I was glad to hear it. Or at least I knew that I would have been glad to hear it if only I could feel something, anything.
Olivia crossed over with us; she had decided to stay the night, before returning to town the next morning. It was hard to believe that only two months had passed since I’d left. The quayside was empty but for an old couple, waiting. The sea was slate-grey and calm, and the few boats left in the water rocked gently in the wake of the ferry.
At Villa Rosengård none of the blooms remained on Astrid’s roses. ‘I thought I’d put you in Ivar’s room,’ Olivia said as she unlocked the front door. ‘You’ll be cosier there than on your own in the cottage.’
That night, like every night since George had shot his brains out, Linus joined me in bed. As always, when I felt his warm skin against mine, a flash of excitement shot down my belly. But before anything could happen the feeling died, as it did every night, and we were left with a melancholy tenderness, lying in each other’s arms, united by our common terrors. That night he cried. He hadn’t cried since it happened. I suppose it was the relief of being home that did it, that released all those tears. I held him close, whispering to him as if he were a child, telling him that he was handsome and brave and clever and kind. I told him I loved him. Eventually he fell asleep, still sobbing.
Most days we rose early, except for the first morning when we slept until gone eleven. Linus did a lot of work in the garden and I took my time shopping, preparing lunch. We ate together. On one day it was so mild we could sit outside on the deck. I noticed that the lawn was turning yellow. In the afternoon we took a walk round the island. Some days we walked from the east side to the west and sometimes from the west side round to the east. Some days we met other walkers, stood aside or passed with a polite nod, on others there was only us. Linus seemed happier on these walks. He even talked a little. But he never spoke of George and Dora or the opera house. To anyone observing we might have seemed like a prematurely middle-aged couple, happy enough in each other’s company, but curiously alone. It happens, I believe, when people have been together a long time and the spark has gone and they’ve forgotten exactly what it was they had so loved in each other once upon a time. But of course it wasn’t like that with us. There were times when the love between us was tangible. You could just put your hand in the air and feel it burn. But we stayed at a distance, kept apart by the contempt we feared we’d see in the other’s eyes if we looked closely.
This particular day we were making our way from the west around to the east, and had got about halfway, when he stopped me, putting his hands on my shoulders and turning me round to face him.
‘Esther, what’s wrong?’ Before I had a chance to answer, he continued, ‘I don’t mean just with you, but with us?’
I looked away out across the slate-grey water, then into his eyes that were the colour of the sea in winter. ‘I don’t know.’ I shook my head. Then I smiled a weary smile. ‘It’s not exactly how I had pictured it, my first grand love affair.’
He smiled back, his eyes serious as he studied my face. ‘No, I don’t expect it is.’
‘I had sort of imagined that if you loved someone, really loved them the way I love you, then you’d want to be with them. But I don’t think we can be together.’
He lifted his hand to my cheek, touching it with the tips of his fingers. ‘No, no, I don’t think we can.’
I left the island the next morning on the seven o’clock ferry.
Epilogue
It’s two years to the day since I left Linus asleep in the blue house. In those two years I’ve done a lot of travelling. It took some persuading, and some gentle emotional blackmail, to get the paper to allow me to write the features that I now wished to write. Once the readers began to respond, Chloe of course wanted to know why it had taken me such an age to find my ‘niche’. My niche was foreign reporting of the in-depth kind. I was a roving Jonah, trawling the globe for the inhumane, the worst, the most sad. Where I found it the misery was such that I could do no further harm, but, and it was a big but, there was always the possibility that I might do some good. It was what kept me going. And there were times when I felt a small bud of satisfaction form inside me. Times when, because of what I had seen and written about, money was raised that made a difference somewhere where people were suffering. Occasions when pressure was put on politicians and some broken victim of tortured imprisonment was allowed to remain in our country.
I learnt, too, that it wasn’t through what was perfect that greatness was shown, but rather that it was the inconstancies, the randomness of life, which most brought our humanity to the fore.
I had just returned to England from Brazil. This time I’d been away almost three months. I was pleased with the work I’d done on the children of the sewers and the priest who tried to save them.
I still wrote, occasionally, for the women’s pages; I needed to prove to myself that I wasn’t a prig. And anyway, I had never quite lost my belief in the uplifting power of the right lipstick.
Linus was often on my mind; mostly when I woke in the morning, or when I went to bed at night. Sometimes I thought of him when I was saddened by what I saw and then again when I was happy. But as the weeks and months passed by I thought of him less and I had trouble remembering his face, but not his laugh. The startling imperfection that had made the whole so endearing to me echoed around the rooms of my mind when I least expected it.
The last I heard he had taken up again with Pernilla.
I never spoke of him. The final time I did I had said it all. Curiously, maybe, it was in Audrey of all people that I had confided two years before, when I returned home.
‘But darling, I don’t understand.’ Audrey had patted the side of her bed for me to sit down. ‘You say you love him and he loves you. So what are you doing back here without him?’
‘I suppose that sometimes love isn’t enough.’
‘You mean you don’t love each other enough?’
I had looked at her, shaking my head. ‘No. I mean that sometimes loving someone, however much, isn’t enough. I never would have thought it. It’s almost funny, isn’t it,’ I added, not feeling in the least like laughing. ‘All those years dying to know what love was, what it felt like. It never occurred to me that I might find it only to have to leave it behind.’
‘But Esther, why do you have to? I don’t understand.’
I had sighed and lain back across the bed, my head resting somewhere along Audrey’s legs. ‘We’re never alone. George walks between us and he tucks himself up next to us in bed at night. I look at Linus and I see George’s blood on his face. God only knows what he sees when he looks at me. It’s as if while we’re together we can never be free of it. We love each other, but we can’t find peace in each other’s presence. I am the salt in his wounds and he is the salt in mine. You can’t live like that.’
‘No,’ she had said. ‘I do see that.’ I felt her hand on my forehead. It felt cool. I closed my eyes. ‘I’m here, if that’s any help. I always am.’
I remember opening my eyes and looking up at her. ‘You are, aren’t you. I don’t think I’ve appreciated that enough.’
‘You do now, that’s sufficient. It takes time for children to appreciate their parents.’
I sat up. ‘Maybe we could go shopping together sometimes. Or go to see a show, or just out to dinner.’
There was a pause, then Audrey said, ‘Now don’t let’s get carried away. You know I don’t go out.’
I looked at her and smiled. ‘At last you’re being utterly consistent. It’s what I always wanted.’
My mother smiled back. ‘Good, darling. I’m pleased you’re pleased. Now, if you don’t mind.’ She grabbed the television remote. ‘I’m going to watch my programme.’
That had been that, everything the same and yet so utterly different. Does that make sense? I don’t know.
But it made sense for him to be back with her, with Pernilla. The reflection he saw in her eyes was easie
r to live with than the one he’d see in mine.
He had written a couple of times. A few months after we parted it was to tell me of his decision to continue the work on the opera house, now officially named the People’s Opera.
The most persuasive argument for going through with it [he wrote] came from Stuart Lloyd. Dora had stated that she never wanted to return to the cottage after what had happened. George had killed himself, the dreadful damage was done. We had wanted to build the opera house because we believed it was a right and good thing to do. Whom would we help but our own consciences if we scrapped the project? What earthly good would it do? Much better, then, to build and to make the building the best and most beautiful in our power. Anything else would be a meaningless gesture.
So much for the official argument [he had gone on to say], the truth of the mind, not the heart. But really I went ahead with the project because I wanted more than anything to build that house. I went ahead because the Opera would be the fulfilment of all my dreams and would make my life worthwhile. I’m being as honest with you as I can although I know it might drive us even further apart.
I wrote back saying ‘Good Luck!’ But that was a long time ago. And now the building of the opera house was complete. Tonight was the opening, with a performance of Madam Butterfly in front of a huge invited audience. As Stuart Lloyd had promised, it really was the people’s opera. The usual dignitaries had been invited, of course, but mostly the guests were what politicians loved to call Ordinary People. There were even buses laid on, from all over the country, that’s how ordinary those people were.
I had refused to cover the occasion for the paper, but knew I could use my pass to get in. I needed to be there. I wanted to see Linus’s building, of course, but more than that it seemed important, too, that we were there, if not together, at least in the same place, that place, at the conclusion.
And I wished him well. But I told myself that the love had melted into an easy stream of affection capable of no great waves. It was a comfort.
I had seen photographs of the opera house as the work progressed. The papers had been full of reports lately, for good and for bad. The good being the mentions of the many awards already given: For beauty and innovation of design: The People’s Opera, Kent.
For bringing together design and location in an outstanding manner: The People’s Opera, Kent.
For acoustics: The People’s Opera, Kent.
Then there was the headline which read, THE OPERA HOUSE WITH BLOOD ON ITS STEPS.
I arrived early and, as it was a fine evening, parked my car at the lower car park and walked up towards the lake. I was wearing a Pernilla dress: a short pink shift embroidered with tiny silver and pink beads, although when I bought it I hadn’t thought of it that way, and I wore a floaty white wrap round my shoulders.
It was only half past six, but the moon and the sun were out together. I walked up the road in my silver sandals, turning now and then as a car with another early guest drove past. Two stopped and offered me a lift. I told them I was happy walking. I rounded the corner where the gate to Rookery Cottage had been and that’s when I first saw the opera house. It stood, slightly raised on the hillock above the lake; a square of white stone with the crescent-shaped foyer all in glass reaching into the water, connecting with the old manor house via a series of covered bridges. It was beautiful, of that I was in no doubt.
Linus Stendal stood alone on one of the three small bridges which connected the restaurant on the tiny island in the lake to the main part of his building.
The day before he had stood in that same place, and he had seen his building free, at last, from its cage of scaffolding and netting. And at that moment, for the first time in his life, he felt complete. ‘That’s it,’ he had said out loud. ‘I’ve done it. Now I can rest.’ It had been an instant of true happiness. He was a lucky man. Many people went through life without ever having that moment.
And then it was gone. All those doubts and fears, all that guilt which he had repressed for so long, rose, as in revolution and squeezed the happiness from him until he was left standing there, empty before his creation.
He had returned to his car and driven back to London, drowning his thoughts in music, telling himself that he was tired, that was all. Tomorrow everything would seem different.
But it wasn’t, much. He gazed at the building before him. It was a triumph. He knew that. But try as he might, he could not recapture that feeling of yesterday, the one he had waited for all his life. He scrabbled around among his memories, brought each of them out and inspected them for shards of happiness: the day he was told he’d got the commission, when he first saw the model of the design, the praise when it was shown, the awards. But although he felt a great sense of relief at the project having been completed, and a real sense of achievement, the joy eluded him. Then again, why was he complaining? No one ever said you were put on this earth to be happy.
He looked at his watch. It was ten to seven, time to go inside. And the date, well it was the same as that day, two years ago, when Esther had left him asleep in his room at Villa Rosengård. He had woken up to find her gone and had wanted to die. But he wasn’t like his mother. He would never do to Ivar, or the others, what she had done. Instead, he had picked up the fragments of his existence and tried as best he could to unite them into something resembling a life.
And one day he had awoken and realised that for a while now he hadn’t had to work so hard at it. He found himself laughing, not because he knew it was a laughing moment but because he genuinely felt like it. And his work with the opera house was not only absorbing and fulfilling in itself, it also led to other work, commissions interesting and challenging. Not quite like this one, but that was all right too, he wasn’t expecting that, not yet.
Pernilla had moved back to Gothenburg and they had started seeing each other again. At first it had been good. ‘A healing experience,’ as she put it. But he couldn’t make it last. He just couldn’t love her. Not the way he could have loved Esther. He’d rather have nothing than some pale imitation. So, lovewise, that’s exactly what he was left with: nothing. But that too was all right. And he had the other, different kinds of loves. He had his son. Ivar was nine years old now. Tall and thin, not plump the way Linus had been at that age. He had stopped wanting to grow up to be a woman and spent most of his time playing sport: football in the summer, ice hockey in winter. He was pretty good too. So, Linus thought, as he wandered back across the bridge, it was all mostly quite all right.
But as he reached the side entrance to the crescent foyer and faced the first guests, the trays of food and glasses of champagne, as he spotted Stuart Lloyd at the far end, he dived outside again, using one of the small fire exits that brought you straight out. He told himself that all he needed was some air.
Below him to the left, just where the road curved, was the place where Rookery Cottage had once stood. He looked away, he always did, but then he forced himself to look again, centre, right and left; he could not allow himself the luxury of not seeing. He walked on down, smoking a cigarette. The sky was dark now, but the moon and the stars and the headlights of the cars lit up the evening so that he could see where he was going.
In the distance, about halfway up the road, he saw the lone figure of a woman coming towards him. She was quite small and she was wearing a dress that reflected the light. Her hair was dark. He walked a little faster and crossed over to the same side as her. By now he was all but running. Then he stopped and waited.
I wished now that I had brought a coat, or a cardigan at least, because it had grown cold all of a sudden. No matter. It was time to go inside anyway, to join the party. I quickened my steps and then I saw him, this man, crossing the road towards me. A car passed close to him and at the moment his face caught the headlights I recognised him. I stopped walking and raised my arm in a wave.
‘Linus,’ I called. ‘Linus, it’s me, Esther.’ I started walking again, as fast as I decently could. When we were bu
t a few inches apart we both stopped, abruptly, as if we were covered in thorns and could reach no further.
‘Hi,’ I said. I never was that good at chit-chat.
‘Hi,’ he said. He used to be better.
‘Nice place you’ve got here.’
‘Oh, it’s just a little something I dreamt up. I’m glad you like it.’
Enough, I thought, of taking it lightly. ‘I love it, Linus. It’s a truly wonderful building and I haven’t even been inside to see all that miracle of light you told me about.’
‘The inside will knock you out, so to speak.’
‘You must be happy with what you’ve done here. Tell me you are.’ I watched his face in the comings and goings of headlights. It was hard to read his expression.
‘Of course I’m happy with it. It’s good and I know that. It’s just…’ He shrugged. ‘Well, you know how it is.’
‘You did what you wanted to do,’ I said to him. ‘You built your opera house and it’s beautiful. It’s a great thing you’ve done here. But now you want it all pure and untainted as well. But you can’t. Life isn’t like that.’
He laughed. Not the high-pitched giggle of a laugh that I remembered, but softly, quite normally, in fact. ‘That’s pretty well what Stuart Lloyd said to me once.’ He remained where he was, about ten inches away, but he reached out and put his hands on my shoulders. I could feel the warmth of his touch through the thin shawl.
‘I had my moment last night,’ he said. ‘I stood there, looking at the building, and I knew that I had created something beautiful. We can do that sometimes, make a whole of far greater value than the sum of our own pitiful parts. I felt I’d done just that.’ There was a smile in his voice. ‘You see, I’m not afflicted with modesty.’
I smiled back. ‘You know, Dora is doing all right,’ I said.
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