Frozen Music

by Marika Cobbold

  ‘… and you go on, pushing down, one after the other and nothing comes out, nothing happens and then suddenly…’ Gerald paused momentarily as I entered before continuing, ‘… out it flies, a big dollop of rotting food. It could be meat or, like this morning, spinach and that Italian cheese, you know the one I mean, Ricco… Ricotta, that’s the one.’

  ‘Gerald is telling me about the joys of flossing.’ Linus rolled his eyes at me, then he laughed – that laugh. It reached me and it sounded good to me. I stared at him and waited for the sound to infuriate me. It didn’t. Instead, the sound of Linus’s high-pitched giggle of a laugh filled me with happiness and I found myself joining in, hesitantly at first, then hilariously. Gerald looked at us and shook his head, so abruptly we both fell silent. But I couldn’t take my eyes off Linus.

  ‘Esther?’ Linus said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Why are you reading a book on herring fishing in Swedish?’

  ‘I’m not,’ I said. Then I looked down at the book. Maybe I was. ‘Whoops,’ I said, closing it. ‘Wrong one.’ I sidled out of the door and once I was back in the hall I slammed the book down on the table under the mirror, hard, to punish it for making me look silly. Then I hurried back to the cottage and my room, and lay down on the bed. I started to cry and once I had started it seemed I just couldn’t stop. So that’s how I spent the rest of that afternoon, lying on my bed, crying.

  When it was time for dinner I took one look at my swollen face in the mirror before rushing outside, down the hill, along the harbour, round to the fort, on to the cliffs. It had stopped raining, but the sky and sea were a dull grey and the wind came from the north. I was alone by the bathing steps. With a quick look round to make sure there was no one approaching I tore off my clothes and shoved them into a crevice. I hurried down the steps and into the sea, gasping as the cold water hit my midriff. Taking a deep breath I dived under the water and swam a couple of lengths. Then I swam back to the steps and clambered back up on the rocks. Damn! No towel.

  It’s no fun dressing when you’re sopping wet. I ran all the way back to the house, my clothes clinging to my body, water dripping from my hair on to my face.

  I dashed straight into the kitchen, where they were all about to sit down, and said, ‘Sorry I’m late but I just had to go for a swim. I’ll get some dry things on. Won’t be a tick.’ Seven pairs of eyes looked up at me, seven mouths gaped in silence. I dashed off again and as I left the house I heard Ulla’s voice, loud, querulous, saying something in Swedish, something unpleasant I shouldn’t wonder. Still, I didn’t mind. I had achieved what I set out to do; now my red eyes would be down to a swim in the cold, salty sea and not an afternoon of crying.

  I perched at the foot of Audrey’s bed, a mug of coffee in my hand. ‘I think that was going too far,’ she said. Olivia had already told her about my evening swim and now she had wormed the reason from me. In fact, I had been grateful to have someone to confide in – that is, until I remembered who it was.

  ‘I suppose you wish you had listened to your mother now,’ Audrey said. ‘I told you nothing good would come of you pursuing that campaign of yours.’

  ‘You mean because it made an adversary of Linus?’

  Audrey looked at me with infinite patience. ‘Yes, darling.’

  ‘But you can’t live your life like that. Either something is right or it isn’t. My feelings for Linus should have nothing to do with it.’

  ‘I thought that therapist, what’s his name…?’

  ‘Peel.’

  ‘That’s the one, I thought he was meant to have cured you of all of that.’

  I knew it was a mistake to try to talk to my mother. Her mind was a pink cave, which the light of reason never reached.

  That night I couldn’t sleep for love. My skin was itching, feeling as if it were crawling with insects, ladybirds most probably, cute red ladybirds that itched like fleas from hell. I tossed and turned. I conjured up images to torture myself further, images of Linus with Pernilla, of him smiling down at her, taking her in his arms, pressing her down on to his bed, caressing her… ‘No!’ I cried. ‘Enough!’ I rolled on to my stomach and buried my face in the pillow. It smelt of shampoo, my cheap and cheerful unscented pharmacy-brand shampoo. I tried to drive away the images of Linus and Pernilla, concentrating instead on the interesting fact that you could always smell unscented shampoo. It didn’t work. In my mind Pernilla tossed her head from side to side, her hair fanning across Linus’s pillow. I started to sob. I don’t know how long I lay there with my face pressed against my own sensibly scented pillowcase, but when eventually I got out of bed to fetch a drink of water the sun, which never rested for long during the short Swedish summer, was already spreading a soft pink light across the horizon.

  I went outside and stood for a while on the front step of the cottage, drawing in the morning air. I felt the dew-drenched grass beneath my bare feet as I wandered across the lawn towards the house. The back door was never locked and I pushed it open and continued inside. My heart was pounding as I walked up the stairs, steadying myself with one hand against the wooden banister. The early morning light reaching through the uncurtained windows lit my way. Linus’s room was the third on the left. I made my way towards it. The room next to Linus’s was Ivar’s. His door was ajar, as was his father’s, and the faint light from their windows seeped out and met halfway on the landing.

  Love, I thought as I stood, my hand on the door handle, was a more desperate emotion than I had ever guessed. I pushed open the door and slipped inside. I had never been into Linus’s room, but I knew that it had been his mother’s many years ago. Here, as in the rest of the house, the curtains were left open, the light from outside once again showing me the way. Linus slept in a wide, white-painted wooden bed. He had thrown off the duvet and was lying naked on his stomach. I followed the outline of his back and shoulders, the triangle down to his waist and buttocks. I gazed at his long legs, his left one drawn up at an angle, the other straight. I had to touch him. I could die tomorrow without ever having known the touch of his skin on mine. I wanted my lips to touch his. I wanted to kiss the crease where his neck joined with his shoulder and run my finger down the outline of his spine. I wanted him to turn over so that I could bury my face in his stomach. I stepped forward and put out my hand, leaning down over his sleeping profile, catching his warm breath with my own.

  Linus startled and turned, shooting out of bed. ‘What’s happened? What’s the matter?’ His eyes were barely open and he seemed not to have recognised me at first. As he focused, he grabbed the duvet with one hand and wrapped it round his waist. ‘Esther? What on earth is it? Is it Bertil?’

  ‘No.’ I took a step backwards. ‘No, everything is fine. I just thought I’d… I’d… I wondered if you had a stamp.’

  Twenty-three

  I woke exhausted, my back and shoulders aching and my mouth dry. It was raining once again. I sat up and as my head moved my brain hit against the hard rock of my forehead. My memory, until now a grey mass, splintered into a thousand shards, each one piercing my consciousness more painfully than the next, as I remembered. I had risen from my bed in the early hours of that morning and wandered across the garden to the house in my oversized T-shirt and nothing else. I had walked upstairs to the room where Linus lay sleeping. I had gone up to the bed where he lay, naked, and he had woken and found me there. I had asked him for a stamp. ‘Oh God,’ I groaned and buried my head in the pillow, pulling it up around my ears. ‘Oh God,’ I groaned again.

  Linus had been very kind. He had put his arm round my shoulders and given me a little hug. He had told me not to worry. That it had been a traumatic few days for all of us. He had grabbed a bathrobe from a hook on the door and pulled it on, letting the duvet drop as the robe fell down around his feet. He had insisted on walking me back to the cottage. I had allowed myself to be led into my room and up to the bed where he had left me, sitting on the edge, my feet dangling just above the floor. Five minutes later he had
returned, carrying a large steaming mug. ‘Warm milk, dark rum and sugar,’ he had explained with a little smile. ‘It’ll help you sleep.’

  He had been right. I had slept. I hadn’t slept so late since I arrived on the island. Already it was ten o’clock.

  I had just finished dressing when there was a knock on my door. It was Linus. He was smiling. I looked at him and realised that it was possible to love someone and want to hit them hard in the mouth with a vase of roses, both at the same time.

  ‘I came to see how you were?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ I forced myself to smile back. I wished, fleetingly, that I had blackened my teeth as I used to when I was a child. It was a surefire way of putting people off what they were thinking. As it was, Linus just looked at me, still smiling, and shook his head.

  ‘Why are you being so kind to me? After what I did.’ The words tumbled out of my mouth before I had a chance to stop them. I didn’t dare to hold his gaze for fear of my naked love showing, so I studied a fly crawling up the wall just above his left shoulder.

  ‘Why on earth shouldn’t I be? You were sleepwalking. It can happen to anyone.’

  That wasn’t what I was thinking of, but I grasped the excuse gratefully. ‘Sleepwalking.’ I nodded. ‘Of course. I mean, I do. I’m known for it. “That Esther sure is one hell of a sleepwalker,” the folks at home say.’ I paused. ‘But that’s not actually what I meant. I was thinking of the opera house.’

  Linus sighed. ‘I told you before; it was business. I did mine. You did yours. You don’t buckle, you remain constant: that’s important.’ He nodded towards the white-painted chair by the dressing-table. ‘May I sit down?’

  I nodded back, attempting a relaxed little smile, but inside I was begging him to tell me that it wasn’t true, that there was no way he could hate me. I love you Linus. Love you love you love you. Don’t hate me back because I’ve never loved before and the pain might kill me. I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Oh well.’ What a bright, relaxed little thing I was.

  ‘You’re sure you’re all right?’ he said. ‘This sleepwalking. You see I know you had that, that…’

  ‘Nervous breakdown,’ I filled in. It was essential for lovers to be honest with one another and right now I was pretending that was what we were: lovers. Then again, one mustn’t forget that even among lovers there was a place for deception. So I sighed and rolled my eyes. ‘It’s an awful nuisance, though, this sleepwalking. I’m really sorry to have given you such a fright.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ Linus said, giving me another warm smile before getting up. ‘I just wanted to make sure you were OK.’ As I watched him walk towards the door I wondered if some kind of fit might stop him from leaving. Nothing too dramatic, just some twitching, a quick collapse on to the floor, no the bed, and some gentle foaming at the mouth. Before I had time to reflect further he was gone.

  So that was the power of love, I thought, as I listened to his footsteps disappear down the gravel path: to turn you into the kind of person you’d cross the street to avoid.

  Bertil was up and about again, and he and Olivia were already busy organising the evening’s event. As I walked in through the back door she bustled past me with a vase of raindrenched roses, Astrid’s roses. The scent trailed behind her like a memory. ‘We’ll just have to be inside.’ She peered out of the kitchen window at the sky. There was no sign of any brightening among the solid grey. Olivia had explained to me a couple of days before, when she first suggested the party, that on the island it was considered bad form to issue invitations far in advance. ‘People come here to relax. They don’t want to be tied down to schedules and checking their diaries every other minute. We all get enough of that in town. No, here spontaneity is the name of the game.’

  I felt a tickle of unease. ‘I hate not knowing ahead.’

  ‘Why?’ Olivia asked me on her way out of the room.

  I shrugged. ‘I just do. Anyway, I thought Swedes lived organised, planned lives.’

  ‘Not in July,’ Olivia said from the doorway.

  I followed her out on to the veranda. Gerald was asleep in the rocking chair, and he stirred and mumbled, his mouth making little chewing movements, as Olivia passed, placing the vase of roses on the coffee table in front of him. Next she bustled off again, calling for Linus. He appeared from upstairs, carrying a half-finished Lego model of a racing car.

  ‘Is Pernilla able to come?’ Olivia wanted to know. I crossed my fingers behind my back and shut my eyes.

  ‘Of course. She wouldn’t miss it for the world,’ I heard Linus answer. I should have known better than to trust to superstition rather than good old hands-on measures like locking her in her bedroom or taking her eyes out with hot pokers.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Olivia asked me.

  I started guiltily. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, not waiting for an answer, ‘it looks as if there’ll be about thirty of us tonight.’ At this, there was a roll of thunder, waking Gerald, and the rain started to fall once more from a blackening sky. How much better it would have sounded, I thought, against the mentioning of Pernilla’s name.

  ‘Look.’ Ivar came rushing in from upstairs, pointing out of the window at a sudden burst of forked lightning.

  ‘Your Aunt Ulla’s being recharged,’ Gerald said.

  ‘Is she like Frankenstein’s monster?’ Ivar asked, turning to look, round-eyed, at Gerald.

  ‘Not as pretty,’ Gerald answered. Olivia looked as if she was about to tick him off when Kerstin appeared with a tray with coffee and buns, and those little squares of sugar-sprinkled chocolate biscuits that I had grown particularly fond of. They did a lot of eating at Villa Rosengård: cake and buns and biscuits and little toasted sandwiches with buttered chanterelles and rye cracker bread with strong cheese. In the evening, after supper there were bowlfuls of sweets and plates of green, seedless grapes. At least Audrey couldn’t complain about the food. I myself was growing quite plump with it all, my stomach straining against my jeans button.

  There was another crash of lightning and Ivar squealed excitedly, running from one of the large windows to the other. Puddles were forming on the gravel path and in the biggest, sparrows were having a bath. By the time Bertil and, moments later, Ulla had joined us, the entire path was flooded.

  ‘You should cancel,’ Ulla said.

  ‘Certainly not, I’m British.’ Olivia winked at me.

  ‘When it suits you,’ Ulla muttered. ‘I suppose that next you’ll both be wearing berets and serving garlic with everything. As it happens, the educated French abhor garlic in all its forms.’

  Bertil, grey-faced under his tan and slightly stooping, as if he was expecting something to collapse on his head at any second, smiled at her and shook his head. ‘Whatever are you talking about?’

  They said he had made a full recovery, but looking at him, I wondered. Ulla, though, looked perkier than I had seen her for a long time as she bustled across to her favourite chair by the tiled stove with her sewing basket. ‘I thought I’d start on the vent pull.’ She nodded towards the brass handle up high on the side of the stove. ‘I’ve found a lovely little pattern, forget-me-nots.’

  Bertil and Olivia exchanged glances. ‘What’s the point, you demented woman,’ Gerald scoffed. ‘Unless you’re planning it as a gift for the new owners.’

  ‘We might decide to stay, after all,’ Olivia began. ‘These last couple of weeks have shown me the importance of having family and friends close as one gets older.’

  Ulla looked up with a little smile, a smug and, for her, curiously gentle smile. ‘It’s as I’ve always said, there’s nothing more important than family. You know my view on this move. I think it’s madness even to contemplate it. You’d regret it, mark my words.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Bertil interrupted. ‘And it’s not like you to fuss so, Olivia. A bit of tummy trouble, that’s all. You heard what the doc said; I simply ate something that didn’t agree with me.’

  ‘You ate a bit of Aunt Ulla.’ Ivar gi
ggled. ‘She doesn’t agree with you.’ At this he threw himself back on the rug and laughed uproariously.

  Ulla glared, but Bertil ignored him. He lowered himself down into the wicker armchair by the window and said, ‘If you really want to know, I’m more determined than ever to make the move. While there’s still time.’ He picked out his pipe from his pocket and lit it, seemingly oblivious of Olivia’s worried frown.

  Ulla looked at them both. Then, all of a sudden she leapt to her feet like some malevolent jack-in-the-box. ‘Is that it? Is no one going to discipline that boy? Is that how he’s going to be encouraged to behave?’ And she stormed from the room.

  ‘Biscuit anyone?’ Olivia passed the plate round.

  I looked at my watch; it was gone eleven already. ‘What would you like me to do?’ I asked Olivia. ‘About the party, I mean?’ I took the plate and helping myself to a chocolate square, held it out for Ivar who was sitting cross-legged on the floor next to my chair.

  Olivia said that everything was under control. ‘Fru Sparre will be here in a minute.’ She said that in the kind of trusting but awestruck way that is normally reserved for announcements of the coming of the Messiah. I soon saw why. Gertrude Sparre sailed into Villa Rosengård just as the physiotherapist was leaving after a session with Audrey. The two women, who obviously knew each other, stopped and spoke in Swedish, nodding now and then towards my mother’s room. After that it took Fru Sparre only moments to assume command of all she surveyed. Audrey, who was about to defy the physiotherapist’s instructions and sneak back to bed, was made to hobble out on to the veranda and a hard chair by the window. Gerald was sent off with the newspapers and Kerstin was put to work making meatballs. Bertil was told he looked as if he could do with a rest.