In the Name of Love (25 page)

Afterwards, when she’d gone down and come back with fresh coffee, she said, ‘I guess you realize I’m a little in love with you, DeeJay. Don’t let it worry you,’ she added. ‘I can take care of myself.’

‘I know.’

‘For the most part anyway. Listen, will you do me a favour?’

‘If I can, yes, of course.’

‘If Anders Roos rings don’t say I was here.’

He felt a chill rush of speculation.

‘Why?’

‘He doesn’t want me to see Johan Ek any more.’

‘Why not?’

She sighed. ‘He thinks Johan’s too interested in me. Anders is the one who introduced us and now he doesn’t want me meeting Johan any more.’

‘Lena, what is this? What have you got yourself into?’

‘Nothing, DeeJay. I swear! Anders thinks I’m having an affair with Johan but I’m
not
. Johan took me out to dinner one night to tell me who he could introduce me to. After that he said it was out of his hands. He was just trying to help is all.’

‘Why would that bother Anders?’ Dan asked and then he saw it. ‘You’ve been to bed with Anders?’

‘It’s nothing serious. His wife’s away a lot at her mother’s with the baby and Anders is in town on his own. It’s a casual thing.’

‘And now he’s jealous?’

‘Right. But it’s nothing. A few times when he drove me home after a party or something and he’d ask if he could come up. I didn’t want to keep on saying I was too tired. I should have stopped it earlier but it became a sort of habit. Now he’s after me all the time, he won’t leave me alone.’

‘He doesn’t mind you coming here?’

‘You and me, it’s different. He wouldn’t believe it if someone told him we had sex.’

‘What about his family? His wife? The baby?’

‘That’s what I said to him the last time. That we couldn’t go on. But it only made him worse. He said I’m the passion that’s been missing in his life, that he never knew what love meant before, bla-bla-bla.’

‘You don’t take it seriously?’

‘They all say it, DeeJay. Believe me. Except you. That’s another thing I like about you. You’re not possessive. And you respect me.’

‘Anders doesn’t?’

‘He goes on and on. He says he wants to get a divorce and marry me. I can’t imagine what he thinks that would be like.’

‘Lena, you’ve got to stop this. He has a child now, a family, they’ve made a fresh start. Madeleine would be crushed if she thought—’

‘I
want
to stop it, DeeJay. He sits in his car outside the flat to see when I get home at night. He wants to know where I’ve been. It’s driving me nuts!’

‘Lena, listen. Please. If I ask you, and it’s the only thing I’ll ever ask, will you stop seeing Anders? Madeleine has had a hard time of it and now she thinks that with the baby everything’s going to be all right.’

‘I told you, I
want
to stop it. He’d listen to you, DeeJay, he respects you. Tell him I told you and that he has to lay off.’

‘I’ll see.’

In the following days Dan thought again and again of getting in touch with Anders, but he kept putting it off. His own feelings were confused. Not that he imagined he was in love with Lena Sundman, but she had changed him, she had brought back something to his life. The morning when she came into his bed was a turning point. For the first time in more than three years he had made love with passion and tenderness, a combination he hadn’t thought he could ever manage again. They’d spent the morning in bed so that she had to phone Stockholm to say she’d be late for her appointment before they made love the third time.

‘I always felt it would work between us, DeeJay,’ Lena said as she was leaving. ‘And it does, doesn’t it?’

He knew he wanted her to go on coming out to the island, he didn’t fool himself about that. But he also wanted to protect Madeleine Roos. Although they hadn’t seen each other since before Easter he thought affectionately of her. If ever Madeleine got word of Anders and Lena and heard that Lena came here she might feel doubly hurt.

He rang Anders’s business number, prepared to confront him. The phone rang and rang and then Madeleine’s voice answered and he quickly put down the receiver. He had promised not to ring her until she got in touch with him and he would keep his word. He remembered how she had once said she and Anders had begun their affair on his boat, without their respective partners knowing. Had that happened with Connie? The week they had gone sailing, all four? It would have been easy for Anders and Connie to meet up on deck while he and Eleonora slept in their bunks. In fact he remembered one night when, unable to sleep, he had gone up and seen Anders alone at the tiller. A beautiful wind-still night, the sea like glass beneath the broad golden carpet the moon laid out.

‘I should have woken up Eleonora at four to take over but I couldn’t. A night like this makes life magic doesn’t it?’

‘What happens if there’s no more wind for days?’

Anders leant over and pressed the starter button. The motor purred gently. The boat eased forward.

‘Volvo diesel. Keep the speed low and it’s almost soundless.’

He switched off the engine and they stayed like that, without saying another word, until dawn. A profoundly happy time.

A week went by without him getting hold of Anders. As the weekend approached he found he was thinking more and more about the possibility that Lena might come out. On Friday morning he rang her in Herräng. Her aunt said she wasn’t home.

‘Is she in Stockholm?’ he asked.

The aunt said that she’d gone to Södertälje. She hadn’t said when she’d be back.

When he hung up he found himself thinking about how defenceless her body had looked the afternoon she went into the cold water, how the sun lit up the almost invisible down along the centre of her back and the little hollow at the base of her spine. The scene had affected him strongly, not only sexually but emotionally. He was surprised by the raw hunger he felt for her now. It was something he would have to learn to deal with. He was aware of her vulnerability, of her need for a steadier base to her life than he could offer her.

The next day he rang the Stockholm number she had given him. She answered at once. She said she’d been away for a few days but now she was back. She sounded in good spirits. No, she wouldn’t get out this weekend, she had things to do in town, but next weekend?

Later he walked to the headland beyond the church to see Sune Isaksson. The house was silent, the door locked. He walked through the forest for a while and then back along the coast. A heavy autumn fog was seeping in from the sea. He quickened his steps but by the time he reached home the fog had thickened so much he could just distinguish the blurry outlines of his house from the end of the garden.

He felt tired after the walk and went upstairs to rest before dinner. When he woke the room was dark. Outside the fog pressed against the windows. He lay there without moving, thinking again of Lena. Finally he jumped from the bed, went down and began to prepare dinner.

While he was eating at the kitchen table the phone rang. He went quickly to the hall, hoping it was Lena, but it wasn’t.

‘Dan? It’s Anders.’

‘Hello, Anders—’

‘Is Lena with you?’

‘No. I haven’t seen her for a while.’

‘She’s not at her place. I’ve been trying there.’

‘What do you mean her place? Herräng?’

‘The flat. The flat I fixed for her.’

‘I can’t help you. I don’t know where she is.’

‘Dan, I’m worried about her.’ He certainly sounded worried. Dan had never heard his voice so tense before. ‘Something’s wrong,’ he said. ‘She’s not herself. I took her to a cocktail party this evening to meet some people and you know what she did? She left with Johan Ek. I swear to God. Everyone saw it. He was leaving and she just left with him. She wouldn’t even know Johan Ek if it weren’t for me.’

‘Maybe they’ll be back.’

‘That was over an hour ago. An hour and a half. I’ve been ringing Ek’s number in town. No one answers.’

‘Anders,’ Dan began but Anders interrupted.

‘Did you know something was going on with Ek?’

‘No.’

‘You know that I’ve been looking out for her, trying to help her, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but you’ve got to stop—’

‘And you’d tell me if she had anything going with Ek out there?’

‘Anders, listen—’

‘I’ve taken her places. She’d be lost in Stockholm otherwise, I’ve introduced her to people all over – I took her to this cocktail party, people she doesn’t—’

‘You told me,’ Dan cut in. ‘But you can’t go on like this.’

Anders wasn’t listening.

‘She’s been acting strangely, Dan. I’m worried. She said something offensive to Lennart Widström – another of my introductions, he’s helped her with work and lent her a company flat. She really was aggressive, I don’t know what’s got into her. Then Ek arrived and she was talking to him and suddenly they were gone. People told me she’d left with him half an hour before. Dan, has she been taking drugs or anything like that?’

‘I’ve no idea. I wouldn’t think so.’

‘Do you have the number to Ek’s place out there?’

‘No. But I want to talk to you, Anders. You have a family—’

‘You’ll let me know if she turns up, won’t you? Before she does something foolish.’

‘Anders, she’s not the one who’s doing something foolish, you are.’ His voice was harsh but he had the feeling Anders was too taken up with what he had to say himself to notice. He would later on, though, when he recalled the conversation. ‘Lena doesn’t need another man running after her. But Madeleine needs her husband and your daughter needs her father.’

‘All that’s over, Dan. I’ll take care of them of course, but I have a life too, a new life now.’

‘What the hell do you mean it’s over?’

‘I’ve got to help Lena before it’s too late. I’m going to take care of her. Listen Dan, she told me she’s found out things about the Arab family out there, that she’s going to settle things with Gabriel. Is he the one who does your gardening?’

‘Settle what with Gabriel?’

‘She’s found out he’s the heir. If she can get him on his own she says she can persuade him to let her have it. She’s not in balance, Dan. And her going off like that with Ek is—’

‘Anders, don’t talk rubbish!’ Dan interrupted roughly. ‘You have a wife and a baby child who love you and rely on you. For God’s sake come to your senses.’

There was a long silence. Dan thought that Anders had put down the phone. He said, ‘Hello? Anders?’ When Anders’s voice came on his tone had changed.

‘Dan, you’re a good friend. I know you mean well and I know you’ll understand when I tell you this. I haven’t told it to anyone else, not yet, except Lena herself. I’m in love with her, Dan. I’ve never felt this way before. I want to marry her, to take care of her. I was going to tell her that tonight, I thought I’d go back to her flat with her and tell her.’

‘You must be out of your mind!’

He could hear Anders breathing. Then the breath caught.

‘I’m not going to let her go on being used by men like Ek,’ Anders said. ‘And this Arab boy. She’s got to stop that kind of thing. I’m coming out now before she does something foolish.’

‘Anders!’ Dan shouted but Anders had hung up.

The house was uncannily silent. Dan heard the distant moan of the foghorn. In the kitchen the clock showed a quarter to nine. The fog was so thick outside it might have been the middle of the night.

In bed by ten o’clock, he was fast asleep when a noise down in the kitchen woke him. After a moment he heard the stairs creak. He sat up. Anders, he thought. The bedroom door opened and Lena’s voice softly whispered, ‘DeeJay?’ He waited without moving, wondering if she was alone. He heard the sound of her undressing, her clothes dropping softly to the floor. Then she slipped into the bed beside him and he turned to her.

‘Did I wake you?’ she whispered.

‘No.’

‘You heard me come in?’

‘I’m glad you’re here.’

‘I’ve been longing to see you.’

‘Then why haven’t you come out?’ He regretted the question at once but it was too late. She withdrew a little from him, no more than centimetres, as though to look in his face.

‘There’s been so much to do. But I’ve got the information I’ve been looking for. I have everything I need. I met Johan Ek this evening and he was driving out so I came with him.’

‘Anders rang. He wanted to know if you were here.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘That you weren’t, of course.’

‘I should have told him I was leaving. But there wasn’t time. It was a stroke of luck running into Johan. He told me lots of things I wouldn’t have thought of on my own.’

As she spoke, her hands moved over his stomach. She felt his erection and gave a sweet, gentle sigh before climbing onto him and sitting up. At once he was in her, so ready was she. After a couple of minutes she rolled over, pulling him on top of her, stroking his face as he moved in her and saying his name so tenderly it brought tears to his eyes.

Afterwards they lay in each other’s arms. For the second time since he’d come out here to live, he felt utterly at peace; not only with the world but with himself.

‘DeeJay,’ she murmured.

‘Yes?’

‘You think I treated Anders badly, don’t you? Leaving like that. But I had to talk with Johan before I confront the Selavas. And Johan was leaving. Besides, I don’t belong to Anders.’

‘I know.’

‘I’ve got a new life now, DeeJay. There are a lot of things I won’t be doing any more. Being dependent on men is one of them. Lennart wants me to go to another congress thing, this time in Rome. He told me tonight we’d stay in this fabulous five-star hotel, we’d see all the sights and go to this fabulous restaurant. I told him if it was so fucking fabulous why didn’t he take his wife along? He looked as if someone had hit him on the head with a baseball bat. From now on I’m going to run my own life. The farm is mine, DeeJay. Morally and now legally as well.’

Dan thought about Anders and their conversation earlier that evening. Then all thought slipped away as they prepared to make love again.

Afterwards she said, ‘DeeJay, I want to ask your advice about something.’