My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry (42 page)

“No, it’s a quote from
Doctor Glas
,” insists Britt-Marie.

“Is that a site?”

“It’s a play.”

“Oh.”

“What’s Wikipedia?”

“A site.”

Britt-Marie puts her hands together in her lap.

“In fact,
Doctor Glas
is a novel, as I understand. I haven’t read it. But they put it on in the theater,” she says hesitantly.

“Oh,” says Elsa.

“I like theater.”

“Me too.”

They both nod.

“ ‘Doctor Glas’ would have been a good superhero name,” Elsa says.

She thinks it would actually have been a better name for a superhero nemesis, but Britt-Marie doesn’t look like she reads quality literature on a regular basis, so Elsa doesn’t want to make it too complicated for her.

“ ‘We want to be loved,’ ” quotes Britt-Marie. “ ‘Failing that, admired; failing that, feared; failing that, hated and despised. At all costs we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others. The soul abhors a vacuum. At all costs it longs for contact.’ ”

Elsa is not quite sure what this means, but she nods all the same. “What do you want to be, then?”

“It’s complicated being a grown-up sometimes, Elsa,” Britt-Marie says evasively.

“It’s not, like, easy-peasy being a kid either,” Elsa replies belligerently.

The tips of Britt-Marie’s fingers wander carefully over the white circle on the skin of her ring finger.

“I used to stand on the balcony early in the mornings. Before Kent woke up. Your grandmother knew this, that’s why she made those snowmen. And that’s why I got so angry. Because she knew my secret and it felt as if she and the snowmen were trying to taunt me for it.”

“What secret?”

Britt-Marie clasps her hands together firmly.

“I was never like your grandmother. I never traveled. I was just here. But sometimes I liked to stand on the balcony in the mornings, when it was windy. It’s silly, of course, everyone obviously thinks it’s silly, they do, of course.” She purses her mouth. “But I like to feel the wind in my hair.”

Elsa thinks about how Britt-Marie may, despite everything, not be a total shit after all.

“You didn’t answer the question—what do you want to be?” she says, winding her scarf through her fingers.

Britt-Marie’s fingertips move hesitantly over her skirt, like a person moving across a dance floor to ask someone to dance. And then, cautiously, she utters the words:

“I want someone to remember I existed. I want someone to know I was here.”

Unfortunately Elsa doesn’t hear the last bit, because the veterinary surgeon comes through the door with a look on his face that creates a surging noise inside Elsa’s head. She has run past him before he has even had time to open his mouth. Elsa hears them shouting after her as she charges down the corridor and starts throwing doors open, one after the other. A nurse tries to grab her, but she just keeps running, throws more doors open, doesn’t stop until she hears the wurse howling. As if it knows she’s on her way and is calling for her. When she finally storms into the right room, she finds it lying on a cold table, a bandage round its stomach. There’s blood everywhere. She buries her face deep, deep, deep in its coat.

Britt-Marie is still there in the waiting room. Alone. If she left right now, probably no one would remember that she’d been there. She looks as if she’s thinking about that for a moment, then brushes something invisible from the edge of the table, straightens a crease in her skirt, stands up, and leaves.

The wurse closes its eyes. It almost looks as if it’s smiling. Elsa doesn’t know if it can hear her. Doesn’t know if it can feel her heavy tears dropping into its pelt. “You can’t die. You can’t die, because I’m here now. And you’re my friend. No real friend would just go and die like that, do you understand? Friends don’t die on each other,” Elsa whispers, trying to convince herself more than the wurse.

It looks as if it knows. Tries to dry her cheeks with the warm air from its nose. Elsa lies next to it, curled up on the treatment table, as she lay in the hospital bed that night when Granny didn’t come back with her from Miamas.

She lies there forever. With her Gryffindor scarf buried in the wurse’s pelt.

The policewoman’s voice can be heard between the wurse’s breaths as they grow slower and the thumping on the other side of the thick black fur gets more and more drawn out. Her green eyes watch the girl and the animal from the doorway.

“We have to take your friend to the police station, Elsa.” Elsa knows she’s talking about Wolfheart.

“You can’t put him in prison! He did it in self-defense!” Elsa roars.

“No, Elsa, he didn’t. He wasn’t defending himself.”

And then she backs away from the door. Checks her watch as if pretending to be disoriented, as if she has just realized there is something extremely important that she has to get on with in an entirely different place, and how crazy it would be if someone she was under very clear orders to bring to the police station would not be watched for a moment so that he could talk to a child who was about to lose a wurse. It would be crazy, really.

And then she’s gone. And Wolfheart is standing in the doorway. Elsa flings herself off the table and throws her arms around him and couldn’t give a crap about whether or not he has to bathe in alcogel when he gets home.

“The wurse mustn’t die! Tell him he mustn’t die!” whispers Elsa.

Wolfheart breathes slowly. Stands with his hands held out awkwardly, as if someone has spilled something acidic on his sweater. Elsa realizes she still has his coat at home in the flat.

“You can have your coat back, Mum has washed it really carefully and hung it up in the wardrobe inside a plastic cover,” she whispers apologetically and keeps hugging him.

He looks as if he’d really appreciate it if she didn’t. Elsa doesn’t care.

“But you’re not allowed to fight again!” she orders, her face thrust into his sweater, before she lifts her head and wipes her eyes with her wrist. “I’m not saying you can never fight, because I haven’t quite decided where I stand on that question. I mean morally, sort of thing. But you can’t fight when you’re as good at fighting as you are!” she sobs.

And then Wolfheart does something very curious. He hugs her back.

“The wurse. Very old. Very old wurse, Elsa,” he growls in the secret language.

“I can’t take everyone dying all the time,” Elsa weeps.

Wolfheart holds her by both her hands. Gently squeezes her forefingers. He’s trembling as if he’s holding white-hot iron, but he doesn’t let go, as one doesn’t when one realizes there are more important things in life than being afraid of children’s bacteria.

“Very old wurse. Very tired now, Elsa.”

And when Elsa just shakes her head hysterically and yells at him that no one else can die on her now, he lets go of one of her hands and reaches into his trouser pocket, from which he takes a very crumpled piece of paper and puts it in her hand. It’s a drawing. It’s obvious that it’s Granny who drew it, because she drew about as well as she spelled.

“It’s a map,” Elsa sobs as she unfolds it, the way one sobs when the tears have run out but not the crying.

Wolfheart gently rubs his hands together in circles. Elsa brushes her fingers over the ink.

“It’s a map of the seventh kingdom,” she says, more to herself than to him.

She lies down again on the table with the wurse. So close that its pelt pricks her through her sweater. Feels its warm breathing from the cold nose. It’s sleeping. She hopes it’s sleeping. She kisses its nose, so her tears end up in its whiskers. Wolfheart gently clears his throat.

“Was in the letter. Grandmother’s letter,” he says in the secret language and points at the letter. “Mipardonus.” The seventh kingdom. Your grandmother and I . . . we were going to build it.”

Elsa studies the map more carefully. It’s actually of the whole of the Land-of-Almost-Awake, but with completely the wrong proportions, because proportions were never really Granny’s thing.

“This seventh kingdom is exactly where the ruins of Mibatalos lie,” she whispers.

Wolfheart rubs his hands together.

“Can only build Mipardonus on Mibatalos. Your grandmother’s idea.”

“What does Mipardonus mean?” asks Elsa, with her cheek pressed to the wurse’s.

“Means ‘I forgive.’ ”

The tears from his cheeks are the size of swallows. His enormous hand descends softly on the wurse’s head. The wurse opens its eyes, but only slightly, and looks at him.

“Very old, Elsa. Very, very tired,” whispers Wolfheart.

Then he tenderly puts his fingers over the wound that Sam’s knife cut through the thick pelt.

It’s hard to let go of someone you love. Especially when you are almost eight.

Elsa crawls close to the wurse and holds it hard, hard, hard. It manages to look at her one last time. She smiles and whispers, “You’re the best first friend I’ve ever had,” and it slowly licks her on the face and smells of sponge cake mix. And she laughs out loud, with her tears raining down.

When the cloud animals land in the Land-of-Almost-Awake, Elsa hugs it as hard as she can, and whispers: “You’ve completed your mission, you don’t have to protect the castle anymore. Protect Granny now. Protect all the fairy tales!” It licks her face one final time.

And then it runs off.

When Elsa turns to Wolfheart, he squints at the sun as you do when you haven’t been to the Land-of-Almost-Awake for an eternity of many fairy tales. Elsa points down at the ruins of Mibatalos.

“We can bring Alf here. He’s good at building things. At least he’s good at making wardrobes. And we’ll also need wardrobes in the seventh kingdom, won’t we? And Granny will be sitting on a bench in Miamas when we’re ready. Just like the granddad in
The Brothers Lionheart
. There’s a fairy tale with that name, I read it to Granny, so I know she’ll wait on a bench because it’s typical of her to nick something like that from other people’s fairy tales. And she knows
The Brothers Lionheart
is one of my favorite fairy tales!”

She is still crying. Wolfheart as well. But they do what they can. They construct words of forgiveness from the ruins of fighting words.

The wurse dies on the same day that Elsa’s brother is born. Elsa decides that she will tell her brother all about it when he’s older. Tell him about her first best friend. Tell him that sometimes things have to clear a space so something else can take its place. Almost as if the wurse gave up its place on the bus for Halfie.

And she thinks about how she will be very particular about pointing out to Halfie that he mustn’t feel sad or have a bad conscience about it.

Because wurses hate traveling by bus.

33

BABY

I
t’s difficult ending a fairy tale. All tales have to end sometime, of course. Some can’t finish soon enough. This one, for example, could feasibly have been rounded off and packed away long ago. The problem is this whole issue of heroes at the ends of fairy tales, and how they are supposed to “live happily to the end of their days.” This gets tricky, from a narrative perspective, because the people who reach the end of their days must leave others who have to live out their days without them.

It is very, very difficult to be the one who has to stay behind and live without them.

It’s dark by the time they leave the vet’s. They used to make snow-angels outside the house on the night before Elsa’s birthday. That was the only night of the year Granny didn’t say crappy things about the angels. It was one of Elsa’s favorite traditions. She goes with Alf in Taxi. Not so much because she doesn’t want to go with Dad, but because Dad told her Alf was furious with himself for being in the garage with Taxi when the whole thing with Sam happened. Angry because he wasn’t there to protect Elsa.

Alf and Elsa don’t talk very much in Taxi, of course; this is what happens when you don’t have so much to say. And when Elsa at last says she has to do something at home on their way to the hospital, Alf doesn’t ask why. He just drives. He’s good in that way, Alf.

“Can you make snow-angels?” asks Elsa when Taxi stops outside the house.

“I’m bloody sixty-four years old,” grunts Alf.

“That’s not an answer.”

Alf turns off Taxi’s engine. “I may be sixty-four years old, but I wasn’t sixty-four when I was born! Course I can make bloody snow-angels!”

And then they make snow-angels. Ninety-nine of them. And they never talk much about it afterwards. Because certain kinds of friends can be friends without talking much.

The woman in jeans sees them from her balcony. She laughs. She’s getting good at that.

Dad is waiting for them at the hospital entrance when they get there. A doctor goes past who, for a moment, Elsa thinks she might recognize. And then she sees George, and she runs across the entire waiting room and throws herself into his arms. He is wearing his shorts over his leggings and he has a glass of ice-cold water for Mum in his hand.

“Thanks for running!” says Elsa, with her arms around him.

Dad looks at Elsa and you can see he’s jealous but trying not to show it. He’s good like that. George looks at her too, overwhelmed.