Britt-Marie Was Here (38 page)

“I’ve never supported a team. I think I love soccer too much. Sometimes your passion for a team can get in the way of your love for the game.”

It seems quite fitting for a man like Sven that he should believe more in love than in passion. He’s a policeman who believes more in justice than in the law. It suits him, she thinks to herself. But she doesn’t tell him as much.

“Poetic,” she says.

“Course.” He smiles back.

She wants to say so much more. Maybe he does too. But in the end all he can manage to utter is: “I want you to know, Britt-Marie, that every time there’s a knock on my front door, I hope it’s you.”

Maybe he is also intending to say something bigger, but he holds off and walks away. She wants to call out to him, but it’s too late.

The door tinkles cheerfully behind him, because doors really don’t seem to get when the moment is or isn’t right.

Britt-Marie dabs her cheeks with her handkerchief so no one can see she’s wiping her eyes. Then she walks purposefully through the pizzeria to Somebody. There are still people everywhere. Ben’s mother and Dino’s uncle and Toad’s parents, but also a lot of other people whose faces Britt-Marie can only dimly recall from the soccer cup. They are cleaning up and putting the chairs in order, and she only just manages to resist the urge to straighten them again.

“It was, what’s-it-called? Beautiful funeral, huh?” says Somebody, her voice a little gravelly.

“Yes,” agrees Britt-Marie, before getting out her wallet and immediately continuing: “I should like to ask what I owe you for the car door.”

Somebody drums the edge of her wheelchair.

“Well. I been, you know, thinking about that car, huh, Britt-Marie. I don’t have good car mechanic, huh? Maybe did it wrong, you know? So first you check the work, huh? Then you come back. Pay.”

“I don’t understand.”

Somebody scratches her cheek so no one can see she’s wiping her eyes as well.

“Britt-Marie very honest person, huh. Britt-Marie does not steal. So then I know Britt-Marie comes back to Borg, huh. To pay.”

“Of course,” she replies, turning away. “Of course.”

She wants to get busy cleaning up, but then has a merciless realization that the people she does not know, inside the pizzeria, have already done it. Somebody has already told them all what to do. And now there is nothing left to finish.

Britt-Marie is not needed here anymore.

She stands on her own in the doorway until the children stop
playing. They go home, one after the other. At a distance, Sven waits patiently for Vega and Omar. He lets the children take the time they need. Vega goes directly to the backseat and closes the door behind her, but Omar wanders on his own along the plank and runs his fingers across the white jerseys. He leans over the candles on the ground, carefully picks one up that has gone out, and relights it by holding it over the flame of another, then puts it back. When he straightens up he sees Britt-Marie in the doorway. His hand moves almost unnoticeably away from his hip, in a little wave. A wave from a young man is much more than a wave from a child. She waves back as much as she can without showing him that she is crying.

She goes down to the parking area just as the police car pulls into the road and heads off towards the children’s house. Kent is waiting for her, sweaty, his shirt creased and hanging loose, his hair on end to one side of his large head—and he still only has one shoe. He looks quite, quite mad. It reminds her of how he used to look when they were children. Back then it never bothered him that other people would shake their heads at him; he was never afraid of making a fool of himself. He never needed anyone’s affirmation except hers.

He takes her hand and she presses her eyelids against his lips. Says, almost panting:

“Vega is afraid even if she mainly seems angry. Omar is angry, even if he mostly seems afraid.”

“Everything is going to be all right,” says Kent into her hair.

“I promised Sami their lives would work out,” sobs Britt-Marie.

“They’re going to be fine, you have to let the authorities take care of this,” he says calmly.

“I know. Of course I do know that.”

“They’re not your children, darling.”

She doesn’t answer. Because she knows. Obviously she knows that. Instead, she straightens her back and wipes her eyes with a
tissue, adjusts a crease in her skirt and several in Kent’s shirt. Collects herself and clasps her hands over her stomach and asks him:

“I should like to take care of a last errand. Tomorrow. In town. If it’s not too much trouble.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“You don’t always have to stand next to me, Kent.”

“Yes, I do.”

Then he smiles. And she tries to.

But when he starts walking back to the BMW she stays where she is with her heels dug into the gravel, as you do when enough is finally enough:

“No, Kent, certainly not! I am certainly not going into town with you if you don’t first put on both your shoes!”

O
ne remarkable thing about communities built along roads is that you can find just as many reasons for leaving them as excuses to stay. Some people never quite stop devoting themselves to one or the other.

In the end it’s almost a whole week after the funeral before Britt-Marie gets into her white car with its blue door and drives off along the road that leaves Borg. Admittedly it’s not entirely the fault of the council employees in the town hall. Possibly, they are only trying to do their jobs. It is not their fault that they are not wholly aware of Britt-Marie’s precision when ticking off her lists.

So on the first day, a Monday, the young man who’s working temporarily on reception at the town hall looks as if he thinks Britt-Marie is trying to be amusing. The reception opens at 8:00, so Britt-Marie and Kent have turned up at 8:02 because Britt-Marie doesn’t want to come across as pigheaded.

“Borg?” says the temporary receptionist in the sort of tone you might use when pronouncing the names of beasts in fairy tales.

“My dear boy, surely you can’t be working for the council without knowing that Borg is a part of the local council!” Britt-Marie says.

“I’m not from here. I’m a temp.”

“Ha. And I suppose that’s meant to be an excuse for not having
to know anything at all.”

But Kent nudges her encouragingly in the side, and whispers to her that she should try to be a little more diplomatic, so she grimly collects herself, smiles considerately at the young man, and says:

“It was very brave of you, putting that tie on. Because it looks absolutely preposterous.”

Following this, there is a series of opinions exchanged that could not exactly be described as “diplomatic.” But in the end Kent manages to calm down both combatants to the extent that the young man promises not to call the security guards, and Britt-Marie promises not to try to strike him with her handbag again.

One curious thing about communities built along roads is that you don’t need to spend very long in them before you’re deeply and personally offended when young men don’t even know these places are there—that they even exist.

“I’ve come here to demand that a soccer pitch should be built in Borg, for your information,” Britt-Marie explains with her most goddess-like patience.

She points at her list. The young man looks through a file. He turns demonstratively to Kent and says something about a “committee,” which is currently held up in a meeting.

“For how long?”

The young man continues going through the file.

“It’s a breakfast meeting. So, more or less, until about ten o’clock.”

Whereupon both she and Kent have to leave the town hall, because a newly aggressive Britt-Marie has taken umbrage at the idea of a breakfast that lasts until ten o’clock, causing the young man to break his promise about not calling the security guards. They come back at ten o’clock, only to learn that the committee is in a meeting until after lunch. They come back after lunch, when they
find out that the committee is in a meeting for the rest of the day. Britt-Marie clarifies her errand to the young man, because she does not believe it should have to take a whole day to get it done. The security guard who the young man has called takes the view that her clarity is somewhat overstated. He tells Kent that if Britt-Marie does this one more time he’ll have no option but to take her handbag away from her. Kent sniggers and says in that case the security guard is a braver man than Kent. Britt-Marie doesn’t know whether to feel insulted or proud about it.

“We’ll come back tomorrow, darling, don’t worry about it,” Kent says soothingly as they are walking out.

“You have your meetings, Kent. We have to go home, I understand that, of course I do understand that. I just hope that we manage to . . .”

She takes a breath so deep that it seems to be extracted from the bottom of her handbag.

“When Vega plays soccer she doesn’t feel any pain anymore.”

“Pain about what?”

“Everything.”

Kent lowers his head for a moment in thought.

“It doesn’t matter, darling. We’ll come back tomorrow.”

Britt-Marie adjusts the bandage on her hand.

“I’m aware of the fact that the children don’t need me. Obviously I am aware of that, Kent. I just wish I could give them something. At least if I could give them a soccer pitch.”

“We’ll come back tomorrow,” Kent repeats, as he opens the car door for her.

“Yes, yes, you have your meetings, I understand that you have your meetings, we have to go home,” she says with a sigh.

Kent scratches his head distractedly. Coughs gently. Fixes his
gaze on the rubber seal between the glass and the metal of the door, and answers:

“The fact is, darling, I only have one meeting. With the car dealer.”

“Ha. I didn’t realize you were planning to buy a new car.”

“I’m not buying. I’m selling this one,” says Kent, with a nod at the BMW that she has just got into.

His face is dejected, as if it knows this is what is expected of it. But when he shrugs he does it as a young boy might, and his shoulders are light and relaxed as if they have just been liberated from a heavy burden.

“The company has gone bankrupt, darling. I tried to save it for as long as I could, but . . . well. It’s the financial crisis.”

Britt-Marie gawps at him.

“But I thought . . . I thought you said the crisis was over?”

He considers this for a moment, then simply says, “I was wrong, darling. Totally, totally wrong.”

“What are you going to do?”

He smiles, unconcerned and youthful.

“Start again. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Once upon a time I had nothing, remember?”

She does remember. Her fingers seek out his. They may be old, but he’s laughing:

“I built a whole life. A whole life! I can do it again.”

He holds her hands in his and looks into her eyes when he promises:

“I can become that man again, my darling.”

They’re halfway between town and Borg when Britt-Marie turns to him and asks how things have gone for Manchester United. He laughs out loud. It’s heavenly.

“Ah, it’s gone to pot. They’ve had their worst season in more than twenty years. The manager is going to get kicked out any moment.”

“How come?”

“They forgot what made them successful.”

“What do you do when that happens?”

“You start again.”

He rents a room from Toad’s parents for the night. Britt-Marie doesn’t ask if he’d prefer to stay in Bank’s house, because Kent admits “that blind old bat scares me a bit.”

The next day they go back to the town hall. And the next. Probably some of the people who work at the town hall believe that sooner or later Britt-Marie and Kent will give up, but these people are simply not aware of the profound implications of writing your lists in ink. On the fourth day they are allowed to see a man in a suit who’s a member of a committee. By lunchtime he has called in a woman and a man, both wearing suits. Whether this is because of their expertise in the relevant area, or simply because the first suited man wants to improve his odds of not being hit in the event Britt-Marie starts lashing out with her handbag, is never clarified.

“I’ve heard a lot of good things about Borg. It seems so charming there,” says the woman encouragingly, as if the village some twelve miles from her office is an exotic island only accessible through reliance on magic spells.

“I am here about a soccer pitch,” Britt-Marie begins.

“There’s no budget for that,” the second suited man informs them.

“As I already said,” the first suited man points out.

“In that case I have to demand that you change the budget.”

“That’s absolutely out of the question! How would that look? Then we’d have to start making changes in all the budgets!” says the second suited man, terrified.

The suited woman smiles and asks if Britt-Marie wants some coffee. Britt-Marie doesn’t. The suited woman’s smile intensifies.

“The way we understood it, Borg already has a soccer pitch.”

The second man in a suit makes a dissatisfied humming sound from between his teeth, and almost yells:

“No! The soccer pitch was sold off for the eventual building of apartments. It’s in the budget!”