by Helena Halme
‘Don’t be like that, Kaisa.’ Peter now said, correctly interpreting Kaisa’s silence. ‘Tell me instead how you are feeling? Are you getting enough sleep?’
‘But I miss you so much!’ Kaisa managed to say. She was swallowing tears, tears of disappointment, but also tears for what she had to tell him. And it just couldn’t be done over the phone.
‘Me too, my little Peanut. But I’ll phone you tomorrow, again. A few more days isn’t that bad, is it?’
Kaisa wanted to say, ‘Perhaps not for you,’ but instead sucked in air through her nostrils and replied, ‘I know. But I’m at work Monday till Thursday.’
‘Ah, I hadn’t thought about that. Couldn’t you swap with someone? And work the weekend instead? Or better still, sleep all weekend, so you’ll be refreshed when I’m there. You won’t get much sleep with me in your bed!’
Kaisa could hear Peter’s desire for her in his voice and her longing for him became almost unbearable.
‘I’ll try,’ she whispered.
‘There’s my girl.’ Peter said and added, ‘I love you.’
‘Me too,’ Kaisa said and put the phone down.
She remained on the seat, still in her overcoat, for a while longer and watched as the last rays of the spring sunlight filtered through the back door. The wall of light revealed tiny specs of dust in the long narrow hallway. Kaisa tried to remember when she’d last hoovered. She decided not to swap her shift that weekend, but to work something else out, as Peter had suggested. She was too exhausted after the week she’d had, not least after her meeting with Rose.
She’d been on duty the weekend before, preparing her daily news bulletin on Saturday afternoon, when news of a crowd rioting over the new council charge, dubbed the Poll Tax, had come through.
Kaisa and two male reporters, one from Italy and one from Hungary, had decided to walk down the Strand to take a look. They’d had a sound engineer with them too, and Kaisa had been excited. This could be her big break, getting a live report of an historic event. But even before they’d reached Charing Cross, police had closed the streets leading up to Trafalgar Square. They had heard the crowd, and seen mounted police in the distance, and had even smelled smoke, but they couldn’t get close. Kaisa had tried to show her press badge to a WPC, the only one in the wall of uniformed police wearing riot helmets who looked friendly, but the woman had just shaken her head and said, ‘You don’t want to get into that, love.’ It was then that she had slipped.
She didn’t know if the fall had contributed to what happened later, and she didn’t want to speculate. She’d stayed on the pavement, feeling very dizzy, and the WPC had come over and helped her up. The two other reporters and the sound guy then said it was time to give up and go back to the office, so she’d followed them back to Aldwych.
Late that night, the Tube station at Holborn had been closed, and she’d had to wait nearly an hour in drizzling rain for a cab to drive her home.
The next day, on the Sunday, after reports had revealed how remarkable the protest had been, Kaisa’s boss had asked her to write a long piece on the Poll Tax for a feature bulletin. She’d spent most of the night at Bush House. Although she’d been due to take Monday off, she’d gone in to read the special news report herself.
At midday on Monday, she had fallen into bed, and by the next morning her condition wasn’t a condition anymore. She’d put the bloody sheets in the washing machine and was back at her desk in Bush House on Wednesday morning even though it felt as if her insides were being pulled off in waves. She swallowed aspirin after aspirin and told her colleagues it was a bad case of the time of the month. Which she guessed it was in a way.
She wasn’t looking forward to telling Peter the full details of the riot and her reporting of it, or about the fall. She knew his hopes were up, and that he’d think she’d been careless, which she knew she had been. It was so hard to remember to take care of herself when nothing seemed to have changed in her body.
Three
Peter put the phone down and cursed under his breath. When would he learn not to upset Kaisa? She was so sensitive about not living at the base.
Peter loved it that his wife was a news reporter and was very proud of her. Yet at the same time, he knew she worked too hard. And the fact that the job was in London meant that after each patrol he had to wait longer than the other officers and sailors to see his wife.
Most of the crew had wives living nearby, either in the grim married quarters on the hill in Rhu, overlooking the steely grey Gareloch, or in homes they’d bought in the small villages outside Helensburgh. Peter shuddered. He’d never want to buy a property in the cold and rainy West coast of Scotland. When he was ashore, he couldn’t wait to fly back down south, not just to see Kaisa, but also to be away from Scotland.
At the same time, he couldn’t help but feel that if Kaisa was up in Helensburgh, she wouldn’t find it so difficult to have a baby. Her job at the BBC meant early mornings and long days and a lot of weekend working.
Up in Scotland, her life would be quieter, she’d be able to rest, and she could concentrate on having a baby. Peter knew, of course, that it was a pipe dream, but he would have loved to see Kaisa as soon as the submarine docked, and see her enjoy events such as the surprise royal visit.
The rumours of a VIP visit had been doing the rounds in the wardroom, and around the submarine, for a week before they were due back in Faslane. Out of the six patrols Peter had been on, only one other had ended with a VIP visit of some kind. Usually it was the Secretary of State for Defence, especially if they were newly appointed.
Last year, on his first patrol back at the Polaris submarines since his unfortunate dismissal from the submarine five years previously, he’d met the current incumbent, Tom King, who’d come onboard as they were approaching the Faslane base.
King had been a dull man, shaking hands with each of the officers quickly, and hardly speaking to anyone apart from the captain. Peter and the rest of the Wardroom had felt they were too lowly to interest their new Secretary of State, but King had taken great interest in the equipment, including the war head, asking the senior rates several questions in the engine room and in the weapons compartment.
This time, when the Captain told them over the tannoy on the morning of the visit that ‘Her Royal Highness Diana, Princess of Wales’ would be coming onboard the submarine, the whole vessel had been buzzing. Even the leading galley hand who’d served him breakfast that morning had said, ‘You looking forward to diving with Lady Di, Sir?’ He seemed to be talking about the impending royal visit, but Peter knew the reference to diving was a sneaky jibe about his past. There was no way they were going to take the princess on a dive, Peter knew that much.
When the Captain, Stewart Harding, an unusually good-humoured man, with a belly that moved when he laughed (generally at his own jokes), met Peter in the gangway an hour or so later, he said, ‘This is a huge honour Peter, so make sure to be on your best behaviour?’
‘Yes, Sir,’ Peter had replied and wondered as he watched the Old Man make his way to the control room if the Captain doubted Peter’s ability to act correctly in front of royal visitors. He’d been at Dartmouth Naval College with Prince Andrew, and had met the Queen, for goodness sake! But he knew what the problem really was. Peter had been found guilty on an assault against a fellow Officer. It was behaviour unbecoming of an officer of Her Majesty’s’ Royal Navy.
He knew that the joke the rating in the galley had made about his ‘diving’ was because the fight he’d had with Duncan, his so-called friend, had taken place in the swimming pool at the naval base in Faslane, but why did the Captain have to remind Peter to behave? Would they ever forget about the Court Martial, he wondered, as he tried to distract himself with the tasks he needed to oversee as the Navigating Officer onboard.
* * *
Kaisa fell asleep in front of the TV that night, and was woken up by telephone ringing.
‘Hello Kaisa, how are you?’
Ka
isa glanced at her watch; it was five to six in the morning.
‘Mum.’
‘Did I wake you? Why aren’t you at work? Did you oversleep?’
‘No, it’s only just six am here. And it’s Saturday. I’m off today.’ Kaisa sighed; how could her mother always forget the two-hour difference between Finland and Britain?
‘Well, you’re awake now. How are you feeling?’
Kaisa was quiet. How had she been so stupid to tell her mother? Suddenly, as she was about to speak, tears welled up inside her. ‘Mum,’ she began, but couldn’t go on.
‘Oh darling! Not again?’
‘Yes,’ Kaisa managed to say.
‘You poor love. Is Peter with you?’
‘No, he was supposed to be home last night, but they had a VIP onboard, so he couldn’t make the last flight.’
‘I see.’
‘He couldn’t help it. It wasn’t his fault.’
Why did Kaisa always have to defend Peter to her mother? She supposed it had something to do with the months Kaisa had spent in Helsinki, sleeping on her sister’s sofa. She’d fled there after Peter’s Court Martial. The fight between the two officers had all been Kaisa’s fault and Peter’s open hostility towards her, combined with the pressure from the other Navy wives on the married patch, and the reports of the ‘incident’ in the national press, had made Kaisa finally flee Scotland.
While she was in Helsinki, Peter had hardly contacted Kaisa and she knew her mother thought that had been unfair. There had also been suspicions that Peter was seeing an old flame. At the time, Kaisa believed their marriage was over, so although it was devastating news to her, she’d thought it part of her punishment for what she had done to Peter. But her mother didn’t see it that way.
‘It was Princess Diana!’ Kaisa said, trying to distract her mother.
‘Oh, really, did he meet her?’
‘Yes, of course he did.’
‘What was she wearing?’
Kaisa sighed. ‘He didn’t notice.’
‘Have you been to see the doctor?’ Her mother asked next.
That diversion tactic didn’t work, Kaisa thought.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
Kaisa didn’t want to discuss her condition – or lack of it – with her mother. Or why she hadn’t had time to see her doctor. Her mother was another person in her life who thought she worked too hard. There was an implication that if she wasn’t so skinny and stayed at home more, she wouldn’t keep on losing the babies.
‘Look, I’m going to see the doctor soon. And I need to talk to Peter first.’ Kaisa felt bad that she’d told the sad news to her mother first, before Peter, but she also knew her mother thought it was her lifestyle that was at fault.
‘Of course. But you know, you could come over here and see a Finnish specialist? They are world-famous you know. We have zero incidents of …’
‘I know, Mum,’ Kaisa said, interrupting the familiar flow of praise for Finnish doctors and the infamous zero infant mortality rates.
‘Anyway, the reason I called was to tell you that your sister is engaged to be married!’
Kaisa thought about Sirkka, her older sister, who’d been in love with a man from Lapland for years. Theirs was an on-off relationship that Kaisa thought would never come to anything.
‘Haven’t they only been back together for a few months!’ Kaisa now said and immediately regretted the words.
There was a brief silence at the other end. Then her mother replied, predictably, ‘Why do you always have to be so negative about your sister?’
Kaisa sighed. ‘I’m not being negative, I just want her to be happy.’
‘Well she is! Jussi is a wonderful young man. He is head-over-heels in love with your sister and will make a wonderful husband. He’s a businessman, you know, with his own building firm. It’s doing very well – he drives a brand-new Mercedes!’
‘That’s wonderful,’ Kaisa replied and spent the next ten minutes convincing her mother that she did indeed think that the marriage between her sister and this Jussi, whom Kaisa had met only once, would be a very happy one.
When she felt her mother had been pacified, and she was able to put the phone down, Kaisa was exhausted. She was happy for her sister, of course, but at the same time she didn’t want her to rush into a marriage.
Kaisa thought she knew all about true love, and how rare it was – and how easy it was to walk away from a relationship, but how strong the pull back to the person you really loved was. Did Jussi love Sirkka back? Kaisa thought about her own mistakes, and how close she’d come to losing Peter, the love of her life, because of her isolation and unhappiness in the naval community in Scotland. If their love hadn’t been strong, she and Peter would never have survived that crisis.
She shuddered as she thought of what she had to tell Peter now. Would their marriage be strong enough to cope with AIDS too?
* * *
Later that same morning, while she stood on the Tube all the way from Notting Hill Gate to Holborn with her nose stuck in a man’s stinking armpit, Kaisa daydreamed about being comforted in Peter’s arms. But she feared having to tell him everything.
Instead of their usual reunion routine of a candlelit supper, followed by sex, she’d have to tell Peter about her ‘condition’, or lack of it, and about the deadly virus.
This time the tiny foetus – she tried not to think of it as a baby – had lasted over nine weeks, eight of which Peter had been away. Although she’d already had the familiar metallic taste in her mouth the morning of his departure to Scotland, she had decided not to say anything to him. But when he phoned a few days later, while still on the base in Faslane, waiting for the Starboard crew and the submarine to come back from its patrol, so that the Board crew could take over the submarine and sail, she’d been so convinced she was in the family way again, and so excited, she’d spilled the beans and told him.
Peter had been so happy that he’d gone quiet and Kaisa suspected that if she’d been able to see him, she would have spotted tears welling up in his eyes. She too was beyond elated when her GP, Dr Harris, an old man with grey hair, had confirmed her suspicions a week later.
How she now regretted telling Peter about the pregnancy! She should have known better. This was her third miscarriage – again she tried not to utter that word too often, because she’d only start feeling morose.
It was obvious her body couldn’t keep hold of a baby, and now Peter would tell her that she was working too many hours and would insist she get help.
A friend of theirs, Pammy, another Navy wife, had told them at a drinks do up in Faslane that after you had lost three babies, the GP could refer you to a specialist. Kaisa thought back to five years ago, when she’d lived in the married quarters in Helensburgh, and Pammy had miscarried for the second time. She was much further gone with her pregnancy, months rather than weeks, and she’d been taken to the local hospital. Her friend had been confined to bed for a couple of weeks afterwards, but had been determined to try again as soon as her husband was home from sea.
With Kaisa’s previous miscarriages (that word again), all that had happened was a heavier and more painful period than usual, making her doubt the pregnancy test the GP had taken. Apart from the metallic taste in her mouth, which she’d had every time, she had hardly felt any different. She’d lost her appetite, gone off coffee, and felt a little nauseous every now and then, but that was it.
And now, on top of the awful news that she’s lost yet another baby, she’d have to tell Peter about Duncan. And the possibility that they might both be carrying the virus. She couldn’t even say the word in her own mind, let alone picture herself telling Peter about it. She shifted her position in the crowded carriage, turning her head away from the smelly man next to her. Nausea, which she knew had nothing to do with a foetus, overtook her and she stepped off the train one station before her destination and walked the rest of the way.
Four
Ravi looked as
handsome as he always did when Kaisa saw him sitting at a corner table in Terroni’s on Saturday. He was wearing a smart pair of trousers, with a jumper over a striped shirt. As usual, in his gentlemanly way, he got up when he saw Kaisa. His old-fashioned chivalry always brought a smile to Kaisa’s lips, even today, when the world seemed to be conspiring against her. When she’d emerged onto the street at Holborn, gasping for air, the skies had opened and soaked her during the walk to the café.
‘A little bit of rain and the whole of London decides to take the Tube instead of walking a few metres!’ Kaisa said, shaking her mac, which was dripping with water.
‘Cappuccino, bella?’ Toni said.‘Come stai?’ he added, carrying a frothy cup of coffee. He kissed her on both cheeks and nodded to Ravi.
‘I’m OK,’ Kaisa said and signed. ‘Grazie,’ she added.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Oh, nothing: just everything!’
‘He not home again?’ Toni said and pulled up a chair and sat next to Kaisa.
‘No. This time it’s Lady Di’s fault!’ Kaisa said. She was relieved she could talk to Toni about something other than the two awful things on her mind.
Toni took hold of Kaisa’s hands, and kissed them. ‘Ooh, Princess Diana! How come?’ Kaisa explained about the royal visit and about the delay.
‘Bella! And you have to suffer because of this selfish princess!’ His eyes, gazing intensely at Kaisa were sad, as if he was about to cry on Kaisa’s behalf.
Kaisa managed to laugh. During her time with the Terroni family, she’d got used to their overly emotional reactions to everything. Mamma Terroni would shout as if someone had died when the coffee machine was playing up, or Toni hadn’t ordered the right kind of biscotti for the shop.