In the Name of Love (8 page)

‘You know how to do this kind of work?’ Dan asked him. ‘How to prepare a concrete wall, plaster it, paint it?’

‘Sure. I can do it.’

‘You have experience?’

‘I can do it.’

‘What experience have you had?’

‘I did handicrafts in school.’

Dan thought of the bookends Carlos had once made for his birthday. Those too had been made in handicrafts class in school. Sweetly done, but hardly professional work.

‘How much will you charge?’

‘Forty kronor an hour.’ It seemed a lot for someone unqualified. He quickly added, ‘Cash.’

‘Well, I don’t know.’

‘Let me work a couple of days and see what I can do. You can decide then. If you’re not satisfied, you owe me nothing.’

Dan said he’d think it over.

When Sune Isaksson dropped in later that day the first thing he said was, ‘Well?’ Clearly he’d been talking to the Selavas family.

‘He’s never done this kind of work before.’

‘That’s why it’s important,’ Sune insisted. ‘It’ll give him the experience he needs to refer to next time a chance comes up.’

‘You think I should let a kid practise on my house?’

Sune ignored the question, saying again that the family needed the money. Any revenue generated by the farm was blocked until Solveig Backlund’s will went through probate. Their situation was getting very tight.

‘I’m sorry to hear that but the insurance company is tough, they sure as hell aren’t going to pay a second time if the plastering and painting are botched.’

‘Nothing will be botched. These are serious people.’

‘Who’s this Solveig Backlund?’

‘The widow who died. The one who owned the farm on Bromskär. Didn’t Lena tell you?’

‘No.’

‘After Solveig Backlund’s husband died she couldn’t run the place alone but she couldn’t bring herself to sell it either. So she borrowed from the bank and she looked for help. She even put an ad in the farmers’ paper. The Selavas were about the only people who applied and she took them on. They’ve been there for a couple of years now. Solveig gave them free room and board and probably a small salary. Suited everyone.’

‘And now the Selavas have inherited her farm?’

‘Solveig left it to them but the will hasn’t gone through yet. Don’t worry about the painting. Gabriel comes from France but he’s part of their clan. A cousin or a nephew or something. They’ll see to it that the job gets done. They had a farm of their own in Iraq. And it’s not just the money, Gabriel needs the occupation. He’s bored out of his mind here. So if you can keep him busy for a month or so it’d be a big help.’

‘Where are his parents?’

‘In Lyon at the moment. His mother’s Swedish, his father Iraqi. They were living in Lebanon before.’

‘So that’s how he speaks Swedish.’

‘Plus Chaldean and Arabic and French. In France it was most­ly fellow Chaldean refugees he saw. Just like they do here.’

Sune stood a moment in silence, abandoning the conversation as he lifted one hand, stretched his fingers. After a minute or two he lowered his hand again. Dan asked him if he was in pain. He didn’t say anything. Instead he went to the table and sat down. Dan got him his glass of whisky.

‘Know how long they gave me?’ Sune asked at last. ‘The Onco people?’

‘No. How could I?’

‘Everyone else out here knows.’ Sune tilted his chin, emphasizing the amusement he attached to this remark. Then he gave a laugh that didn’t quite make it to his normal bellow. ‘You’re goddamned incorrigible!’ he said. ‘Are they all like that in Ireland?’

‘How long?’

‘The head guy said eight months. Maximum. Maybe six acceptable. As a life. That was just over a year ago. I’ve spent a happy year out here since then. Never trust the experts. I sometimes wonder what madness made me ever leave this place. Work, I suppose. There was nothing to do here in those days. All the more reason why we have to find something for Gabriel Rabban before he gets it into his head to leave too. His grandaunt and granduncle would really be in the lurch without him.’

‘Doesn’t he go to school?’

‘He’s finished secondary school. And the nearest upper high school is in Norrtälje. Not that he’d be likely to go. Anyway his granduncle needs him here.’

He smiled at Dan. It was a good smile, warm and friendly. He put his fist on the table, so tightly clenched that the edges swelled. Clearly another burst of pain. Slowly he opened the fingers and spread them until his palm was wide.

‘Is it bad?’

‘I can manage. Time for me to go though. Cocktail hour. I can take my painkilling shot.’

‘I’ll drive you back.’

‘No, that’ll come soon enough. For the moment I’m okay walking.’

The following week, Madeline Roos rang.

‘I’m not ringing too late, am I?’ she asked.

‘No. Not at all.’

‘Mummy only left today. It’s the first chance I’ve had to ring.’

‘I’m glad to hear your voice.’

‘Dan, I told Anders. I told him on Easter Monday that I was going to have an abortion.’

‘Yes? What did he say?’

‘He broke down.’

‘Oh.’

‘Dan, he started to cry. I’ve never seen him like that before. He begged me not to kill our child.’

When she said this she too began to cry. She cried helplessly into the phone.

‘Isn’t that good?’

‘Dan, listen to me. Please listen to me. I don’t know if I can ever say this again. I love you, Dan. Maybe this is a shock to you but I’ve loved you since the first time you came to our house. I can’t explain it, nothing like it has ever happened to me before.’

‘Madeleine—’

‘No, listen Dan, please. I want to say this. Anders and I went together to the gynaecologist this morning and we saw the scan. It’s a girl. A tiny girl, we saw her nose and her mouth and her eyes. Anders burst into tears again when he saw her. I’d never have thought it of him. I can feel her move now, I can tell that she’s awake.’

‘Madeleine—’

‘No, listen to me, Dan, please, please listen. I don’t want to lose you, I don’t want you ever to leave my life, you mean more to me than I ever thought possible, but Anders is my child’s father. I can’t ignore that.’

He could barely hear what she was saying. Yet he knew every word before she said it. He knew she was right to face whatever pain might come for the sake of her child. But he didn’t want her to be hurt.

‘Madeleine, I’m sure Anders will be a fine father.’

‘Today for the first time I confronted him about his affairs and he said it was true he’d had other women but they didn’t mean anything. The only one that had ever meant anything to him had cost him his first marriage when his wife found out and left him. He wasn’t going to risk that happening again, not now that we were a family.’

‘He has good reason to mean it,’ Dan said.

‘You’ve known him a long time, Dan, much longer than I have. I’m glad you said that. It gives me hope.’

‘But if ever it doesn’t work out, I want you to know there’s a home for you here for as long as you want it.’

‘I know that, Dan. I know what a generous person you are. And I know that you’re the only man I have truly loved. But now – listen. We saw her skin, it’s wrinkled. It’s… it’s unbelievable. But you know that, you must have seen your son.’

He had, he’d seen Carlos as a foetus, he knew the miracle she was talking about, he remembered it vividly as she went on, telling him how she dared not meet him yet. ‘For the baby’s sake Anders and I have to make a new start. I can’t endanger my child’s happiness.’ She said that if she were to see Dan now all her resolve would vanish. Once the baby was born and she had settled into her new life as a mother and the baby was secure she wanted them to meet again, but not now. While she told him this, her voice trembled.

‘I’m not going to cry!’ she said. ‘I’m happy, I really am, at the thought of meeting you again, Dan, even if it takes time.’

The conversation ended with her sobbing into the phone again, telling him how much she loved him but how her unborn baby must take first place in her life and how she needed time to make that possible. When he had put down the phone he sat staring at the black window and in the reflection, for the first time, he saw what he looked like now – a rumpled, middle-aged man.

As he stared he thought again of what Madeleine had said. He understood her, he understood her resolve: nothing must endanger her child’s happiness. Would Anders stick to his decision to lead a new life? It was certainly possible. He thought of what Madeleine had said Anders told her, that an affair had cost him his first marriage and how he wasn’t going to risk that again. He remembered how shocked Connie and he had been when Eleonora left for London. They’d assumed that she’d met someone else, some Englishman, and Dan had felt a stab of disappointment that she hadn’t even rung to say goodbye. Not as much as a postcard from England. Until then he had thought that he and she had something in common, something they recognized in each other, a sharing of the role as amused onlooker with an exceptionally gifted socializer as spouse. He remembered the glance Eleonora had given him the year Ingemar Stenmark won his first World Cup. All Sweden, it was said, went wild that evening. Anders and Connie had leapt to their feet when Stenmark’s final time came up on the screen, shouting and waving, hugging each other wildly, while Eleonora gave them an affectionate smile and glanced at Dan. There
was
a bond there, he hadn’t been mistaken. That winter they flew, both families together, to the resort where Stenmark had triumphed. Connie and Anders were accomplished skiers, if not up to Eleonora’s high standard. Carlos, at twelve, had done cross-country but not downhill yet. Dan was a complete beginner. Despite their protests Eleonora spent an hour each morning with the two of them, showing them the basics. They practised until she came back with the others at lunchtime. Sometimes Dan took Carlos up in the cabin lift and they all had lunch together on a restaurant terrace, surrounded by high glacier peaks. Afterwards he and Carlos watched the other three race down. Connie and Anders went first, negotiating the difficult gullies as best they could, falling and laughing like kids, while Eleonora zigzagged past them with astonishing speed. It was the single accomplishment, she said afterwards, that she had taken with her from the Swiss school her father sent her to. There wasn’t much else to do, she told them, except compare clothes and service the boys and ski. Carlos loved being with Eleonora but he loved being with
farbror
Anders even more. After skiing they chased each other through the snow, tumbled, wrestled, threw snowballs. As always, Anders seemed blessedly free from self-importance.

‘He’ll make a wonderful father,’ Connie said once, laugh­ing as she watched them.

‘Are they going to have children?’

‘Oh yes, I’m sure they will.’ Connie herself couldn’t have any more. Her ovaries were removed in the second trimester with Carlos due to incipient cancer. Later she regretted it. ‘Radiation, chemical treatment. I’d have survived.’ An only child herself she had missed not having brothers and sisters. Dan had sided with the oncologist. Better for a child to be without siblings than without a mother.

After the success of the ski trip Eleonora and Connie had become good friends, meeting for lunch once a week back in Stockholm. That summer they went sailing all four in what had been Anders’s father’s boat, a two-masted ketch, slim and fast. Neither Dan nor Connie had done any sailing but Anders and Eleonora were seasoned hands. Anders was particularly skilful and when they returned at the end of the week he took an almost boyish delight in docking in the crowded Norrtälje marina without using the engine.

‘Isn’t he the show-off,’ Eleonora said when the hull slid slowly and silently up along the jetty, but she was smiling at him with a pride and fondness that were unmistakable.

‘Have you always loved sailing?’ Dan asked her.

‘Since I met Anders. He makes it almost mystical. Come out with us more often and you’ll see for yourself.’

He thought about it in the months that followed but by autumn Connie no longer had time. Many of her new patients were elderly and they grew attached to her, they liked to chat. She had to skip her lunches with Eleonora and sometimes got home late for dinner. She and Dan both cooked so it wasn’t a problem, and on evenings when she hadn’t been able to phone, Dan and Carlos went ahead without her. ‘No sweat,’ Carlos said whenever she got in late, flustered and apologetic. Dan encouraged him to be relaxed about such things. He and Connie had already seen too many marriages turn sour over trivial complaints.

The day he saw the truth started like any other day on the island except that his sleep had been troubled all night with dreams of the past, of skiing and sailing, of missed lunches, of suppers alone with Carlos. Finally, as dawn came, he got up from his makeshift bed in the living room and went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast. While he filled the kettle he glanced out at the pale light and saw, through his own reflection, the familiar landscape, and found that many things came together at once.

He turned off the tap, went back to the living room and sat on the unmade bed, a sickening tension spreading from his throat to his stomach as details of his dreams formed a pattern.

He remembered how, the evening after the roof caved in, he had stopped deciphering the entries in Connie’s agendas and chosen to riffle past the pages before putting them back in the holdall, as though what he saw there could not possibly concern him.

He went to the closet in the little entrance hall and took out the holdall, then put it back almost at once. He already knew that the appointments without initials or venues, the ones he had scarcely looked at so quickly did he thumb past them, would begin not long after he and Connie returned from the week’s sailing with Eleonora and Anders. He remembered what some of the unattributed entries looked like. A time, mostly around twelve or one, occasionally early in the evening, five or five thirty, just the time followed by neither a place nor a person. Which would mean that both place and person were always the same. The last such entry was three-quarters of the way through the year, probably early September. Eleonora had left for London the first week in October, her application for divorce already registered with the district court.