A Blessed Child (9 page)

Chapter 34

Laura decided to buy flowers. She would go into town to do some shopping, and she would buy flowers and make everything look nice at home.

Jonas Guave had gone, and now she would spend the rest of the day cooking dinner and surprise Lars-Eivind when he got home late that evening. First she would serve a soup. Her mobile rang; it was Erika.

“Have you changed your mind?” Erika asked.

Erika was sitting in the car. She had crossed the border and stopped at a service station to have a coffee and perhaps take a nap in the car. Remembering that Magnus was in Poland on a school trip to some concentration camps, Laura knew Erika would be thinking about the boy all the time.

“No,” said Laura. “Or rather, I don’t know. I’ve got so much to do here at home, things I have to sort out.”

“So you might come after all?”

“No. It’s difficult, I think. Maybe.”

“I hope you will.”

“In that case,” said Laura, “we all ought to come. I’ll ring Molly and ask her what she’s up to these days.”

“It would give him a shock.”

“A shock?”

“It would give him a shock if all three of us showed up at once.”

Laura suppressed a laugh.

“Then a shock is what he’ll get.”

And she added: “It wouldn’t be a bad idea for him to see who we are and to know our names, for him to see us face-to-face before he dies.”

“He’ll never die,” said Erika, “but he claims this is his epilogue.”

Laura could hear that Erika was preoccupied with something. Perhaps a paper cup of hot coffee. She hoped her sister wasn’t spilling hot coffee all over herself while driving.

Erika said: “What is it you’ve got to sort out before you leave?”

“Sort out?”

“You said,” Erika reminded her, “that you had something to do at home. Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s okay, but I think we’re going to sell the house and move.”

Laura heard Erika sigh. And then: “Why move, then, all of a sudden?”

“I don’t know,” said Laura. “Because we’re not happy here. All the neighbors are so uptight. They’re virtually forcing an old man to move out because he gives bracelets to little girls around here.”

“Why does he give bracelets to little girls?”

“I don’t know,” said Laura.

She wished the conversation would end.

“I can understand people feeling uneasy,” said Erika.

Laura sighed and said: “Yes, but they can’t force a man to move just because they don’t like him.”

“People do such strange things,” said Erika. “I wouldn’t let Julia accept any more bracelets from that man.”

“Yes, yes,” said Laura, and changed the subject. “If you’re talking to Lars-Eivind…if you ring here, say, and he happens to answer, don’t mention what I just said about selling the house. It’s not as much of a priority for him at the moment as it is for me, if you see what I mean.”

“I’ve got to go now,” said Erika.

“Okay then,” said Laura. “Call me again in a little while and let me know how you’re doing.”

She raised her head and looked out the window, at the snow covering everything, the grass, the flower beds, the birch tree, the green gate. Later today she was going to spend some time out in the garden with Julia and Jesper. She wouldn’t be in a rush or answer them irritably. She would take her time. As long as Jesper wasn’t feeling too poorly. He was always so sick once he’d gotten a fever; he woke up in the night, crying and saying it hurt, and it was impossible to comfort him. He wasn’t happy at that nursery, either; on the playground, he wandered about on his own with an old man’s frown and didn’t want to play with the other children. Maybe she should have kept him at home today? No, no, it was all right. His cold wasn’t that bad. His face was slightly hot and flushed from traipsing around the living room in his outdoor clothes while she was looking for Julia’s mittens. He’d be fine. Later today she would build a snowman with a carrot nose and a big checked scarf around his neck; she would make waffles and hot chocolate with cream for their supper; she would let them fall asleep in her and Lars-Eivind’s bed, both Julia and Jesper. She would let them sleep there all night and it wouldn’t matter if they kicked in their sleep or lay crossways. Laura and Lars-Eivind weren’t usually able to get much sleep when the children were sharing the bed, so the rule was no children in the bed at night, but tonight it didn’t matter if they got no sleep and it didn’t matter if the children slept in their bed. It would be nice. Everything would turn out fine.

“Drive carefully,” she added to Erika, but Erika had already hung up.

Chapter 35

The cramped little hall had a black tiled floor and the walls were of untreated pine, studded with hooks and pegs for all sorts of winter garments—garments that generally ended up lying on the floor in little pools of melted snow. For the third time that day, Laura stood in this detestable, dark little room that she dreamt of redecorating in the style of the spacious, spotless white halls pictured in the interior design magazines.
(If the kitchen is the heart of the house, then the hall is the open hands of the house. It is the hall that welcomes you, your family, and your guests every day!)
She put on an extra woolen sweater, her anorak, thick boots, a long scarf, and a hat. Her gloves were lying in one of the puddles on the floor; they were wet through, and she had to rummage in the cupboards to find some others. She found a yellow woolen mitten and a brown lined leather glove that some visitor must have left behind. They would have to do. Eventually, when she was nearly at the shops, she would take off the mitten and the glove and put them in her trolley. Laura was going into town to buy the dinner. First to the Turkish shop, where they had the freshest fruit, the fresh vegetables; then to the fishmonger; then to the wineshop; and finally to the supermarket. She left the car where it was and took her blue shopping trolley. This evening, once she’d put the children to bed and read and sung to them (without rushing it), Lars-Eivind would finally be served a well-composed meal. It was a long time since she’d last done that. Soup first: possibly a clear meat broth, made from scratch, with horseradish. Laura felt in her anorak pocket to check that she had her money; then she opened the front door and went out, pulling the shopping trolley after her. Sometime today, in a little while, maybe even on the way to the Turkish greengrocer’s, she would ring Molly.
Hello, it’s Laura. Erika’s on her way to Hammarsö. Shall we go, too?
Neither Laura nor Erika had spoken to Molly for several months, and there was no other way of asking her.
There’s always the risk he could die soon,
she might add, though it would sound melodramatic. Molly would say no. She would say no in her ringing voice, and then she would laugh. Molly would say she didn’t care if Father died. She had once cooked a dinner for him, when she was just seventeen, and he hadn’t turned up. When Molly was little, Isak used to lift her high in the air and spin her around the living room, and then Molly would stretch her arms wide and pretend she was a big bird.

Chapter 36

Laura was seven. She had walked a long way. She had walked to the shop and back for her mother, Rosa, and for that she got an ice cream. It was a summer’s day on Hammarsö in
1975
, and Laura had a shopping trolley even back then. The shopping trolley was full of groceries and she pulled it after her along the dirt road.

“There’s nothing more practical for shopping than a decent-size trolley,” Rosa would say.

As soon as Laura had put the groceries away in the kitchen cupboards and drawers, she would lie down in the tall grass below the white limestone house and read Erika’s Norwegian magazines.

If a Norwegian opened his or her mouth and said something, Laura didn’t understand a word; Norwegian was almost as incomprehensible as Danish.

Erika had told her that everybody who lived in Norway could understand Swedish. That was because the Norwegians had Swedish TV. They had Norwegian TV
and
Swedish TV. In Sweden, nobody understood Norwegian, and nobody had the Norwegian TV channel, either. But as far as Laura knew, nobody minded. Swedes didn’t care about not understanding Norwegian and not having the Norwegian TV channel, so Erika didn’t have to be so snooty about it.

Erika spoke both Norwegian and Swedish. Erika was half all manner of things. Half Swedish. Half Norwegian. Half sister.

When Laura was younger, she had no idea that she had any siblings, half or whole, big or small, sisters or brothers, but then Erika appeared on Hammarsö and called Laura’s father Daddy, and then Rosa had to explain that Isak had been married before to a woman called Elisabet and they had had a baby. Frida, Laura’s friend, said it wasn’t impossible that Isak Lövenstad,
the well-known womanizer,
had a whole gaggle of kids spread about the island. Frida had heard her dad say exactly that to her mum. And that must mean, Frida reckoned, that Laura had a whole heap of brothers and sisters.

That made Laura say: “It would be great to have a big brother.”

Frida had a big brother who occasionally bought her licorice sticks, and licorice was the best thing Laura could think of.

First Erika arrived, then Molly. All it took was for Laura to squeeze her eyes shut and open them again, or walk to the shop and back and be gone less than an hour—and these things happened. She opened the gate, shut it behind her, and walked the little way remaining down to the house, the shopping trolley behind her, and just outside the house stood a red carriage, and in it was a child with a red hat on its head, screaming. It wasn’t a newborn. Laura approached the carriage; it wasn’t a newborn because it was quite big and could sit up by itself, and in fact had to be strapped in so as not to fall out. Laura wasn’t entirely sure, but it looked like a girl. At any rate, it was too little to be able to talk properly and say who it was. Laura looked around her. HELLO, she called. HELLO THERE, DOES THIS BABY BELONG TO ANYBODY? She had allowed the shopping trolley to topple over, and two lettuces and a jar of jam had rolled out. Laura retrieved them, picked up the trolley, wheeled it to the door, and shouted HELLO. She looked at her watch. It was outdoors time, which meant she couldn’t go on shouting like that.

Erika was with Ragnar somewhere and Rosa could have gone to the mainland on errands. Isak was in his workroom and was not to be disturbed for any reason. Laura didn’t think mislaid babies would count as an exception. Laura looked at the child. It was clearly a girl—nobody would put a hat like that on a boy’s head—and now it had screamed so much and for so long that it was too tired to do more than sob. Snivel. Isak would start bellowing if she gave the child to him. This was Laura’s problem. When Rosa got home, it would be Rosa’s problem, but until then it was Laura’s. She looked at the child. She made a plan. First, she thought, she would slip into the kitchen and put all the shopping away in the fridge and larder, and then she would take the child for a walk and hope Rosa would be home soon.

Laura started pushing. She had to shove hard to get the carriage moving; it was much bigger and heavier than the shopping trolley. They made slow progress. One wheel caught on a stone and the carriage almost tipped over. She managed to right it, but the child began to scream again.

“Hello, you,” said Laura, pushing the carriage. The wheels squeaked. “My name’s Laura.”

The child looked at her and screamed; its eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, and now and then it raised its hand and pointed into the air and shouted semirecognizable words:
mummy, nanna, mummy, see! see!

Laura said: “We’re going for a ride, and you’re going to sit in your carriage and be completely and totally quiet.”

The child looked at her and sobbed. Laura walked faster. She marched along the dirt road, pushing the big red carriage in front of her. No more close calls now. Laura gripped the handle more firmly, went through the gate, and turned onto the path through the woods. The silent green forest light seemed to soothe the child; it looked around, pointed at everything, and kept saying See! See! There were the stunted, windblown trees and outstretched branches scraping the carriage; there were the stumps and roots and rotten trunks and one or two dead birds (sometimes something even bigger, like a dead fox); and there were other paths that led right down to the sea, to open green heathland, to the secret patches of wild strawberries that Ragnar had shown Laura and Erika the summer they first met him. Now Erika and Ragnar didn’t want to be with Laura anymore. They said she was too little. They said Laura didn’t know where the secret hut was, but she did. She had been there many times; she had even helped Ragnar to make a curtain and hang it up over the big split in the timber, which served as a window.

Once, a long time ago, Laura, Erika, and Ragnar had been sitting in the hut, in the dark, and Ragnar had taken a penknife out of his trouser pocket so they could all cut their thumbs and mix their blood. Laura had taken the knife and cut herself and made her thumb bleed as easy as anything. But when they passed Erika the knife, she sat fiddling with her thumb and didn’t dare cut deep enough. There wasn’t a drop of blood.

“Come on, come on,” said Ragnar.

Ragnar and Laura’s Tom Thumbs were both bleeding and they were ready to rub them together, and if Erika didn’t hurry up the blood would dry and they would have to do it all over again.

“Come on then,” repeated Ragnar angrily.

“I don’t want to,” said Erika.

“You’ve got to,” said Ragnar.

“You’ve got to,” said Laura.

“I don’t want to,” screamed Erika, and then Ragnar got tired of waiting.

He took the knife from her, grabbed her hand, held it tight, and jabbed her thumb. Immediately the blood began pouring from the wound. Erika screamed and pulled her hand away. She screamed and screamed, and then she cried. Laura almost cried herself, afraid that Ragnar had cut too deep and her sister would bleed to death, but both collected themselves and held out their hands when Ragnar said it was time to rub their thumbs together.

“Now we’re blood brothers and sisters, in life and in death and for all eternity, on Hammarsö, in Sweden, on Earth, and all over the universe,” Ragnar said.

Erika and Ragnar were nine now (they had the same birthday, like twins!) and Laura was only seven, too little, they had said. And they thought Laura didn’t know where the hut was, simply because Ragnar had told her so many times:
You don’t know where the hut is, you don’t know where the hut is, you don’t know where the hut is.
Ragnar believed he could hypnotize people. He believed it because he had once stared at Frida and said:
Frida loves Ragnar, loves Ragnar, loves Ragnar,
and then Frida had giggled, stretched her hands out in front of her, walked unsteadily over to Ragnar as if she were a sleepwalker, and kissed him on the mouth, long and hard. Afterward, Frida whispered to Laura that she’d only been pretending. Frida had kissed Ragnar because he was so disgusting and you sometimes had to do disgusting things, she said, like gulping down the skin on your milk, or drinking warm Coca-Cola. Laura and Frida had been summer holiday best friends for years, but now Frida didn’t want to be with her anymore. Frida would rather be with Marion, the girl with the long black hair.

Laura looked at the child in the red carriage. It had been quiet for a long time now. Every so often its eyelids would droop and it would look as if it were about to nod off. The carriage joggled over branches and fir cones and twigs.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you,” said Laura.

She was tired and out of breath, and it had gotten cold and cloudy. She had walked farther than she’d meant to. Laura found the brake, parked the carriage under a tree, and looked about her. She wasn’t sure now which way she had come, or which was the way back. When the child began to scream again (maybe because the carriage had stopped joggling), Laura shouted at it to stop.

“Stop that! Stop that!”

Laura wanted to find her way out of the woods to fetch Rosa, and she’d be able to do it quicker if she left the carriage under the tree. The carriage was much heavier than she had thought when she set out on this walk.

“Wait here. I’ll be back soon,” Laura said.

She turned around and started walking. She was doing everything wrong now, it was all falling apart, people would be cross with her and shout at her or ignore her at the dinner table; she shouldn’t have taken the child into the woods in the first place, and then she shouldn’t have left it under the tree. But she had to find Rosa. Only Rosa knew the right thing to do in situations like this. Laura didn’t know the right thing to do. Laura had never even touched a baby before. The child’s screams turned to crying. Laura walked briskly on without turning around. After all, nothing could happen to it there, half sitting, half lying, and strapped into the carriage. It wouldn’t be on its own for very long. Laura would find Rosa as quickly as she could, and Rosa would know what to do. The child no doubt wanted food and milk and was bound to need a clean diaper.

“Won’t be long!” she called, still without turning around. “I’ll be back soon!”

There was no danger. Nothing could happen. There were no bears in this forest. When Laura was little, four or five, she had been afraid of bears. It was Isak’s fault. Rosa had tried to hush him, not wanting her daughter scared, but Isak thought it did children no harm to be scared, so he told the story of the Hammarsö bear, which had the run of the island. The Hammarsö bear had white fur and could travel by land or sea, half mammal and half sea creature as it was. It had sharp teeth, gleaming eyes, sharp claws, and slavering jaws that gave heavy sighs when it was hungry, which it always was. And if it got the chance, it would tear a little girl apart and eat her body, bit by bit.

Laura could hear a rustling among the trees and a branch creaking a little way off. One path looked much like another. She could no longer see the child, but she could hear it crying. Laura stopped and listened. The crying was different now, as if the child was on the verge of giving up.

Laura went on walking, but stopped again. It was no good. The child couldn’t be left alone. She would have to go back and push the carriage out of the woods as best she could. It wasn’t
that
heavy. If she had managed to push it into the woods, she would surely be able to push it out again? She would find the way home. She would find Rosa. Laura ran. First she saw the tree, then the carriage, and then the child, which had tried to get out of its harness but had gotten tangled up instead, so it could no longer move its right arm. Laura ran to the carriage, unclipped the harness and picked up the child.

“Hush, hush,” she whispered, rocking the little girl in her arms. “Hush, hush. I won’t leave you again. I promise.”

Laura took the white wool blanket from the carriage, wrapped the body of the sobbing baby in it, and sat down on the ground, under the tree. Soon she would set about finding the way home. But first, she and the child would sit here under the tree and rest. The little girl was so tired from all her crying that she immediately fell asleep in Laura’s arms, her heavy head resting on Laura’s shoulder. With one finger, Laura stroked the girl’s forehead and nose, the back of her soft neck, her thin wrists and little hands.

As long as the girl slept, she would sit here under the tree and not move.