Frozen Music

by Marika Cobbold

  ‘None whatsoever, oh Dark-haired, Dark-minded Stranger,’ the reply would come.

  I sighed. Linus, deep in dark thoughts of his own, did not seem to notice. I sighed again, louder now. I wanted so badly to reach to him, to communicate with him, if only by me sighing and him asking what the hell was the matter? Or, miraculously, to ask me tenderly if all was well? But Linus said nothing and we reached the house in silence. He opened the gate and stood back to let me pass, then he followed. I had to explain. Before the anger took root in him I had to tell him that it wasn’t how he thought it was; not that crass, not that simple, but where to begin? There were so many thoughts behind the actions that trying to pull them out was like sticking your hand inside a bag of maggots and choosing the plumpest.

  I opened my mouth to speak. But it was too late. Gerald must have been looking out for us because he was already hurrying towards us on his stiff, thin legs, calling out to Linus.

  ‘Go and see your parents,’ he shouted and his old face was sagging more than ever, as if all the cares of the household had assembled like dust in the bags under his eyes and the pouches of his cheeks. ‘Hurry, hurry.’

  The colour drained from Linus’s cheeks. He dropped the basket of shopping and hurried towards the house.

  Gerald told me that Bertil had been taken ill again and that this time the attack had been worse, far worse, than the last. They were waiting for the ambulance and Dr Blomkvist was on his way.

  A cheery hello made us turn, two actors in a drama facing a stray extra from the comedy show on the next-door set.

  ‘Oh hello, Pernilla,’ Gerald said, his voice distracted.

  Stay away you scarlet-princess-type person, I wanted to cry. This is family business. But if it was, what business was it of mine? It was odd, but it was now more than ever, when things seemed to be going continuously wrong, that I wanted to belong with them all, be one of the family, not this English trouble-maker, this outsider.

  Gerald was filling Pernilla in on the latest news. ‘I’d better go and see what I can do,’ she said, marching off as if to war. I wished she were marching off to war, that is. A really bloody one, just for a day or so, to give me a chance. Then I thought of Bertil and I felt ashamed.

  ‘Don’t.’ Gerald’s voice, surprisingly firm, called Pernilla to a halt. ‘There’s enough people fussing about in there. But if you want to help you might like to go and find Ivar. He was looking for hedgehogs, but I haven’t seen him for a while.’

  I went with her. We found him on his hands and knees among the lilac bushes. ‘I saw one, a baby one, a tiny tiny one.’

  I tickled the grubby soles of his little feet and he squirmed and giggled. It struck me how comforting the sight and sound of a child was in times of crisis.

  ‘You really don’t think there’s anything I can do?’ Pernilla asked me. ‘It’s just that I’ve got a tennis court booked.’

  I forced myself to consider the question. Could she be of any help? Gerald had said not. Maybe she could be of comfort to Linus? ‘You go off to your tennis.’

  ‘But you’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do,’ Pernilla said as she strode off down the gravel path. As she rounded the corner she turned and called, ‘And tell Linus I was here, will you?’

  I raised my hand in a reassuring little wave before turning to Ivar, who had scrambled to his feet. ‘What say I shout you an ice-cream?’ I asked. Ivar wanted to know how one shouted an ice-cream and I was just about to explain when the ambulance screeched up the hill, coming to a halt outside the gate. It wasn’t using its siren, there was no need on the island. The sound of the engine and the tyres on the small street were enough to get people out of their houses and front gardens, and to send old Mrs Palme next door scurrying to her open window, her head full of pink curlers. I held Ivar’s hand as they brought the stretcher from the back of the ambulance.

  Linus emerged from the house, his mouth set in a grim line. ‘You wait here with me, darling,’ I told Ivar as he made to run towards his father. ‘That will be the best help, right now.’

  I sat on my bed in the cottage, fingering Astrid’s diary. There was no news, as yet, of Bertil. Audrey was happily ensconced in bed with a pile of English magazines I had ordered and which had finally arrived. Olivia and Linus were at the hospital with Bertil. Kerstin had taken a grey-faced and trembling Gerald to visit friends on a nearby island. Ivar was staying the night with the family in the yellow house two doors down the hill. It was nine o’clock and the blue of the sky was beginning to darken as the sun set behind the western point of the fort. A couple of hours earlier I’d called the hospital, but as I wasn’t family they would not tell me anything. What about Ulla? Where did she fit in? In fact, where was she? And then, like a genie whose lamp had been rubbed the wrong way, she stood in my doorway, her small triangular face set in an angry frown.

  ‘What are you reading?’

  ‘Oh nothing,’ I answered, truthfully as it happens. Ulla marched forward and before I knew it she had snatched the diary from my hand.

  ‘Have you heard any news of Bertil?’ I asked her, hoping to divert her attention while I decided what to do next.

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing. No one has seen fit to let me know what’s going on. Not that that should surprise me.’

  Before I had a chance to snatch it back she had opened the small book. She scanned the first page and looked at me. It was hard to read her expression: surprise, anger, sadness? ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘I told you the other day, remember. It was in the bookcase. I found it behind some of the other books when I was dusting. It’s Astrid’s, isn’t it?’

  Ulla nodded, silent. She looked around for somewhere to sit and sank down in the wicker chair by the window. ‘You haven’t read it?’ She shook her head. ‘No, of course you haven’t. You can’t. For someone who says they’ve had lessons your Swedish is appalling.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘But I wouldn’t have read it all even if I could, of course I wouldn’t. I had a fair idea that no one else had seen it. My first thought was to give it to Linus, but I got worried. I mean, should a son read his mother’s diary, especially a mother who’d killed herself? And Bertil and Olivia? Would Astrid have wanted them to see it? The same thing went for you. And yet, for all of you, Astrid’s death is unfinished business; you said she left no note, no letters and, until now, no diary. It’s hard not to know. Anyway, I’m sorry to have kept it to myself but I was in a quandary.’

  ‘I understand that.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘I just told you I did, didn’t I? I’ve noticed that you care about this family. I’m glad of that.’

  To my horror I started to cry, in front of Ulla of all people. Thank God she made no attempt at comforting me. Instead she said, ‘Are you in love with Linus?’

  I stopped crying and stared at her. Ulla nodded, a self-satisfied little smile on her thin lips. ‘I thought as much. I can’t say I’m surprised; he’s Astrid’s son, after all. But he wouldn’t go for you. Not just because of all that trouble over the opera house. I’m not saying you’re not pretty, but you’re too intense. Too serious. Always frowning and brooding. Men don’t like that kind of thing. Men like women who are easy, uncomplicated, cheerful. Then they can save their real energies for the important things in life.’ Her smile widened. ‘All those things mattered to me once, you know.’

  My feelings were all over the place; surprise at this sudden show of humanity, like seeing a glimpse of lace below a guardsman’s tunic. Surprise, too, that she had guessed. And horror when I realised she saw something of herself in me. Was that it? For weeks I had struggled to emulate Pernilla with the result that I had picked up bits of Ulla. Ulla!

  She patted the diary. ‘I’ll take this into my room.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s the right thing to do? I mean, she might not have wanted anyone to read it. It was hidden, after all.’

  ‘Not that well hidden by the look of things. I’m he
r closest surviving relative, apart from Linus of course and, as you said with some wisdom, it’s probably not appropriate for a son to read his mother’s diary.’

  She was right, rightish, at least, and that, I was beginning to see, was about the best you could hope for in life.

  After she had gone, I stayed on my bed, eyes closed. She would be in her own room now, crouched over poor Astrid’s diary. But at least she had loved her. I had noticed the way her pale-brown eyes softened at the mention of Astrid’s name the way they never softened, not even when looking at Ivar dressed in one of his most mixed-up outfits, or a baby hedgehog tick-tacking across the gravel path.

  I would like to have said that I was woken that night by my door quietly opening and soft footsteps on the floorboards. (At least then I wouldn’t be sitting as I was now, bolt upright in bed, my eyes wide and my heart thumping.) But Ulla came bursting through my door, an avenging gnome, shouting, ‘You want to know about Astrid? Well I’ll tell you. In fact, I’ll tell everyone.’

  I switched on the light. ‘Ulla. Are you all right?’

  ‘Of course I’m not all right.’ And to my horror she began to cry, her skinny shoulders heaving with unlovely sobs. I got out of bed and walked up to her, put my arm round her and she shrugged it off, of course. Instead she fished a large white handkerchief from the inside of her sleeve and trumpeted into it, before plonking herself down into the chair by the window. I perched on the bed, looking at her where she sat, just outside the circle of light.

  ‘We drove her to it,’ she said, her voice hoarse. ‘Bertil and Gerald and I. And that man, of course.’ She looked up at me. ‘He became a grand old man of music. He might still be alive for all I know. Whereas she, my little Astrid, lies in her grave nothing more than a bundle of bones.’ Again she clenched her fists. ‘If I had known… Bertil too. He showed no mercy. He felt no compassion. That man deserves everything that’s happened to him. And worse.’

  ‘You don’t really mean that?’ I said stupidly.

  Ulla returned to her old self for long enough to snap, ‘Then why would I say it?’ But then she added, so quietly that I had to strain to hear, ‘But I am to blame too. I just never realised how much.’ When she looked up again her face was contorted with pain. ‘I loved her and when she needed me I let her down. She died thinking I didn’t care. Me, Bertil, that man, all of us.’

  I put out my hand to take hers, but she pretended not to see. ‘What does it say, that diary? What is it that’s upset you so?’

  ‘What’s upset me? I’ll tell you what’s upset me. I’ll read it to you.’ And she did.

  Twenty-seven

  Astrid’s Story

  I wonder what is wrong with me. Maybe if I write things down, I’ll see it more clearly. Maybe I love people too much, so that I end up driving them away. I used to wonder if my parents really were dead, or if they had just grown tired of their small daughter and her entwining arms. I used to picture them sneaking off across the border to another country, on exaggerated tiptoes like pantomime burglars, suitcases in hand. I used to imagine them on some sunny tropical shore, under the palm trees, laughing, drinking wonderful things from coconut shells, swimming in the clear, warm sea; without me. I still do, sometimes.

  Bertil might as well be in another country for all the attention he pays me, although I can’t see him doing much laughing or drinking from coconut shells. I’m not alone among the women I know to complain that my husband doesn’t notice me. Of course he does, sometimes. Usually it’s with a frown, because I’m late, or early, or chatty, or silent, or disorganised, or fussing. But it’s at night I mind the most. Gunilla, plain, homely Gunilla, told me today over lunch how her husband would sometimes gaze upon her with a look of almost awe. She giggled when she told me that. She was embarrassed but delighted too, I could see from the flush on her cheeks and the way her eyes grew bright at the memory.

  ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he would say. ‘With your wide womanly hips and your soft breasts.’ Gunilla had giggled even more, but I believed her, I had seen her husband look at her and that was when she was dressed and out in public.

  I’m pleased for Gunilla, but sad for me. What’s wrong with me? I’m young. I’m beautiful, so everyone tells me, everyone but my husband. ‘You look very well tonight,’ he says sometimes as we go out. He doesn’t look at me when I undress. He doesn’t look away either. Soon I’ll be old and not worth looking at at all.

  My birthday. Bertil came home early from the office and Fru Sparre had been at it all day, organising a family dinner. Ulla came, of course, dear, funny Ulla, with her pepper-and-salt hair freshly permed on account of Pastor Bergström. I think Ulla harbours dreams of marriage to the pastor. Gerda returned from a field trip to South America just in time for the party, and Gerald and Marie came with little Kerstin to keep Linus company. I never thought it was possible to care so much for another human being as I care for that little boy. And he depends on me utterly and loves me. No one has ever depended on me before.

  Bertil was sweet. He had bought me a woven platinum bracelet. Linus gave me an ashtray, blue-and-green-coloured Kosta glass. Bertil swears he chose it all by himself. He’s only five, but he’s got an eye for beautiful things already. Later in bed, Bertil made love to me, but I couldn’t help feeling he saw me as a house with the entrance in an impractical place.

  Tonight I did a recital at Stenhammar Salon. I was one of four performers; a tenor, a baritone, a mezzo and me. The recital went well. When I had finished my last piece, Jonas Aminoff, the conductor, and the orchestra applauded me. They don’t always do that. Bertil told me he thought I had done well.

  ‘I want you to be proud of me,’ I said, putting my arms around his neck.

  ‘I am proud of you,’ he said, giving me a little push away. ‘Very proud, my dear.’

  Tomorrow we move out to the island for the summer months. At least, Linus and I do. Bertil and the others will come on Midsummer Eve as usual. I picked up Linus from kindergarten and we went to Paleys for hot chocolate and buns. He looked so serious where he sat, on his chair opposite me, so careful not to spill his drink or put crumbs on the floor. ‘Let’s have a conversation,’ he said.

  ‘What do you want to have a conversation about?’ I asked him.

  He thought for a moment. ‘Fire engines,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a conversation about fire engines.’

  Linus was beside himself with excitement at his pappa joining us at Villa Rosengård at last and he insisted on wearing his patent leather shoes with silver buckles. They all arrived together: Bertil, Gerald, Marie and little Kerstin. I wish Bertil would pay more attention to Linus. He barely spoke to the poor little boy and when he did it was only to tell him off for being over-excited. He never even noticed the new shoes.

  It rained most of the afternoon, thank goodness, so there was no inspection of the garden. I don’t know what he’ll make of my rose beds.

  Ulla arrived today, thin as a crow, her hair a dry frizz, as she scattered criticisms like shards of glass: Linus’s laugh was too loud. Why was Kerstin’s nose always running? Had Bertil not noticed the paint flaking on the west gable?

  Pastor Bergström has gone to be a missionary in Madagascar and her heart is broken. My poor cousin, so full of love no one seems to need. Compared with her I’m lucky, I’ve got Linus, after all, and Bertil. Sometimes he looks at me as if he really does care.

  Gerald went fishing and brought home five mackerel for supper. Bertil grilled them outdoors. They were delicious.

  I can’t believe that summer is over already. Linus has grown a full centimetre. He is as brown as a nut and full of energy. Bertil left for town last week. He seemed relieved to get back to work and what he would term ‘sensible people’. I know when we married some of my friends said I was wise marrying a man who was ten years older. ‘He’ll carry you through life on his hands,’ they said. ‘And what’s more, he won’t find it easy to run off with someone younger.’

  I don’t think Bertil i
s interested in other women, but then he isn’t terribly interested in me either. Linus and I seem mostly to irritate him. ‘You’re all emotion,’ he said to me the night before he left for town. I asked him what else there was. I hated the look he gave me as he answered in that cool, low voice he seems to reserve just for Linus and me, ‘Try common sense, a sense of proportion, intellect.’

  But he is not unkind, Bertil. When he saw the expression on my face he came over to me and put his hands on my shoulders. ‘I love you very much.’ He gave my bottom a little pat. ‘Now off you go and get ready for bed.’

  We made love. I kept my nightdress on, as usual. I always wait for him to undress me, but he never does.

  Tonight was the first of the Strauss evenings. The audience loved it and afterwards Jonas Aminoff came round to our dressing-room to congratulate us.

  I saw Jonas at the party for the cast and orchestra. We were both hot, so we wandered out on to one of the balconies and talked for ages. He really listens when I speak, as if he truly wants to hear what I have to say, not because he’s decided to indulge me.

  Bertil’s birthday. Where have the weeks gone? Gerda gave a dinner in his honour at the university. The family was there, of course. And the people from the office. Linus was allowed to come too. We had gone shopping together and he fell in love with a pair of bright-red corduroy trousers. He got himself ready for the party hours early and then, when we were ready to go, it all got too much for him and he was sick all over his new trousers. He was in such a state that we had to put him to bed. Linda next door came over to babysit. Later she told me that as soon as we’d left he had got out of bed and dashed into the hall. He had stayed there, pressed against the door, sobbing, and for most of the evening she couldn’t persuade him to move, until finally he’d gone to sleep in a little heap on the floor. I can’t get his little stricken face as we left without him out of my mind. I sometimes understand Bertil’s aloofness. It must be so comfortable loving someone just a little, but never so much that it hurts.