In the Name of Love (12 page)

He talked on in a richly blended mix of local cadences and standard Swedish. It was easy to feel comfortable, even sheltered listening to his deep melodic voice. Outside, the darkening afternoon was silent.

‘Why didn’t her father stay on and take over the farm?’

‘Farming didn’t interest him. Women did. In order to get out he went to teachers’ training college about the same time as I got into KTH.’

‘Is he still alive?’

‘No. He died of a heart attack quite a while back. Some­where over on the West Coast.’

Sune sipped his whisky again then stretched his arms and placed his hands far in on the table, leaning back as he did it. At such moments Dan sensed the dull pain that rose inside him. His fingers were widespread, his nails strong and straight as chisels. When he’d relaxed again he looked up.

‘Lena’s not a kid any longer, she’s a woman. Men can’t prey on her the way they used to. If they try, they get what they deserve. You’re not one of them. That’s all I wanted to say, Dan.’

‘This business of the farm, does she have anything to back up her claim?’

Sune sipped again, slowly, an excuse to reflect.

‘She tells people she has letters from Solveig Backlund. Where­as the Selavas have a will signed in the presence of wit­nesses. But Lena is all set to fight. If she shows an interest in you, just make sure you keep it sexual, that’s all I wanted to say.’

He stretched again, easing into another thought. ‘People here hold you in some esteem, Dan, they admire you for stick­ing it out. If you have an affair with a younger woman now, believe me they’ll understand, they’ll see it as a sign you’re getting back into life again. Maybe Lena could be that woman. I’m not saying she couldn’t. But maybe her tough childhood has also taught her to manipulate people without necessarily realizing she’s doing it.’

‘You could say that of any of us, tough childhoods or not. To be honest, what little I’ve seen of Lena Sundman I find tiresome. And I don’t think I’ll be seeing any more.’

‘Aren’t inheritances a curse though? They bring out the worst in everyone.’

Dan shrugged, indicating that the subject didn’t concern him. The yard outside was rapidly blackening out of dusk into night.

‘The Selavas have been working their backs off over there for two years, keeping the place afloat. Gabriel’s a huge help but he’s eighteen now, he can do what he wants. Their great fear, of course, is that he’ll go back to France. Truth be told it seems he got into a little trouble down there when he was younger.’

‘So you’ve landed me with a juvenile delinquent? Thanks a lot!’

‘It was nothing serious. From what I’ve understood he wanted to get in with a crowd of older boys. Since he was under age at the time there wasn’t much would happen to him if he was caught borrowing a car so he was the fall guy when they went joyriding. He was finally put in a youth home for a while. After he got out his family decided it was best he come here where he was needed.’

As the thaw continued vestiges of so many hidden things came to light: last year’s leaves with their smell of rot and change, mysterious, sweet; giant granite boulders that emerged and looked as if they’d been placed there for a purpose. Dan returned from his walks physically tired but now, for the first time since coming out here, he felt buoyed by the hosanna of life all around him.

On one such afternoon, when he was in the bathtub before going to Sune’s birthday party, the doorbell rang. He went downstairs in his dressing gown and saw Lena Sundman standing outside.

‘Am I too early?’

‘Too early for what?’

‘Sune’s party.’

He stared at her blankly.

‘He asked me to pick you up. Didn’t he say anything?’

Still damp from the bath, Dan stood frozen a moment in the doorway before he reluctantly showed her in. Beneath her overcoat she wore a short black cocktail dress. She saw the new double bed that had been delivered from Norrtälje. It filled much of the end wall in the living room.

‘This where you set your seduction scenes?’

‘It’s here because the bedroom isn’t ready yet.’

‘Last time I only got as far as the hall. Now we’re talking bedroom. I’m not sure I can take the pace.’

Dan picked out clothes from the closet in the entrance and said he’d be back in a few minutes.

Sune Isaksson was alone when they arrived. He complimented Lena on her cocktail dress, telling her she looked lovelier than ever. In return she gave him her smile. Dan could see they were both a little on their guard. Was it because of the Selavas and the farm? She did kiss Sune’s cheek though, and then they talked about the old days when she lived here on the island and about her father who’d been at school with Sune.

‘People lived a different life here then,’ Sune told Dan. ‘There were plenty of fish in the sea, they sailed their boats into Stockholm to sell their catch on the quays. No one got rich but no one went hungry either. They all knew what the changes in the weather meant, the colour, the movements of the water. It was another world.’

He served champagne and said he wondered if birthdays should be celebrated.

‘I mean what is it? Another step towards the final silence. Birthday cards should offer condolences instead.
So sorry! One more year gone, one less left
.’

Refilling Lena’s glass he eyed her.

‘You haven’t changed,’ she said, ‘have you?’ The remark was dry but there was an underlying note of something gentler, like the shadow of an old pattern on a well-washed garment. ‘What are you up to nowadays?’

‘Still at the Institute.’

‘What is it you do there?’

‘Mesocopic systems.’

‘Meso what?’

‘It’s the interface between the microscopic world, where chance determines things, and the macroscopic world, where it doesn’t.’

‘So. Weird stuff.’

‘Right.’

‘Aunt Solveig always said you’d end up in trouble.’

Sune laughed, the old laugh with his head back, his hands on the table. He told Dan people out here had thought him odd even when he was young.

‘
That Isaksson boy!
’ Lena said, mimicking the local accent.

Sune laughed again. He emptied his glass, poured more champagne, and told Dan that bubbles moved faster through lead than attitudes changed out here. He said there were elderly islanders who had never been to Norrtälje, let alone Stockholm.

‘Old-time church-goers. Righteous people in the good sense. A certain moral distaste for wasteful city lights, nightclubs, playgrounds of the rich.’

‘Sodom and Gomorrah!’ Lena said. ‘God, how Aunt Solveig used to go on about it! Do you remember?’ she asked Sune. ‘Loose money. Lust. Half-dressed women on the streets.’

Again she provoked his laughter. The rich rumble of a well-tuned cello. He was enjoying her now. She played up to it with a touch of ferocity in her voice. ‘What do you say we bus them in? Give them equal access. Like they do with school kids in America?’

Sune suggested they all go to the kitchen. There they made their own sandwiches and took them back to the little sitting-room with another bottle of champagne. Dan began to wonder when the other guests were going to appear.

He and Lena Sundman left after another hour or so. No one else showed up.

‘Do you think he invited anyone else?’ Lena asked.

‘I’m not even sure it really was his birthday.’

When she parked outside Dan’s house, she asked if she could use his bathroom. Beneath the hall light, her blonde hair was full and soft, as though just shampooed. She looked brazenly at an envelope from the tax people on the hall table and read off his name. ‘D. J. Byrne.’

‘DJ,’ she said, pronouncing it the English way.

‘Don’t.’

‘I said it with a capital J. Didn’t you hear?’

She gave a quick almost secret smile, a smile she seemed unaware of. The amusement, whatever its cause, lay all inside. He watched her pale blue eyes and felt a return of the peculiar dread he had felt before.

‘DeeJay,’ she said again. ‘I like it.’

He showed her the bathroom. When she came back down she looked at the double bed. It seemed to take up a lot of space.

‘This going to be it?’ she asked. ‘This where the huffing and puffing start?’

He didn’t answer. Her tone was joking but it was a game he didn’t want to play.

‘Well, DeeJay?’ She gave him a smile that was too brilliant by far to be uncomplicated.

‘You think I want to go to bed with you?’

The question came out harshly but he did nothing to excuse it. Her eyes opened a little. He realized that he had no idea of how she saw him. She studied his face as though to decode what he’d said.

‘Do women usually fall into the bed with you once they’re in the room?’ She was still examining him, her head a little cocked to one side.

‘You came in here to ask me an adolescent question like that?’

‘I came in so I could rebuff you. Nice word, rebuff. Aren’t you going to invite me to sit down? Now that I’m here?’

He wanted to tell her to leave but there was a fragility in her that he saw first now. Was she a little crazy? He didn’t think so, though her brazenness seemed overdone. And this hard-as-hammers attitude wasn’t coming naturally to her.

Sitting in the armchair opposite him her tone changed. She talked about the island when she’d been young, about her great aunt and uncle.

‘They were my real parents. The closest people to me after my father skipped out on my mother.’

At one point she asked him if he knew Anders Roos’s wife. He said yes and changed the subject but she came back to it.

‘What’s she like?’

‘Not at all like you,’ he said. The answer came unsought and he didn’t bother to stop it.

‘No, I wouldn’t have thought so,’ she told him calmly. ‘I get the impression he may not always be faithful.’

‘I don’t know anything about that.’

She shrugged and touched the corner of her mouth with her fingertip as though to remove something, maybe a crumb left from Sune’s sandwiches.

‘I hear Gabriel Rabban is working here? What does he do?’

‘Plastering, sanding, painting.’

She looked around the room again.

‘Upstairs,’ Dan said.

‘Do you think he has something incurable?’ she asked unexpectedly. ‘I mean Sune? I get that impression. What else would he have moved back out here for?’

‘The peace and quiet.’

She shook her head. Then she studied the tiled stove a moment. It was obvious he was blocking her lines of approach but that didn’t seem to bother her. Looking back at him she asked: ‘What were you two up to this evening?’

‘Up to? Nothing.’

‘When he rang he asked if I’d pick you up. He said you were the reserved kind and might not come otherwise. He even asked if I had a girlfriend I’d like to bring along for you.’

‘That has nothing to do with me.’

She stared at the window. Dan followed her eyes. There was nothing outside that he could see.

‘What is it?’ he asked her.

‘What?’

‘In the window?’

‘What about the window?’

‘You were staring at it.’

‘Just wondering. You going to repaint in here too?’

‘Yes.’

‘And put up curtains maybe?’

‘Maybe.’

‘You think we’ll all be able to handle the excitement? If and when you do?’

He put his hands on the armrests of the chair, preparing to rise and accompany her to the door.

‘I know it’s a lot to ask,’ she said, ‘but do you happen to have anything to eat? I drank too much champagne and I don’t want to drive back to Herräng in the dark with nothing but a couple of thin sandwiches in my stomach.’

Unenthusiastically he went to see what there was. They shared an omelette with reheated rice and a tin of artichokes. Drank water.

‘This kitchen’s really snug,’ she said. ‘With an iron stove and all. Just like Aunt Solveig had. I used to love her big old kitchen. It was the safest place I knew on earth. Have you been in it there? In Bromskär?’

‘No.’

She looked around the room again.

‘Of course, a coat of paint will do wonders here. Curtains would too. Can I come and have a look when it’s finished?’

He shrugged. What the hell was he to say? ‘If you want.’

‘An invitation like that,’ she said, ‘I can hardly wait.’

After she’d gone Dan took his sleeping pill and went to bed. Almost at once, or so it seemed, he began to dream of Madeleine Roos. She put his hand on her stomach, asking him to feel her baby move. ‘A live human being,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that extraordinary?’ Then the baby began to cry inside her, a heart-rending sound that came again and again, filling him with anguish though Madeleine didn’t seem to hear it. He woke and discovered that the phone was ringing.

‘Am I disturbing you?’ Lena Sundman asked. ‘Tell me if I am.’

‘Did you forget something here?’

‘I just wanted to talk. First I rang a counsellor. Then I rang you.’

Dan lay back in the bed, the receiver against his ear, relieved to have been woken from the anguish of the dream, glad to hear a human voice.

‘I found her in the yellow pages. SOS Salvation.’

‘What did she tell you?’

‘God is love. Love isn’t rational. She liked my voice. She said we should meet.’

‘What for?’

‘She’s a post-Lutheran Christian. She said post-Lutheran Christians are holy but unbound. Then she had to go. There was a call waiting on another line. So I rang you. Tell me I’m not bothering you.’

‘Now that I’m awake, you mean.’ The dream was gone, he still felt relieved.

‘I wanted to say I’m sorry about that Sunday. The walk. I should have said it while I was at your place tonight. I was in a rotten mood that day but that’s no excuse for being so rude.’

‘None of us was at our best.’

‘Don’t you ever get lonely out there? On your own?’

‘Do you? In Herräng?’

‘Comes and goes. Like a migraine or something.’

‘You’ll soon find friends.’

‘I’m not talking about friends. I mean has anyone told you this thing about the monk or whatever, China or someplace. You know. He builds a cell around himself. Brick by brick. Or stone. Even the roof. No door, no window. Sealed off. Inside he settles, ready to live his life and get it over with.’