The Faithful Heart

by Helena Halme

  Suddenly Kaisa could feel Duncan’s arms around her, and his lips on her. For a brief moment, Kaisa’s reflexes took over and she kissed him back. But she remembered who and where she was and pulled herself away.

  This time Duncan didn’t seem to be at all embarrassed to be rejected. He just took one step back and, waving his hand, said, ‘Good night, Kaisa. If there’s anything at all you need, I’m next door.’

  After he’d gone, Kaisa stared at the door he’d closed behind him. As if in a trance, she took off her shoes, tiptoed onto the landing and listened for movements. It was all quiet in his room. What was going on? Suddenly Duncan had seemed a different person again. Would Kaisa be safe here after all? She tiptoed back into her room and noticed there was a lock on her door. She turned the wrought-iron key as gently as she could, and when she could feel there was a click, she feigned a cough to cover the sound.

  In the morning, Kaisa woke late after a night of fitful sleep during which she’d dreamed of being found in bed with Duncan by the reproachful Peter. She woke with a start and decided that she’d take the first train home to Portsmouth. After she fell asleep again, it was Rose who entered her dreams. She was holding both Kaisa and Duncan’s hands and they were in a church somewhere, with frilly curtains and flowers everywhere. Rose was giving them her blessing, but after a priest in a vast white robe had married them, Rose lifted her finger and, wagging it at Kaisa, said, ‘No babies, Kaisa, remember, no babies.’

  The upstairs was empty when Kaisa tiptoed to the bathroom. She decided against a shower and did what Peter called ‘a submarine dhoby’. She washed her face, armpits and between her legs, the latter requiring some gentle gymnastics, as the basin in Duncan’s house was much higher up than in the flat in Portsmouth. But Kaisa didn’t care, she just wanted to go home.

  Kaisa found Duncan frying bacon and eggs downstairs in the kitchen. ‘Sleep well?’ he said, turning around to smile at her. She looked into his pale blue eyes, and his expression changed. He took the pan off the heat and sat down at the small kitchen table. ‘Look,’ he said, running his hand through the mop of blond hair. ‘I’m so sorry about last night.’

  ‘It’s not OK,’ Kaisa said.

  As if surprised by her words, Duncan now really took Kaisa in. She stood in the doorframe, holding her bag, which she’d packed, ready to leave.

  ‘Look, Kaisa, I promise it won’t happen again.’ Duncan went to touch his hair once more, rubbing his scalp with both hands. When Kaisa didn’t reply, he gave her another glance and pleaded, ‘Please don’t go before you have breakfast.’ He motioned his hand to the pan on the stove. ‘I know it’s almost the same thing as last night, but, I’m only good at one thing.’ He gave her a lopsided grin.

  Kaisa sighed and put down her bag.

  This seemed to spur Duncan into action and he served Kaisa a plateful of food. He put a fancy new gold coloured cafetiere in front of her, ‘I know you don’t like tea,’ and pushed a smoky glass cup and saucer towards her. The smell of coffee was irresistible and even though Kaisa hardly ever ate bacon (it was so greasy and meaty tasting), she was famished that morning. Perhaps it was the tiredness after the sleepless night, and the vivid dreams she’d had; or all the wine in the cellar bar the night before.

  ‘Help yourself. I hope the coffee is strong enough?’ Duncan sat opposite her and gave her a boyish smile, and even though she was still angry with him, Kaisa couldn’t help but return it. ‘I knew a Swedish girl once, and she liked very, very strong coffee,’ Duncan said and smiled. Kaisa wondered if he was talking about Jannica, but decided it was none of her business. She didn’t want to make small talk; instead she ate in silence, thinking about everything that had happened the night before – the arrival in London, finding her way from Waterloo to Sloane Square, meeting up with Duncan and Rose. The interview and a possible job offer.

  Duncan coughed and pointed at the kitchen window that overlooked a small garden. ‘It’s started raining.’

  ‘Oh,’ Kaisa replied, still deep in thought.

  ‘What shall we do today?’ Duncan asked.

  Kaisa looked up from her plate. She was holding the coffee cup, about to take a sip. ‘I have to go,’ she said, surprised that he didn’t know this. Hadn’t he heard her before?

  Duncan sighed and said, ‘Of course.’

  After a brief silence he added, ‘It’s just that I was going to take you to a pub for lunch, there’s a really nice place close to here.’ Now Duncan wasn’t looking at Kaisa, but moving a piece of bacon around on his plate. ‘We could go to a new art gallery that has just opened, or would you prefer the British Museum? It would be a shame to come all way up to London and not see anything.’ He now lifted his eyes to Kaisa. There he was again, the nice Duncan, full of friendly concern for her welfare. ‘Or there’s St Paul’s Cathedral, have you been there?’

  Kaisa didn’t say anything.

  ‘Or Westminster Abbey? Or the Tower of London? I have my car, so we could drive over really quickly; heck we could see all of them!’

  ‘I’ve been to St Paul’s,’ she said quietly. She was looking at her hands, trying very hard not to return Duncan’s smile.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. Duncan looked so disappointed that she added, ‘Where’s this new gallery?’

  ‘Oh, it’s not too far, near the Lord’s Cricket Ground in NW.’ When Kaisa didn’t react, he said, ‘You follow cricket?’

  ‘No, Peter likes all sports, but I just like ice hockey.’

  ‘I don’t like sports, not really, only cricket.’ Duncan said. He told Kaisa about the new gallery. ‘Do you like art?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ Kaisa said uncertainly and thought back to the Picasso sketch Tuuli had in her apartment in Helsinki. Tuuli loved modern art, but Kaisa was fond of the traditional Finnish artists who’d painted dark canvases of pine trees, or scenes of farm workers making hay bales.

  ‘That’s settled then,’ Duncan said.

  Duncan drove Kaisa in his little blue sports car. As he opened the door for her, and asked if she minded the roof being down now that the rain had changed into bright sunshine, Kaisa wondered if all unmarried officers in the Royal Navy owned a sports car. Driving through the city, with her hair flopping over her face and swirling around, reminded Kaisa of the first time she visited Britain, when Peter took her to London. She’d never been there, and he wanted to show her all the sights, just like Duncan. Kaisa felt a pang of guilt sitting next to Duncan and decided that as soon as she got home she’d write a long letter to her husband and tell him all about the weekend. Although perhaps not Duncan’s attempts to kiss her.

  Kaisa got home on Sunday evening, after they’d been to the pub for lunch, which Duncan insisted on buying. ‘It’s the least I can do after the way I’ve behaved,’ he said. Afterwards he drove to Westminster Bridge and they had coffee and ice cream on the banks of the Thames, overlooking the Houses of Parliament.

  Back home, Kaisa tried to piece together what had happened; she would have an interview in a women’s magazine on Wednesday. Although she’d rather work on a serious publication, this was still a huge opportunity. It could lead to other more important jobs, and though she’d never even dared to say it out loud, she’d dreamed of being a journalist ever since she was little girl. She put Scotland out of her mind; if the Captain’s wife could live in London and work as an air hostess, why couldn’t she live in Pompey and work in London? Surely there was no reason why they couldn’t get a small place in London in due course?

  How she wished she was still working at IDS, and could tell both Kerry and Ann about her brilliant new job opportunity. But that was just her pride talking; she hadn’t got the job yet. How awful it would be, if she told them about the interview only to fail it? More importantly, she needed to consider what to wear. It was late August and the weather was still very warm; it might be too hot for her trouser suit. On the other hand, it was the smartest thing she owned and she guessed she could leave the jacket off until the last minute. The i
nterview seemed like a dream come true! Having decided on her outfit, Kaisa sat down and wrote to tell Peter all about her weekend in London. She hoped he’d be proud of her and wish her luck.

  Twelve

  On Monday when Kaisa came back from a shopping trip to Commercial Road, where she’d bought a new shirt to wear with her trouser suit, she found a letter from Peter waiting for her. It was such a joy to read his words and to hear how the trip was going. He couldn’t tell her any details of his work, of course. Kaisa wasn’t sure she’d understand all the engineering terms anyway but, reading between the lines, it looked as if they were testing the boat, and it was going well. How she wished she could speak to Peter and tell him about London and the interview on Wednesday, instead of just writing to him about it. In the worst-case scenario, Peter wouldn’t get any of Kaisa’s letters until he was back. Often their correspondence was out of sync, so it was hopeless to discuss anything properly. She’d just have to tell him in person when he came back.

  Kaisa was missing Peter intensely. She tried to understand why it was suddenly so much harder to be without him, and thought it must be because of the trip to London and Duncan’s unwanted approaches. Kaisa missed just hearing Peter’s voice. After a while the silence became unbearable. Of course, she worried, too, but like any good Navy wife, she’d trained herself not to think of the worst. Still, thoughts of him drowning inside that metal tube in the chilly depths of the Atlantic (or the Arctic, or even the Baltic – she had no idea where he and the submarine were at any given moment) made her want to curl up in a ball on the floor and weep. But then she’d brush these thoughts of a disaster aside and imagine that everyone was safe onboard and wonder what he was doing at that very moment. Was he on or off duty? Was he thinking of Kaisa? Probably he was, if he was bored. Peter once told Kaisa that 95 percent of his time at sea was spent waiting for something to happen, and the remaining 5 percent was very exciting, when something did happen. Kaisa knew better than to ask what that ‘something’ was.

  * * *

  The weather in London was awful in the end. In Pompey, when Kaisa woke up at 6am to catch the 7.15 train, it was warm and dry, but as soon as the train pulled out of Guildford, it started to rain. It was also a lot colder than in Portsmouth, and Kaisa wished she’d taken her mac. She got absolutely drenched while looking for the Sonia offices in Soho, and got lost so many times, that when she eventually found the dark building opposite a busy sandwich shop, she was fifteen minutes late. When she saw how the girl at the reception desk looked at her, Kaisa felt ashamed. Her jacket was soaking wet and her light-coloured leather shoes had dirty-looking damp patches at the toes. She pushed strands of hair that had fallen over her face behind her ears, and tried to smile confidently when she asked for Miss Rosalind Cummings.

  The offices were quite different from what Kaisa had imagined. The hallway was dark, but the first floor, to which the girl escorted her, was flooded in light, even on such a rainy day. There were desks and typewriters and wastepaper baskets everywhere. Mostly female faces turned up to look at Kaisa when she passed each desk, but no one seemed to take much notice of her or her shabby appearance. When the girl got to the end of the room, she knocked on a half-glazed door and a woman’s voice replied, ‘Come in!’

  Rose looked far more intimidating in her own surroundings than she’d done in the dark wine bar. She was sitting at a vast desk, covered with photographs and papers, with two telephones. There was a floor-to-ceiling window behind her, overlooking the sandwich shop, where there was still a queue of people waiting to be served.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late, I got lost.’ Kaisa said after the girl had shown her to a seat opposite Miss Cumming’s desk.

  Rose, as she still insisted Kaisa should call her, was wearing a brown-checked skirt and a cream jumper. ‘Don’t worry about it. Soho can be a very confusing place if you don’t know it.’ She looked Kaisa up and down and then glanced over her shoulder at the window behind her. ‘Raining, is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kaisa said and looked at her wet shoes.

  ‘For goodness sake, take that jacket off!’ Rose started laughing and, despite feeling like a drowned rat, Kaisa joined in and giggled nervously. Even though she was shivering from the cold, she felt sure there’d be sweat patches showing under the arms of her blouse. Clutching her old London A-Z, which Peter had given her on that first visit to London, Kaisa had been running up and down streets for the best part of an hour. But she felt forced to take the jacket off, damp patches, or no damp patches, and as she did so Rose handed her what looked like a striped woollen shawl. ‘That’s a Jaeger poncho – from their autumn collection.’

  After she’d collected herself a bit and felt warm and cosy underneath the soft wool, Kaisa dug out a CV from her handbag and handed it to Rose. She smiled at Kaisa, took the piece of paper and studied it in silence.

  Those few minutes, while Kaisa waited for (what she hoped would be) her new boss to examine the one sheet of text, seemed to take forever. It was as if she was reading the story of Kaisa’s life. She shifted on the wooden chair and tucked her feet underneath the seat. Eventually Rose looked up from the desk and said simply, ‘When can you start?’

  ‘You mean …?’

  Rose smiled again, ‘I told you this would be a mere formality.’ She got up and said, ‘I’ll show you around. You can type, I presume?’

  Kaisa walked behind Rose into the main office, where she was introduced to three women who were sitting at a cluster of desks divided by head-height screens. There was Molly, ‘the fashion editor’, who complimented Kaisa on the poncho. She was about Kaisa’s age, with long dark hair and bright red lipstick. ‘Thank you, but it’s actually …’ Kaisa began, but was interrupted by Rose, who took her arm and said, ‘And here’s Laura. She writes the Aunt Betty column.’ Laura was an older woman, perhaps Kaisa’s mother’s age. She had a short bob, wore half-moon glasses and a cardigan over her shoulders. ‘And this is Jacquie, she’s Features.’ Kaisa had no idea what that was, but thought she’d ask later, because now Rose was heading back to her office, shouting behind her, ‘Molly, can you get a typing test set up for Mrs Williams?’

  On the train back to Portsmouth Kaisa could hardly believe what had taken place. Had she really been for an interview at the glamorous London offices of a fashion magazine? Rose had said that Kaisa should come up for a typing test the following week and that she’d start at the beginning of October. She gave Kaisa a sheet of paper with the working conditions and the salary. On the train, Kaisa worked out that this would not be that much more than she was getting at IDS, but at least it was a proper, permanent job. And in London.

  Before Kaisa had left Sonia, and shaken hands with Rose, her boss-to-be asked what Kaisa’s husband thought of her new job. Kaisa replied truthfully, ‘He’s away, so he doesn’t know yet.’ Rose gave her another quizzical look, just as she had when they’d discussed Kaisa’s husband in the wine bar with Duncan. Kaisa wondered now, as the grey London landscape turned into green rolling fields, whether she was just puzzled about husbands in general. She must be at least ten years older than her, and still unmarried, so perhaps she wanted to find out how it all worked between a husband and a wife? Oh well, Kaisa could tell Rose all about it when she started working for her.

  And Peter would soon be home, just before they were due to fly to Helsinki to see her mother and sister. She’d do the typing test on the 2nd of September (she hoped that wasn’t the day Peter came home!), and on the morning of the 3rd they’d be flying into Finland, and she’d be home. Kaisa could not wait to see her sister Sirkka and her mum; she missed them so much.

  Duncan phoned Kaisa about two hours after she got home from London. He’d heard the good news from Rose and wanted to congratulate her.

  ‘It’s you I need to thank!’ Kaisa said.

  She didn’t tell him, but she was still a bit worried about the typing test. Kaisa knew she could type in Finnish and in Swedish, but wasn’t sure if she’d be quick enough in Eng
lish. Oh well, Rose kept saying it was just a formality.

  But what Peter would say when he found out that Kaisa was going to be working in London, and with a cousin of Duncan’s, worried her a lot more than the test. Plus there was the money. When Kaisa worked out how much it would cost to travel to London and back every day, she realised that she would actually be earning less than she had at IDS.

  Thirteen

  There was only 24 hours to go until Peter would be home. It was about a week earlier than Kaisa had expected. He had phoned Kaisa first thing in the morning and told her he’d be flying from Glasgow the following day and should be back in Pompey by midday. It was so wonderful to hear his voice that Kaisa couldn’t really speak.

  ‘Are you alright?’ he asked, and she nodded, swallowing hard and trying to find a voice.

  ‘Kaisa, are you there?’ he said after a while.

  ‘I miss you,’ was all she could manage.

  ‘You’ll see me tomorrow!’ Peter said. He sounded a bit annoyed, and Kaisa had to take a deep breath to stop getting upset. She thought she was being over-emotional, and he was most probably very tired after all that time at sea. Eventually Kaisa managed to say she would meet him off the train and Peter promised to phone from the airport, or the station if he had time. If not, Kaisa was to wait at home. As soon as the phone call was over, Kaisa studied the timetable. She saw that if the flight from Glasgow was on time, Peter should be able to catch the 10.34 from Reading, which meant he’d be at Portsmouth Harbour station at 12.45. Kaisa could not wait to feel his arms around her.