In the Name of Love (23 page)

‘This thing of playing come-hither-and-have-me covers a lot of conflicts in her.’

Dan said he had come to a similar conclusion himself.

‘She hasn’t yet got over Bertil’s walking out on her when she was a kid,’ Sune said. ‘I don’t think greed is what motivates her. In fact I wonder if she wouldn’t have kept the Selavas on as long as the place was formally hers. Let them run it. What else could she do with it? Not sell it, I don’t think. She sees it as her home. In fact it may be that all she needs is the acknowledgement that she
has
a home – her father’s home.’

Clearly he didn’t know about the rape story and Dan had already decided not to go into it. The whole story left him uneasy. He didn’t doubt that Lena’s version was accurate from her point of view, but how had Gabriel seen it?

‘What are her chances?’ he asked Sune. ‘Do you think Solveig Backlund really did leave it to the Selavas?’

Sune looked out the window. Gabriel was at work in the garden outside.

‘Look at him! The way he digs, the way he feels the con­sis­tency of the soil with his fingers. You can see that working with his hands is his metier.’

‘Lena says she has letters from Solveig Backlund saying she was leaving the place to her.’

‘It’s not the same thing. She’s told half the island about them but what do they signify? True, some people are beginning to feel maybe this business with the Selavas went too fast. But I’m pretty sure the law will confirm the validity of the will.’

As Sune saw it, there were a lot of factors a court would consider in the Selavas’s favour. Before they came there two and a half years earlier, Solveig Backlund had been on the verge of doing what she least wanted in the world, selling the farm and going into an old people’s home. Then the Selavas appeared. They worked night and day, taking care of her as well as keeping the farm going, just for their keep. They even brought Gabriel up from France to help. Where was Lena Sundman all that time?

‘I’m not blaming her,’ Sune said. ‘She was young and she had a life of her own on the other side of the country. And even when she came here on holiday did she ever scrub a floor? Mangle a sheet? I doubt it. Solveig loved her being there, no question of that, but towards the end she needed help and the Selavas provided it. They cooked and cleaned and cared for her, day and night. You don’t have to be Solomon to see the right judgement there, do you?’

‘How well did you know Lena when she was here on the island?’

‘She came to see me from time to time. As she did with a lot of people who knew her father well. The priest and his wife, for instance. Why do you ask?’

‘No reason. I was wondering how much support she feels she can count on.’

‘She’d have mine if she could reach an agreement with the Selavas. They’ve had too much pain to be put through any more. If they came to this country it was to find refuge here. Let’s show them they weren’t mistaken.’

As he left he stopped to talk to Gabriel for a few moments. They both looked towards the window and saw Dan watching them. He waved and went back to ringing Lena’s number in Stockholm again. This time someone answered; a man who didn’t give his name though Dan recognized the voice – Lennart Widström. He said Lena wasn’t there. As he spoke Dan heard Anders Roos say ‘Who is it?’ in the background.

‘Is Anders there?’ Dan said. ‘I’d like to speak to him.’

When Anders came on Dan went straight to his question. ‘Do you know where Lena is? I’ve been trying to get hold of her.’

‘She’s here in town. Why?’

‘Why?’ The abruptness of the question caught him short. ‘I was just wondering how she’s doing.’

‘She’s all right.’

‘Is something wrong?’ It struck Dan that maybe Anders didn’t want to talk in front of Widström. ‘Do you want me to ring you a little later?’

‘We’re on our way to a meeting. I’ll be tied up all afternoon.’

‘Her aunt is worried, she asked me to try to get hold of her.’

‘There’s nothing to worry about. Lena’s all right.’

‘Her aunt doesn’t think so. Do you have her phone number?’

There was a second’s silence. Then, very carefully, Anders said, ‘I have the feeling she needs to be left in peace for a while.’

There was a protective note in his voice. Dan asked him again for her number. This time Anders said he didn’t have it. She was flat-sitting for someone. That was all he knew.

‘Does she have your number?’ Anders asked.

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Then she’ll ring you if she wants to.’

‘Just ask her to ring her aunt,’ Dan said and he hung up.

What had come over Anders? His claiming not to know where Lena was staying seemed so unlikely that Dan took it as an affront. But once again it struck him that maybe it wasn’t him Anders was trying to protect her from. Maybe he didn’t want to say her number in front of Widström. The more Dan thought of this, the more likely it seemed. Flat-sitting sounded like something Anders or maybe even Madeleine had arranged for her. He remembered how dejected Lena had been in Paris after lunch with Widström. Would Widström expect a return for the flat he’d lent her in Stockholm too? Maybe flat-sitting was a way of freeing her from that.

Shortly after his call, while he was still in the kitchen, Gabriel came and tapped on the open door. He said that his grandaunt wanted to know if Dan would come to eat with them that evening.

Dan said yes, he’d like that very much. He assumed that Sune had been invited too, that that was why they’d both looked towards the window at the same time while they were talking.

‘I can give Sune a lift,’ he said.

Gabriel shook his head.

‘It’s only you.’

By candlelight Nahrin and Jamala were different shades of amber but their eyes seemed startlingly alike. The child spoke fluently with her hands, tapping her grandmother’s arm to get her attention. Seeing Dan watch them, Gabriel said, ‘She wasn’t born a deaf mute, you know. She became that way after the killing.’

Jamala looked at him. She seemed to understand what he’d said although Nahrin had earlier told Dan she couldn’t lip-read Swedish yet, only Chaldean. Her eyes flitted from face to face as they spoke.

Josef had dressed for the occasion: a dark suit, a white shirt, a dark tie. And, although the sleeves were slightly too long, the shoulders too wide, he looked undeniably respectable, the ex-teacher from Mosul.

‘Solveig told me to make use of the clothes,’ he murmured softly in French. ‘Her husband’s.’ Dan understood his need to explain. The gift of used clothes did not demean him.

Dinner turned out to be a single dish. It was, as Sune had said it would be, delicious. Nahrin cut straight down through the pot and carefully lifted out each slice with its different layers. Red kidney beans on top, then meat, then aubergine and onions, all of them interspersed with cinnamon sticks, whole cardamoms and cumin seeds, and finally rice in a crunchy bottom layer.

‘The best part,’ Gabriel told Dan with a grin. His lips shone with juice from the meat he chewed, making his mouth look soft as a ripe fruit. Dan had a fleeting memory of what Lena had told him, then dismissed it. He was in no position to judge. Nahrin ate with great delicacy. She cut the meat into tiny morsels, speared each one, lifting the fork with care.

They talked inconsequentially during the first part of the meal. Whenever Nahrin or Josef had difficulty finding a word in Swedish, Gabriel came to their aid. He told Dan that the delicious crunchy layer resulted from cooking the rice in olive oil at the bottom of the pot. The flavour of the spices soaked down, as did the juice of the meat. Dan asked what sort of meat it was. Was it the spices that give it its gamey flavour?

For a moment Josef seemed confused. He turned to Nahrin. Intrigued, Dan looked at Gabriel. It was obvious that he had something he was bursting to say.

‘Is it—’ Dan began.

‘Sure,’ Gabriel said. ‘I potted a deer. The hunting season’s opened, hasn’t it?’

Nahrin spoke sharply to him and turned to Josef. But Gabriel was still looking at Dan. Dan resisted the temptation to ask him if he had a licence.

‘A single shot through the heart at forty metres. Not bad, eh?’

Dan remembered Johan Ek’s dog. Shot between the eyes. Rights of access, Ek had said, didn’t mean you could walk up to people’s houses and stare in their windows. Both Nahrin and Josef looked embarrassed. Jamala made signs to Nahrin which seemed to ask what was going on. Nahrin raised her hand, fingers spread:
Not now
. The choice for Dan was clear. Either he pushed his plate away to show his disapproval of the wrongdoing, or he went on and enjoyed it, in which case he was complicit. But how many locals had never broken the hunting laws? There were no police on the island. And in a community as enclosed as this people did not inform on each other. Better to take the law into your own hands. Dan went on eating. He saw Nahrin and Josef exchange a glance. First the birth of the calf, now this sharing of a poached deer. Gabriel gave him a look of approval.

Once the meal was over, Nahrin said something and Gabriel got up and told Dan he was going to give Jamala her Swedish lesson before bed and he’d say goodnight now in case Dan was gone when he came down.

‘It take time,’ Nahrin explained. ‘He teach her to read better in Swedish. Two Swedish pages of her book each night. He translate the words she not know and she read his lips.’

When Gabriel and Jamala had gone Dan thought again of the poached deer. A shot in the heart at forty metres. It seemed unlikely.

‘Well, maybe not forty,’ Josef said when Dan asked him. He translated for Nahrin and she added, ‘Gabriel make everything big. Maybe ten metre more like. And it is I who must take off the skin, cut the meat. Gabriel is young, he need to grow, to become adult. You understand? No more shooting. I say this to him. We see too much shooting in Iraq. I tell him no more. No more ever. Already I hide the gun away.’

Throughout all this her husband said nothing more. There was something faintly distant about the way he sat, his back straight, his lean face calm, his small ears close to his head. His hands, like his face, were fine-boned. Not the hands of a peasant.

‘You hear about us,’ Nahrin said. She gave no indication of whether or not she had noticed the glance Dan gave her husband, but she said, ‘Now I tell you who we are.’

The story she told him was simple. She and her husband had been married for forty-one years. Josef had been a widower at the time. Her brothers had been killed in the war with Iran. When her father died he left the farm to her and Josef to take care of her mother. The farm was big with many employees. She and Josef were administrators, not labourers.

‘You understand?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ Dan said. ‘I’m sorry you had to leave.’

‘Enough,’ Nahrin said. ‘I make coffee now.’

Once again the coffee she served was in tiny cups. She stood small and slim, the tray in her hands. Josef said nothing. He sat in his black suit, with his slender face, his thinly curved nose making him look like an old-fashioned French priest. His rimless spectacles added a delicate touch to this.?It was after nine when Dan left. As he passed in front of the window he saw Josef and Nahrin, alone in the kitchen. She leant over to clear the table and Josef stretched his hands out for her. She moved into his reach, kissed him chastely and moved on. He stretched his hand after her again and briefly caressed her buttock as she continued to clear the table. Dan walked quickly away.

Before the second weekend in September Lena rang and asked if she could come out that Saturday. Her voice sounded so drained he knew something was wrong. She said she’d like to sleep at his place on Saturday night.

‘There are some people I’m meeting out there that evening and it may be late.’

‘Why not come on Friday and spend the weekend? It’ll be a rest for you.’

She arrived around seven o’clock on Friday, clearly worn out. But her fatigue was more than physical, more than just too many late nights. He carried her small suitcase up to the guest room, where he had made up the bed. Dinner wouldn’t be ready for a while and he told her to go ahead and take a long bath if she felt like it.

By the time she came down he had the table laid and the food was ready, oven-baked vegetables and roast chicken, one of her favourite dishes. She brightened a little but didn’t talk much. She said she hadn’t got to bed until four o’clock the night before. Dan didn’t ask why not and she didn’t volunteer the information. Instead she asked him about Ireland and what it was like to grow up there. He told her much the same as he had told Madeleine Roos in Tösse’s
konditori
. By the time dinner was over rain was pouring down outside but she was in better form. In the kitchen she said, ‘I’ll wash if you dry. Okay?’

‘Let’s just pile them up in the sink. I’ll take care of them later.’

But she insisted, saying that doing something mechanical was what she needed just then.

When everything had been put away and they were sitting in front of the fire, she told him her plans had changed. Instead of her going to dinner at Johan Ek’s tomorrow as scheduled she had been invited for Sunday lunch. His friend from Monte Carlo would be there then and Johan wanted her to meet him.

‘The man with the stock photo agency,’ she said. ‘I told Johan I was staying with you and asked could you come and he said yes, he’d like to see you.’

Dan’s heart dropped like a shot bird. The thought of sitting through a lunch with people like that was more than he could take. But Lena insisted. She said she couldn’t go without him.

‘I’d be lost there,’ she insisted.

‘Lena, I can’t imagine you lost anywhere.’

‘I’m really a very timid person, DeeJay. I know it doesn’t always show but I am. I’m afraid to meet new people. I have to force myself to do it.’

‘You’ll be fine. You’ll be the centre of attention.’

‘I’m serious. There are lots of things you don’t know about me. I wasn’t wanted as a child. I mean really not wanted. It doesn’t exactly make me feel secure. I’m frightened most of the time. That’s just the way it is.’

In the end, although it was the last thing he wanted to do, he said yes, he’d go with her. Later, when they went upstairs and said goodnight, she squeezed his hand.