The True Heart

by Helena Halme

  She was changing the subject on purpose, Kaisa knew, and gratefully replied, ‘No you won’t.’

  Kaisa would have been glad of the numbing effect of alcohol, but even if she’d allow herself to have a glass, which the midwife had said would be OK, she felt nauseous at just the thought of it.

  After they’d chosen their meals and Kaisa had been back to the bar, taking her chance to order the food with a new barmaid she didn’t recognise, Pirjo said, ‘I wanted to talk to you, Kaisa, before I leave.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Kaisa said.

  They’d been doing nothing but talk all fortnight. After the first few days, when Peter’s parents had been in the house, and then after the funeral, a day that was mostly a haze in Kaisa’s mind, when all Kaisa wanted to do was sleep, Kaisa and Pirjo had been talking about everything.

  Kaisa had told her how wonderful Peter had been on the phone, and how he’d said she’d made him the happiest man alive. She had poured her heart out to her mother, telling her about her regrets, speaking again about the awfulness of the first year of marriage and her unfaithfulness with Duncan, and her friendship with Rose, who had promised to come up to London when Pirjo had gone home. Of course, Pirjo knew all of it already, but it helped Kaisa to say it all again, to tell her mother how happy Peter had made her in spite of everything.

  Pirjo had listened and had hugged Kaisa, even sleeping with her when Kaisa couldn’t settle in the middle of the night.

  ‘I want you to think about what you are going to do now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You need to think about your future. It’s not easy to bring a child up on your own.

  ‘I know,’ Kaisa said. She was looking at Pirjo’s face trying to find out what she was talking about.

  ‘Come back to Finland!’

  ‘No!’ Kaisa said, a little too loudly.

  People around them looked up from their drinks. Even the love birds lifted their gaze and stared at Kaisa and Pirjo.

  Pirjo put her hand on Kaisa’s arm, ‘All I’m saying is that you should think of yourself.’

  Kaisa was silent for a while then said, quietly, ‘I am thinking of myself.’

  ‘And the baby? Do you think you will be able to give the baby a good life in England?’

  ‘Yes!’ Again Kaisa raised her voice, but when she saw the landlord put down a glass he was wiping, she lowered her voice and whispered to her mother, ‘This is my home now. I was very happy here with Peter.’ Kaisa swallowed hard. She couldn’t’ go on. She removed her hand from the table and from under her mother’s grasp and placed both hands on her lap, looking down at them. Keep calm, keep calm.

  Pirjo leaned back in her red velvet chair and sighed. ‘All I wanted to do is make you understand that it’d be easier for you to be at home.’

  Kaisa lifted her eyes to her mother’s. ‘The Navy is looking after me financially, and I have my job. And Ravi and Rose.’

  It was Pirjo’s time to be quiet. She looked down at her glass, then lifted her eyes up at Kaisa again. ‘But are you sure? You’re a foreigner here and always will be, won’t you?’

  Kaisa took a deep breath, and then another, in an attempt to calm down. She felt stronger now and had her eyes squarely on her mother. ‘This is my home now. I will have this baby here, and he or she will be English, just like Peter. Our home and place is here.’

  Pirjo nodded. ‘OK, but just think about what I said.’

  ‘Mum, I know you’re thinking of me, but this baby I’m carrying is half English. He or she is part of Peter, and the only thing I have left of him now.’ Tears were welling inside Kaisa, but she continued, ‘and for now I can’t think about moving anywhere.’

  In the last few hours Kaisa spent with Pirjo, she tried not to show her frustration with her, and kept quiet. Of course, Pirjo noticed, and when they parted at Heathrow, her mother said, ‘Don’t think badly of me for what I said. I was only thinking of you. At least think about coming back home, eh?’

  Kaisa had nodded and hugged her mother hard. She was fighting tears again, and wondered if she had been right to dismiss moving back to Finland so hastily.

  * * *

  The day after Kaisa’a mother had returned to Finland, the telephone in the hall rang. It was just past 6 pm and Ravi and Kaisa were sitting in front of the TV in the lounge, watching the evening news.

  ‘You expecting a call?’ Ravi said.

  Kaisa shook her head. They’d got into a routine during those few first weeks after Peter’s passing: if the telephone went, Ravi, or her mother, would reply in case Kaisa wasn’t up to talking to yet another Navy Wife who felt she needed to convey her and her husband’s condolences.

  Kaisa was surprised how little of this English etiquette she could take before she felt close to tears, so Ravi, bless his heart, had taken upon himself to listen to the same platitudes over and over. He was excellent at making excuses for Kaisa not being able to come to the telephone; she was asleep, in the bath (Kaisa never took baths; she preferred the shower), or at the shops. One time, Ravi even told someone that Kaisa had nipped out to buy milk for his tea, an excuse that particular Navy Wife (whom Kaisa couldn’t even remember meeting) swallowed easily. Why wouldn’t a woman take care of the man in the house – even a ‘Paki friend’ as Ravi put it when they laughed about the call almost a year later, when Kaisa found she could see the funny side to life again.

  Kaisa knew she was being selfish and impolite, but she didn’t care. She had pulled the short straw in life, and she didn’t need to pander to anyone’s sensibilities anymore. She couldn’t care less what any Navy Wife – or anyone in the Navy for that matter – thought of her behaviour. If they didn’t like it, they could try losing a husband in the senseless way she had. She bet they’d not care about being polite or doing things the right way either in the circumstances.

  ‘It’s your sister, I think?’ Ravi now said, looking at Kaisa and holding onto the receiver.

  ‘Hello Sirkka, you feeling any better?’ Kaisa tried to put on a jolly voice for her sister.

  Kaisa had spoken to Sirkka several times after Peter’s death. They’d had long, long phone calls in which Kaisa had poured her heart out, and they had both cried and cried. Sirkka had been feeling too sick with her pregnancy to come to the funeral.

  ‘No, still throwing up daily. But I wanted to talk to you about something.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘I might as well come out with it.’

  ‘What?’ Kaisa sighed. Since Peter had gone, she had no patience for anything. ‘C’mon what is it?’

  ‘Come home to Finland!’

  ‘You’ve been speaking with mum.’

  ‘You know she isn’t usually right about much, but this time she has a point. You know the best place to give birth is here in Finland. Helsinki has a fantastic new maternity ward, really close to where mum lives. All you’d need to do is to come over a month before you’re due, and stay six weeks after the birth. If you want to go back to London, well then you could. Just for the duration of your maternity leave. I’m sure the BBC would let you go earlier under the circumstances.’

  Kaisa didn’t reply. She wondered if Sirkka might be right. How lovely it would be to be looked after by your own family. To let Sirkka and Pirjo make the decisions for her, and to be in a familiar place when the baby was born. That would be wonderful, wouldn’t it?

  Sirkka continued, ‘Just think, the cousins would get to know you, and you could come over for long visits to Rovaniemi. We could go for a walk with the babies in their prams! How fantastic it would be to have so much time together.’

  ‘OK, I’ll think about it.’ Kaisa thought there was nothing stopping her from going to see her sister in Lapland whether she was in London or Helsinki, but she let it drop. She didn’t want the same argument with Sirkka as she had had with her mother.

  ‘That’s wonderful!’

  ‘I said, I’d think about it, not that I’d do it!’

  ‘OK! How are yo
u feeling anyway?’

  Kaisa told Sirkka about the end of the hormone injections and how she was actually feeling pretty good. Poor Sirkka had been very sick from almost the beginning. The sisters exchanged a few more pregnancy stories, before Kaisa said she had to go. Ravi had made a mild curry and was gesticulating from the kitchen to say the food was ready.

  Over supper, Kaisa told Ravi how tempting it would be to just go back to Finland.

  ‘I can’t rely on you forever,’ she said and looked down at her plate.

  Ravi put his hand over Kaisa’s and she was struck how pale her skin looked against Ravi’s mocha shade. ‘I want to help.’ His eyes were gazing directly at Kaisa. ‘So no more nonsense about my generosity. You’re like a sister to me, Kaisa. I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

  Kaisa could feel tears welling up inside her, but she held them back and smiled at Ravi instead. ‘That’s decided then. I want the little one to be born in England, however much less fabulous and world class the facilities!’

  ‘That’s my girl.’

  * * *

  That night, waking after just a few hours sleep, Kaisa thought about her conversation with Ravi and about her sister’s words. Would she be better off moving back to Finland after all? She knew she might be able to get a job with the national broadcaster, YLE, or possibly with one of the commercial radio stations that had sprung up all over Finland. They were relaying programmes that Kaisa and the other reporters at the BBC were producing, so she would be known to the management teams in these companies.

  The thought of being at home again, with family around her, was very appealing. Especially if she could find work and a place to live. But the thought of leaving the Notting Hill house that she had shared with Peter was unthinkable. There were so many memories here: the white, impractical sofa they’d bought together; the bench in the hall; the wobbly kitchen table that Peter had found in the second-hand shop on Portobello Road; and the pictures on the walls bought during their trips to France with Ravi.

  The house itself seemed to breathe Peter. She smiled when she recalled the day they moved in, how they’d vowed to make love in each room, and how they had. They’d even made love in the kitchen, where on one afternoon in the middle of a London heatwave, Peter had entered Kaisa from behind, while she leaned onto the wobbly kitchen table. Kaisa remembered how much they had wanted each other. No, this house held too many wonderful memories. Kaisa couldn’t leave this place, or this country. Britain was – had been – Peter’s home, and it would be the home of his child too.

  The next morning when Kaisa woke after another restless night, there was a letter on the mat. She recognised the writing immediately, and tore open the envelope.

  ‘Dear Kaisa,

  I hope you are coping, but I know it must be hard. I have been speaking with your mother …’

  Kaisa put her hand to her mouth. Her father had been speaking with her mother! She walked into the kitchen, flicked the kettle on and continued reading.

  ‘We both agree that you should come back home. Unlike your mother, I don’t interfere in the lives of my grown-up daughters, but on this occasion I must give you my opinion. You are expecting a child.

  As your father, I know that having a baby when there are two parents isn’t easy. To do it on your own is very difficult indeed. And you are planning to have this baby on your own in a foreign country.

  You know I very much respected Peter and know he was a good husband and would have made a good father. But, it is not to be. So you need your family around you.

  Come home to Finland, this is isänmaasi.

  Greetings, Dad.’

  Kaisa sat down at the kitchen table and stared at the words. She tried to think when – if ever – she’d had a letter from her father. And he had used that word, isänmaa, fatherland, which he must have known would bring a lump to her throat.

  ‘Bad news?’ Ravi stood in the doorway, with a concerned look on his face. He was wearing a thick, dark green Prince of Wales checked dressing gown and his smart black leather slippers.

  Kaisa translated the letter for Ravi, fighting tears, while Ravi picked up a mug from the wooden tree next to the kettle and made himself tea. He then measured coffee into a cafetière and poured the rest of the hot water over the top.

  He turned back to face Kaisa. ‘It’s OK. If you want to go back to Finland, you should.’

  Kaisa sighed and closed her eyes. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  Twenty-Nine

  Kaisa had come to fear the nights since Peter’s death. During the initial weeks, she’d fallen into bed in a kind of coma from all the crying, usually forced there by her mother or later by Ravi, who would make her a cup of soothing camomile tea and sit by the bed until she fell asleep (or pretended to).

  Thinking about the baby usually made her settle, but she’d be awake again a few hours later, in the dead of night, at first blissfully unaware of Peter’s death. When reality hit her, she would feel as though someone had punched her in the stomach. She’d feel winded and close to being sick. To calm herself she’d often place her hand on her growing belly and try to think about what Mrs D, her therapist, had told her.

  ‘Try to be grateful and think about what Peter gave you during his life.’

  After Kaisa’s mother had left, Ravi had got Kaisa in touch with the analyst. ‘Just go and see her once,’ he’d said. ‘For me.’

  Kaisa had promised and had immediately liked the grey-haired woman with wise, kind brown eyes. Mrs D, whose second name, she said, was ‘unpronounceable’, saw her ‘clients’ as she called the people who came to her home in smart Holland Park.

  Kaisa sat opposite Mrs D in a small room while they talked about Kaisa’s feelings. For the first sessions, Kaisa spoke less than Mrs D, fearing she’d embarrass herself with an inconsolable crying fit, or even rage, as she’d done when her mother had been staying with her.

  Gradually, however, she managed to talk about Peter without tears. She told Mrs D how they had met under the sparkling chandeliers of the British Embassy in Helsinki, about her engagement to the Finnish Matti, about his death, about Kaisa’s difficulties in getting used to life as a Navy Wife in Britain, and about the short separation from Peter.

  Finally, she told her about her miscarriages and how happy Peter had been during that last phone call home, when he’d found out she was pregnant and receiving treatment that would ensure the baby’s survival.

  ‘You must be so glad that he knew about the baby,’ Mrs D said to Kaisa on her fourth or fifth visit, and Kaisa, looking up at the wise grey eyes of the older woman, nodded.

  ‘You were lucky.’

  ‘Lucky?’ Kaisa replied, her mouth open in amazement.

  ‘Many of the bereaved people I see didn’t get the chance to share good news or express their love, like you and Peter did, before their partner is taken away.’

  Kaisa looked at her hands resting below her round belly. The baby inside her now kicked properly. When this happened, she’d feel tears prick her eyelids at the thought that she wasn’t able to tell Peter about it. She hadn’t once considered herself lucky (lucky!) for being able to tell Peter she was pregnant again, or for being able to say she loved him. Those words, You’ve made me the happiest man alive, now rang in Kaisa’s ears and she saw she was indeed fortunate.

  * * *

  After she’d been seeing Mrs D for a few weeks, Kaisa began to sleep better. At the same time, she started to have vivid dreams about making love to Peter. Waking after such a dream, she’d feel so happy at the prospect of his homecoming, until she remembered that he would never again walk along the front garden and hurriedly take her into his arms, while closing the front door with his foot.

  Sometimes Kaisa would dream she was kissing him at a cocktail party onboard a ship, in full view of everybody. He’d grab her behind, just as he had when they’d first met at the British Embassy in Helsinki all those years ago. He had been slightly drunk that evening, having already repres
ented Britain at three other embassies. On the dance floor, in front of the Finnish Foreign Minister and his wife, a former model, Peter had squeezed her bottom. But unlike on that first wonderful evening with her beloved Englishman, when Kaisa had removed his hand and told him off, in the dream, Kaisa ignored the gasps of the other wives and honoured guests.

  Once she dreamed that Lady Di came to speak to her at such a party and told her that if she’d been married to Peter she would never let him out of her sight. After that dream Kaisa woke with an intense feeling of jealousy, until she remembered that Peter was no longer alive. She then felt queasy, as if a heavy plate had been placed on her chest and she couldn’t breathe. After she’d calmed herself down, she put the light on and pulled a letter out from a pile in her bedside drawer. She lost count of how many notes she’d received from people who had known Peter. Some of the messages were short, some beautifully written with the same kind of old-fashioned fountain pen that Peter had used. But one letter was more special than the others. The sheet of heavy yellow paper had a beautiful crest made out of her initial, with a crown perching on top of the ‘D’ above the text ‘Kensington Palace’. It had arrived a few days after Peter’s death, but Kaisa hadn’t read any of the notes until weeks later.

  ‘Dear Kesa,

  I was so distressed to hear that your husband, Lieutenant Commander Peter Williams, who I had the pleasure to meet onboard HMS Redoubt in May this year, perished during an accident. I remember him as a very polite and charming naval officer and can only imagine what sorrow his passing has caused you and your family.

  Please accept my warmest condolences.

  Yours sincerely,

  Diana’

  The letter was typed, but the Princess had hand-written the greeting and signed it. She’d misspelled Kaisa’s name, but Kaisa knew it was probably a mistake by one of her courtiers, or whatever the people working for her were called. The words alone were lovely, as was the personal touch. She guessed that correspondence from the Princess had caused that particular succession of images in her dream.