In the Name of Love (6 page)

She looked in the window of the cheese shop at the beginning of the little square. After a moment she turned and looked down the street as if searching for something. When he saw her go towards Tösse’s he realized that the something must, against all the odds, be him.

She was sitting outside on the lower deck, looking over the river, when he walked up behind her and said, too cheerily, in English: ‘A penny for your thoughts.’

She turned abruptly, pulling the hair away from her face and blushing furiously.

‘Sorry,’ Dan said lightly in Swedish. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’

‘Oh? Didn’t you?’ she said. And then she asked, ‘How did you know I was here?’ It was a bold question from her and he answered at once. ‘I saw you outside your yoga class. I followed you.’

‘You what?’

She looked up at him again, her face altogether grave. Then she said: ‘Well, aren’t you going to sit down?’

He hung his gabardine jacket across the back of the chair opposite her and asked if she would like another tea. She nodded, staring at him all the time, maybe wondering if he was serious about having followed her. When he came back with the tea tray she seemed flustered. He asked her if everything was all right. She said she was confused.

‘Why?’

‘There’s so little I know about you.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘That’s the trouble. I don’t know enough to know what to ask.’

Her dark eyes shimmered with the last of the sunlight off the river and he saw that she was close to laughing now, although she didn’t laugh.

‘It’s so ridiculous,’ she said instead. ‘I came here out of curiosity. I don’t even know why I thought you might be here. You’re strange.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘You are! Anders thinks it’s because you’re floating around like a rudderless boat. You can’t decide what to do with the rest of your life. Is that true?’

The question caught Dan off balance. He hadn’t expected such directness from her.

‘You discuss me with Anders?’

‘Of course I do! He’s my husband. Do you see how strange you are?’

‘But why would you discuss me at all? I don’t understand.’

‘I told him I ran into you and that we had tea together. And so we talked about you. It’s the most natural thing in the world. Don’t you have anyone you talk to out on that island?’

‘And he said I was a rudderless boat?’

‘He meant you haven’t found your bearings yet. Not in your new life.’

‘What new life? I’ve moved house is all.’

‘And become a mysterious hermit in the archipelago.’

‘You’re having me on,’ he said. ‘The two of you.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Just me.’

And now she did laugh.

After that they met every Wednesday. There was nothing secret about these encounters. Tösse’s, the
konditori
they met in, was always busy with afternoon shoppers, some of whom she knew. He saw these meetings as inconsequential, small events woven into the fabric of his life.

Only occasionally did something intimate slip in, like the time when he said that Anders had always seemed someone who led his life exactly as he wanted, realizing too late how the remark might sound to her. After a brief silence she ignored it and instead asked him about growing up in Ireland. To cover his embarrassment he answered carefully, trying to be as objective as he could.

‘By and large, fairly standard stuff for the time. We were taught the things the children of middle-class parents were taught all over Europe. Emotion must be disciplined, rationality alone gives constancy, civilization means curbing nature’s unpredictability, man’s success depends on imposing his order, his logic on the world around him.’

‘It does?’ she said. ‘Goodness.’

He looked at her dark eyes, the black hair hanging close by her cheeks, and she burst out laughing. She was laughing at him and he found himself relieved she could do it so openly.

‘Was it really like that? It sounds like a training programme for – I don’t know. Some sort of
übermensch
.’

‘I think all boarding schools probably are. Training for something or other is almost always going on.’

‘Didn’t you like your school?’

‘We had some good teachers. And plenty of games. It was very anglophile.’

‘In Ireland?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did being an anglophile school involve?’

‘Rugby in winter. Cricket and tennis in summer. No Irish sports of any kind. There were four hundred of us so we could have our own leagues and divisions. The disadvantage was there was no contact with girls. None.’

‘Ah! Now I understand.’

‘Understand what?’

‘Why you’re so hopeless. No, really, you are! You seem so gauche sometimes. Other times you’re full of charm, of course.’

On the way home, thinking of this, what he remembered was less the words than the special quality of her voice, a little provocative, a little tantalizing, above all, intimate and trusting. He sensed a joy held back in her, a joy that at moments like this bubbled up and might, if let free, transform her and the world around her.

The first weeks of March were cold and beautiful. The days ran past like an elusive stream. On one Wednesday, an afternoon with sunlight sharp as glass, he waited for her outside her yoga club and suggested they go for a walk instead of going to the
konditori
. She shook her head.

‘You don’t want to?’

‘It’s not a question of wanting.’

‘You’re worried about what people might think? Is that it?’

‘What does it matter what people think?’

‘What is it then? There’s nothing to be afraid of.’

‘That’s easy for you to say.’

‘You’re too honest a person to have anything to be afraid of.’

‘Honest with who?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t care what people think but I do care about what’s happening to me.’

She looked at the other pregnant women who were coming out of the yoga class and then looked back at Dan. ‘I wish it would wear off,’ she said. ‘Whatever it is. I wish we could go back to being what we were. Casual friends.’

Her saying it shocked him. It showed a side of her he hadn’t seen before. It also showed him the stage they had reached without his noticing it.

‘Nothing’s happened to change that,’ he said.

‘It has. You know it has.’

They were still standing on the pavement outside the yoga club. Some women passed close by. He waited until they had gone and then he asked her, ‘How?’

She hesitated and looked away again, down the street after the women. Her hair had blown across her face. For the first time he felt an urge to touch it, move it so that it fell into place. She stared back at him, looked him straight in the eyes. The blood had drained from her cheeks, revealing the bones beneath her skin.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I need that tea.’

In the
konditori
he asked her if she had known Anders for long before they married. At first she didn’t answer. ‘What does that have to do with anything?’ she demanded. He waited as the blush crept over her cheeks.

‘Six months,’ she said abruptly. ‘We met on Anders’s boat one weekend. There were six of us, three couples.’

‘All right,’ he said. He didn’t want her to go on and she knew why. She shrugged. Whatever happened on the boat between her and Anders would likely have happened behind their respective partners’ backs. It wasn’t pretty. But he liked the way she’d looked straight at him when she said it.

‘You know, you’re one of the strangest people I’ve ever met,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what to make of you.’ She’d thought him so secure at first, she said, like one of the rocks in the middle of the sea out where he lived. ‘That’s the impression you give. But behind it you’re constantly alert aren’t you? I don’t know what for, but you are.’

She asked him if he had always been like this. He said he didn’t suppose so since no one had ever remarked on it before. She lifted out the teabags from the pot the waitress had brought and poured their tea. ‘Do you have someone out there?’ she asked without looking up.

‘You mean a woman?’

‘A companion. Someone to be with.’

‘No.’

Out on the street, parting, she looked at him, examining him. ‘Maybe I’d understand myself better if I’d met you before.’

Before what? he almost asked. Did she mean before she became pregnant? A pulse beat in his head.

On the way home he found himself thinking of other things they might do together, blameless things which would not harm her in any way, such as taking a thermos of coffee and crossing the long bridge to the little island beyond the Society Park and sitting on one of the beaches there when the sun was out. Or going through the woods around the town, walking on the layers of dead leaves. But in fact they did none of these things. They continued to sit in the same
konditori
and talked to each other and that, he understood, was what they both wanted, and felt they had a right to.

But soon a week became a long time to wait. He drove to Norrtälje and walked the streets hoping to run into her. He had lunch in their
konditori
and then walked around again, looking down every street. By three o’clock he knew it was hopeless. He went back to his car and drove to the house north of the town.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said as soon as she opened the door. ‘I should have telephoned.’

She said it was all right. She stood to one side to let him in.

He didn’t want to look at her so he studied the room instead. Dark red wallpaper. Eighteenth-century furniture in the
gustaviansk
style of the house.

‘I really should have telephoned,’ he said again.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘What does it matter?’

In the room she said she was glad he had come. She had been going to ring him. She wouldn’t be at her yoga class on Wednesday.

‘I’m having lunch with Pappa in Stockholm.’

The news dismayed him. At the same time he saw how ridiculous this was. Did he really begrudge her lunch with her father? Then she said, ‘Would it matter if I were a little late? At Tösse’s?’

His soul shot up.

‘Not at all.’

‘Then we can still have tea?’

‘Yes.’

‘Would you like something to drink now? Coffee? Some­thing stronger?’

‘No thanks. Really. I just thought I’d drop in.’

They sat opposite each other, each on an old carved wooden sofa with its two side cushions, its three back cushions. They talked about the garden which was visible through the French doors, then about the book she’d been reading, Eyvind Johnson’s
Några steg mot tystnaden
. She didn’t press the conversation. It came or it stopped. She gave no sign that she had other things to do. It struck Dan that her sitting here could merely be the politeness of someone well brought up. Then he realized that she didn’t mind the silences. To her they seemed natural. It must, of course, have been obvious that he wanted to see her alone, that if he had wanted to see Anders he would have gone to the showroom. She was surely aware of all this. Finally he said, ‘You’re very quiet sometimes.’

‘It’s just the way I am. You must be used to it by now.’

‘I’m not used to anything about you.’

She looked at him.

‘I think a lot about you,’ he told her, ‘but I can’t get used to any of it.’

‘No, don’t say that. Please.’

‘But it’s true,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing to be afraid of,’ he added, ‘it’s just that I like your presence, that’s all. I like to hear your voice.’

‘You shouldn’t,’ she said. ‘Please.’ Seconds passed. A minute. He heard her breathe. She closed her eyes. When he drew back in his seat she took a deeper breath and looked at him again.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, although he did not know what he was sorry for. He asked if he might phone her occasionally here at the house. She said, ‘Of course. What did you think? Call me any time. Call me tomorrow. I’m here all day. Let it ring, I may be out working in the garden.’

But he didn’t. He sensed that if he started to call her, if they started to have the sort of conversation that one has on the phone in circumstances like theirs, it would end up causing trouble for her.

The following Wednesday, when she was due to drive into Stockholm, it snowed all day. As the time passed waiting for her in Tösse’s Dan began to worry. Finally she came. She said she was double parked outside. Her face was flushed, her hair was all over the place.

‘We’d better get out of here,’ she said. Her voice sounded hard.

When they were sitting in the car a horn from a car blocked behind her blew gently, just a tap.

‘Oh shut up!’ she muttered as she put the car in gear.

They drove down the main street towards the park and the water, then turned off on the road out of town. He asked her where they were going. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Anywhere.’

‘I didn’t sleep last night,’ she said. ‘Not a wink. Pappa noticed at once. He asked if I was all right and I couldn’t answer him. He knows something is up.’

She kept her hands high on the wheel where her fingers could move, which they did, continuously, restlessly.

‘What’s wrong,’ he asked her. ‘Why are you so irritable?’

‘I’m not irritable!’

‘Yes you are.’

‘I’m tired. That’s all. It doesn’t matter.’

When they came to a crossing she said, ‘Which direction?’

‘Am I to decide?’

‘Yes.’

‘To the right.’

But suddenly she pulled over and stopped on a broad patch of earth before a dirt lane leading in among the trees. She sat quite still with her hands on the steering wheel and looked out through the windshield. There was nothing to see but reddening snow all the way down to the water. The low March sun made mauve the shadow of each birch trunk.

‘Do you want to walk a bit?’ she asked.

‘Is that what you want to do?’

‘I want us to talk to each other.’

‘Let’s talk then.’

But for a long time she remained silent. She made no move to leave the car. When she lowered the window a little, enough to let in the cold air, noises came from the frozen bushes in the ditch beside them, small noises from rustling animals, maybe birds.