Let the Old Dreams Die (7 page)

On Thursday afternoon Roland packed a suitcase and put it in the car along with Tara and some dog food. The attack of mange had turned out to be a mild one, and he decided to risk going to the show even though he shouldn’t have done. There was virtually a price on the head of anyone who brought mange into kennels.

Tina stood at the bedroom window and watched him go. She had taken the day off work because she wasn’t feeling well. Something to do with her stomach, her chest, her heart. It was the first time in her entire working life that she had been off sick. When she rang work to say she wouldn’t be coming in, they asked if she’d called
the local health insurance office. She didn’t know what to do, so she didn’t bother.

When the Volvo had disappeared down the drive she went and sat on the patio for a while and read
Comet in Moominland
. It was an unusually warm autumn day, and there was the same feeling in the air as there was in the book: a damp, highly charged warmth as if everything was holding its breath, waiting for a change.

The air pressure made her head ache, and she found it difficult to concentrate. She went inside and stood by the kitchen window for a while, looking down towards the cottage.

What’s he doing in there?

As usual when Roland went away she had been shopping for a private party. The snails were on ice in the fridge. This time she had bought extra, but hadn’t yet dared ask the question. She was afraid. Everything had conspired to create a situation where this evening could be crucial. Roland was away, Vore was leaving the next day.

And what is it that’s going to be resolved tonight?

If she had been in her right mind she wouldn’t have been standing here dithering about, putting off asking Vore if he’d like to come over for dinner. She would have called the police. Because she was convinced he had a child in there. Her hearing was better than most people’s, and she’d heard it.

She ought to ring Ragnar at the police station in Norrtälje and explain the situation. They’d come straight away. They knew her.

Nobody knows me.

A long time ago she had read an article about how people choose their partner by smell. At least women did, she thought. Five women had been allowed to smell five T-shirts that had been worn by five different men. Or it might have been more women. The whole thing had seemed slightly shady and perverted—the combination of a laboratory environment and sweaty clothes.

She had felt some sympathy with the result, and snorted at it. As if you could choose.

She had chosen Roland
in spite of
his smell. Not that he smelled unpleasant, exactly. But he smelled wrong. Wrong for her. He wasn’t the only one who had answered her ad, but he was the only one who had shown any interest after the first meeting. There’s your freedom of choice.

But Vore. The smell of him, the aroma of him was like coming home. It couldn’t be described in any other way. Lying in his sheets was like crawling into Mummy and Daddy’s bed. Tina’s parents had slept in separate beds, and it wasn’t that smell she was thinking of, but something different, something safe and associated with home rather than anything based on a real memory.

So she didn’t call the police.

Night fell quickly, helped along by black clouds rolling in from the east. The air was heavy, pressing down on her head. Odd raindrops trickled down the kitchen window, and the light went on in the cottage. Anxiety was a trembling sparkler inside her body.

There’s going to be a thunderstorm.

She went around the house pulling out every single plug and electrical connection, the television, the phone. Switched off the power. She couldn’t bring herself to ask him, didn’t dare invite him over. Didn’t know where it might lead. But she wished he would come, come of his own accord.

She drank a glass of white wine, then another. The anxiety pulled and tore at her. She would have liked to go out into the forest, but didn’t dare. The storm would start at any moment. She could feel it, and it was like being trapped inside a castle, waiting for an unconquerable army to arrive. If you fled you would be killed, if you stayed where you were you would be killed.

She sat down on the kitchen floor and pressed her forehead
against her knees. Got up quickly, poured herself another glass of wine and sat down again. Her hand shook as she brought the glass to her mouth and knocked the wine straight back. After a few minutes she felt slightly better.

Then the storm arrived. It started close by; she only had time to count one thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and thr—between the lightning and the crash of the thunder. The rain started pouring over the gutters, hammering on the window ledges. She clenched her teeth, folded her arms over her head and stared at the floor so she would be able to see the flash of the lightning.

The next one was closer. She only got as far as one thousand and two. As soon as she stopped clamping her jaws together, her teeth started chattering. The storm came rumbling in from the sea, an enraged, gigantic ghost getting closer and closer, wanting to crush her, to sweep her away in its white light.

When the next crash came she didn’t know if it was the floor or her own body shaking. It was close now. Soon it would be on top of her.

She leapt to her feet. Without bothering with a coat or shoes she ran outside. The rain plastered her blouse to her back, splashing up around her bare feet as she sprinted across the grass to the drive.

Vore’s car was a blurred, white shape behind the veils of rain, and she ran towards it as if the ground were electrified, which was exactly what she was afraid of all the time.

She opened the passenger door, threw herself inside and slammed the door shut. The rain pelted against the metal, the landscape burned in the phosphorescent flash and the trees were riveted to the sky. The crash came only a second later; two coffee cups in the space below the glove compartment clinked against one another.

Beneath the hire car aroma of upholstery cleaner she could pick up his smell. Her heart slowed down slightly, the worst of the
shaking abated. It was an unexpected relief. She had been looking for the insulation of the rubber tyres against the ground, but his smell was here and it calmed her more than technical considerations. She took a deep breath, then gave a start as the driver’s door opened and Vore folded himself into the car.

His eyes were wide open. He was just as scared as her. With some difficulty he got into the driving seat and slammed the door shut. The car was like a suit four sizes too small for him. Even though the seat was pushed back as far as it would go, his knees were rubbing against the steering wheel. She realised what he must look like when he was driving, and laughed out loud.

He turned to face her with a wan smile. ‘A thunderstorm,’ he said. ‘Most amusing.’

‘No, I just…’ She pointed to his head, which was almost touching the roof. ‘Wouldn’t you be better with a bigger car?’

He said something in reply, but she couldn’t hear him. A deafening clap of thunder drowned out everything else. She clenched her fists, felt the tears welling up. Vore grabbed hold of the wheel and stared fixedly out through the windscreen.

She did it without thinking. She shuffled closer to him. The handbrake dug into her hip as she leaned her head against his chest and inhaled the smell of his shirt. He placed one hand on her cheek, her ear. She closed her eyes.

The storm continued to rage around them, but after a while she could hear his heart slowing down too. The solace was mutual, and the thought calmed her even more. Which made him feel calmer. By the time the storm started to move away, they were almost not afraid anymore.

They were sitting in their seats like normal people. Didn’t know where to start. The storm was far away now, a mumbling reminder of what they had gone through. Eventually Vore said, ‘Roland.’

Tina pulled a face. ‘What about him?’

‘He’s unfaithful to you.’

‘Yes,’ said Tina. ‘How do you know?’

‘The smell.’

Of course. Why had she asked? She nodded and looked out through the windscreen. Now the lightning had stopped it was almost pitch-black outside. The light inside the car picked out the odd dancing raindrop on the bonnet, nothing more. Vore opened his door.

‘Come on,’ he said.

She took his hand and they walked to the cottage. When they got inside, they both sat down on the bed. They didn’t switch on any lights, and there was nothing but sounds, smells. Tina had a lump in her throat. She fumbled in the darkness and found his cheek, stroked his rough beard.

‘Vore,’ she said. ‘I want to. But I can’t.’

‘Yes, you can.’

His answer was so definite that it should have been enough to convince a stone. But still she shook her head. ‘No. It hurts too much. I can’t.’

‘You’ve never done it.’

‘Yes I have.’

He took her face between his hands. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not your way.’

‘What do you mean?’

He ran his hand over one breast and a swarm of ants ran through her body, gathered in her diaphragm, grew.

‘Trust me,’ he said.

He undressed her. The feeling in her diaphragm was something she had never experienced before, as if a previously unused part of her body had suddenly blossomed. When he took off his shirt and vest and she pressed her face to his bare chest, she felt a throbbing,
pulsating sensation down there.

Her eyes were wide open in the darkness. It was as if something was being turned inside out, unfolding in her belly. When he pulled away from her for a moment to take off his trousers, she ran her hands over her sex. She gasped out loud.

A stiff erection was pointing upwards from what she had thought was her vagina. She groped along its root and found no opening. The sensation had been exactly right: she had been turned inside out.

Vore’s hand touched her. ‘Now do you understand?’

She shook her head. The bed creaked as Vore lay down. ‘Come here,’ he said.

She lay down on top of him. He gently guided her, and she pushed into him. The bed made a terrible noise as she pulled back, pushed in again. She ran her hands over his chest. The pleasure she was getting from this new part of her body was terrifying. Like phantom pains, but in reverse. She was experiencing pleasure in a place that didn’t exist.

How…how?

After a while she stopped worrying. Stopped thinking. She fell on him and thrust into his wet, soft darkness. Vore groaned, grabbed her bottom and caressed the scar, the dead skin. They were no longer man or woman, just two bodies finding one another in the darkness. Moving apart, reuniting, rolling on each other’s waves until the white light poured through her body, her belly cramping and contracting; she screamed as the burning ants were hurled out of her and into him.

He lit candles. Tina lay on the bed feeling her sex as it softened, withdrew inside her. When Vore stroked her breasts it hesitated for a moment, then disappeared into her.

She looked at his back. The big, curved scar at the bottom of his
back was dark red in the candlelight. She touched it with her middle finger.

‘I didn’t know,’ she said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘That was very clear.’

‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

‘Because…’ His hand moved slowly over her body. ‘…because I didn’t know if you wanted to know. I mean, you’ve made a life for yourself. Adapted to the world of human beings. There’s a great deal you don’t know. A great deal you might not want to know. If you’re going to carry on living as you have done up to now.’

‘I don’t want to carry on living the same way.’

‘No.’

She thought he was going to continue. Tell her something. Instead he sighed deeply and folded his body into an uncomfortable position so that he could rest his head on her stomach. After a while he started shaking, and she thought he was cold. She leaned forward to pull the covers over him, then realised he was crying. She stroked his hair. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Tina.’ It was the first time he had used her name. ‘There aren’t many of us left. It’s better for you if you…forget about this. Don’t let it influence your actions from now on.’

She carried on stroking his hair as she gazed at the ceiling. The cottage wasn’t well insulated; the candles flickered and flared in the draught, making the shadows move across the ceiling. Life everywhere.

‘You’ve had a child in here.’ His body stiffened on top of hers. ‘Haven’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who was it? Where is it now?’

He raised his head and slid down onto the floor by the bed; he knelt there gazing searchingly into her eyes.

She could just get up and leave right now. Go back into the
house, have a hot shower and drink several glasses of wine until she fell asleep. Tomorrow he would go away. Roland would come back. On Monday she would go to work. She could carry on living within this—

lie

—security that had been her life up to now.

Vore got to his feet and opened the wardrobe. Moved the pile of hand towels on the top shelf. Reached in and pulled out a cardboard box, about the size of two shoe boxes. Tina pulled the covers over her. Vore’s head almost reached the ceiling, he towered over her holding out the box. She closed her eyes.