Frozen Music (46 page)

‘What did they ask you?' Kerstin, looking old in her little-girl's clothes, grabbed my arm as I returned to the sitting-room after my interview.

‘Nothing much,' I said. I was tired. I hadn't slept much that night, then again, I don't suppose any of us had. ‘They wanted to know which meals I had prepared and who with. How long I had been staying here. Whether I knew of any family quarrels or tensions, that kind of thing.'

‘Ah.' Kerstin nodded and went to join the police officers in the dining-room.

‘This is a nightmare,' Olivia whispered. She seemed to have shrunk in the last few hours, withered and wilted, and the sparkle had left her brown eyes. ‘It's been bad enough Bertil being taken ill, but this, that it's some kind of deliberate attack and by one of us. Ulla is right, it's like some stupid detective story. But it isn't a story, it's us and it's real.' She buried her head in her hands and wept. I went up to her, patting her awkwardly on the shoulder while all kinds of inane words of
comfort auditioned in my head.
The police might have got it wrong. The hospital might have got it wrong. Maybe there was a mix-up of samples
. None of them passed muster, so I stood there wordless, patting away at her shoulder.

I was alone in the garden. The late sun bathed it in golden light. The wind had stilled. Across the street they were having a party. In normal circumstances, non-poisoning circumstances, I would have said it was a lovely evening.

‘What's going on?' Pernilla came striding towards me, fair hair dancing. She seemed to have got even more tanned in the last day, her bare arms and her legs under the white shorts the colour of the ginger biscuits Ivar liked for his elevenses. ‘How is Bertil?'

I filled her in on what had happened about Bertil's progress, but I didn't say anything about the police's suspicions. I didn't think that having a poisoner in the family was something the Stendals would want known at this stage. Pernilla tut-tutted, then she asked where Linus was. I told her he was inside. I added that I thought he was just about to go off to the hospital. Actually, I wanted to run inside and put a screen around him so that she wouldn't find him.

‘Pernilla! Oh Pernilla, it's all so dreadful.' Kerstin came running towards us, tottering slightly as her bare feet hit the gravel. She said something to Pernilla in Swedish, but I recognised the word police.

Pernilla turned to me, her eyes wide and hostile. ‘Why didn't you tell me? This is unbelievable, awful.' She pronounced the
aw
in awful in a mournful elongated way, as she looked accusingly at me. Kerstin, too, turned to me, eyebrows raised.

I hung my head. ‘I wasn't sure how much I was supposed to tell anyone.'

Kerstin gave a little laugh. ‘Pernilla isn't anyone, Esther.'

I agreed there. Pernilla certainly wasn't anyone, she was a ginger-biscuit princess with fair hair, green eyes and right now I wanted to push her down on to the ground and sit on her head.

Kerstin was speaking to Pernilla in Swedish again as they walked towards the house. I went back to the cottage.

I sat on my bed thinking over and over about the ease with which the dream had turned into a nightmare and how seamlessly it had happened. What a surprise it all was. You could be the most inveterate pessimist and yet, when it happened, when that giant boot in the sky descended on your head, you were left disbelieving. Crushed too, obviously, but disbelieving to the last.

Bertil remained in hospital. His heart was not as strong as it could be and it had been weakened further by the latest ordeal.

‘I'm glad, really,' Olivia told me. ‘At least there he's safe.'

‘As soon as the police say we can, Audrey and I will be leaving,' I told her. ‘I spoke to Dr Blomkvist and he said she'll be OK to travel. At least then you won't have us to worry about.'

‘Oh Esther, you know how we've enjoyed having you here. But I admit that once this is over all I'll want to do is go away somewhere with Bertil, just the two of us.' She sank down on to the chair next to me at the kitchen table. ‘The worst is not knowing who did this dreadful thing. It doesn't matter how many times the police tell me it had to be someone here, I still can't believe it. I mean Gerald, or Kerstin? Linus, Ulla? You, or your mother? Me? It's all crazy.'

‘What's crazy?' Pernilla stood in the doorway. I hadn't heard her come in. ‘I let myself in,' she said. ‘The door was open.'

Olivia made a half-hearted attempt to get up, but she didn't make it to her feet. She collapsed back into the chair and burst out crying. After all the weeping there had been at Villa Rosengård lately you would have thought I'd got used to dealing with it, but I hadn't. As usual, I just stood there feeling hopeless and like someone getting a glimpse through a door that should be shut.

By the time I had thought to ask if she wanted a cup of tea, Pernilla was at her side. ‘You're still in shock,' she said. ‘Let me take you to your room.
Du borde vila
.' She switched to speaking Swedish as they disappeared upstairs, Olivia allowing herself to be led by Pernilla, the daughter-in-law in waiting.

I was appalled at myself. How low could I get? To think like that at a time like this. It was the problem with love, another problem, it
had no respect for the accepted rules of behaviour. Love had no decorum, it just barged in where you least wanted it, however unsuitable the occasion, bringing with it, as likely as not, its unattractive offspring, jealousy and selfishness. And I'm ashamed to say that in my mind they were both blondes.

I went in to see how Audrey was. ‘How's Bertil taking the news?' she asked as soon as I got through the door. I noticed that she was looking perkier than she had for a long time. Disaster obviously became her.

‘What news in particular?'

‘About the police believing he's been deliberately poisoned.'

I shrugged. ‘I don't know.'

‘What do you mean, you don't know?'

‘I
don't
know.' As I spoke, I wondered how many mothers and daughters across the world were at that moment exchanging just those words.

‘How can you
not
know?'

I felt that the conversation wasn't getting anywhere, so I asked her instead if I could get her some books from the library. She said, sulkily, as she always did, that she had read them all. I looked at my watch. ‘The physio will be here in a minute.'

Audrey leant back against her pillows. ‘I'm feeling quite weak,' she said. I had noticed lately that she affected some undetermined middle-European accent when she wanted sympathy. ‘Be a darlink and get me some of those heavenly white roses from the garden. I need something beautiful to look at.'

‘You've got me,' I said and I was not entirely joking. I mean, what hope had I to turn Linus's eye from Pernilla if my mother didn't think I was pretty?

Audrey sat back up and peered at me through those great big baby-blue eyes. Then she sighed and fell back once more against the pillows. I got up from the bed. ‘I'll get you some roses.'

‘Esther.' Audrey called me back. ‘If you would only stop scowling you could be quite lovely.' My heart did a little leap in my chest. ‘But then, what do I know? I'm your mother.' My heart moved back to its normal place, skulking in the depth of my chest cavity.

I thought the kitchen was empty until I spotted Linus in the corner by the scullery door where the light never quite reached. He was standing completely still, leaning against the cupboard. I didn't know if he'd noticed me coming in.

‘How's Audrey?' His voice came from the shadows.

I turned and walked up to him, smiling, because however awful things were, his mere presence made me smile. I couldn't see his eyes, but as I came closer I could feel his pain; it hung in the air around him like an A note at the end of a song.

‘Audrey's fine,' I told him. ‘In fact, you should be getting rid of us as soon as the police confirm it's OK for us to leave. Dr Blomkvist says she's well enough to travel whenever we're ready.'

‘I can't believe this is happening,' he said. ‘Isn't that what everyone says?' He looked up at me suddenly and the hurt in his eyes made me want to rush up to him and take him in my arms. ‘You step from the light into darkness.' He clicked his fingers. ‘Like that. In a second everything has changed. Someone in this house has poisoned my father. How are we supposed to live with that?'

‘I didn't do it,' I said quickly.

He gave me a small smile. ‘Of course you didn't. You English don't know a poisoned mushroom from a good one.' He raised his hand and it hovered between us, then his fingers touched down lightly on my cheek. I closed my eyes for a second and his touch was like a branding iron. As I walked out into the garden, I was sure the mark, his mark, was there for everyone to see.

I fetched a pair of secateurs from the small red-painted shed and went to cut some roses, Astrid's roses. I never did find out if Bertil had approved of her planting them, that summer all those years ago.

Ulla had spent the day in her room refusing to come out. Earlier, I had left a plate of sandwiches and a mug of coffee outside the door, and when I returned an hour later the plate and mug were gone. Linus and Olivia were over at the hospital, and Gerald and Kerstin and I ate our supper on our own in the kitchen. Audrey, as usual, had refused to get out of bed. I looked around the table at the empty chairs. The ghosts of happy families looked back at me.

On my way to my room I knocked on Ulla's door. ‘Are you all right? Would you like me to bring you something more to eat?'

There was no answer and I knocked again, then, suddenly worried, I opened the door and stepped inside. Ulla was fast asleep in her armchair. I stopped and stared at her. Ulla the helmet-haired harridan was draped in a rose-pink silk dressing-gown and her feet were shod in white down slippers. The grey helmet of hair was a helmet no more, but a fluffy bird's nest of wiry curls. Astrid's diary lay on the small desk by the window and next to it was a black-and-white photograph. I bent down and looked at a female version of Linus: same fair hair and large dark eyes – I expect hers were grey as well – same curved top lip, same expression of slight surprise in those eyes as they looked out at the world. So that was Astrid, Astrid who had died under the icy sea around the island all for the lack of love.

In her sleep Ulla stirred and muttered, and I tiptoed from the room, closing the door softly behind me.

That night I slept, exhausted. I woke to the sound of doors slamming and a cat shrieking as if it had been kicked. Next I heard Ulla's voice so it probably had been. She was speaking in Swedish and an unfamiliar voice, a man's, answered her. I got out of bed and on my
way to the shower I bumped into Ulla and a police officer. She didn't seem to notice me. The policeman nodded briefly in my direction before disappearing into Ulla's room.

What was going on?

I had resisted listening at the door. Or rather, I'd realised that it would not do me much good as the conversation inside was both low and in Swedish. The sun was shining from a clear blue sky and it was warm to the point of mugginess. I sat on the terrace having my breakfast. Kerstin joined me with a cup of coffee and the papers. Neither of us felt like speaking.

Olivia came out through the French windows, her face grey in the sharp light, blinking at the sun as if she was surprised that it was still there. She sat down beside me and after a while she said, ‘Ulla is a bit of an expert on mushrooms. She took us mushroom picking once and she knew exactly which were edible and which were not. I told the police.'

As if on cue, Ulla came out of the cottage followed closely by the police officer. They didn't approach us where we sat, staring, on the terrace. We kept staring as they disappeared out of the gate. Then, suddenly, Olivia leapt from the chair and hurried after them. After a moment's hesitation I followed, then Kerstin. We must have looked pretty silly as we ran down the path. Halfway down the hill we caught up with them. Ulla stopped and turned to look at us. Her pale-brown eyes were blank, as if all the seeing had been turned inwards. A sparrow hopped round her feet and down in the harbour the ferry bell rang to announce its departure. The church clock rang out the half-hour, half past eleven.

Olivia said something in Swedish; I think she asked where they were going. She was panting, out of breath already from running. I sometimes forgot that she was not a young woman.

I heard the words Miss Andersson, that was Ulla, and police station. Ulla still said nothing. Kerstin suddenly reached out to touch her shoulder, but Ulla shrugged her off. We stood there watching them walk away. Ulla looked like a steel-helmeted child as she kept pace with the tall policeman.

Ulla! Who could believe it? Well, everyone actually. She had been formally charged with the attempted murder of Bertil Stendal, but the next day we were told that the charges had been reduced to grievous bodily harm. Everyone liked that a lot better, not only Ulla. Having an attempted murderess in the family left a much darker stain than a batty old aunt (not quite aunt) who indulged in a bit of recreational poisoning, because that was all it had been, the family decided. Bertil was back home and fit enough, give or take a weakened heart and liver. Olivia visited Ulla in her holding cell in Ytterby on the mainland. She returned to tell us that Ulla had never meant to kill Bertil or anything close, she had only wanted to scare him into believing he wasn't strong enough to make the move to another country. We all believed this to be true. I was silently grateful that Bertil had been harmed enough to be out of Ulla's way now she had read the diary, or she might have mixed an extra toadstool with his morning porridge.

I was walking round the island for the last time. When I reached the point where I had seen Linus, that first morning, dive naked into the sea I sat down and wept, my head in my hands. Now I knew only too well what love was and I wished I didn't. It was like giving a blind person sight for just long enough to take in the wonders of the world only to take it away again, plunging him back into darkness. But now it would be a different, crueller darkness, the darkness of absence: of light, of colour, of sunsets and sea, of trees and mountains, of paintings and the infinite variety of human faces. That's how my life would feel without Linus.