Frozen Music (37 page)

Ulla carried on as if Ivar had never spoken, ‘… I would tell you that Bertil will end up bitterly regretting selling this place. You both will, I'm telling you this.'

Kerstin turned to her and said something cross in Swedish. I realised I hadn't even noticed her arriving at the table.

‘English please,' Olivia said. ‘We have to think of our guest.' I didn't contradict her; I hated being left out of things.

‘I just can't see', Kerstin went on obediently, ‘how you can think that Olivia and Bertil should keep this place simply because we all like to spend our summer holidays here. It's their life.'

The colour rose in Ulla's thin cheeks. Her hand shook as she placed the mug back on the table. ‘What do you know?' She spat the words out, making us all turn to look at her. ‘What do any of you know with your full lives and your families and friends?' She stopped herself, putting a bony hand to her throat. Then she got up and hurried from the room.

Ivar wanted to know if she'd gone to fetch some paper. I told him that I thought it unlikely.

Moments later, Linus appeared in the doorway. ‘It's Father.' He looked straight at Olivia. ‘You'd better come. Gerald is calling Dr Blomkvist.'

Bertil was asleep upstairs with Olivia watching over him, seated in a hard chair at his side. He was going to be fine, Dr Blomkvist had said, but he was sending some samples to the laboratory nevertheless and he was consulting a specialist. Ulla had taken to her room and had not been seen for several hours, although Kerstin had left a tray with sandwiches and a flask of coffee outside the room after Ulla refused to come out. ‘I want to be alone,' she had snapped, like some Greta Garbo gone wrong. Olivia appeared downstairs just once that afternoon, but when she heard about Ulla, she and Gerald both went across to the cottage to see how she was doing. So that was what families were all about, I thought as I wandered alone between the rose borders, looking out for one another in critical times, even when you couldn't stand the sight of each other. No wonder Ulla was so desperate to belong. I felt an outsider more than ever. Not only was I The Woman Who Had Spiked Linus's Project, but my role in the unfolding drama over Bertil's health was no more than that of a concerned passer-by.

‘I feel quite forgotten,' Audrey complained.

I told her that she was. ‘But I'm here,' I added, trying to soften the blow.

Audrey continued to look disgruntled. ‘When did that Doctor What's-his-name say I could get up and about?'

‘You never get up and about.' I was surprised at her question.

‘Bed is no place for a sick person,' Audrey said. I didn't feel up to arguing.

The rain had held off for a while but as I passed the apple tree the sleeve of my sweater brushed against the low branches, sending a shower of droplets down the back of my neck and under my collar. I was trying to think of a story for
Modern Romance
magazine. I had
received a letter from Mary, the editor, in reply to mine, saying that they would be happy to look at anything I'd like to send them.
With a bit of heart at their centre, your stories could be excellent
, she had written.
So I hope you've found one
. That last remark had stung me. Of course I had a heart, I'd had one all along. We just hadn't had that much to do with each other until recently.

The weather, after the rains, had turned cooler and the garden had a clean, tousled look, with the tall grass flattened and the leaves heavy with water. I wondered when Linus would be back. He had gone shopping with a list of foodstuffs ordered for Bertil by Dr Blomkvist; clean, dairy-free food that would not feed whatever unfriendly bacteria had taken hold within his inflamed gut.

I was on my way back to the house when he appeared. I watched him push the gate open with his foot, his hands busy with the shopping. I saw him make his way along the narrow gravel path, his cheeks pink and his fair hair curling from the damp. I felt myself grinning and I raised my hand in a wave. Then I spotted Pernilla coming up behind him. She called his name, catching up with him by the sundial and he stopped and turned towards her. I ceased grinning and lowered my hand. He hadn't even seen me and I felt as if someone had switched off the light, just around me. Pernilla and Linus remained in their circle of light. I stood alone in the depths of my black-bottomed mere. I brought it with me as I went, that dark pool.

I stared at him, caressing his features with my gaze, allowing it to wander down the side of his face, along his left arm, down his hip, following the line of the long leg to the ground. I tasted his name, tracing each letter with my tongue. My heart was pounding. I wanted to die. I wanted to live for ever. I wanted to cry. Light flooded my pool of darkness. My God! I was in love.

My first impulse was to call for help: Posy, Chloe, Arabella, Audrey even. Ask them how to stop it. Enquire how to remove these alien sentiments. ‘A damp cloth and just the tiniest amount of Woolite,' Audrey would say. Posy, the old romantic, might suggest arsenic. Arabella would probably post me her vibrator. Chloe would laugh. I sank to the ground, careless of the wet grass. I had wondered for so
long about what it must be like, being in love, and now it had happened I hated it. I was nothing to him in the shadow of Pernilla's radiance. She gleamed. Her teeth glinted white, her hair shone gold, her skin glowed. I was pretty, I knew that, but even my best friend would not accuse me of radiance. Pernilla joined a gathering as if she knew that everyone had been waiting just for her to get there. I arrived looking as if I wondered where the hell I was and why? As if that wasn't enough, I was everyone's enemy: the journalist! Audrey would have told me that a woman was supposed to help her mate's dream come true, not slash the fabric it was woven from. All in all, my prospects did not look good.

I sat on my bed in the cottage, staring out of the window. ‘What is love?' I had scurried around asking, a morning long ago, just days before the wedding that never happened. Now I could answer the question myself. Olivia's vigil by her husband's bedside was love. Ulla's poison-pale face at the thought of no longer belonging was love of sorts. Feeling as if Linus had his finger on the light switch of the world, that too had to be love. I didn't like it. Love was turning me into someone I didn't know. In fact, it was turning me into someone I didn't wish to know. And it hurt.

It had rained for three days now and the wind was up from the sea. In a way I was pleased; this chilly grey state of affairs had just the kind of Ingmar Bergman gloom about it that I had expected from Sweden. But the islanders were still defying type by making the best of things, shouting jolly greetings to each other through the wind and rain and saying, in a very British way, that things could be a lot worse. I searched in vain for my soul mate, that fictional Swede, quiet and dark of mind.

I had managed to finish the story for
Modern Romance
and I had just been to the post office and faxed it to Mary Swanson. Back at the house, I shook the water off Kerstin's oilskin anorak and hung it up on its peg by the back door. I looked in on Audrey. She was asleep and even in sleep her face looked disgruntled. The doctor had said that it was only a matter of days now until she would be fit enough to travel back and I knew she couldn't wait to get home. And me? I had toyed with the idea of breaking a leg or toe myself as a means of being able to remain close to Linus, but a small something inside me, sanity maybe, stopped me. I closed the door to Audrey's room softly behind me and when I heard Linus's voice from the veranda I went out there, grabbing a book from the hall table on my way out. Gerald was there too. I sat down on the small wicker sofa and opened the book.

‘… and you go on, pushing down, one after the other and nothing comes out, nothing happens and then suddenly…' Gerald paused momentarily as I entered before continuing, ‘… out it flies, a big dollop of rotting food. It could be meat or, like this morning, spinach and that Italian cheese, you know the one I mean, Ricco… Ricotta, that's the one.'

‘Gerald is telling me about the joys of flossing.' Linus rolled his eyes at me, then he laughed – that laugh. It reached me and it sounded good to me. I stared at him and waited for the sound to infuriate me. It didn't. Instead, the sound of Linus's high-pitched giggle of a laugh filled me with happiness and I found myself joining in, hesitantly at first, then hilariously. Gerald looked at us and shook his head, so abruptly we both fell silent. But I couldn't take my eyes off Linus.

‘Esther?' Linus said.

‘Yes?'

‘Why are you reading a book on herring fishing in Swedish?'

‘I'm not,' I said. Then I looked down at the book. Maybe I was. ‘Whoops,' I said, closing it. ‘Wrong one.' I sidled out of the door and once I was back in the hall I slammed the book down on the table under the mirror, hard, to punish it for making me look silly. Then I hurried back to the cottage and my room, and lay down on the bed. I started to cry and once I had started it seemed I just couldn't stop. So that's how I spent the rest of that afternoon, lying on my bed, crying.

When it was time for dinner I took one look at my swollen face in the mirror before rushing outside, down the hill, along the harbour, round to the fort, on to the cliffs. It had stopped raining, but the sky and sea were a dull grey and the wind came from the north. I was alone by the bathing steps. With a quick look round to make sure there was no one approaching I tore off my clothes and shoved them into a crevice. I hurried down the steps and into the sea, gasping as the cold water hit my midriff. Taking a deep breath I dived under the water and swam a couple of lengths. Then I swam back to the steps and clambered back up on the rocks. Damn! No towel.

It's no fun dressing when you're sopping wet. I ran all the way back to the house, my clothes clinging to my body, water dripping from my hair on to my face.

I dashed straight into the kitchen, where they were all about to sit down, and said, ‘Sorry I'm late but I just had to go for a swim. I'll get some dry things on. Won't be a tick.' Seven pairs of eyes looked up at me, seven mouths gaped in silence. I dashed off again and as I left the house I heard Ulla's voice, loud, querulous, saying something in
Swedish, something unpleasant I shouldn't wonder. Still, I didn't mind. I had achieved what I set out to do; now my red eyes would be down to a swim in the cold, salty sea and not an afternoon of crying.

I perched at the foot of Audrey's bed, a mug of coffee in my hand. ‘I think that was going too far,' she said. Olivia had already told her about my evening swim and now she had wormed the reason from me. In fact, I had been grateful to have someone to confide in – that is, until I remembered who it was.

‘I suppose you wish you had listened to your mother now,' Audrey said. ‘I told you nothing good would come of you pursuing that campaign of yours.'

‘You mean because it made an adversary of Linus?'

Audrey looked at me with infinite patience. ‘Yes, darling.'

‘But you can't live your life like that. Either something is right or it isn't. My feelings for Linus should have nothing to do with it.'

‘I thought that therapist, what's his name…?'

‘Peel.'

‘That's the one, I thought he was meant to have cured you of all of that.'

I knew it was a mistake to try to talk to my mother. Her mind was a pink cave, which the light of reason never reached.

That night I couldn't sleep for love. My skin was itching, feeling as if it were crawling with insects, ladybirds most probably, cute red ladybirds that itched like fleas from hell. I tossed and turned. I conjured up images to torture myself further, images of Linus with Pernilla, of him smiling down at her, taking her in his arms, pressing her down on to his bed, caressing her… ‘No!' I cried. ‘Enough!' I rolled on to my stomach and buried my face in the pillow. It smelt of shampoo, my cheap and cheerful unscented pharmacy-brand shampoo. I tried to drive away the images of Linus and Pernilla, concentrating instead on the interesting fact that you could always smell unscented shampoo. It didn't work. In my mind Pernilla tossed her head from side to side, her hair fanning across Linus's pillow. I started to sob. I don't know how long I lay there with my face pressed against my own sensibly scented pillowcase, but
when eventually I got out of bed to fetch a drink of water the sun, which never rested for long during the short Swedish summer, was already spreading a soft pink light across the horizon.

I went outside and stood for a while on the front step of the cottage, drawing in the morning air. I felt the dew-drenched grass beneath my bare feet as I wandered across the lawn towards the house. The back door was never locked and I pushed it open and continued inside. My heart was pounding as I walked up the stairs, steadying myself with one hand against the wooden banister. The early morning light reaching through the uncurtained windows lit my way. Linus's room was the third on the left. I made my way towards it. The room next to Linus's was Ivar's. His door was ajar, as was his father's, and the faint light from their windows seeped out and met halfway on the landing.

Love, I thought as I stood, my hand on the door handle, was a more desperate emotion than I had ever guessed. I pushed open the door and slipped inside. I had never been into Linus's room, but I knew that it had been his mother's many years ago. Here, as in the rest of the house, the curtains were left open, the light from outside once again showing me the way. Linus slept in a wide, white-painted wooden bed. He had thrown off the duvet and was lying naked on his stomach. I followed the outline of his back and shoulders, the triangle down to his waist and buttocks. I gazed at his long legs, his left one drawn up at an angle, the other straight. I had to touch him. I could die tomorrow without ever having known the touch of his skin on mine. I wanted my lips to touch his. I wanted to kiss the crease where his neck joined with his shoulder and run my finger down the outline of his spine. I wanted him to turn over so that I could bury my face in his stomach. I stepped forward and put out my hand, leaning down over his sleeping profile, catching his warm breath with my own.