In the Name of Love (22 page)

A new bed had been installed in the spare bedroom and they said goodnight on the landing outside the door.

‘Do you have an alarm clock I can borrow?’ Lena asked. ‘I have to be up by eight at the latest.’

‘I’ve only got one, but I’m up long before that anyway. I can wake you with a cup of coffee if you like.’

‘That’d be lovely! But not too early?’

‘Don’t worry.’

In the morning she was still asleep when he went up to look, face down in the bed, a pillow over her head like a teenager. All her efforts to be tough seemed futile now. She stirred but didn’t wake. He tiptoed down the creaky stairs to prepare fresh coffee for her.

When he went back up with the tray she’d kicked down the sheet, leaving her back bare to the thighs. A tow-coloured light touched everything in the room – her skin, her hair, the wood floor. He put the tray on the night table and reached out to pull up the sheet before she woke. As he eased it along her bare back the edge of his finger brushed the arched flesh. Sleepily she stirred and then suddenly rolled over and gave a shout. Her fists thumped the bed.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’

‘I’m sorry, Lena. I didn’t mean to touch you.’

‘Like fuck you didn’t!’

She began crying inconsolably.

‘Oh, I wish to God all this was over. I wish we were all dead.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Lena, you don’t mean that.’

For an instant sunlight filled the room again like a rich scent, and then, as suddenly, it was gone. She continued crying, more quietly now until finally she got up. Dan held out a hand to help her.

‘Leave me alone!’ she snapped.

She left the room, crossed the landing and went into the bathroom and closed the door. He heard her vomit. His first thought was that it might be morning sickness. She stayed a long time and when she came out her face was washed clean and her hair was tied at the back with an elastic band. He asked her if she was all right.

‘Yes,’ she said shortly.

‘Lena? Are you… pregnant?’

‘Oh Jesus,’ she said. ‘Is that what you think?’

‘I’m just asking.’

‘Because with a woman like me it could only be hormones, it couldn’t be a thought or a grief like yours or life or fuck­ing anything else!’

‘Lena, stop it.’

‘But it’s always the same fucking thing, isn’t it? It’s either being a good fuck or a neurotic cow. There’s no space in between for being human, is there?’

He felt a surge of dismay. Then the dismay went and a stillness came over him as she sat on the bed and looked straight into his face.

‘It’s not you, DeeJay,’ she said finally. ‘I’m sorry I yelled at you. I know you aren’t like that. Your touching me like that reminded me of Gabriel Rabban – he pretended to be my friend but the first chance he got, he tried to rape me. To sodomize me.’

She took a deep breath. For a moment it seemed that she would cry again but instead she became angry.

‘Fucking Arab Christians! They’re so screwed up they can’t even do it normally, they have to fuck a woman up the ass. I suppose that way it’s not a sin for them or something.’

That his brief touch could awaken such a violent memory left Dan numb.

‘I was kind to him,’ she went on, ‘I trusted him, a lonely kid of seventeen on his own out here and his thanks was to try to rape me. It was awful. It was so fucking awful that when I was back in Gothenburg I broke down. I went to pieces, they had to put me in hospital. For months and months. I only got out at Christmas. Jesus, I hate being touched like that!’

‘Lena, please – it was accidental.’

‘Why does helplessness turn men on?’

‘Lena, I don’t—’

‘Ask any woman! You can’t even have your wars without defenceless women being raped.’

Then she was crying again. He sat on the bed beside her. She was crying violently now, shivering, sobbing. Dan was rigid with fear and worry. Had the brush of his finger across her skin been altogether accidental? Or had some instinct made him want to touch her? Either way, was it so terrible? Softly he said her name.

‘It was my fault, Lena. I’m deeply sorry.’

Her shivering had lessened. After a moment she took his hand.

‘It’s not your fault. You’re a kind man, I know that. It’s Gabriel Rabban’s fault. If you knew how badly he treated me. And I trusted him, I trusted him all the time until the end when it was too late.’

Bit by bit over the course of the morning her story came out. It had happened on the little island opposite the farm, Svartholm. Where her Uncle Fritjof used to take her to when he was laying out the nets. She hadn’t been back since he died. Until last summer. When Gabriel came from France to join the family, she’d told him about it and he said he’d love to go one day. In August they went.

‘He was on his own here, he knew no one. He was going nuts with boredom. So one sunny day we went over in the boat.’

She paused a moment. Dan listened carefully, hoping to become again the older man she could trust, to wipe out all memory of that brush of his finger. And so she went on, telling him how she had got Aunt Solveig to make cinna­mon buns and how she herself had prepared a thermos of coffee just as they used to do when Uncle Fritjof was alive. She had taken the key so she could show the hut to Gabriel.

‘What a dumb cow I was!’

She took a deep breath, while she pressed the palms of her hands hard against her eyes. When she took her hands away she looked Dan straight in the face.

‘I feel sorry for people who are lonely, I really do. I’ve known too much of it myself. I wanted to be an older sister to Gabriel. There was a difference in our ages, he was seventeen and I was twenty-one. I thought the difference was enough. But he must have planned the whole thing from the beginning. When we got to the island he said he didn’t swim, so I went in alone. And while I did he took my towel and clothes and the basket to the hut. When I came out and asked him why he said it was because he’d gone for a walk and he was afraid someone would steal them. There were other people around, people who’d come on boats and were sunbathing on the rocks, most of the women were topless like me. I mean it could hardly be safer and I didn’t suspect a thing. But as soon as we went into the hut to get the towel and the picnic basket he closed the door and tried to kiss me. He said he’d been wanting to do it since he first saw me. He began pawing me. He grabbed my breast and so I slapped his face. I slapped him hard. Then he got angry. He forced me down, he had my face against the boards and he was trying to pull my bikini pants off. I kept struggling but I couldn’t get up, he was too heavy. I screamed. I screamed as hard as I could. He said to shut up but I went on screaming and someone called out asking if everything was all right. A man came to the door and hammered on it. When Gabriel jumped up, I ran past him and out. People were staring but I didn’t even stop to get my clothes. I ran straight to the boat. Aunt Solveig didn’t see me when I got home. But Nahrin did. She asked where Gabriel was and I said he was still on the island. “And how’s he going to get home?” she said. I told her he could drown for all I cared.’

She stopped again. Dan knew she was expecting a reaction but he was too shocked to say anything. It didn’t seem possible. He couldn’t see Gabriel doing such a thing.

‘Well, there you have the story of the Selavas family and me. That same day the pygmy must have told Aunt Solveig because Aunt Solveig asked me if I’d taken off my clothes in front of Gabriel on Svartholm. I tried to tell her what had happened but she didn’t listen. The sin of taking off my clothes in front of a boy like Gabriel was too much. She said I had to understand that Gabriel was brought up in an old Christian family, a family that had been Christian since the time of the apostles – she really believed all that guff – that he was brought up to respect women, not to see them half-naked. She said Gabriel wasn’t used to the way Swedish girls behaved and that it was wrong to have provoked him. Then the next day she told me the best thing was for me to go back to Gothenburg for the time being, to keep away from Gabriel until he’d had a chance to settle down. I tried to explain to her what had really happened but she was too well prepped by the pygmy. I was so angry I packed and left right away. And now they’re trying to take the farm away from me. You see how they work? I sometimes wonder if that whole outing wasn’t planned, if it wasn’t the pygmy who told Gabriel to get me to take him to Svartholm.’

She talked on about all the summers she had spent at the farm with her Aunt Solveig and Uncle Fritjof, how happy she was then. Until the Selavas arrived.

‘It was so fucking unfair! And on top of everything else he started sending me letters in Gothenburg telling me how much he loved me and how he missed me every minute of every day! Jesus Christ! That he hadn’t meant to do me any harm, that he had been in love with me from the beginning and now the island was empty without me. Well, fuck that! If I’d been stupid enough to answer just one of those letters, even if it was only to tell him to fuck off, the pygmy would have seen to it that Aunt Solveig saw the envelope arrive so that they could say I was still chasing him.’

‘Maybe he did love you?’

‘You call that love? When I was back in Gothenburg I had a breakdown. In the hospital I decided to let it be for a while. I thought that when I was in better shape I’d write to Aunt Solveig and explain the whole thing. Only in the meantime she died and the Selavas had it all sewn up by the time I got here.’

Dan no longer knew what to think. He felt sure Lena wasn’t lying to him, but what exactly had happened? The fact that other women were sunbathing near them on the island made it seem natural for Lena to be topless, but maybe it wasn’t natural to Gabriel. Lena had learnt young how to be sexually provocative – Dan saw that the first time they met. How was a seventeen-year-old like Gabriel Rabban meant to interpret it? Why had she gone into the hut with him? It wasn’t difficult to imagine Gabriel misunderstanding, even if it did nothing to excuse the way he behaved.

When she was leaving, later in the morning, she said, ‘DeeJay, can we be friends?’

The question surprised him.

‘We are friends.’

‘I mean really friends. Friends who trust each other, believe each other. Don’t you want that?’

‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘Of course I do.’

Her voice as much as what she said made him uneasy and the uneasiness increased after she had gone. Had she really been afraid he might take advantage of her like Gabriel Rabban had tried to do? Was she so unsure about the way he felt for her? But what exactly did he feel? he asked himself.

The next afternoon, when he rang to talk to her, her aunt said she’d already gone. She’d left early that morning, taking the first bus to Stockholm. The aunt sounded anxious. She even asked Dan if he had any idea where Lena might be staying.

‘Probably the same flat as before,’ he said, trying to reassure her.

‘I rang there. I’ve rung several times this morning. There’s no answer.’

Again he tried to reassure her but she interrupted.

‘I know she spent the weekend with you. Was there anything wrong? She didn’t seem herself and she left so suddenly this morning.’

‘I don’t think so. If I get hold of her I’ll tell her to ring you.’

After that he phoned the flat in town repeatedly but got no reply. He kept trying over the next few days.

* * *

In the midst of all this Carlos rang from New York. He said he was using Zoë’s family’s phone and could Dan ring him back? It was touching to hear how his voice changed at the mention of her name. When they were connected again Carlos chatted on about her, something he hadn’t done before. He said her business was going really well. ‘She’s taken on another designer, a Swedish girl who gets Swedish magazines for the latest interior trends. Zoë passes them on to me so now I know the King is still getting flak for insisting the flag over the palace be flown at half-mast in honour of Olof Palme. It really impressed Zoë. Here the Republicans painted Palme as a rabid Bolshevik. When I told Zoë she said, “Good for your King!” The funny thing is I’d never thought of him as my king before.’

This conversation had clearly led to other things for in the next breath Carlos said that maybe living in Sweden might be better in the long run after all. Zoë and he agreed, he said, that despite its unique attractions, New York might not be the best place to raise children – if ever one wanted to have children, he added. Dan’s heart quickened. How happy that simple phrase made him. Carlos said that the Swedish woman Zoë had taken on even suggested setting up a branch in Stockholm. At once Dan told him that he’d have a chance to meet the famous Johan Ek here on Blidö if he wanted to.

‘He has a summer place only half an hour away. We’ve run into each other a couple of times.’

Carlos was impressed. Dan added that he’d met Ek in Stockholm too.

‘I can easily introduce you.’

‘You know him? Sure! I’d like that,’ Carlos said.

Scheming wouldn’t be too strong a word for what he was doing, he knew that. Nevertheless the glow of happiness continued to warm him long after they’d hung up. It’s not just for myself, he thought, I’m protecting Carlos too. After all, in his line things must be fiercely competitive in New York. And that business about a family. Of course it would be better to raise children in Sweden.

When he mentioned this to Sune, Sune started in on him. He gave Dan quite a lecture but Dan couldn’t listen.

‘Oddballs like you and me must learn how to let go,’ Sune said. ‘We don’t have a natural talent for controlling people so everything becomes a battle.’

All this was too rational for Dan’s mood. He was ashamed of wanting to stage-manage Carlos’s life, but he also exulted in what it might lead to. There was really no talking sense to him.

Instead he told Sune he was worried about Lena Sundman. At first Sune thought he meant her fight to take over the farm. True she was caught up in what she saw as her entitlement, her right to assert her claim as a member of the only real family she’d known, but not letting go was making her life a misery, Sune said.