Frozen Music (2 page)

‘Of course it's hard for a child to grow up without a mother,' Olivia said and I felt like pointing out to her that it was hard for a child to grow up
with
a mother too. ‘And the way it happened can't have made it any easier,' she went on. ‘Not that the boy knows much about it. Bertil wants to protect him for as long as possible. Actually, I doubt that he'll ever feel ready to speak of it. I certainly can't get much out of him.'

I was confused. What did they need to protect this Linus from? Where was his mother?

‘How did she die? The first wife?'

So the boy's mother was dead. I too wanted to know how. We had just learnt about leprosy at school. Lots of people used to die from
leprosy and they still did, in Africa. If Linus's mother had died a long time ago as they said she had, maybe that was it. I could see why they didn't want to tell Linus. It's horrible. Their fingers and toes fall off and their noses…

‘Linus was five or six, something like that,' Olivia said. I liked her shoes as well. They were nicer than Janet's, but they still looked as if you could run pretty fast in them. When we were out together, Audrey, Madox and I, we always had to wait for Audrey to catch up and sometimes we had to stop at some boring old café just so that she would be able to rest her feet. She always said it had nothing to do with those shoes she wore, all pointy and high-heeled, but I didn't believe her. Once I suggested that she bought a pair like Janet's, I even offered to find out which shop Janet got hers from, but Audrey had just laughed and said, ‘Honestly, darling, do you think I would be caught dead wearing shoes like that?' Obviously there was something very wrong with Janet's shoes, but I couldn't see it myself. I had thought then, and I thought now, that being caught dead was precisely what she might be if she carried on wearing those silly shoes she liked if some lion or tiger or something chased her and she couldn't run.

‘So have you got a photo of your Bertil?'

‘Not on me, no.'

‘No starry-eyed romantic you.' Audrey laughed and shook her head. ‘When I was engaged to Madox I carried his picture in this tiny silk purse around my neck, next to my heart.'

‘When Linus's mother died, did he have to wear black clothes?' My voice, coming from the depths of the green armchair, seemed to startle them. They both turned round and stared at me as if they were indeed surprised to see me still in the room.

‘I really don't know,' Olivia said finally. ‘But I shouldn't think so. He was very young.'

‘Maybe he had to wear a black band around his arm?' I suggested.

‘Esther, Olivia wasn't there. Now why don't you run along and play? Do a nice picture for Olivia.'

I knew it! Being told to draw a picture was the oldest trick of them all when it came to getting rid of children. ‘Why don't you run along
to your room and draw me a really pretty picture,' Audrey would say. But then when I'd done one and I showed it to her it was as if she had forgotten that she had ever asked me for one. Honestly, it made you think she never wanted a picture in the first place.

‘Come on, Esther, do what Mummy asked you and draw Olivia a really nice picture to take back to Sweden with her.'

I always told myself I wouldn't fall for it again, but what choice did I have? Reluctantly, I propelled myself off the chair and pottered off, pausing briefly in the doorway. ‘When Amy Tillesly's grandmother died Amy had to wear a black band around her arm for a whole month.' I remembered because I had wanted to wear one very badly myself. There was no comment from my mother or Olivia so, disgruntled, I trundled upstairs to my bedroom, right at the top of the house. I brought out my coloured pencils and my drawing pad and set to work, lying flat on my tummy on the green rug. When I had finished I sat back on my heels and inspected the result. It was quite good, I thought. There was a tall old man, I had written
Bertle
underneath just in case Olivia didn't recognise him, and next to him stood a small round boy, Linus of course, wearing shorts and a cap. I looked some more at my picture and scratched the tip of my nose with my crayon, then I picked up a black one instead and drew a black band round the boy's arm.

‘You will grow up to be the kind of man who sits on his hat.' With his teacher's words ringing in his ears, Linus Stendal trudged through the wintry streets of Gothenburg. He felt the colour rise in his cheeks at the memory of the titters that had rippled through the classroom and he blinked and shook himself. No matter, it was over for that day. He was on his way home and already it was getting dark. The first snow of the winter had fallen the night before, but it had not been cold enough in the centre of town to allow it to rest on the ground. Instead it had melted to a grey slush that seeped through the joins of his black zip-up ankle boots and settled in a mess on the toe-caps. People were hurrying past, their heads bent low against the icy wind, its gusts like a shower of glass needles against the face. Linus pulled his red woolly hat further down his forehead, but he kept his steady slow pace of
walking. Dawdling, his father called it and it drove him crazy with irritation.

‘When I was your age I ran everywhere, I didn't even know the meaning of the word “walk”,' Bertil would say. Well, Linus just wasn't made for running. Not only because of his roundness, but more because of his thoughts; they simply couldn't catch up with him if he walked too fast.

A stream of cars passed, their headlights on, the sound of their tyres squelching through the slush-filled gutters. That sound meant winter had really come and Linus, for one, was glad. He liked being indoors best, and in winter people did not nag him quite so much to go outside and play. Right now his model kit, a Spitfire, lay waiting for him in his bedroom in the large third-floor apartment he shared with his father. Thinking of the model kit made Linus speed up so that now he was keeping pace with everyone else. It had taken him almost two months to save up enough money to buy the kit, and even then he had had to dip into his emergency funds stored in a black-and-yellow tin hidden in a shoebox at the back of his wardrobe. Last night he had brought all the components of the kit out of their packaging, easing each piece from its plastic frame, snapping the little plastic stalks that held them in place, carefully, before arranging them all on his blue Formica-topped desk, ready for today. He crossed the street, his cheeks pink with pleasurable anticipation. Still, at Paleys café he paused for a moment, as he always did, to look through the large windows at the round marble-topped tables and small straight-backed gilt chairs, and at the counter at the front of the shop, laden with pastries and cakes and buns of every kind. Linus and his mother used to go there together before the accident. He had been little then, but he remembered the last time they went. It was winter, like now, and he had burrowed his face into the sleeve of her coat. If he closed his eyes he could feel the coarse softness of the fur against his cheek and the faint smell of camphor. With a little sigh he hurried on his way.

He was about to fish out the key he carried round his neck on a metal chain to unlock the front door when it was opened from the inside.

‘Daddy!' Linus rushed inside pulling his knitted hat off his head
revealing dark-blond hair, wavy and damp with sweat. ‘Why are you home so early?'

‘Good afternoon, Linus. And please remove your boots, you're bringing the entire street inside with you.' Linus's cheeks turned a deeper pink as he knelt down, clumsily unzipping the boots. ‘When you've washed your hands and combed your hair I'd like you to come into the library. I've got something to tell you.'

Linus could not help himself. ‘What is it? What's happened?'

Bertil sighed. It was a special sigh, a mixture of irritation and resignation, reserved just for Linus. ‘I believe that I told you a second ago that I would see you in the library in a minute.' Bertil turned on his heels and strode off, leaving Linus still struggling with his boots.

Linus washed his face and hands, and combed his hair, parting it carefully to one side, trying in vain to make it lie flat against his head instead of springing up in those embarrassing curls. On his way to the library he sneaked into his bedroom to take just a little look at his model. On the threshold he stopped, his grey eyes rounder than ever. The blue Formica desk was bare apart from the photograph of Linus as a little boy seated on his mother's lap, the brown imitation leather pencil case and the large pencil sharpener fixed to the side of the desk top. The carefully laid-out pieces of Linus's model aeroplane were nowhere to be seen. With an anguished little yelp Linus scurried across the room and up to the desk, pulling out the drawer underneath. There they were, the components of his plane, thrown in just any old way among his tin soldiers, the bits of modelling clay, and the handfuls of marbles and pencil stubs.

‘It's too bad, Daddy, really it is. She had no right.' Linus was all hot and bothered as he appeared in the library; his cheeks had turned bright pink again and his hair was springing up in those damp curls he detested.

Bertil Stendal looked up from the business section of the paper, taking his pipe out of his mouth. ‘There you are, Linus.' He glanced at his watch.

‘She's ruined it, that's what she's done. She had no right. It's my…'

‘Linus, would you please be quiet for a moment and sit down. I've got something important to tell you.'

Linus fell silent, sitting down on the sofa beneath the portrait of his grandfather. Inside, though, he was fuming, churned up with anxiety. In the end he could not help himself. ‘I bet she's lost some pieces and if she has then everything is…'

‘Linus.' Bertil's voice held a warning. There was a pause as he collected himself. Before his inner eye Linus saw his father separate into two, one Bertil striding off angrily as the other followed, putting a hand on the angry one's shoulder and bringing him back to their mutual body. He stifled a giggle as Bertil spoke again.

‘Now, you'll be aware that I enjoy the company of Tante Olivia very much. I have been lonely since your mother died.' Linus looked up at his father, surprised at the suggestion of him harbouring emotions similar to Linus's own. ‘And, well, what I wanted to tell you is that Olivia has consented to be my wife and therefore your new mother.'

‘You and Tante Olivia are getting married?'

Bertil heaved that special Linus sigh. ‘Yes, Linus, that is exactly what I've just told you. I hope this arrangement meets with your approval.'

Linus tried to concentrate his thoughts, still hovering anxiously around the question of his model, on his father's news. He liked Tante Olivia. She didn't talk down to him or ruffle his hair. She did not talk that much at all, come to think of it, and she left him alone in his room to do what he wished. His father was in a better mood when she was around and once she had cooked him a really good meal, something English with fish and normally he did not like fish very much. She was English but she had lived in Sweden long enough not to be embarrassing like Johan Falk's mum who came from Argentina. Mrs Falk talked all the time and in a very loud voice and she hugged everyone, even Linus whom she hardly knew. He knew he could rely on Tante Olivia not to be embarrassing like that.

He nodded to his father. ‘It's very nice. Are you engaged now?'

His father's rather thin lips parted into one of his rare smiles. ‘Yes, Linus my boy, we are indeed.'

Linus liked it when Bertil called him ‘My boy', but he thought that if his father would only smile a bit more often he would manage to do it better. ‘Practise, Linus,' his gym teacher was always telling him as
Linus's legs refused to reach up to the wooden bar. ‘Practise and they will stretch.' Maybe if Bertil practised his smile a bit more, it too would stretch.

‘Where is she, Tante Olivia?' he asked, remembering that he had not seen her for a while.

‘She's been back to England for a visit. She returned this morning. So, have you any more questions?' Bertil's glance passed from his son to the stack of papers on his desk.

‘If Tante Olivia comes to live with us can we stop having Fru Sparre? She had no right to come into my room and spoil my things like that and just…'

‘Linus, stop ranting. I'm going out to dinner in a little while. A small celebration. Fru Sparre left some meatballs for you. You can heat them up in the frying pan if you wish or eat them cold. And there's lingonberry preserve in the fridge. I especially reminded Fru Sparre to get some.' Linus cheered up momentarily; meatballs with lingonberries was his favourite. ‘So, my boy.' Bertil got up from the leather armchair and walked across to Linus, placing his hands on Linus's shoulders. ‘You're pleased?'

‘Yes, thank you.' Linus looked up at his father. ‘The other day I had to have my meatballs without lingonberries.'

Bertil withdrew his hands. ‘I meant about Tante Olivia and me, Linus.'

Linus's high pale forehead creased in concentration. ‘I haven't had time to think properly, but I think I am. And if you're happy…'

Later that evening Linus sat in the light of his blue-shaded desk-lamp painstakingly reassembling the pieces of his model while listening to Bob Dylan singing ‘Mr Tambourine Man' on the record player. Outside his room the apartment was dark and silent. Linus looked up from his work at the photograph of his mother with him on her knee and tears began to fill his eyes, running down his round cheeks and into his mouth. He sniffed and wiped them away with the back of his grubby hand, before bending down over his work once more.

‘The opening of Olivia's friend's gallery went well, apparently.' Audrey was reading her letter, her gold-rimmed spectacles down low on her nose. Now and then she mumbled a sentence out loud, but not loud enough for me or my father to hear, not until she looked up with an ‘Oh God, how awful!'