House of Orphans

by Helen Dunmore

  There’d been ructions, Lotta remembered, smiling faintly Imagine leaving such a precious heritage to Lotta, not to the boys or her elder sister, Astrid! But the chest was hers.

  Of course our good fortune is God’s gift, not our own doing, she thought automatically, looking around her warm, comfortable room. But she didn’t really believe it. Lotta knew that houses like hers were built up by generations of self-control, self-denial and public service. Her men had taken up their responsibilities. As soldiers they had defended and enlarged what was theirs. As men in public life they had fought longer battles, which called for guile as well as resolution.

  Where would Finland be without such men? Who else could handle the Russians with such consummate skill? Lotta’s men knew that they had to play a long game. There were extremes on both sides. Fennomania, Russification: both of them entirely wrong for our beloved country. Here was Governor-General Bobrikov, trying to turn Finland into Russia, with all that Slavophile nonsense about a Greater Russia that Lotta simply couldn’t stand. On the other side there were hotheads who thought that they could take on the might of their Great Neighbour and win the battle. Well, Lotta had been as angry with the Tsar as anyone when the February Manifesto was issued. She’d seen the threat to the Finnish Constitution as clearly as anybody. But she was a realist. She had no time for extremism of any sort. The reality was that Russian power had to be managed, not defied.

  And then, as if all this weren’t enough, there were easily led, ignorant people, who grabbed at the idea that this was the right moment for strikes and civil disturbance. They hadn’t the sense to realize that this would only give Russia the chance it wanted, to crack down harder than ever, and swallow up Finland into its greedy belly for good. Well, you couldn’t expect an illiterate sawmill or shipyard worker to understand history, thought Lotta. All they cared about were their own interests.

  But the unrest was spreading. Even in a small town like this there were agitators. Why, only last week Lotta had read in the local paper about pamphlets smuggled in from Helsingfors, denouncing the ‘Swedish Elite’ for its ‘traitorous collaboration with the Tsarist Oppressor N. I. Bobrikov’, and calling for all true Finns to ‘rise up and throw off the Russian yoke’. In the pamphlet there was a phrase that chilled her: it called for ‘the solution by blood’.

  They believed that the problems of the world could be solved by blood, did they? But Lotta knew they could not. Most things could not be changed. She had fought long battles, praying for acceptance to replace the terrible anger that threatened to swallow up her life. In the end she’d won her battle. She’d come to believe in her deepest, inner fibre that it was God’s plan that she should be childless, and married to a man who not only didn’t love her but seemed sometimes to…

  But God had not given her an empty life. He’d recognized her patience, and repaid it. He’d given her Erika, Astrid’s little girl. He’d let a miracle happen. He’d ordered things so that Erika, the precious, astonishing baby who had caught at Lotta’s heart from the first instant, had returned Lotta’s love. She had always gone straight into her Aunt Lotta’s arms, smiling as if they shared a secret no one else knew. As she grew older, Erika had come to Lotta with all her troubles. Astrid once said, ‘Of course, when they get to a certain age, you can’t expect their confidence.’ Was there regret in her voice? Lotta said nothing. She hugged to herself the secret that Erika’s heart was open to her, even though it might be closed to her cool, graceful mother. And now there was Simon, who looked so much like Frans, but was dearly and entirely Erika in character.

  And all the time, Lotta had Thomas, her oldest friend. The way he liked to laugh at her! Nobody else laughed at Lotta like that, or told her that her new hat looked exactly like a fruit salad. And when he was tired or troubled, he could always confide in her. He used to talk over difficult cases with her. Nothing indiscreet, but she knew it eased his mind, and she was always there to listen.

  How her back hurt. When she turned her neck, pain tightened in her skull. She had walked too far. But it was God who had given her the pain, and He had done so for His own good reasons. The pain was there to cure her thoughts.

  At that moment, she knew what she must do. Family, order, duty all demanded it. Thomas must be protected, even against himself. She must send for Minna.

  13

  Thomas opened the lid of the oak chest, and propped it against the wall. Every family has a chest like this, he thought, full of things you can’t use and can’t throw away. If your father and grandfather have kept your great-grandfather’s sword, which has the blood of 1808 on its scabbard, then you’ll keep it too.

  ‘There’s Russian blood on your great-grandfather’s sword,’ they’d told him solemnly, and he’d searched the metal until his eyes dazzled, but had never been able to find the stain.

  If time has a smell, it must be like the smell from the inside of these chests, Thomas thought. Time rested there in layers, with the heavy steel sunk to the bottom. He lifted a fold of white cambric wrapping, and bright colour showed. Yes, there it was. The quilt made by his great-grandmother, perhaps at the same time that his great-grandfather was sticking his sword into Russian flesh during the Finnish War. She’d been a famous needlewoman, renowned for exquisite embroideries on christening caps and muslin collars. But with this quilt she’d broken the rules. No one had made anything like it; no one wanted to.

  He lifted the quilt, and shook out its folds. It was too light to be warm. She’d made it for beauty, what she thought was beauty, out of silks culled from God knew how many long-gone dresses. Or maybe she’d bought these bright silks, just for her quilt. Such gypsy colours wouldn’t be worn by the country gentlewoman she’d been.

  ‘All that work, and it lay on the bed like a whisper. You couldn’t feel it.’

  He remembered someone saying that, not admiringly but critically.

  He was going to give the quilt to Eeva, to cover her attic bed. He lifted it into the light. The colours hadn’t dimmed in almost a hundred years. Maybe it had never been used, even in its own day. It was out of keeping with a Swedish home, as violent as a cry of pleasure in the middle of a church service.

  What had his great-grandmother been thinking of, to put this luscious patch of orange next to crimson? He knew nothing about such things, but it disturbed him, as if there were a message trapped in the stitches.

  Yes, he would give it to Eeva. The tail of the quilt slithered over the lip of the chest, onto the floor. He fingered the black oak and remembered when the chest had stood taller than him. He’d stretched up on tiptoe to rest his chin on the edge, one day when his mother had left the chest open. She’d pulled him away angrily ‘Don’t you see, the lid could crash down? What do you think would happen to you then? Do you want your head to be cut off?’

  In the depths of his mind, that lid remained ominous and potent. He always connected it with an engraving of the guillotine, from a childhood history book. There was the guillotine, with its sideways blade still dripping with blood, but ready to drop again. Even the King of France had been felled by that blade. Thomas’s finger traced the engraving. The guillotine was an engine, pulsing with energy. Beneath it, women wielded their knitting needles or looked up to jeer. They were Les Tricoteuses. They had wanted the King and they had got him. It was the time of the Terror, when all order had dissolved.

  The text of his history book clanged with anger and alarm, as if the King had only just died, and cartloads of brave, helpless men and women were still trundling towards the guillotine. The knitting women were still flashing their needles, while they watched the dreadful basket that held heads like coconuts. The individual features of the severed heads showed quite clearly on the engraving. Not all the eyes were closed. If a head could see its own body, would it faint with fright? But could a head faint, if it hadn’t a body to fall down? And could it still think, and know that those things outside the basket were its own arms and legs and its own feet with the shoes it had tied that morn
ing…

  If the head wanted to, could it stick out its tongue?

  These thoughts had teased Thomas when he was eight years old, as if they were live and present problems that he would one day have to solve.

  Poor old chest. It was no good taking history so seriously. It was just a chest, full of things that now had no one but him. If he didn’t care about them, who would? Certainly not Minna. I should give them to Lotta, he thought. She’d cherish them all right. Both of us are the end of a line. Lotta childless, Johanna dead, Minna gone. When I die they’ll come and tip the whole lot out, silk and sword together. Minna might supervise the process, but I doubt it. She’ll sell the house if she can, but I can’t see who’s going to live here, so far out of town. No one will buy the house, and it’ll fall to pieces, quietly. People from the village will take banisters and tiles and floorboards for their own use. And good luck to them.

  Yes, the poor old chest only had him to care about it, and he didn’t care much. He wanted the quilt, because Eeva must have it. He wanted those violets and crimsons and flames to lap around her while she slept, and fill her dreams with colour. He’d seen those bare orphanage dormitories, and for all his fine thoughts and intentions the attic room he’d given her wasn’t much better. He would change all that. Eeva must have boots that fitted, and decent clothes. They’d have to be plain and suitable for a servant, because anything more would set the tongues clacking, and Lotta would come to ‘have a little word’.

  In her room, though, in secret, things could be beautiful. First the quilt, then a rug for her floor, and why shouldn’t she have pictures? The house was full of pictures that nobody looked at.

  Would she be warm enough up there, when winter came? Those rooms beneath the eaves were stifling in summer. Kirstin and Jenny would always leave their windows open wide on July nights. Maybe they’d shivered in January, too. But surely Johanna would have seen to it? This was a house that had always kept its servants. Would they stay if they weren’t content? But he remembered suddenly the smell from Kirstin’s underarms, on hot days.

  He would take the quilt upstairs now, and lay it on her bed himself. He gathered up the silk. It was so light and slippery that it seemed ready to pour itself away from him, back into the chest. He would put it on Eeva’s bed and when she came upstairs at night she would…

  No. No. He must not do it. He mustn’t go to her room. If that started, where would it end? He wouldn’t be able to help himself. He would fall on his knees, and strip back the bedclothes to find the coarse sheets that covered Eeva’s body, and smelled of her. He would bury his face in the hollows her body had left in the mattress. He would clench the sheets in his fists so tightly that nobody would be able to drag him away. And when Eeva finished her work she’d find him there.

  His head hurt. He was clutching the quilt tight, pressing it to his heart. ‘Eeva,’ he said aloud. She was very near.

  No, he said to himself. No, no, no. He folded the silk, closed the chest and laid the quilt down on its lid. His fingers trembled, as if he’d swum a long way in water that was much too cold. But he wasn’t cold, he was sweating.

  He walked down the corridor to his bathroom. The sunlight had swung away from its windows now, but the air was warm. The splendid bath he’d ordered from Stockholm all those years ago dug its claw feet proudly into the Turkish carpet. The screen Johanna had made stood folded beside it. There was no fire in the grate. He had installed that fireplace, to supplement the heat of the stove, because he had once visited London and stayed in a hotel where he took a bath by firelight.

  The little green silk-upholstered sofa was pushed against the wall. Johanna sat there once, wrapped in a towel, her hair falling out of its pins. She was drying herself after her bath. There were two candles lit in the candlestick on the dresser, and firelight on her shoulders. She was drying her feet, bending down with an awkwardness which was so rare in Johanna that it touched him more deeply than her usual grace. She looked up when he opened the door and stared at him. She pulled her towel more tightly around her. But we’re married, he thought. She is my wife. A frown gathered on her forehead as he continued to stand there.

  ‘Close the door, Thomas,’ she said at last. ‘There’s a draught.’

  He stepped inside. ‘Johanna,’ he began. The firelight shone on her skin. The windows were quite black, but she hadn’t drawn the blinds. What need was there? He saw their reflections in the glass. She’d gone still, watching him.

  ‘Johanna,’ he said again, and put his hand on her bare, pearly shoulder. She didn’t shrink away, but her complete stillness unnerved him. His hand looked big and clumsy, as if it didn’t belong anywhere near her. The sight of his nails and the little dark hairs on the back of his hand disgusted him. He lifted his hand, almost afraid that he’d leave a mark on her skin.

  ‘I need to get ready,’ she said. ‘We’re expected at the Aströms’ by six o’clock.’

  But it was daylight in the bathroom now. He glanced behind him to check that the door was locked. Quickly, he took off his clothes and put them on the sofa. The cheval glass was still there, its glass tilted up to the ceiling, and dusty. He never looked in it as a rule, but now he walked over and straightened the glass until it was looking at him.

  He looked at himself long and close, until he began to seem strange to himself. His image swam through the dust. Good God, there was even grey in his pubic hair. But he was still strong. He was familiar with bodies and knew how old men dwindled, their legs skinny and their bellies turning to pots. That hadn’t happened to him yet.

  But it was impossible for him to tell if anyone would ever want him again. Johanna with her beautiful skin and hard grace had turned away from him. And Eeva… But the thought of Eeva overwhelmed him, as if she were in the mirror instead of his own naked flesh.

  He looked away and glanced down. His penis stirred obediently, as if it knew he was thinking of it. Johanna had never touched him there. She had let him put ‘it’ inside her on occasion, as if she were humouring some childish caprice, and that was that. A prostitute would take you in her hands and caress you but the money that changed hands cancelled the touch; not at the time, he had to admit, but afterwards.

  And there he was, his erection pointing hopefully at the glass.

  ‘Ooh!’ Sophie had squealed. ‘It feels exactly like satin. But a bit suedey as well. It must be so strange, having one of those!’ And she’d laughed, and then suddenly wriggled down the guest bed – good God, yes! That guest bed prepared for Sophie by Johanna – and pressed her face against his penis, as if it wasn’t enough just to touch him with her hands. Her warm face, her round cheeks and beautiful open lips. Where had Sophie got her ideas from? How had a girl like Sophie emerged from the same type of home as Minna, and from exactly the same education? She was warm all through, Sophie, from her clusters of curls to her soft breasts and the dimples on her knees. She complained that she had fat feet, and let him put her toes in his mouth.

  He shut his eyes, reaching for himself.

  When he’d dressed again and left the bathroom, he felt quite calm. He passed the quilt lying on the old chest, and thought that he must put it away, to preserve the colours. Or perhaps he would get rid of it altogether. Inside his body there was a clean, empty feeling. He would find a counterpane for Eeva, of Swedish woven cloth. It would keep her warm, in the traditions of his house. If his madness stirred again he would tell himself over and over that she was his servant, living under his roof. He would never hurt her. She could sleep in peace, and he would never put one foot on the narrow staircase that led to the attic rooms.

  A man’s voice called from below. Matti. But Matti rarely came beyond the kitchen, unless there was a job of work to be done. Something must be wrong. He went to the head of the stairs and called down, ‘What is it, Matti?’

  ‘Telegram, Doctor. It’s a telegram come from Åbo.’

  14

  ‘My daughter, Minna, is coming to stay,’ Thomas said to Eeva. He sti
ll held the telegram in his hand, as if he needed to prove himself by showing it to her.

  His first thought after he’d read it hadn’t been pleasure at the prospect of seeing Minna. No, he’d thought: Now I can go and talk to Eeva. I need to tell her to prepare for Minna’s visit. And he’d been flooded with warm pleasure at having a reason to go to the kitchen and talk to Eeva. He never rang the bell for her. Johanna had always rung the bell for Jenny or Kirstin, but now that there were only the two of them in the house the whole bell business seemed ridiculous. Odd how he had never felt that with Kirstin or Jenny. It had seemed entirely natural that they wiped their hands, slipped on a clean apron and ran to see what he wanted.

  He had hastened to the kitchen. Eeva was chopping onions. She put down her knife when he opened the door, and pushed away that bit of hair which always slipped out of its knot and followed the curve of her cheek. But there must have been onion juice on her fingers. She turned away, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles.

  ‘Don’t rub your eyes. There’ll be more onion juice on your hands,’ he said sharply ‘Take this.’

  He pulled a clean handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to her.

  She scrubbed away her tears, rough with herself in a way that hurt him to see. He loved the perfect cut of her eyelids. Every day he noticed almost with fear some new aspect of her beauty, as her real face emerged from hunger and neglect. When she’d finished wiping her eyes she turned back to him, blinking, her eyelids reddened, the whites of her eyes bloodshot. It was hot in the kitchen and her face was shiny. Her hair needed washing and she’d bundled it into a knot without brushing it. She must have been in a hurry. He listed all these flaws to himself. Did he want her to be less beautiful? Was that really what he wanted?