Frozen Music

by Marika Cobbold

  Ivar was wearing blue jeans and a fluffy pink sweater. Apparently he still had problems with his ‘gender identity’, as his mother put it.

  ‘You like pink, darling, do you?’ Linus made his voice casual.

  ‘Not really,’ Ivar admitted, putting his hand in his father’s. ‘But it’s a good colour for little girls.’ He sounded matter-of-fact. Linus thought about pointing out to his son that he was a little boy, but Lotten had expressly told him not to broach the subject. ‘It will just confuse him further. It might even make him feel a failure,’ she had said. (Lotten had started a course in child therapy and was, by all accounts, doing very well.) So Linus said nothing, but just picked up the child’s overnight bag, and hand in hand they walked upstairs to the flat. It was Maundy Thursday and Linus was taking a week off. He and Ivar were going to the island. He turned to his son and grinned. ‘We’re going to have a lot of fun.’

  ‘Are we going right now?’

  ‘Almost,’ Linus said. ‘I’m just waiting for a phone call, a very very important phone call.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Well, Pappa has designed an incredibly beautiful building for a man in England. The man in England is looking at several different plans made by all these different architects from all over the world, then he’ll decide which one he likes best and build it. I’m waiting to see if he’s had the wonderfully good taste to pick mine.’

  Ivar was looking at his smiling father with a grown-up look of indulgence on his small winter-pale face. He liked it when his father smiled like that. Lately, both his parents had taken to bending down low and looking him in the eyes until he felt embarrassed, and saying, ‘Mamma and Pappa just want you to be happy.’ They didn’t seem to understand that Ivar wanted them to be happy. They weren’t very often these days. His mamma cried for no reason at all sometimes, or no reason that she would tell Ivar about, and his pappa seemed to be far away even when he was sitting right next to Ivar and there was a sad look in his eyes even when he laughed. But not now. Ivar’s pappa was smiling all the way to the eyes and that made Ivar feel really happy too. ‘Is it a really, really beautiful house?’

  ‘The most beautiful house in the world.’

  ‘How beautiful is that?’

  ‘As beautiful as… as a sunset over the sea.’

  ‘As beautiful as the Peter Pan grotto at the funfair?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘As beautiful as the girl in Holiday on Ice?’

  Linus had to think for a moment. ‘There were lots of girls in Holiday on Ice.’

  Ivar began jumping up and down. ‘You know, the really beautiful one with the blue spangly dress and the hat with fur on.’

  ‘Oh, just as beautiful,’ Linus said, not remembering the girl at all.

  ‘As beautiful as ice-cream?’ Ivar giggled.

  Linus put his head to one side and scratched his head. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘Not that beautiful.’ Then he laughed and Ivar did too.

  Suddenly Linus looked serious. ‘You know, Ivar, I really want this to happen. I’ve dreamt that building, sung it, slept it and eaten it, and I can’t believe that it won’t be the one they pick. I know I’ve had problems getting my designs through before… sorry, Ivar, what was that?’

  ‘I said, why did you eat your design?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘You said you did.’

  ‘I meant it figuratively. And before you ask, figuratively means roughly that I didn’t mean what I said, exactly the way I said it.’

  ‘So why did you say it?’

  ‘Never mind.’ He picked Ivar up in his arms and gave him a noisy kiss on the baby-soft cheek. ‘The point is, Ivar my boy, that your father’s design is, if I may say so myself, heaven. It’s an opera house, which is a place where people come to listen to other people singing stories. There’s a foyer, that’s the place where you spend the time before the performance and in the interval, which is built in a semicircle skirting the lake, and the outer wall is all in glass so that you feel as if you’re actually walking on the lake itself. That part of the opera house faces west so that in the summer you’ll catch the last of the evening sun. There’ll be a bridge, a covered bridge, connecting the foyer with the bar and restaurant on a small island in the middle of the lake. When there is no music, when you stand and wait for it all to start, you’ll hear water, water from everywhere, but never too loudly. And just as music flows the rooms of my opera house will flow one into the other, over the bridge, through the foyer and finally into the auditorium where the most wonderful music ever written by man is performed.’ Linus stopped suddenly, remembering that he was speaking to a six-year-old child.

  But Ivar’s large blue eyes were fixed on his father’s face and he looked as if he was listening intently. ‘Are you an architect?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, Ivar, that’s exactly what I am.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ the child said. ‘But the other day, when they talked on TV about professions, Mamma said you were a professional bastard.’

  ‘Ah, well, I expect Mamma was joking.’

  Ivar shook his blond head. ‘No, she wasn’t.’

  ‘Anyway, as I said, then you have the auditorium. In that room you have to have all special shapes and materials to help the music to sound its best. And masses and masses of seats for people to sit comfortably, and balconies…’ The phone rang. Linus made himself walk up to it slowly. ‘Hello.’

  It was Lotten. She wanted Linus to stop off at Domus and buy Ivar a pair of wellington boots. Linus felt his heartbeat slow down and steady as he listened and agreed.

  Ivar was drawing a picture of an opera house. He added a sun to his picture. The phone rang again.

  ‘You did it!’ It was Sten, his colleague from the firm. ‘We’ve just had a fax through with the result of the competition. You won. The commission for the Stuart Lloyd opera house is yours. They want to talk to you as soon as possible. I know you’re on your way to the island, but…’

  ‘Sure. Sure, I’ll call them right now. Give me the number again, would you?’ He jotted down the numbers on the back of a brown envelope he’d picked up from the floor. ‘Will that get me through to Stuart Lloyd direct?’

  ‘I said, can I have another drink?’ Ivar sounded impatient.

  ‘Drink?’ Linus had replaced the receiver. ‘Drink, yes of course. What would you like? Champagne? Lingonberry?’

  ‘O’Boy chocolate milk, please.’

  ‘O’Boy. Right you are.’ His heart was thumping hard against his chest and the excitement he had felt when first hearing the news kept growing, slowly filling his body from the pit of his stomach up towards his chest, until it almost squeezed the breath from him. Trying to concentrate on Ivar, he brought the tin of O’Boy out from the cupboard. Next he needed milk. He opened the fridge and stared into it, in the idiotic hope that a carton of milk would miraculously materialise. It did not. ‘Sorry, little man, we seem to be out of milk.’

  ‘Mummy said you would be,’ Ivar stated. ‘She said, “Eat all your breakfast because your father is bound to have nothing but beer in his fridge.” I can’t drink beer,’ he added.

  Linus closed the fridge. ‘I tell you what,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we just get on our way. We can stop off at the kiosk at Ytterby and buy you an ice-cream. One call, I’ll just make one call and then we’ll be off, promise. You see, I won. My design won the competition.’

  ‘Will Grandpa be there when we arrive?’ Ivar asked from the back of the car. Linus nodded in the rear-view mirror. ‘And Grandma Olivia?’

  ‘Yes, she’ll be there too.’ He went over in his mind the conversation he had just had with his client, Stuart Lloyd, who had confirmed the fax and congratulated him on the design. As soon as the Easter break was over he wanted Linus to fly over to London for a meeting. ‘We intend you to have a free hand, though, believe me. We’ll expect consultation, but you’ll have the final word at each stage.’ If Stuart Lloyd had been a fairy godmother waving a m
agic wand, instead of a middle-aged man with a beard, he could not have brought things to a happier conclusion, Linus thought. God, it was frightening getting everything you’d ever wanted.

  ‘I like Grandma Olivia. I don’t think she’s a smug old bat at all,’ Ivar said.

  ‘Of course she isn’t a smug old bat. Whoever put that idea…’ Here Linus broke off, knowing suddenly all too well whose words Ivar was repeating.

  ‘Mummy says men are weak.’ Ivar’s voice fluted towards him. ‘But I saw this muscle-man on TV and he could lift a whole car. It wasn’t a very big car, but I still think he had to be quite strong.’

  ‘Absolutely, Ivar.’ There was silence.

  Then Ivar spoke again: ‘Mummy says that women are strong like silk thread but…’

  ‘Look at all those balloons,’ Linus said, pointing to the balloon seller by the gates to the Municipal Gardens. ‘Have you ever seen so many balloons?’

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘Oh. Where?’

  ‘At Torvald’s party. There were bunny balloons and doggy balloons and kitty balloons… I wouldn’t have called them that myself, I would have said rabbit balloons and dog balloons and cat balloons but the balloon man…’

  I have been given a chance few men are given, Linus thought. The chance to fulfil my dream. Bloody hell!

  ‘Of course balloons are fat, but they’re not at all strong,’ Ivar told him. ‘They go bang.’ He tried the word again, raising his voice to a high-pitched squeak. ‘Bang! As soon as you touch them, almost.’

  ‘They sure do,’ Linus said, changing into the fast lane as they joined the motorway.

  Ivar sucked on a sweet he had found in his jeans pocket. ‘I sometimes wonder why sweets take so little time to eat when Brussels sprouts take ages. Ages and ages and ages and ages.’

  ‘Because you like sweets and you don’t like Brussels sprouts.’

  ‘But I do like Brussels sprouts.’

  ‘Oh.’ Linus slowed down and changed lanes again, keeping right and filtering off on to the smaller road leading to the island.

  ‘Could Grandpa lift a car?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Has he tried?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge.’

  ‘So how does he know he can’t?’

  ‘Some things you just know, Ivar. You know a fire burns without putting your hand in it. When you wake up in winter and see snow you know it’s cold before you’ve even gone outside.’

  ‘But that’s because I went outside in the snow last year. And Torvald’s little sister put her finger in a candle flame and she screamed for ages so it must have hurt.’

  ‘Ivar.’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘Would you understand if I told you that I’m so pleased right now that I don’t want to talk for a little while?’

  ‘Daddy.’ Ivar’s voice was careful, as if tiptoeing towards him. ‘Daddy?’

  ‘Yes, Ivar.’

  ‘Who else will be there?’

  ‘On the island? Oh, everyone.’

  ‘Are they nice, everyone?’

  ‘Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember meeting Uncle Gerald and Cousin Kerstin and Aunt Ulla?’

  Ivar thought for a moment. Then he shook his head vigorously. ‘Not very much.’

  ‘Well, you’ll see them all in a little while. Then you’ll remember.’

  Thirteen

  ‘It strikes me’, Audrey said, ‘that you have to be young in order fully to appreciate the concept of ageing gracefully. I have to admit that the charm of the idea is completely lost on me these days.’ My mother was reclining against a stack of lacy pillows, holding a silver-backed looking-glass up to her face, pouting into it, frowning, smiling, raising her chin and lowering it again. With a sigh, she put it down on the chest of drawers next to her bed and reached for a sugar-dusted apple doughnut. Across the soft blue counterpane shiny golden toffee wrappers lay scattered like melted stars and on the floor stood a silver ice bucket, a bottle of champagne periscoping over the rim. Audrey glanced at her watch. ‘Time for a drink. You’ll have one, won’t you darling?’ My mother was the only one left in my acquaintance who still expected me to make decisions. I rewarded her with a nod followed by a shake of the head. ‘Better not, I’m driving.’

  ‘But you sold the car when you moved. You told me you couldn’t afford to keep it.’

  Found out. ‘All right, then, it clashes with my medication.’

  ‘Oh, Esther, you’re on something at last! I am pleased. I know you’ve always despised that kind of thing, but I was sure it would help to stop you being so serious.’ She smiled contentedly and bit into the doughnut, her free hand beneath her chin to stop the sugar from falling on to the sheets. ‘Mother knows best.’ She leant over the side of the bed and pulled the dripping bottle out of the bucket. ‘You know, life is so much easier since they invented champagne stoppers that really work. It keeps fresh for days with one of these little gadgets.’ She waved what looked like a silver spinning top at me and poured herself a glass. ‘I really don’t like all this trouble at Covent Garden,’ she said suddenly. ‘Things are not well with the arts, I tell you.’

  ‘What do you care? You never go out.’

  ‘I know I don’t, but I’d like other people to have the benefit of these things. Anyway, I watch the televised performances. I have my books.’ She gesticulated towards the newly installed bookcase, its shelves filled already but for a small space, about four hardbacks wide, on the bottom left. ‘But music is the key, I’m sure of it. Even the coarsest thug would respond to Mozart, the hardest heart could not fail to soften at the sound of Beethoven’s “Spring” Sonata. Oh, Esther, why did you give up the flute?’

  I sat back in the blue-and-white checked armchair at the foot of my mother’s bed and closed my eyes. I saw myself being attacked by a burly mugger holding a knife to my throat as I pull out my flute and begin to play. The shock might kill him, of course, but I wouldn’t like to bank on it. But I was too tired to argue the point.

  ‘So how are you anyway?’ Audrey asked.

  I thought about it for a moment. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Considering that I’m out of work and have been forced to attend a psychiatric clinic while Angus has decided that the best way of standing by his woman is buggering off to Chicago for six months, things are going remarkably well.’

  My mother looked pleased to hear it. ‘And have you heard from your father lately?’ she asked.

  I nodded. ‘He wants me to come up for a visit. He says he’s strong enough to overcome the siren song of family ties by now. Insanity obviously runs in the family.’

  ‘Not on my side, Esther. Now if you don’t mind I’ll just finish my letter from Olivia.’ Audrey picked up the handwritten pages that lay folded on her lap and resumed her reading. ‘Apparently they’re all on the island. Bertil is taking to retirement just as badly as she thought he would, refusing to do all the things he’d always planned to do once he had the time.’ She glanced up at me. ‘That’s so typical. It’s easier for women, on the whole. Life never allows us to be as single-minded as men, so we have more resources to fall back on.’ She read on. ‘Oh and Linus’s divorce has come through, which is very sad, but a great relief all the same. Still, Lotten spends a lot of the time ringing up to speak to Ivar and ending up screeching down the phone at Olivia blaming her and Bertil for it all.’ My mother’s voice and the sun shining straight in through the tall windows made me drowsy and I felt my eyes close. I opened them again as Audrey shrieked, ‘Darling, how exciting. Linus has got a huge commission. Very prestigious, very hush-hush.’

  I tried to look alert and interested. I wanted to be interested, damn it. ‘What kind of commission?’

  Audrey turned to the next page in the letter. ‘Olivia doesn’t say.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Audrey read on. ‘That Ulla person is there, as usual. Why Olivia puts up with it all I’ll never know.’ She continued, ‘Bertil’s cousin Kerstin is training for the Wasa Run, jogging round
the island every morning before breakfast and…’

  ‘What’s the Wasa Run?’ I interrupted, eager to prove to myself that I hadn’t lost all interest in life. But it didn’t really work because while Audrey explained – it had something to do with skis – my mind drifted along its now familiar routes: you get up in the morning, all ready to get on, work, do well, be good, do the right thing. Then a man’s sneeze, as he drives along the M40, reverberates through the atmosphere and, before you know it, the walls of your existence come tumbling down. So what is the point? you ask yourself.

  ‘Gerald is showing no signs of improvement.’ Audrey went on mumbling aloud as she read her letter. I gave her a brief kiss on her cheek, which was plump and wrinkled like a prune that had been left overnight to soak, and left.

  ‘I don’t know if my mother stating so categorically that there’s no insanity on her side of the family actually means that there is some on my father’s side,’ I said to the therapist.

  ‘I told you, you are not insane.’

  ‘So what am I doing here? Not an original question, I know, but pertinent nevertheless.’

  ‘What do you think you’re doing here?’

  There we go again. I sighed. ‘Have you no answers? Not even an itsy-bitsy tiny one. I mean, I came here for answers.’

  Anthony Peel told me that in that case I had come to the wrong place. ‘You’ll only find true answers within yourself.’

  I tried to be patient. ‘That’s the whole point, though; I don’t want my answers, they don’t work. I want someone else’s. And while we’re about it I wouldn’t mind some absolutes back. You know the kind: “Just because Mummy threw a Pyrex bowl at Daddy and Daddy called Mummy a demented cow, it doesn’t mean we’re not the best of friends and love each other very much.” Or: “Virtue is its own reward.” Or even: “God loves you.”’