In the Name of Love (24 page)

‘I appreciate it, DeeJay. Really, I do. I’ll make it up to you.’

‘There’s nothing to make up for. Anyway,’ he added as convincingly as he could, ‘it’ll probably do me good to meet some new people.’

‘I’ll ring Johan tomorrow and tell him you can come.’

The next day, Saturday, the morning was warm and clear but soon clouds came racing in from the Baltic and the rain poured down. Before he and Lena had even reached the coast they turned back. He lit a fire and they listened to an afternoon play on the radio about hitchhikers in space, which made Lena laugh.

That evening he had counted on taking her to dinner at the restaurant but when they saw how filthy the weather was and how cosy the fire, they decided they didn’t want to drive across the island after all. Dan made a run for the shed to chop more wood. When he came back Lena had laid a tray with what she found in the kitchen and had put it on the floor in front of the fire. Wine, bread, cheese, what was left of the chicken and an omelette she’d made with chopped parsley and onions. She was lying flat out on the floor looking at the flames.

‘Isn’t it nice,’ she said, ‘to hear the rain outside? And have a picnic dinner in front of a fire?’

Raising her head a little, she sipped the wine.

‘When I’m not here,’ she said, ‘I’ll think of this.’

‘You can come as often as you like.’

‘It’s sweet of you to say that, DeeJay, but I have a lot of things to do. I don’t want to go back to Gothenburg, you see. I have to find work in Stockholm. And I’m hoping this man with the photo agency in Monte Carlo will have something. At least until the farm is settled up.’

‘Will it be settled up?’

‘It has to be. It’s mine by rights. Everyone says so – or they soon will.’

‘Why? What will happen?’

‘I’m working on that, DeeJay. Just give me a little more time and you’ll see. The poison pygmy is in for a shock one of these days. I’m going to see to it that the truth about them is known.’

‘What truth?’

‘There’s something not right about their story. I don’t know yet what it is but I can sense it.’

Dan poured her another glass of wine.

‘One of the things I like about you, DeeJay, is that you don’t make judgements. So many people go through their lives judging others.’

Later again, when he had opened a second bottle of wine, she said, ‘This won’t last much longer, will it?’

‘I can always open a third.’

‘You know what I mean. You being out here like this. Welcoming me whenever I want to come.’

‘Why won’t it last?’

‘You’re an attractive man, DeeJay. And you’re easy to be with. Women value that. You’ll find someone as soon as you’re ready for it. And when you do, bye bye Blidö, bye bye Lena.’

‘It won’t be like that. Whatever happens. You’ll always be welcome.’

‘Just make sure whoever she is she likes going for walks. And leaving you in peace when you need to be in peace. And swimming when the sea is still freezing cold.’

They finished the wine slowly. Dan began to feel drowsy. He could easily have fallen asleep there in front of the fire. Lena stretched out her body.

‘Isn’t this bliss?’ she said. ‘You forget all the rubbish.’ She stopped and looked at him. ‘Hey, don’t get any wrong ideas. I don’t want you telling people at Johan Ek’s tomorrow how I fixed a wonderful supper in front of the fire for you like some dim little housewife.’

‘Dim?’

‘Yeah, dim.’

After a moment she said, ‘When my mum was given a bigger flat by the social-security people, I helped her set it up. Curtains, fittings, furniture, rugs, carpets. The perfect little homemaker. I loved every minute of it. Then her bloke decided it was so nice he moved in. Jesus, talk about dim! I was the most stupid kid around. When Mum got angry she used to tell me life was great until I came along.’

‘Lena, we all say stupid things. Even to those we love most.’

‘I don’t mind any more. It used to bother me a lot but I’m over that. I got over it before she died. Anyway it’s not true that her life was fine. My father was hardly ever around. He had other women. When he lived with us for a while he and she had shouting matches in the middle of the night. He used to have a dog, a cocker spaniel he was crazy about and she hated it because she said he gave it more affection than he gave her. One Saturday when he was off with some woman she took the dog to the vet and had her put down. He moved out the next day and never came back. I expect the dog meant more to him than I did.’

‘I’m sorry, Lena.’

‘Don’t be. It’s all over, gone with the wind.’ She gave a wave of her fingers. It looked a little drunk. ‘I hope now they’ve finally forgiven each other,’ she said, ‘and that they’re happy.’

Dan watched the flames, unable to answer.

‘I wasn’t sure before, but now I am. All the rest they told us when I was small, the wine into water, the blind man, the miracles, I never had any trouble with. If Jesus was God he could do what he liked. I mean, what’s raising Lazarus from the dead compared with creating the universe from nothing? But life after death – I couldn’t imagine that. I still can’t but I believe in it. Do you?’ she said, ‘Believe that everything’s forgiven after death? And that we can all be happy together?’

‘Together?’

‘Yes.’

‘The dog too?’

She began to laugh and he felt relieved.

‘Well, who knows?’ she said. ‘Can you tell me that? Who knows?’

After a moment she said, ‘Do you think your wife is watching us now?’

The question shocked him. Witlessly he looked towards the window.

‘She’d see we’re being very good,’ Lena said, ‘wouldn’t she?’

‘Yes.’

Minutes passed and neither of them said anything. He looked at her hands again.

‘Hey,’ she said, ‘What happened to those curtains you talked of putting up?’

‘You think it’s time I did?’

‘What are you waiting for? Some busy little woman to move in and do it all for you?’

‘Not a bad idea.’

‘Don’t fool yourself, DeeJay. She’d have predatory intentions.’

‘At least I can’t accuse you of that.’

‘I’m here to give you something more than thumpity-thump on some dumb bed, DeeJay. Wears out the springs, that kind of thing.’

‘You usually prefer the floor?’

‘I didn’t mean the bed springs, DeeJay. I meant yours. You’ve reached an age when you need to consider conservation measures.’

‘Thanks a lot.’

‘I’m thinking of what’s best for you. You’re not used to that, are you? You’re used to the plunderous type.’

‘Plunderous. That’s good.’

‘I know it is. I made it up myself. Now let’s get back to these curtains.’

She was surprisingly knowledgeable about colour schemes, the pros and cons of various fabrics, of different hanging methods, rods with rings, clips with slides, curtains simply doubled over a single bar and sewn together at the bottom – all things she said she had learnt when she was creating a new home with her mother.

‘That’s my choice for this room,’ she said finally, looking around. ‘Something striped. Yellow and blue. Measure up, buy double the lengths you need, fold them over so they can hang from a rod and have one of your busy little predators run them through her sewing machine. Use the money you’ll save from not needing a backing to get the very best material.’

‘What if she doesn’t have a sewing machine?’

‘She’ll get her mother to run them up and pretend she did them herself. Hey, what am I saying? Maybe the mother’ll be the one you get.’

By now the night wind had come in from the sea. It whipped the rain like shot against the windows. The lights fluttered and came back. Lena got up and went to the kitchen. She had a tray of glasses and bottles and a carton of juice with her when she returned.

‘Be prepared,’ she said.

‘For what, Lena?’

‘The dark. In case the lights go.’

‘Is that supposed to make me nervous?’

‘It should if I were one of the manipulative bitches you’re used to.’

‘I thought they’d all be matronly?’

‘They’re the most manipulative of all. What would you like?’

‘To do?’

‘To drink. In case the lights go. I can make a pretty good White Lady but you don’t have any Cointreau, do you? Maybe orange juice would work if I up the gin a bit.’

‘I thought you were opposed to dim little—’

‘I can’t mix drinks for you if the lights go,’ she said.

‘—housewife routines.’

She crossed her eyes and shoved out the pink triangle of her tongue at him. And then she said, ‘You know, coming here is like having a secret garden to go to. A place where I feel safe. At ease.’

They were both a little drunk by now. When it was time to go to bed they left the glasses and the bottles on the floor. Climbing the stairs she took his arm for support. At the top he quickly said goodnight and went to his room.

By mid-morning next day the sky was clear again, the air as warm as it had been two days before. They went for a long walk through the beauty of the autumn forest before getting ready for lunch at Johan Ek’s. Ek had told Lena people were coming out from Stockholm so she had brought her black cocktail dress with her and wore it with a choker necklace of cabochon garnet and earrings to match. It wasn’t the kind of thing one usually saw on the island and certainly not at lunch. Before they went out she swung around to show Dan.

‘Well?’ she asked. ‘Will I do?’

‘You look terrific,’ he said, and she did.

When they arrived everyone was sprawled in the living room. The day was warm and the big glass doors to the deck were open. The men were in casual clothes and loafers. Johan Ek’s girlfriend had long brown legs below the hem of a sailing sweater and short-cut jeans. Ek kissed Lena on both cheeks, holding her shoulders in his strong hands.

‘I love those little black outfits,’ his girlfriend said. ‘My mother used to wear them all the time to cocktail parties.’

There were a dozen people for lunch. Dan looked to see if he could spot the man who ran the photo agency out of Monte Carlo.

Lena told Ek that Dan’s son was studying to be a lawyer too. ‘At Harvard,’ she added. Dan was touched by the way she said it. ‘Isn’t that right?’ she prompted him. Dutifully he said yes, it was.

‘What’s the name of the school again?’ she said, although she already knew.

‘Harvard Law School.’

‘And the other part?’

‘The International Center for Criminal Justice.’

Ek’s interest picked up. He said he went there too in the seventies. ‘Is he coming back to work in Sweden?’ he asked Dan.

‘I hope he will. He’ll decide at the end of the month when he’s here.’

‘Send him over to see me. I’d enjoy talking to him.’

And so, thanks to Lena, it was done.

Lena’s neighbour at the table turned out to be a probate lawyer. Dan wondered if the placing was so that Lena could get to know him and later contact him about her inheritance. He heard him tell her no, he didn’t have a summer place out here. His summer place was in Saltsjöbaden. He described how one got there on the railway built by the Wallenberg family in the 1890s for the convenience of upper-class Stockholmers. His fingers dropped onto her bare arm.

‘Why don’t you come out with Johan and Pernilla one weekend?’ he murmured. ‘You’d enjoy it. Meet all sorts of interesting people.’

Lena took away her arm. She looked down at where his squeezing fingers had left faint red marks on her skin.

‘Where?’ she said.

‘Saltsjöbaden.’

‘Where’s Saltsjöbaden?’

‘You don’t know where Saltsjöbaden is?’

‘Well,’ Lena said, putting down her wine glass so hard she broke the stem, ‘such a fabulous goddamn place, I think I’d remember.’

Johan Ek deftly changed the subject while his girlfriend, equally dextrous, removed the broken glass and spread a napkin over the stained cloth in front of Lena. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said and added, ‘Worrying doesn’t help anything, does it?’

The man from Monte Carlo, relaxed and urbane, said Johan had spoken to him about her. He’d be glad to help in any way he could. It was a neat kindness on his part, letting her know the broken glass, the spilt wine didn’t mean much. They talked of stock photo agencies, a field which was just starting up then. Lena had heard of them but not much. Ek’s friend promised to recommend her to some Swedish photographers he worked with. Johan Ek too went out of his way to be nice to her and soon all her old assurance came back. She even adopted some of the bluff abrasive kind of talk she used to use with Dan when first they met, and she got some laughs for it. The glass, the wine stain, the cocktail dress worn to a Sunday lunch in the country, none of it mattered any more. By the time they left it was late and Dan was glad it had gone so well.

Lena too was in good form on the way back through the forest. The moonlight made every tree and flower as delicate as porcelain. She clowned along the winding path, practising her French on him. ‘Nom de Dieu you saying?’ she asked him. In French-accented English she said, ‘God seve ze couine.’ She said, ‘I am exhaustée.’ Somebody had also taught her to say in English, ‘Appy as ze monkey wizze monk.’ Probably, Dan thought, a reference to the Chinese fable, which she said she hadn’t heard. ‘Monsieur-what-tu-callim’ was her French for the man at the dinner who’d squeezed her arm and whose name she said she was glad to have forgotten. She skipped ahead and turned to face Dan.

‘Let’s go to Monte Carlo, DeeJay. What do you say?’

Back in the house she kicked off her shoes. She stood on tiptoe, her hands on his shoulders as she kissed him on the cheek.

‘You’re a super guy, DeeJay. Don’t worry, I’m not going to interfere with your life, but I wanted you to know that.’

That night he slept deeply. He woke late next morning to the distant sound of church bells and the smell of fresh coffee. Lena was in his room, coming towards him with a tray, wearing a man’s shirt as a nightdress. Without a word she put the tray on the bedside table and climbed into bed beside him. ‘Come on, DeeJay,’ she said. ‘We’re not children. And I’ve been lying awake far too long thinking about you.’

Before she even touched him he felt the rush of blood and the almost instant hardness that followed it. Her breath was fresh and her saliva sweet when she kissed him. Only minutes later he was in her.