his arms, thick and hairy, resting on its back. His shirt was open at the top. New-grown chest hair foamed up against his throat.

‘Dan, there’s no reason you shouldn’t see all you want of her. Just be careful, that’s all.’

‘Careful? I don’t even know her. And I’m not likely to meet her again.’

‘You will. She’s going to be on this island a lot in the months to come. There’s a battle going on between her and the Selavas.’

‘I’ll give it a miss.’

‘Too late for that. You drove her over in the dark to check they were there. Stopped in front of their house to look.’

‘Look? It was practically night.’

‘To see if the lights were on. And she sent you flowers by taxi the next day. With the directions to the driver so incomplete he had to stop and ask where you live. You think that was an accident? You think the whole island doesn’t know about it? She’s young but she’s no fool.’

Dan poured him his whisky. After a slow swallow he went on.

‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m very fond of Lena, always have been. She still drops in to see me now and then. But she’s somehow got off on the wrong foot with the Selavas family and I don’t think she likes me telling her that. It’s not just a legal question, it’s a moral one. The Selavas are getting old, they’re refugees with absolutely nothing except a deaf-and-dumb child they want to give a start to in life, the kind of start Lena never got. That’s what I tell Lena, that she’s on her way out of all that now, she’s on her way up. She’s attractive, she’s intelligent, she’s energetic and she’s come through what sounds like a nervous breakdown to me although she calls it a ‘down period’ in her life. Anyway she’s been given a clean bill of health to tackle her future now and that’s exactly what she’s doing. She’s on her way to creating a new life for herself in Stockholm. She already has successful people who want to help her. She doesn’t need a run-down farm to survive, not the way the Selavas do.’