The English Heart

by Helena Halme

  In spite of her disapproval, Matti bought the rings ten months after their first Midsummer’s night together. It was a sunny and warm Sunday in late April. Kaisa’s mother was away at a conference, and Matti took Kaisa to Suomenlinna, a historic island off the coast of Helsinki. She wore a beige mac on the ferry but underneath had a sky-blue dress, which Matti had bought for the occasion. Kaisa had worn rollers in her hair all night and her neck still hurt from the awkward sleeping position. It was only when they arrived on the former military island, and Kaisa saw the old battlements with the guns pointing towards them, that she sensed this was a momentous occasion. For a while they walked along a path that ran around the island; Matti wanted to find the ideal spot – not too crowded by the groups of youngsters who, buoyed by the warm weather, had come out to drink their vodka in the open, yet beautiful enough for the pictures he wished to take. Matti said he wanted the images to look romantic. ‘Our three children will want to know where their parents got engaged, don’t you think?’ He took Kaisa’s arm in his. ‘You’re not cold my little bird, are you?’

  ‘Just a bit,’ she said. For some reason Kaisa couldn’t stop shivering.

  Finally, Matti found a place high up on a hill from where they could see the outline of South Harbour. The riggings of the few sailing boats moored there after winter were rocking back and forth, mirroring Kaisa’s own shaking, which had got worse. She tried to stop because she could see it annoyed her boyfriend, soon to be fiancé.

  ‘You can’t be cold – it’s boiling here!’ he said.

  Matti wanted Kaisa to take the mac off for the engagement; a coat would spoil the impression of the sunny occasion in the pictures. She tried to breath in and out slowly and took off her coat.

  ‘That’s a good girl,’ Matti said. ‘Sit there on the stone wall.’

  Kaisa never liked the pictures from that day – she looked awful, with a forced smile and goose pimples all along her bare arms in the short-sleeved dress.

  Now watching her boyfriend slurp his coffee, Kaisa remembered how, when her mother got back from her conference and saw the ring on Kaisa’s left hand, she had hit the roof. She threw crockery and threatened to call Matti’s mother.

  ‘But it was his mother who insisted we get engaged,’ Kaisa said, in tears.

  Her mother had stared at her daughter for a moment. She then hugged her. ‘It is fine as long as you are sure it is what you want.’

  Kaisa nodded and put her head on her mother’s shoulder.

  Kaisa and her mother never spoke about the incident again, but her mother and Matti didn’t really get on. It was, of course, easier after Kaisa’s mother moved to Stockholm and she lived alone in the flat of Matti’s aunt.

  ‘Ready?’ Matti now asked in that same manly tone that had so impressed Kaisa when she was younger. He was staring at her plate, which Kaisa had to admit looked unsightly: a brown piece of meat torn to pieces under a creamy sauce, next to a pile of fries covered in ketchup. She’d only managed to eat about quarter of the food.

  Back in the flat, when Matti tried to kiss Kaisa, she moved away from his embrace. Suddenly she couldn’t be close to him. There’d been garlic in the food, and his breath stank.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ Matti moved away from the hall and into the living room. The light had faded outside; without seeming to notice the darkness in the room Matti sat down on the sofa. He tapped the space next to him, ‘Come and tell your uncle all about it.’ In the shady living room his presence seemed haunting, even threatening.

  ‘Look, I need to go to bed,’ Kaisa said.

  Matti got up quickly, ‘That’s a good idea.’

  ‘No…’

  There was a silence. Kaisa knew he understood; he must do. Surely he didn’t think they’d be able to carry on like before? That Kaisa would just forget about Peter? The velvety voice rang in her ears. ‘Look, I need to sleep – alone. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

  Kaisa watched in silence, rooted to the spot in the middle off the narrow hall, as Matti slowly put his coat on, fastening each button of his Ulster carefully as if he was a child who’d just learned how to get dressed. He’d been wearing a flat cap too – it was nearing zero degrees outside. He picked up his leather gloves from inside the brown cap and held onto them. On the spur of the moment Kaisa took the ring off her left hand and handed it to him.

  At first Matti just stared at Kaisa’s outstretched arm and wouldn’t move to take the ring.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Kaisa pushed her hand out so that the ring touched his coat.

  ‘So this is it, then?’

  Kaisa was glad the hall was dark now. She lowered her head and tried to stop the tears. She felt him take the ring from her hand; he snatched it violently away from her as if he’d never wanted her to have it in the first place.

  ‘If you think anything will ever come out of you and that Englishman you must be dafter than I thought.’

  Kaisa lifted her head and said, ‘It’s not just that, you know it isn’t. I was too young when we met.’

  ‘Nonsense! Historically girls of fifteen…’

  ‘Don’t,’ Kaisa had to interrupt him. Why couldn’t he just go? She thought of something, ‘Can I have your key to this flat, please.’

  Matti dug a bunch of keys out of his pocket and began to unwind the silver key from the ring. It seemed to take an age. Finally, the thing came loose and he handed it to Kaisa. It felt hot in the palm of her hand.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Well, goodnight, then.’ He kissed her stiffly on the cheek and left.

  The next day Kaisa called and asked Matti to collect his things from the flat. There were a few of his LPs left, some shaving cream and deodorant she found in the bathroom, the jumper she’d knitted him the previous winter. Looking at the pile of things, Kaisa couldn’t remember how she’d felt before she met Peter. She couldn’t understand how she’d been able to be with another man. Had she ever truly loved Matti?

  Kaisa was making coffee when the phone rang.

  ‘Hello,’ the grave female voice said.

  When Kaisa didn’t reply, it went on, ‘Didn’t think you’d hear from me, did you?’

  Kaisa couldn’t get any words out, but her heart was racing. It was Matti’s mother.

  ‘So, what have you got to say for yourself?’

  ‘Sorry...?’

  ‘You’re a nasty young woman. First you seduce my son, then when it suits, you cast him out like a used dishcloth. But then I knew this from the beginning. Your mother’s divorced, after all.’

  Kaisa was speechless. She imagined the short, round woman, with piercing brown eyes and carefully coiffured hair sitting in her pink hall in the smart house in Munkkiniemi. The villa had high ceilings and the telephone was placed on a dark antique table with a pale-pink satin padded seat next to it. Pink was Matti’s mother’s favourite colour. She wore the shade nearly every day. Kaisa knew even the telephone was pink.

  ‘Well?’ she demanded.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do anything.’

  ‘Why not? You don’t think the English sailor is ever going to marry you, do you?’

  ‘Well...’ Kaisa opened her mouth to speak. She wanted to ask Matti’s mother what right she had to interfere in her son’s relationship. But she couldn’t get a word in.

  ‘You are a very silly girl. If you have any sense, you’ll place that expensive ring on your finger again and accept that life with my son is the best you can do with yours. And as far as the flat goes, let’s just say my sister doesn’t like whores living in her property.’

  Kaisa’s face grew hot.

  She stopped talking. Kaisa heard sniffles at the other end. She remembered how sorry she’d felt for Matti’s mother before. Matti was all she had; her husband had died many years ago. After the engagement she insisted Kaisa called her ‘Mother’. To Kaisa it didn’t seem right and she never called her that. Matti said it made his mother very happy to know she finally had the daughter she always longed for.
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br />   ‘I’m really sorry,’ Kaisa said, as calmly as she could. Slowly she took the receiver from her ear and disconnected the call by pressing the plastic buttons down. Her hands were shaking.

  When a few moments later the doorbell went, Kaisa took the pile of her ex-fiancé’s things and handed them to him over the doorstep.

  ‘Your mother called.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said and tried to step inside.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Kaisa kissed Matti on the cheek. ‘Goodbye.’ She closed the door.

  The coffee percolator was making gurgling noises. From the kitchenette window Kaisa watched her old life walk towards his moss-green Opel Kadett. He was holding the pile of things in front of him, like a robot. The sky looked dark; it was about to rain. The first drops fell when Matti’s car disappeared from view. Kaisa felt light-headed. The rain didn’t matter. The mother’s insults didn’t matter. Matti didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Peter had told Kaisa he was falling in love with her.

  Nine

  By March 1981 Kaisa had been exchanging letters with the handsome Englishman for five months. At times she doubted his sincerity. Showing affection seemed to come easily to him. Yet they hardly knew each other.

  The fights and recriminations with Matti and his mother had finally come to an end. Kaisa had returned the mink coat Matti’s mother had given her as a gift the winter before. The expensive ring her son had given her was no longer on Kaisa’s finger. At the end of every month when the rental bill dropped through the letterbox, Kaisa feared it would include a notice to leave. But so far, she’d been allowed to stay in the flat. Kaisa knew they had no right to evict her just because she’d broken the engagement, but Matti’s rich family might find a way. During the lonely months following the break-up Kaisa began to realise the affair with the English naval officer might soon also become a memory. Perhaps he’d just been a trigger, making her realise that the relationship with Matti wasn’t right. He, and the poet Eino Leino, whose statue she now made a point of visiting when she was in Helsinki centre, made Kaisa understand she was far too young to settle down. What she needed was to concentrate on her studies at the School of Economics and forget about men for a while. On a crackly phone line from Stockholm, Kaisa’s mother had reminded her she was still only twenty years old. ‘You’ll have many, many lovers yet,’ she said. Not usual motherly advice, but Kaisa knew she could be right.

  In the middle of the stormy spring Peter called a second time. Again it was late, two o’clock in the morning in Helsinki.

  ‘I’ve done it!’ he said.

  ‘Sorry?’ Once again he’d woken Kaisa from a deep sleep.

  ‘I’m coming to Helsinki; I picked up the tickets from the travel agent today.’

  This made Kaisa wake up. In only three weeks’ time, in early April, Peter would be in Helsinki for a whole week.

  After she put the phone down Kaisa panicked. She needed to go on a diet. She’d been much thinner when they’d met five months earlier. Kaisa must have put on at least three kilos since then. And what would she wear? A new wardrobe was out of the question; her funds were at an all time low. And she needed to clean the flat. Kaisa looked around and her eyes settled on the bed. What if...they didn’t get on? She’d never had a boyfriend who’d been the same age as her; Matti had been seven years older. What if he wasn’t very experienced? She couldn’t bear the embarrassment. What would she do with Peter for a whole seven days and nights if it all turned sour?

  At the Hanken canteen, Tuuli was much more pragmatic, ‘Throw him out if you don’t like him.’ She’d smiled and added, ‘But I know you will.’

  On the day Peter was due to arrive Kaisa was agonising over what to wear to the airport to meet him. In his letters Peter had told Kaisa he liked women who wore skirts and dresses. Kaisa lived in jeans and trousers. In her wardrobe she had one skirt and one dress – the summer one she’d worn to the embassy cocktail party. The skirt she’d made herself from a silky fabric with a print of a mountain scene at the hem. In the end Kaisa decided to wear the skirt with a pair of new high-heeled beige boots and a cardigan with small pearly buttons that her mother had given her for Christmas. Standing in front of the mirror two hours before she was due to leave, Kaisa was satisfied. She looked almost like a proper girly girl rather than the boyish, lanky thing who attended lectures wearing old jeans and an oversized jumper.

  On the way to the Helsinki Vantaa airport Kaisa felt dizzy. The shiny air-conditioned Finnair bus with tinted windows was nearly empty. A couple of foreign-looking men in expensive dark suits sat at the front. One of them smiled at her when she got on board. Kaisa looked down at the floor. The Helsinki sky outside was grey; it was a cold and rainy April. A few patches of dirty snow were still visible on the side of the road. When the bus pulled up to the terminal, Kaisa let the suited men get off first. She couldn’t wait to see Peter, but had no photo of him. Would she still recognise him after five months? And would she still like him – love him? And what if he was disappointed when he saw her?

  When she finally spotted Peter through the glass wall, Kaisa felt suddenly calm. She’d forgotten how handsome he was. The naval officer she’d met at the British Embassy cocktail party six months earlier was real. She hadn’t fooled herself into an affection for this man just to have the courage to end her relationship with another. Kaisa hadn’t fought with her ex-fiancé and his mother for nothing. Here he was, the man of her dreams, standing a few metres from her, impatiently changing position and staring at the empty baggage conveyor belt. He hadn’t seen Kaisa yet. She was grateful for a few moments to observe him without his intense eyes on her. At the same time she was desperate for that look of burning desire.

  Peter had had a gin and tonic on the flight, served by a pretty blonde Finnair stewardess. The alcohol steadied his nerves and he could have done with another, but decided against it. He wanted to be sober to meet Kaisa. He could hardly believe he was doing this – going back to see a girl he’d met only twice six months earlier. What if she wasn’t as pretty or nice as he remembered? He thought of the words of his captain on HMS Newcastle. After the visit to Helsinki, Peter had been teased mercilessly, and during an onboard cocktail party even the captain had asked Peter about the ‘Finnish girl’. Peter, though highly embarrassed, had been buoyed by the few drinks they’d all consumed into speaking frankly to the ‘Old Man’, as the captain was fondly called.

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about her.’ Peter had said.

  The Old Man smiled, creating lines in his high forehead. ‘Well then, Williams, it’s probably best you go see her. You’re only young once.’

  Peter didn’t see Kaisa until he walked past customs control and through the automatic doors.

  Kaisa was standing to one side of the arrivals lounge. Her blue eyes met his. Peter walked towards her, dropped his luggage and kissed Kaisa.

  She melted in his arms.

  Kaisa had planned a celebratory dinner at her flat, of prawn cocktail, followed by chicken fricassee. Peter ate heartily, praising Kaisa’s cooking, while she could hardly face a bite. Her appetite had again vanished. When Kaisa served coffee with the small Pepe cakes she’d bought in the bakery that morning Peter asked if they could move to the sofa.

  Instead of coffee they kissed, and kissed. ‘You haven’t had any cakes,’ Kaisa said emerging for breath.

  Peter gave her an intense look, ‘Can we go to bed?’

  They didn’t leave the small flat for the next forty-eight hours.

  ‘We have to go for a walk,’ Kaisa said on the third morning of their seven days together.

  With Peter’s arm around Kaisa, the two lovers walked on the shores of Lauttasaari Island. The sea was stormy. Spring was late that year and the chilly wind blew against Kaisa’s face. She didn’t feel the cold, but Peter had not brought the right clothes for the Baltic spring storms.

  They took the bus to the centre of Helsinki and bought Peter a waterproof coat from Stockmann’s. On the way home, it started snowi
ng and he pulled out his sunglasses. Everyone on the street stared. Kaisa laughed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s no sun,’ she said.

  ‘The snow flecks hurt my eyes.’

  Peter had brought music tapes with him. Finnish radio played just domestic hits or a few foreign tracks by Elvis or Frank Sinatra. Kaisa had worn down the Pretenders tape Peter gave her on his first visit. This time his tapes included Billy Joel’s Just the Way You Are and She’s Always a Woman and the Isley Brothers’ When Will There Be a Harvest for The World. They listened to the music and Peter sang along.

  The day before Peter was due to go back home was Kaisa’s 21st birthday and her mother made a visit from Stockholm. She brought a layered sponge, Kaisa’s favourite Swedish cake, Princess Tårta. It had lots of cream in the middle and was topped with green icing and a pink marzipan rose.

  While they were waiting for her, Peter said, ‘She’s come to see if I’m good enough for her daughter.’

  Kaisa looked at him and laughed. ‘No, it’s my birthday!’

  But when they sat around the small table and Kaisa saw her mother assessing Peter, she wondered if he was right, perhaps her mother had planned it?

  Kaisa’s mother didn’t speak English. Before they had the cake, she’d put out some bread, ham, cheese and slices of tomato and cucumber. She’d bought some white bread for Peter. Kaisa didn’t think he’d like the Finnish dark rye.

  ‘Please,’ Kaisa said and nodded towards Peter to start. Together with her mother, Kaisa watched as he took two slices of white bread, buttered them both and filled one side with ham and cucumber. Then he put the other on top and pressed hard on it with the palm of his hand. He took the butter knife and cut it in half diagonally. There was a silence.

  Peter looked up from his plate and smiled. ‘What?’

  ‘That,’ Kaisa said pointing at the thing he’d made with the bread.

  Peter laughed. ‘It’s a sandwich!’

  ‘Oh,’ Kaisa and her mother said at the same time.