Frozen Music (32 page)

‘You have a very nasty jealous streak in you,' my father had told me once after I had trimmed his little god-daughter's eyelashes.

‘I thought they were too heavy,' I had protested. ‘I thought that's why she keeps falling asleep all the time.' The explanation had not convinced anyone.

The breeze from the water grew stronger and I reached for my cotton sweater, draping it across my shoulders. I looked around at them all, so contented. Ivar had pottered down to the edge of the water and was busy chucking stones at a jellyfish. Someone was snoring, but it was Kerstin, not Pernilla. There had to be a trick to this
island-sitting, but for now it eluded me. I tried to lie down, a sharp piece of rock cut into my back. I turned on my side, supporting myself on my elbow. That was no better. I sat back up again and picked out a notebook. Maybe I should begin a diary. I should have started one at the time of my breakdown, charting my road to recovery.

Bertil put down his book. ‘Linus,' he said. ‘Olivia and I have been talking about selling up, buying something in France. What do you think? It's always been a bit of a dream of ours.' He turned to Olivia and smiled. There was an audible intake of breath from Ulla. She too had put down her book. ‘We'd keep a
pied-à-terre
in town, but that would be all we'd need.'

Linus was quiet for a moment, then he said, ‘If that's what you both want, of course you must do it. I'd buy Villa Rosengård from you, but it's too big for just me and Ivar, and I'd never get the time to spend out here to make it worthwhile. You'll find a buyer easily enough, though. No, go for it. Ivar and I'd miss the old place, but we'll live.'

A small choking sound made me turn round. Ulla was sitting bolt upright, staring at Bertil. She looked like someone who had just been served their pet dog for lunch. ‘You're not serious,' she said finally. ‘You can't sell Rosengård. It's been in the family for generations. Astrid loved this place. It's hers. You can't sell.'

‘I know how you must feel,' Olivia said. What was meant to follow that particular phrase but never did, was
But actually I don't really care
. Instead, Olivia looked concerned. ‘It's not an easy step to take, but you only have one life. And as we said, this is something Bertil and I have wanted to do for a very long time. We've got friends over there. We love the food and the people, and the climate will do Bertil's arthritis the world of good.'

‘I didn't know you had arthritis,' Kerstin said.

Pernilla had woken up. ‘My father had arthritis and I tell you, moving to Spain, getting away from the cold, was the best thing he ever did.' The conversation turned into a medical one and then, when Ivar fell into the water for a second time, it was decided that we should pack up and go back home. Ulla seemed her usual self as we bounced through the choppy sea, but as she lifted her binoculars to study a seabird on a buoy I noticed that her hands were shaking.

It had rained all day and it was raining still when I left for the hospital. My mother was mending, but it was a slow process. The lack of any exercise (and as I told her, lying on her back and lifting one leg very slowly, then rolling her ankles a few times before repeating the procedure with the other leg, did not count) had made the healing process more complicated, just as it had weakened her bones.

‘I'm an old woman,' Audrey stated, ‘and old women have weak bones.'

‘Old women who sit around in bed all day have especially weak ones,' I chided. ‘So don't make excuses.' Sometimes I found the cruel-to-be-kind bit the ward sister had told me about a little too easy. But the hospital still believed that she would be fit enough to be discharged by the weekend.

‘I'd better think about getting back to London,' I said. But Audrey begged me to stay on a while longer and I promised to think about it. ‘It depends what Olivia feels,' I added. But it was true that I had nothing much to get back to London for. Work didn't start until late August and Posy was looking after the house.

‘I know Olivia wants you to stay,' Audrey said. She was sitting up, although her thigh was still in plaster right up to the hip. ‘I can't expect her to nurse me. But you are my daughter, after all.'

‘Now you admit to it. But I will stay, as long as that's what Olivia wants.'

Back at Villa Rosengård I found Olivia in the kitchen, perched on top of a stepladder, a paintbrush in her hand, squinting at a kitchen cupboard. She turned and smiled at me. ‘Audrey all right? I must visit tomorrow.'

‘They're thinking of discharging her at the weekend. The problem is, she's not fit to travel back to England yet. Are you sure it's all right for her to stay with you?'

‘Of course it's all right. Your mother is my oldest and dearest friend.'

‘Would you like me to stay on and help look after her, or is that more trouble than it's worth?'

‘We're counting on it. I know I said Audrey is my dearest friend, but that doesn't mean I want to spend my holiday nursing her. I bet she's a shocking patient.'

‘Shocking,' I agreed.

Olivia turned her attention back to the cupboard door. ‘It needs something.'

I gazed at the white surface. ‘Roses.'

‘Roses?'

‘You should paint a yellow rosebush all across it.' I paused, my head a little to one side, thinking. ‘And while you're at it, I'd paint them on the walls of the veranda too.'

Olivia turned and looked sharply at me. ‘What makes you say that?'

‘Innate bad taste, I expect,' I said airily. Then I saw that she was serious. I shrugged. ‘I don't really know. The name of the house, I suppose. Villa Rosengård. Or just a feeling.' I shrugged again.

‘When Astrid, Linus's mother, lived here, she papered the veranda with pictures of roses she had cut out from books and catalogues, every inch of wall, apparently. Bertil removed it all after she … after she died.'

‘What did she look like, Astrid?' I asked. ‘Is there a photo somewhere?'

‘Linus has a couple. He was only tiny when she died, poor little mite.'

‘So what happened? What did she die from?'

Olivia climbed down from the stepladder and went across to the sink to pour herself a glass of water. With her back turned to me she said, ‘I'm not quite sure. Some accident. It's all a very long time ago.'

‘Ulla says she adored this place.'

‘I expect she did.' Olivia made it clear that she wasn't going to pursue the subject. I walked out on to the veranda and stood there for a moment, trying to imagine it in Astrid's day, when the walls were covered with paper roses.

At lunch, in the kitchen the following day, I sat next to Linus. ‘Why is the Lloyd commission so important to you?' I asked him. ‘From what I hear you're very successful. You've won prizes, for heaven's sake. You're earning lots of money. I'm the one with the problem. I've just got my old job back, minus some pay and status and freedom. I've never been married and I have no children. I'm the one who should be desperate. I'm thirty-four years old and sometimes I feel as if I've spent my life reading the instructions upside down.' I regretted saying it all as soon as I had spoken because, put like that, it really depressed me. And Linus didn't seem to disagree with anything I'd said, which depressed me even more. What's the point of being self-deprecating if no one disagrees with you?

Then he smiled. ‘Can't I be desperate too?' He fixed his dark-grey eyes on me. ‘You know, I've yet to see a building I've designed that I'm proud of. I spend my life creating what I know is second-best in order to get the work you're speaking of. Have you any idea, any idea at all what it feels like being forced, over and over again, to create second-rate work when you know you can do first-rate? I tell you.' He hadn't raised his voice but he spoke each word with such emphasis that he might as well have been shouting. ‘Sometimes I think it will kill me.'

Then he smiled again, straight at me, eyeball to eyeball, and I found myself smiling back idiotically.

‘Pernilla gets very impatient with me,' he went on. ‘She never whinges. She says that only privileged people have time to worry about things like that. Try being a single mother on inadequate state support, or terminally ill. She says I'd soon stop worrying about whether or not a building was good, bad or great. She's right, of course. You know, I think that's what I admire most about her. Her life hasn't been easy, but she never wastes time complaining. Instead, she's got this amazing ability to make the most of everything, of living entirely in the present. She never spends a moment on regrets.'

My smile stiffened, then cracked. ‘How lovely,' I said. ‘But I don't actually agree with her. If you were a single mother architect living on the breadline, you might have other pressing needs, but I still think you'd worry about some of the same things that bother you now. It's not just a luxury, reserved for the privileged few, it's universally human, in my view. In fact, it's what makes us human. I've interviewed people who've been through the most horrendous experiences and all the while they'd still care about a line of a drawing or a word in a poem, or the state of their hair for that matter. It seems to have been what kept them sane, alive even. Other animals content themselves with survival. A lion who's eaten well and who has shelter from the hot sun lies down to sleep. He doesn't dash about with renewed vigour thinking up how to improve on raw impala or, for that matter, how to build himself a really aesthetically pleasing den. Human beings never rest at the level of survival, or even comfort. We strive on. That's what makes us human.'

Ulla was addressing me in her precise and accented English: ‘I'm telling Olivia that she'll miss this place more than she imagines.' She wagged her finger in Linus's direction. ‘This place is in your blood, Linus. This was your poor mother's home. You must see that it's a bad decision, selling. Astrid loved this place. How can you even think of letting strangers take over?' She went on about dirty French beaches, syringes in the sand, condoms floating on the waves. ‘And what about Ivar?' But Linus wasn't listening any more. He was staring straight in front of him, past Ulla's right shoulder and out at the garden. His cheeks had turned bright pink.

‘I know what a condom is,' Ivar said. Today he was wearing pale-blue shorts, a blue-and-green striped T-shirt and a straw hat decorated with daisies and forget-me-nots. ‘But I'm afraid I can't tell anyone, because it's rude.'

At the sound of his son's voice Linus had turned round. ‘It's not rude, little man. It's very useful sometimes.'

‘But Mummy says…' Ivar looked confused.

Linus sighed. ‘Well if Mummy says…'

‘Don't be so weak, Linus.' Ulla glared at him.

‘Well, we'll just have to visit Ivar, if Ivar can't visit us,' Olivia said.
‘Bertil and I are looking forward to the change, especially the weather, condoms or no condoms. Anyway, we only want a very small place. Of course you're all welcome to come, but we want something that suits
us
. Something we can just up and leave if we want to travel. Something that doesn't require much upkeep. We're not young and this place is becoming a burden, not least financially.'

‘It makes sense to me.' Linus smiled at her, then he turned back to me. ‘I have to admire Pernilla,' he went on, obviously not realising when he'd lost the sympathy of his audience. ‘She's not had an easy life.' That perked me up a bit. ‘Her first husband was a notorious philanderer. Everyone knew of his affairs, but she stuck by him. The second one – her divorce has just come through – was abusive, not physically, but mentally. He too had affairs. As if that's not enough, she lost her job and her boyfriend, who was also her boss, both at once. Still she manages to be positive and full of enthusiasm. She's a real inspiration, an example to us all.'

I nodded. I suppose she was. But of what, exactly? Courage? Attitude? An inability to learn from past mistakes? But I said nothing. Audrey had always told me that men found envy and spite very unattractive in a woman. Until now I hadn't cared and I always felt that envy and spite were things I did rather well. But now it was different. I wanted to please and the feeling confused me.

‘Anyway,' Olivia was saying, ‘we might not go that far south. Normandy is lovely.'

Next to me, Linus was still prattling on about Pernilla. ‘I feel, well pale, compared with her,' he said.

I looked at him and heard myself simper, ‘But you're not pale. You've got a lovely tan.' A look of impatience crossed his face and I could have bitten my tongue off. ‘Of course I know that's not what you meant,' I added hastily. Inside I was one big complaint.
I
wanted to be an inspiration.
I
wanted yellow hair to toss and a brave, sunny attitude. Why couldn't I be light-hearted, damn it? Instead I sat there, dark of hair and dark of mind, inside my own little cloud of envy where no amount of Swedish summer sun could reach, longing… for what? His approval?

‘You've got a very peculiar expression on your face again, Esther,' Olivia said. ‘What on earth were you thinking of?'

‘Love.' It was out before I could stop myself.

‘Oh dear,' Olivia said. ‘Oh dear, oh dear.'

‘I did tell you that my side was to the right of the bath taps, didn't I?' Ulla asked in a voice with a silky top note but with a sharp undertone, like cheap scent. I looked questioningly at her. ‘I thought I saw your flannel on my side,' Ulla explained. She sounded as if she was determined to be patient whatever the provocation.

Fuck your side, I wanted to say. But I had manners. Suddenly I realised that I really cared what these people thought of me, even Ulla. I actually wanted them to like me and to like having me there. ‘I'll remove it,' I said, getting up from the table, bringing my empty plate across to the sink.