The English Heart

by Helena Halme

  Kaisa wondered how she could get out of helping to prepare the food. Matti never had to do anything in the kitchen, and since she’d promised to help him rake the leaves she could use that as an excuse. Besides, they were here just to clear up for winter, not to have a normal summer weekend in the country. But when they unpacked the car she noticed there was a cold lunch of mushroom pie and salad already prepared. Mother started immediately to set the table, spreading a white tablecloth. Kaisa sighed and began to help her.

  When the food was ready Matti’s mother shouted from the doorway to the kitchen, ‘Lunch is served!’ But there was no sign of Matti.

  ‘I’ll go and see where he is,’ Kaisa said, but Mother gripped her bare arm with a surprisingly strong pressure, ‘No, he should come when called!’ Her nails cut deep into Kaisa’s flesh.

  She couldn’t see her boyfriend from the windows; he must be at the back of the house raking leaves or clearing stuff from the space underneath the house, where things like lilos and collapsible garden chairs were kept. Or perhaps he’d gone to the separate sauna cottage, where Kaisa slept.

  ‘He might be getting the boat ready for winter,’ Kaisa said to Matti’s mother in what she hoped was a soothing tone.

  By the sauna there was a long jetty to the lake and a rowing boat pulled up on the shore. Kaisa thought how Matti liked to take her to the opposite shore to pick blueberries in the late summer and mushrooms in the autumn. After they’d filled the baskets he would spread a blanket on a sunny cliff and make love to Kaisa. She shuddered when she thought about the times she’d been certain someone was watching from the other shore. ‘All they need is a good pair of binoculars,’ she’d tell Matti when he started to undress her. ‘Nah, there’s no one here,’ he’d reply and carry on.

  ‘Where is that boy!’ Mother now said. Her brown eyes had become dark and her voice shrill. With a large serving spoon in her hand, she struggled out into the garden and shouted her son’s name towards the deserted lake.

  From the lounge window Kaisa could see a shape slowly approach the house. Matti was still wearing the brown sweater she’d knitted him. Kaisa smiled; as usual Matti was completely unperturbed by his mother’s outburst.

  Every now and then during lunch, Matti’s mother muttered something under her breath. ‘I cook and clean but no one appreciates how much I do,’ followed by, ‘When I was a little girl my mother never did anything – we had servants then, but oh no, not anymore. Not today.’

  Kaisa was glad Mother was making a fuss; that way she wouldn’t notice she wasn’t eating anything. She just didn’t seem to need food anymore.

  Eventually Matti said, very quietly, ‘We’re not in tsarist Russia now.’

  That Matti’s mother had never even been to Russia didn’t matter to her. The tales her parents had told her were enough; the grand palaces, the acres of woodland the family had owned, the fine china and silver – ‘All of it, left to the Bolsheviks.’ But to Kaisa Matti’s mother appeared rich still. She wore a mink coat in winter; she lived in a large house in Munkkiniemi, the good part of Helsinki; a huge chandelier adorned the lounge. Kaisa never asked how her fiancé’s maternal grandparents had come to Finland, or where the money had come from. Matti tried to tell her about it, but she wasn’t interested. As a Finn, Kaisa didn’t want to think about the fact that Matti was half-Russian – she was just grateful that, when her own father asked, she could say her boyfriend’s father had been Finnish.

  When the light faded in the lounge Matti took Kaisa’s hand and said, ‘I’ll take you to the sauna cottage.’ She looked into his eyes; they betrayed nothing. This was the usual routine; he’d walk her the few hundred metres to the sauna and, unless Kaisa had her period, they’d make love. Sometimes he’d fall asleep next to her afterwards and not go back to his bedroom until four or five in the morning. On those mornings Kaisa would dread going into the house for breakfast. Yet his mother never mentioned her son’s nocturnal escapades. It was as if sex didn’t exist for her, or for her son.

  ‘Goodnight, dear,’ Matti’s mother now said and hugged her.

  ‘I’m really tired,’ Kaisa said to Matti when he closed the door to the cabin behind him.

  He didn’t reply and they walked in silence down the path towards the lake. The sauna cottage was a much more recent addition to the summer place. It was again built on concrete stilts, and had steps up to a small veranda. It was a traditional log cabin, stained dark green. Kaisa remembered watching her boyfriend do the painting on a late summer’s day. She was sixteen and they’d been together for just over two months. It was only her second visit to the summer place. Later, Matti told her, his mother had bought the sauna cottage especially so that she’d have somewhere to stay overnight. It didn’t occur to Mother that Kaisa would share her boyfriend’s bed in the main house. At the time it had seemed endearing, even flattering, this old-fashioned way of doing things. Now it seemed excessive to build a whole new cottage just so that your unmarried son didn’t spend nights with his girlfriend under the same roof as yourself.

  The sauna cottage had a separate shower room next to it, and a dressing room with a single sofa bed. There was no heating apart from the sauna. That night they hadn’t turned it on so the room felt cold when Kaisa opened the door. Quickly she pulled out the trunk from underneath the sofa, where the sheets for her bed were kept. The duvet cover was also flower-patterned and pink. ‘I’m really, really tired,’ she said again, turning to look at Matti. He lifted his eyes to hers. In the small space his face was so close to Kaisa that she could make out the slight wrinkles around his serious mouth. He took a deep breath in and his nostrils flared. He looked angry and left her without saying a word. Kaisa locked the door from the inside and lay awake for a long time, listening to the pine trees sway in the brisk autumn wind.

  When they drove home on Monday through the desolate landscape Matti’s mother, too, was quiet. Kaisa asked to be dropped off first. Her boyfriend’s dark eyes looked at her through the rear-view mirror.

  ‘We’re both working early tomorrow,’ Kaisa said, as nonchalantly as she could. All weekend she’d wanted to be alone with her thoughts. Matti turned his gaze on the road and nodded. Kaisa’s stomach hurt when she thought how she’d lied to him again – did he remember that she’d finished in the bank the previous week?

  The rest of the day Kaisa spent curled up on the sofa, listening to the Pretenders tape left by Peter. She played it over and over, until she knew the lyrics by heart. Kaisa didn’t want to think about her boyfriend, the lies she’d told him, about his mother, or about the future. She just wanted to relive the wonderful few hours she’d spent with Peter. Kaisa longed for his touch, for his lips on hers. She wondered if he was thinking about her as he carried out whatever duties he had on that ship. She wished she’d gone to see him off; instead Kaisa had been forced to spend the Sunday at the stupid summer cottage with her stupid fiancé and his stupid mother.

  Seven

  Peter was sitting in the wardroom with his pen poised over a blank piece of airmail paper. He was alone for now, a state of affairs that would be temporary, he knew. So he had to get on with it it – and sharpish. He didn’t want an audience for what he wanted to say. For this letter he’d decided to use his fountain pen, which he’d bought for the official correspondence that the Navy required. It was what was expected of an officer, one of his tutors at Dartmouth Naval College had told the whole class. Most guys had later sniggered at the comment, but Peter had taken it seriously. He liked the way the ink flowed from the tip of the feathered pen; it needed control to make the letters on the page legible. He liked to think it took some skill to write a beautiful letter. Now, however, he couldn’t begin. As he sat there staring at the blank piece of paper, he realised he wasn’t even sure he should write the letter.

  ‘A love letter, is it?’ Lieutenant Collins said, and plonked himself on the bunk opposite Peter.

  Peter looked at the older officer’s grinning face and smiled back, ‘No, I jus
t thought I should write to my mother and father.’ He screwed the top back onto the pen and closed the writing pad. He needed to be alone to compose the words he wanted to say to the Finnish girl. The fact was, he did need to write to his parents too, and more importantly reply to Jilly. It was over a week since he’d had her latest letter in which she’d asked when he was next going to be home in Wiltshire. Even thought she hadn’t expressly said it, she’d made it clear she was not seeing anyone else. She was saving herself for Peter. Peter bit his lower lip as he watched Collins pick up an old Sunday Times off the table and begin to read it. The situation with Jilly was turning into a bloody disaster. His mother had told him in her letter that, ‘As a lovely surprise, Jilly popped over for coffee with me last week. She’s such a nice girl.’ It’d been a mistake to ask Jilly to the Dartmouth Ball, Peter realised that now. But there’d been no one else to ask, and he had honestly thought she understood that it was just a one off. He – in fact both of them – were far too young to tie themselves down. And surely she knew how he felt about the small town he’d spent all his life in? He’d told her over and over that the last thing he wanted to do was to settle down in Wiltshire.

  Peter and Jilly had gone to the same local grammar school; they’d known each other since forever, and had been among the first in their year to start going out as a couple in the sixth form. But it had never been serious. Peter thought back to the last time with Jilly before he left Wiltshire to join the Navy nearly three years ago now. To celebrate his leaving, they’d been to the pub with the group of friends from school. As usual, at closing time, Peter offered to drive Jilly home in his Mini. He’d parked a few streets away from her house, in a quiet cul-de-sac. Jilly had cried, it was true, but to Peter it was clear that it’d been the last time. Afterwards Peter had promised to write. Now after the one evening (and a night, he had to concede), at Dartmouth, she was keener than ever.

  Peter opened the pad of airmail paper again and began writing.

  ‘Dear Jilly,

  It was very kind of you to accompany me to the Dartmouth Ball. We both had a great time and now I’d like you to fuck off and leave me alone please.’

  Reading back the words, Peter swore under his breath, tore the piece of paper off the pad, formed it into a ball and put it into his pocket.

  * * *

  When Kaisa entered the Hanken building at the start of her second year at university, she felt almost as nervous as she had on the first day she walked through the famous glass doors. The vast lecture theatre on the second floor was barely full, with no friendly faces. The high ceiling made the hushed voices of the students echo through the hall. The first lecture was on employment law, and the professor spoke quietly and ran through his notes at breakneck speed. Kaisa found it hard to concentrate on the finer points of workers’ rights and employers’ duties. All she could think about was her handsome Englishman.

  Kaisa had agreed to meet her friend in the Hanken canteen for coffee during the first break.

  ‘Back here again,’ Tuuli said and bit a large mouthful out of her doughnut.

  They both loved the Berlin buns, freshly baked doughnuts filled with strawberry jam and covered with pink icing. The canteen got a delivery only once a week and they’d usually run out by lunchtime.

  Kaisa felt like an old timer, watching the first-year students queue up at the counter, umming and ahhing over whether to pick up a bun or not. ‘They don’t know how rare these are,’ she said to Tuuli, who, with her mouthful of doughnut, nodded.

  A group of boys walked into the canteen. Kaisa and Tuuli exchanged glances. Two of the guys had hit on them during their first week at Hanken a year ago. They had said they were in their final year, but Tuuli had later found out that the boys had started studying at Hanken in the early seventies, which meant they’d already been there for six years. They all had rich parents, so they didn’t need to finish their studies and find work, Kaisa supposed. The leader of the gang was a tall boy, with light-brown long hair.

  In their first week at Hanken, and knowing little of the whispers surrounding these boys, Tuuli and Kaisa had plucked up the courage to go and sit at a round plastic table in the Students’ Union bar. Quickly they’d been joined by two of the four boys. Both girls had been surprised and quite flattered. The brown-haired boy, who seemed the loudest in the group, had introduced himself as Tom and had asked whether Kaisa ever went to the student disco.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Kaisa had said and glanced over to her friend, who was accepting a cigarette from the blonde guy, Ricky, her head bent down to where his hand was cupped around a lit matchstick. Kaisa had felt the glances from the other tables and from people standing about, smoking and chatting. As usual at Hanken, everyone seemed to know one another, so when they, complete strangers, first years at that, had talked to these two boys, it had created a stir. Kaisa and Tuuli had sat and chatted to Tom and Ricky for a while, smoking the cigarettes they offered, until it seemed time to leave. Kaisa had tried to avoid Tom’s eyes. The hunger in his face had scared and, as she later came to realise, fascinated her. When the girls left, Tom had given Kaisa a wolfish look. She’d felt his eyes on her backside when they’d walked out into the locker hall.

  Later Tuuli found out that most of the boys in the group were titled, with a ‘von’ in front of their names, and that they were often on the lookout for ‘fresh meat’. Kaisa and Tuuli had started referring to the group as ‘the rich boys’. After that first time, when Kaisa refused his offer of meeting up at the university disco, Tom had only given her furtive glances when they passed in the corridor, or when the rich boys sat at their regular round table in the Students’ Union. Tuuli had been out with Ricky once, but nothing had come out of that either.

  The rich boys now made their way noisily past Kaisa and Tuuli in the middle of the canteen, not even making eye contact. They spoke to almost everyone except the two friends. Only when Ricky passed their table, did he give the slightest of nods in Tuuli’s direction, and when Tom passed by, he studiously ignored Kaisa. She widened her eyes at Tuuli when the group finally settled on a table on the other side of the room, but her friend’s face was expressionless.

  ‘So, have you heard from the Englishman?’ Tuuli sounded so calm that Kaisa didn’t imagine the incident with Ricky had affected her at all. She must be over him by now, Kaisa thought.

  She shook her head, ‘I don’t think they’re back in England yet.’

  ‘What about your fiancé – you’re still wearing the ring, I see?’ Tuuli raised her eyebrows.

  The twisted gold band had been on Kaisa’s finger for four years now. Even though she’d thought about taking it off, she hadn’t.

  ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Are you still, you know…’

  Kaisa lowered her eyes, but said nothing. She fiddled with a napkin between her fingers.

  Tuuli gave Kaisa a lecture on how young she was and that she really shouldn’t be engaged to be married at the age of twenty. It was a lecture Kaisa had heard many times before. Now Tuuli finished with, ‘If it’s just sex you want, I’m sure someone else would oblige.’ She leant her head towards the rich boys.

  They started giggling. After a short while, again serious, Tuuli said, ‘Honestly, you have to have a bit of experience – you can’t go from being with one guy since you were sixteen straight onto another serious relationship!’

  On the following Friday, as usual, Matti used his key to enter Kaisa’s apartment after his evening shift at the Customs Office in the South Harbour. They hadn’t spoken at all during the week, and she was surprised to see him. But he came in as if nothing had happened, took off his coat as usual and walked into the lounge. He was full of stories of the havoc the English destroyer had caused.

  ‘You told me already,’ Kaisa said.

  ‘I was there the morning they arrived. I saw the Finnish girls throw themselves at the foreign sailors. And they were well received, I can tell you!’

  Kaisa was quiet. Sh
e knew what her boyfriend was doing. But it also made her think how a whole day had been wasted while Peter had been trying to decode her telephone number. How he’d been on the ship while she’d been at home, not knowing he was trying to get in touch with her. Had he been tempted by those girls? Of course, Kaisa knew that when foreign ships arrived at the harbour women went to the quayside, although Peter hadn’t mentioned it.

  Kaisa busied herself with spooning coffee into the percolator so that she didn’t have to look at Matti. He sat himself down on the sofa his mother had given Kaisa when she moved into his auntie’s flat. It was an old-fashioned rococo-style thing covered in green satin with carved wooden legs that perched on the floor like some large bird’s claws. When Kaisa had first seen the thing she’d recoiled. She preferred her mother’s modern Asko furniture. Of course, Kaisa didn’t say how she felt about the foul monstrosity because her fiancé’s mother had been kind to give her the three-piece suite.