Bertil and I went to the Mayor’s party. Jonas was there. I was wearing my black lace dress and wished I hadn’t as the rooms of the palace were far from warm. Bertil told me I should learn to be practical in my dress. Jonas went and asked our hostess for a shawl. It was such a kind thing to do. ‘But you’re freezing,’ he said, looking at me with such concern. I don’t know why, but it made me want to cry.
Last time we rehearsed with the full orchestra Jonas had talked to me about my future as a singer. He told me he’d love to talk some more if I thought it would be useful and I said that of course it would. Very helpful indeed. So last week he called and we decided to meet for lunch at Park Hotel. I can’t remember a happier afternoon. It was like stepping out from a black-and-white film right into the middle of a Technicolor one. As I looked around me at the other guests I found myself pitying them, just for not being me. He is a widower. I never knew that. He talked about his wife and of how he missed her, and I told him about Linus. Jonas said he sounded lovely and that he’d love to meet him some day.
The third of December and the festival of St Lucia. Linus and I brought Bertil coffee and Lucia buns in bed. I was Lucia of course, with my crown of electric lights in my hair and my white gown, and Linus was the sweetest little Star boy you ever saw. Bertil was thrilled and said he was a very lucky man.
There’s a Sibelius concert tonight. I’ve got tickets, but Bertil says he has to work late.
Jonas came out to look for me in the intermission. He told me he was doing Finlandia just for me.
Christmas was lovely. Then again, right now everything is lovely. Linus still believes that it really is Father Christmas coming with the sack of presents, not Ulla in a red-and-grey suit and a big grey beard. ‘The child is a moron,’ Bertil said, but he was smiling.
Every year I’m taken by surprise at how naked the flat looks once the decorations are down, like a face after a party, all make-up removed and the hair scraped back. This year, though, the sight doesn’t depress me. Nothing does. I’m floating.
Lately I’ve taken to worrying that I might die without ever having known what loving Jonas would be like.
‘With my body I Thee worship.’ It’s ironic that it’s only now that I know fully what that means. Ironic, sinful, because I know from being with a man who is not my husband.
I had told Bertil that I was staying the night with Ulla who wasn’t well. Linus didn’t like me leaving, but I promised him I’d be back before he woke in the morning and that I would take him to Paleys for hot chocolate.
He gave me the strangest look when I returned. A look that did not belong to a six-year-old. He was up already and I said I was sorry I was late. He just fixed those great big grey eyes on me and then, suddenly, he smiled. ‘You look very pretty today,’ he said. Later, we walked back from Paleys and it began to snow. Linus ran up and down the pavement trying to catch the snowflakes falling in the light of the street lamp, and when he got tired he came back to me and buried his face in the sleeve of my fur coat. How I longed for him and Jonas to meet. I know they’d adore each other, I just know it.
I’ve lived just for today to come. Jonas returned from the tour late last night and early this morning we met at Delsjön. The lake is completely frozen over so we could walk right across it. I love this winter landscape. The ice, blue almost, as you get further out, and the branches of the pine trees frosted with snow. The stillness. It was as if we were alone at the end of the world. We held hands and barely spoke. It seemed sacrilege to break that other-wordly silence. I felt so happy it scared me. Some people wear their happiness lightly, almost nonchalantly. I have noticed Jonas does. Others, like me, carry it gingerly, fearfully, as if it were a shell filled with precious liquid.
I had brought a flask of coffee and some sandwiches, and we ate them in his car. It was the first time in days that I had been able to eat and not feel as if I were swallowing sandpaper. When I drove off, leaving him standing in the snow, I felt I was tied to him by my very guts, and as I went further and further away my entrails unfurled and stretched until the pain became unbearable. When I got home I had to rush straight to the bathroom and rub concealer on my lips; they were so swollen and blotchy from kissing.
I can’t go on any longer. I will have to tell Bertil.
Today I had to return Linus to his father. Bertil has gone to court to claim that our son is in moral danger living with his mother and her lover. In the meantime, while they decide, these strangers, the fate of all of us, they have awarded Bertil temporary custody. I try not to think about what that might mean. I rang the bell of the place that was my home not long ago. When Bertil opened the door, Linus buried his face in my coat and clung on to my waist. Then, as if he understood that he had no choice, he just put his little hand into his father’s and went inside. I met Bertil’s eyes, they were cold and polite, and I implored him with mine to show some pity. The door closed and for a moment I stood there, this scream inside me that never reached the air. I wanted to bang on the door and beg Bertil’s forgiveness, implore him to take me back so that I could have my child. I closed my eyes, my fist raised, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t return to my dark prison, knowing that I would never again see the sunlight.
Jonas is wonderful. He understands how much I miss Linus and he’s never other than gentle and loving with me. ‘Astrid, my love, my life,’ he whispers to me as we make love. ‘Astrid, my love, my life.’ He says I’m everything he’s ever wanted and that now he needs nothing else.
My solicitor rang to tell me the judge has awarded Bertil sole custody of our child. I plummeted like a fallen angel to earth, and down some more to hell.
Jonas is changing towards me. I don’t know if I’ve done something wrong, but nothing is the same. He used to hurry home after a performance, just wanting to be with me, and now he often doesn’t come back until the early hours of the morning. When I ask him to be home with me he gets angry and shouts that he’s been neglecting his orchestra for too long. ‘Get your own life,’ he yelled last night. I thought I had, going with him. I wanted to ask him why he was being so unfair. It wasn’t long ago, after all, that he had told me how he wanted me all to himself and that he needed nothing else. But he had left already, slamming the door behind him. I think he’s feeling guilty and that is what makes him especially cruel.
So I sit alone in this small flat that reeks of other people’s cooking. My friends won’t have anything to do with me. Even Ulla won’t speak to me. Two days ago I went to Metz for afternoon tea and Fru Granberg, the manageress, looked at me as if she had never seen me before and said there were no tables available although I could clearly see three. Worst of all, this morning that ghastly weekly printed a story: Singer Wife of Star Architect Bertil Stendal Elopes with Orchestra Conductor. I was due to take Linus out for the day, but now, because of the article, Bertil has forbidden it. I pleaded with him, but he said he wasn’t having his son gaped at by the gossip-mongers of Gothenburg. I lost my control then. ‘You’re a monster,’ I screamed down the phone. ‘I’m his mother and he needs me.’
Bertil’s voice came back to me, quiet and dry. ‘Well, you should have thought about that earlier,’ he said.
‘I should have, I know, but I didn’t, I didn’t.’ I was sobbing and then I heard the click as the phone went dead.
My roses will be in their second flowering now. I close my eyes and remember their scent and the feel of the fresh sea breeze on my face. We’re in Spain now. We’ve travelled Europe for three months. I don’t seem to have had the energy to write my diary until now.
The first five weeks of our trip were part of the orchestra tour, the rest has been part of Jonas’s dream of seeing the world. I haven’t been doing any singing. Jonas says it wouldn’t look good if we performed together as people might accuse him of favouritism. I tried to say that I had been getting work long before I knew him, but he hasn’t got the patience to listen. To begin with, as we travelled, he was loving and considerate, almost like th
e old Jonas, but as the days and the tour progressed he grew more and more irritable and impatient with me. I tried to be cheerful and not let him see how desperately I miss my son, but nothing I do nowadays seems to please him. I think up things to tell him about my day that might amuse him, but everything comes out wrong and we usually end up having a row. How different it all seemed a year ago!
We returned home last night. I telephoned Bertil to ask when I could see Linus. He said he would think about it and ring me back. He told me that Linus seemed more settled and that he had stopped calling out for me in his sleep. I started screaming down the phone that he had never told me that my son had called for me in the night. Bertil asked, in the same cool quiet voice, if telling me would have made me give up Jonas and return home? I asked him if I could have Linus back if I gave Jonas up. Bertil told me that if I ever tried to take Linus back he would destroy me. ‘You have no fixed job, no money and you are morally bankrupt. Do you think any court would hand over a child to you?’
I put the phone down and I didn’t seem to be able to stop crying.
Maybe Jonas is right to be bored with me. I must try harder. I went and had my hair cut short, like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. I’ve put flowers on the table and tidied up, and done all the laundry and the ironing, so that when he comes home from rehearsals there will be nothing for him to get annoyed about. I’ll make a paella for dinner, just the way they did it in that little restaurant in Toledo that he liked so much. If I just try harder he’ll love me again. He has to love me. After all, I have nothing else.
Jonas came home too late to have supper. He had been drinking. He went to sleep on the sofa in the drawing-room and I threw the paella in the bin. I didn’t even bother to take it out of the dish. I found myself listening out for Bertil admonishing me for being such a wastrel and just then, I missed him. Most of all, of course, I long for my son. There has to be a way for us to be together!
I called Gerald and begged him to plead my case to Bertil so that I could see my son. Gerald was polite but cold. He told me he’d see what he could do. Then I took the tram across to Örgryte to Ulla’s. I hadn’t been to her flat in almost a year and it felt strange stepping into the entrance hall and walking up those wooden stairs to the first floor. I knew she would be in, Ulla was always in around six. She opened the door nearly the moment I rang the bell. Almost as if she had been waiting for me all this time, I thought, and I gave her a big smile.
She didn’t smile back. ‘It’s you,’ she said.
I asked if I could come in and she stood back, but so grudgingly that I had to squeeze past her to get through the door. She never asked me to sit down. I stood in her parlour and remembered how I had been the most welcome visitor in the world in that sparse little room.
‘So what do you want?’ she asked me, unsmiling and unyielding.
It seemed to me then that there were faces like hers everywhere, looking back at me with cold eyes, disapproving eyes, eyes without love. I took a step towards her and she took a step back. ‘It’s Linus,’ I said. ‘It’s breaking my heart not seeing him. I thought maybe you could talk to Bertil.’
‘You broke all our hearts when you ran off with that man. And now you want me to help you.’ She shook her head. ‘I will never understand you. Bertil is a good man. He loved you and he would have looked after you for the rest of your life.’ She looked at me and for a moment her eyes softened, or maybe I just imagined that they did because she went on to say, ‘When I introduced you to him and he took such an interest I knew you’d be all right. I did that for you and then you go and throw it all away, and for what? Eh?’
‘Love,’ I whispered.
‘Phaa! And what about your child?’
‘I know,’ I screamed. ‘That’s what I came to you for. I can’t stand it any more. Don’t you understand, it was never meant to happen like this!’
Ulla looked at me and said, ‘You must have things to do.’
Bertil rang the next evening. ‘There’s no point you getting the family to speak for you. I’m not trying to be difficult, but I have to think what is best for Linus. He seems to have settled down at last,’ he said.
‘You mean he’s forgotten me?’
There was a pause, then he said, ‘If you like.’
Being a sinner, I had no rights.
Last night Jonas took me out to dinner. To begin with it was wonderful, just like the old days and his smiles and tender looks, the hand he put over mine across the table, all acted like a balm to soothe the pain in my heart. He asked me what I was doing about Linus. I told him how desperate I was to have my child back and he seemed to understand at last. ‘Perhaps you should try a different solicitor,’ he said. Maybe everything will be all right, after all. If Jonas still loved me, maybe he’d marry me when my divorce came through. And if I were married to Jonas, possibly I could convince a judge that I was not an unfit mother. Slowly that dead place at the centre of my being began to stir and come alive again. I smiled and reached out for his hand, which had left mine some time ago. Then, idiot that I am, I spilled my glass of wine right across the table and over his new suit. He disappeared to the men’s room before I had a chance to say sorry and when he returned his jaw was set tight with disapproval. After that everything I said and did was wrong. Why did I smile at the waiters in that nervous way? Why did I eat so slowly? Why did I gulp down my wine with no thought of its taste and quality? By the time we left I was in tears, which made him even more cross. I lay awake that night, staring at his beautiful profile lit by the faint glow from the street light outside the window. I wondered how I could still love him, but I do.
Bertil called to tell me that I could take Linus out for the afternoon. Six months! That’s how long it’s been. I didn’t sleep at all last night, I was so terrified that he’d find some reason to call off the visit.
All morning I paced the flat, dreading the phone ringing and Bertil telling me I couldn’t see my son. All the way on the tram my heart was pounding and the ride seemed to last an eternity. At last I was there. Back outside my old home. I didn’t bother to wait for the lift, but ran up all five flights of stairs so that when I rang the doorbell… (how odd that still felt, ringing the bell to what had once been my home, standing there waiting to be let in).
At first I thought Linus didn’t recognise me, he just stood there, his face immobile. Then he sobbed, a hoarse, choked-back sob, and ran into my arms and burrowed his face into my coat and wouldn’t let me go. Finally, gently, I prised his strong little hands from around my waist. ‘Let’s go to Paleys for hot chocolate,’ I said. Once there, seated at our table by the window, looking out across the Avenue, I gave him his Christmas gift: a pair of skating boots, black like the big boys wear. He wanted me to take him to the skating pond and I said that I would, soon. He’s grown some more, he’s quite tall now for his age and Bertil had cut his hair very short, but it didn’t take long before it felt as if we’ve never been apart. We stayed as long as I dared. When, finally, I said it was time to go, he got up, as good as gold and pushed his chair in neatly. Once out on the street he put his hand in mine and said, ‘Are we going home now?’
‘Oh, my darling,’ I said, kneeling in front of him, doing up his little camel-hair coat. ‘Mummy can’t live with you at the moment, but soon we’ll be back together again, properly, and then I’ll never ever leave you again. I promise.’
He was so quiet on our walk back. As we stood by the front door he started to cry, clinging to me and refusing to let go. Bertil came out and pulled him away. I screamed at him to let me in, but he closed the door in my face. I could hear Linus crying for me. It went on for ever. I couldn’t bring myself to leave, so I stayed, pressed against the door, listening to him cry and crying with him, soundlessly, until my face ached. Eventually Linus stopped crying. It was late when I finally got to my feet and walked home. Jonas had left a note on the table saying that as I hadn’t been there when he got back he’d gone out for the evening with some friends.
‘Don’t wait up,’ the note said.
Ulla closed the diary. ‘That was the last entry,’ she said.
I lay in my bed, eyes closed, awake. Newspaper headlines floated past my eyes like so many sheep being counted on the way to sleep. The Decline of Morality! Back to Basics! A Return to Old-fashioned Values! Is there no Shame Any More? Black on white, the messages that spelt our desire for order and security and rules. And then there was Astrid’s story.
Twenty-eight
‘Imagine the sea under ice.’ Ulla pointed across the water. We were standing together on the island’s highest point.
‘The whole world seems frozen, the sea, the branches of the trees, the grass. Astrid came out here alone on Christmas Eve that year. They found her body under the ice two weeks later.’
She turned round, her mouth twisted in pain. ‘The moment she left me on her last visit I wanted to run after her and tell her I would do everything I could to help. I phoned Bertil and begged him to let her see more of the boy.’ Her voice sank to a whisper. ‘She never realised.’
‘But why did it take you so long? You loved her. Surely if you love someone you’ll forgive them anything.’ And I thought of Linus. Was there anything he could do that I wouldn’t be able to forgive if he asked me to?
‘You don’t understand,’ Ulla said. She wasn’t looking at me any more, but staring out across the sea again. ‘It was because I loved her that it took me so long to forgive her. And then there was Bertil. He had been my friend long before he knew Astrid. I introduced them. You could say I gave him to her. She took him and then, when she got bored, she threw him away. At least…’ she turned that pained face towards me again ‘… that’s how it seemed to me then, all those years ago. I didn’t understand what her marriage was like. Maybe I hadn’t wanted to understand. I had been so proud of my gift to her of a husband, a wealthy, steady, suitable husband who I thought would give her everything she’d ever need. I just didn’t want to know that he couldn’t give her the one thing she needed most.’
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