The Fredrik Backman Collection_A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, and Britt-Marie Was Here

by Fredrik Backman

  “I thought you said you’d come down with flu,” says Bank.

  Britt-Marie nods helpfully.

  “But my dear, that’s precisely what I’m saying! It’s the only reasonable explanation. When you drink alcohol your immune system is knocked out, you have to understand. And that’s why I’ve got the flu.”

  “Flu, right then,” mumbles Bank and puts the eggs on the table for Britt-Marie.

  Britt-Marie closes her eyes, holding back her nausea, and gives the eggs to the dog. Bank puts a glass of cold water in front of her instead. Britt-Marie drinks. Flu makes people dehydrated. She’s read all about it.

  “Mine and Kent’s children were ill all the time; if it wasn’t one thing it was another—but as for myself I am never ill. ‘Britt-Marie, you’re as healthy as a nut kernel!’ That’s what my doctor always says, he really does!”

  When neither Bank nor the dog answer, Britt-Marie breathes deeply and her eyes blink forlornly. Her words seem drained of oxygen when she corrects herself:

  “I mean Kent’s children.”

  She drinks her water in silence. The dog and Bank have their eggs. They go with her to meet the soccer team, because Britt-Marie is not the sort of woman who bunks off work just because she has flu. The dog makes a demonstrative loop around the flower bed outside the house because it stinks as if someone has vomited there in the course of the night.

  Somebody is sitting inside the broken front door of the pizzeria, drinking coffee, when they get there. She grimaces when Britt-Marie comes too close, and Britt-Marie pulls an even uglier face back.

  “It stinks in here. Have you been smoking inside?” she asks, almost with a note of accusation.

  Somebody wrinkles her nose.

  “And you, Britt? Have you been, what’s-it-called? On fire and trying to put it out with whiskey?”

  “I’ll have you know that I’ve got the flu,” snorts Britt-Marie.

  Bank pokes Somebody’s wheelchair with her stick.

  “Stop going on now and give her a Bloody Mary.”

  “What’s that?” asks Britt-Marie as brightly as she’s able.

  “It helps against . . . flu,” mutters Bank.

  Somebody disappears into the kitchen and comes back with a glass filled with what looks like tomato juice. Britt-Marie sips it skeptically, before spitting it out at the dog. It does not look at all pleased about it.

  “This tastes of pepper!” splutters Britt-Marie.

  The dog goes to sit in the gravel, carefully placing itself upwind. Bank holds out her stick with her arm straightened to make sure she’s out of spitting range. Somebody frowns and fetches a cloth to wipe down the table between them, while muttering:

  “Don’t know what flu you have, Britt, but do me a favor, huh, what’s-it-called? Don’t light a match near your breath before you brush your teeth, huh? Pizzeria has no fire insurance, you know.”

  Britt-Marie certainly has no idea what that’s supposed to mean. But she makes her polite apologies to Somebody and Bank and explains she has a few things to do in the recreation center and actually can’t stay here all morning making a fuss about things. Then she briskly walks across the parking area, continues in a controlled manner into the recreation center toilet, and locks the door behind her.

  When she comes out Sven is squatting by the pizzeria door, putting the hinges back in. He stumbles to his feet and removes his police cap when he catches sight of her. There’s a toolbox at his feet. He tries to smile.

  “I just thought that I, well, that I would mend the door. I thought . . .”

  “Ha,” says Britt-Marie and looks at the wood splinters around his feet.

  “Yes, I mean, I’ll sweep up here. It was . . . I’m, I mean, I’m sorry!”

  He looks as if that last bit is about more important things than wood splinters. He moves out of the way, and she slinks past. Holding her breath even though she has brushed her teeth.

  “I’m, I mean, I’m very sorry about yesterday,” he says wretchedly to her back.

  She stops without turning around. He clears his throat.

  “I mean, I never meant to make you feel . . . the way you felt. I would never want to be the one to make you feel . . . like that.”

  She closes her eyes and nods. Waits until her common sense has silenced the part of her that wishes he’d touch her.

  “I’ll get the vacuum cleaner,” she whispers after that. She knows he’s looking at her as she walks away. Her steps become awkward, as if she’s forgotten how to walk without putting one foot on top of the other. All her words to him are like staying in a hotel, new and curious and tentatively fumbling for switches on the wall, repeatedly turning on different lights than those she wanted to turn on.

  Somebody comes rolling after her into the kitchen, where she’s opening the broom cupboard to get out the pizzeria’s vacuum cleaner.

  “Here. Came for you.”

  Britt-Marie stares at the bouquet in her hands. Tulips. Purple. Britt-Marie loves purple tulips, to the extent that Britt-Marie can love anything without viewing it as an unseemly burst of emotion. Tenderly she holds it in her hands and does her utmost not to get the shivers. “I love you,” it says on the card. From Kent.

  It takes years to get to know a human being. An entire life. It’s what makes a home a home.

  At a hotel you’re only a visitor. Hotels don’t know your favorite flowers.

  She fills her lungs with tulips; during one long inhalation she is there again, at her own dish rack and in her own broom cupboard and on rugs that she knows the whereabouts of because she put them there herself. White shirts and black shoes and a damp towel on the bathroom floor. All Kent’s things. All Kent-things. You just can’t rebuild things like that. You wake up one morning and realize that you’re too old to check in to a hotel.

  She doesn’t meet Sven’s eyes when she comes back out of the kitchen. Is grateful that the noise of the vacuum cleaner is drowning out with its noise all the things that should not be said.

  Then come Vega, Omar, Ben, Toad, and Dino, exactly on time, and Britt-Marie busies herself with fitting them out in their newly washed soccer kits. Vega looks searchingly at Britt-Marie and asks if she’s hungover, because actually she looks hungover, says the girl. Britt-Marie makes it clear in every possible way that she’s certainly no such thing, that she’s merely come down with the flu.

  “Ah. That sort of flu. Sami had that this morning as well,” laughs Omar.

  The first little tinkle from the friendly bell above the door, after Sven has mended it, rings out when the men with beards and caps come in to drink their coffee and read their newspapers. But one of them asks when the first match is starting and when Omar tells them, the men check their wristwatches. As if for the first time in ages they have a schedule to keep to.

  The second tinkle from the bell above the door comes when the two ancient women with walkers come dragging themselves over the threshold.

  One of them rivets her eyes into Britt-Marie and points at her.

  “Err yow thoon she oa treena de boos?”

  Britt-Marie can’t tell if these are words or sounds. Vega leans forward and whispers:

  “She’s asking if you’re our coach.”

  Britt-Marie nods without taking her eyes off the tip of the ancient woman’s finger, as if it’s about to open fire. At this confirmation, the ancient woman produces a bag from a little shelf under the handle of the walker, and presses it into Britt-Marie’s arms.

  “Frout aia de boos!”

  “She says it’s fruit for the boys on the team,” Vega interprets helpfully.

  “Ha. I should like to inform you there’s also a girl in the team,” informs Britt-Marie.

  The ancient woman glares at her. Then she glares at Vega and the soccer jersey she’s wearing. The other ancient woman pushes her way forward and grunts something to the first ancient woman, whereupon the first ancient woman points at Vega and glares at Britt-Marie:

  “Shera havan esstrof
rout!”

  “They’re saying I should have extra fruit,” says Vega, pleased to hear this and taking the bag from Britt-Marie to peer inside.

  “Ha,” says Britt-Marie, frenetically adjusting her skirt in every possible way she can think of.

  When she looks up again the two ancient women are standing so close to her that you couldn’t get an A4 sheet of paper between them. The women point at her and Bank.

  “Yer yunguns shall teek th’ chouldrin un goo ter de blousted folk in toon un tall erm Borg ainnit derd! We ainitt derd hire! Tell doose bastourds dait, hire wha’ I see?”

  “She’s saying you and Bank have to take us to town and tell those bastards Borg isn’t dead,” says Vega, with her mouth full of apple.

  Bank stands on the other side of Britt-Marie with a grin on her face.

  “And she called you a ‘young one,’ Britt-Marie.”

  Britt-Marie, who wasn’t even referred to as a “young one” when she was young, can’t quite think what to say to that. So she just pats one of the women’s walkers, slightly at a loss, and says:

  “Ha. Thank you, then. Thank you kindly.”

  The women grunt and drag themselves out again. Somebody fetches the keys to the white car with the blue door and, in between chewing, Vega informs Britt-Marie that they have to pick up Max on the way.

  “Ha. I was under the impression that you didn’t like him,” says Britt-Marie with surprise.

  “Are you going to start now as well?!” roars Vega at once, so that the apple sprays out of her mouth and ricochets between them.

  Omar laughs loudly and mockingly. Vega chases him out into the parking area with apples and mangos whizzing past the back of his head.

  Britt-Marie closes her eyes and squeezes her eyelids tightly until her headache retreats. Then she nervously fidgets with the car keys, coughs quietly, and holds them out to Sven without making eye contact.

  “It’s not appropriate driving a car when you have . . . the flu.”

  Sven removes his cap when they get into the car. He doesn’t even need to say he’s doing it out of empathy. He doesn’t want Britt-Marie to start worrying about what people might think if she’s driven to the soccer competition by a policeman. Especially not in a white car with a blue door.

  Nor does he say anything about how there are considerably more passengers and dogs in the car than what is suitable from both a legal and a hygienic point of view, especially as the dog and Toad have to sit in the trunk because there isn’t any other space available. In the end, he does timidly point out that the car needs filling up. And asks her if she’d like him to do it. She answers that there’s certainly no need for that, because she can absolutely manage that bit herself. It’s her car, after all, whether it has a blue door or not.

  After she’s stood with one hand clasped in the other in front of the petrol pump for ten minutes, the back door opens and Vega crawls out of a tangle of arms, legs, soccer boots, and dog heads, and comes to stand next to her, carefully positioning herself so that she blocks Sven’s point of view.

  “It’s the one in the middle,” she says in a low voice to Britt-Marie without herself reaching for the petrol pump.

  Britt-Marie looks at her in a panic.

  “I didn’t think about it until I got out of the car, you have to understand. That I don’t know how you . . .”

  Her voice cracks. Vega tries to make herself as broad-chested as she can so Sven can’t see anything from the window. She reaches out and touches Britt-Marie’s hand.

  “It doesn’t matter, Coach.”

  Britt-Marie smiles faintly and tenderly removes a loose hair from the shoulder of Vega’s jersey.

  “Kent always filled up the car. He was always the one who . . . it’s always been him.”

  Vega points at the pump in the middle. Britt-Marie grabs hold of it as if worried that it might be alive. Vega leans forward and unscrews the petrol cap.

  “Who taught you all this?” asks Britt-Marie.

  “My mother,” says Vega.

  Then she grins so you can see more clearly than ever that she’s Sami’s sister.

  “You don’t have to support Liverpool from the day you’re born, Coach. You can learn to do it when you’re grown up.”

  It’s a day for the soccer cup, and for farewells, and it’s the day Britt-Marie puts fuel in her own car. She would have been capable of climbing mountains or crossing oceans, if someone had asked her to.

  30

  Britt-Marie is not sure exactly at what point the sun broke through the eternal gray haze of the January sky, but it seems to be looking ahead into the new season. Borg somehow looks different today. They drive past Toad’s house, the one with the greenhouse outside. A pregnant woman is moving about inside. They pass more gardens, with more people in them, which is deeply strange now that Britt-Marie has got used to Borg’s only road always being deserted. A few of them are young, a few have children, a few of them wave at the car. A man with a cap is standing there with a sign in his hand.

  “Is he putting out a ‘For Sale’ sign?” asks Britt-Marie.

  Sven slows down and waves at the man.

  “He’s taking it down.”

  “Why?”

  “Things have changed. They’re going to the soccer cup. They no longer want to go, they want to see what happens next. It’s been awhile since anyone in Borg wanted to know what happens next.”

  The white car with the blue door travels through Borg, and only when they go past the sign announcing that they are now leaving Borg does Britt-Marie realize that they are being followed by other vehicles. History will remember this as the first time there’s ever been a traffic jam in Borg.

  Max lives in one of the big houses beyond the boundaries of the village, on its own secluded street and with windows so big that they could only have been put there by someone who thought it more important for people to be able to look in than out. Sven explains to Britt-Marie that the residents here have fought with the local council for years, with mounting hostility, to put them under the jurisdiction of the town rather than remaining a part of Borg. In the next moment he slams on his brakes as a BMW backs out, without looking, from a garage at the far end of the street. Fredrik is wearing sunglasses, spinning the wheel as if it’s fighting his efforts to do so. Sven waves, but the BMW roars past; it might as well have driven straight through them.

  “Bloody lemon arse,” mutters Vega and gets out of the backseat.

  Britt-Marie follows on behind. Max opens the door before they have even pressed the doorbell, barges his way out and, looking stressed out, closes the door behind him. He’s still wearing the tracksuit top with HOCKEY printed across the chest, but he has a soccer ball under his arm.

  “No need to bring a ball, Vega has already put one in the car,” Britt-Marie informs him.

  Max blinks uncomprehendingly.

  “Surely you don’t need more than one ball?” Britt-Marie goes on.

  Max looks at the ball. Looks at Britt-Marie.

  “Need?”

  As if that’s a word that bears any relation to soccer balls.

  “Well I need to use your bathroom,” moans Vega, moving impatiently towards the door. Max’s hand catches her shoulder; she instantly slaps it away.

  “You can’t!” he says, looking worried. “Sorry!”

  Vega peers suspiciously at him.

  “Are you worried I’ll see how bloody over-the-top your house is? You think I care if you’re millionaires?”

  Max tries to push her away from the door, but she’s too quick; she slips under his arm and goes in. He bundles in after her, then they stand there, both rooted to the spot. She with her mouth wide open, he with his eyes closed.

  “I . . . what the hell . . . where’s your furniture?”

  “We had to sell it,” mumbles Max after a moment, closing the door without looking at the room.

  Vega peers at him.

  “Don’t you have any money?”

  “No one ha
s any money in Borg,” says Max, opening the door and stepping out, heading towards the car.

  “So why doesn’t your dad just sell his bloody BMW, then?” Vega calls out after him.

  “Because then everyone will know he’s given up,” says Max with a sigh, and climbs into the backseat.

  “But . . . what the . . .” Vega starts saying as she climbs in after him, until she’s stopped by a hard shove from Omar.

  “Drop it, sis, what are you? A cop or something? Leave him alone.”

  “I only want to kn—” she protests, but Omar gives her another shove.

  “Leave it! He talks like one of them but he plays soccer like one of us. You got it? Leave him alone.”

  Max doesn’t say a word on the way into town. When they stop outside the leisure center, he gets out of the backseat with his soccer ball tucked under his arm, drops it onto the asphalt, and drills a shot into the wall that is just about the hardest Britt-Marie has ever seen a ball being struck. Britt-Marie lets out the dog and Toad from the trunk. Bank follows them inside. Dino, Omar, and Vega come behind. Sven is at the back. Britt-Marie counts them several times and tries to work out who’s missing, then hears Ben’s voice, sounding rather pathetic, from somewhere around the far corner of the backseat.

  “Sorry, Britt-Marie. I didn’t mean to.”

  When she can’t immediately locate the voice he manages to say:

  “I’ve never played in a cup before. I got so . . . nervous. I didn’t want to say anything when we were at the petrol station.”

  Britt-Marie still isn’t quite sure she can hear what he’s saying, so she sticks her head into the car. Sees the dark patch on his trousers and the seat where he’s sitting.

  “Sorry,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut.

  “Oh . . . I . . . sorry. Don’t worry about it! It’ll come off with baking soda!” Britt-Marie stutters, and goes to dig out some spare clothes from the trunk.

  Because that’s the sort of person she’s become in Borg, she realizes. Someone who goes to soccer competitions with spare clothes in the trunk.

  She holds the bamboo screen over the window while Ben gets changed inside. Then she covers the seat with baking soda. Brings his trousers into the sports hall and rinses them in a sink in a dressing room.