The English Heart

by Helena Halme

  ‘I’ll never be a naval wife like your friend, you know. Never,’ Kaisa looked into Peter’s dark eyes.

  Peter laughed, relieved now. ‘I know that. And I bloody well hoped you wouldn’t.’

  * * *

  The drive from Edinburgh to Newcastle was much shorter than the journey from Wiltshire to Scotland had been five weeks earlier. Sitting next to Peter in his yellow Spitfire Kaisa wished time would stop and they’d be on the road south forever.

  ‘You must take one of these,’ Peter said. They were onboard the musty-smelling ship, standing in a four-berth cabin she’d booked for the crossing to Gothenburg.

  ‘Why?’ Kaisa looked at the packet of Stugeron.

  ‘It’s going to be choppy.’ Peter put his arm around her, ‘the North Sea in winter.’

  It hadn’t even occurred to Kaisa she might be seasick. She’d never been sick on the ferry between Finland and Sweden but when she tried to explain this to Peter he laughed and said, ‘Just take them; believe me you don’t want to take the chance. There’s a saying in the Navy, “When you’re seasick, first you fear you’re going to die; then you wish you would.”’

  Kaisa put the packet into her handbag. She didn’t need to be seasick to wish to die. The tannoy announced that the ferry was leaving in fifteen minutes. She lifted her eyes to Peter, trying not to cry. Peter took her face between his hands.

  ‘Your eyes are very blue today.’ He looked at Kaisa for a very long time and whispered, ‘I love you.’

  They kissed.

  And then he was gone.

  Kaisa stood in the middle of the large space wondering if the ache for her Englishman would ever go away. A woman in her late thirties came into the cabin, dragging two heavy suitcases. She introduced herself, but Kaisa couldn’t talk. She nodded to her and mumbled her name. Kaisa sat on her bunk and pretended to look for something inside her bag, hoping the woman would not see the tears running down her face. Kaisa tried to control herself but all she wanted to do was scream. Her stomach ached; her chest felt as if it had caved in. As she watched the ferry pull away from the dock, with the afternoon light fading, it felt as if Kaisa’s heart was left on the jetty, a part of her body being ripped away.

  Kaisa went to the cafeteria, which was full of lonely men – lorry drivers, she presumed. She bought an egg-and-anchovy open sandwich and a bottle of Elefanten. Long ago, when they still lived in Sweden, Kaisa’s father had told her this was the strongest beer you could have, and Kaisa wanted to be anaesthetised. She spotted the packet of travel sickness pills in her bag and swallowed two, downing them with gulps of beer. After the meal Kaisa walked around the ship. She went up to the deck, or the ‘Upper Scupper’ as Peter called it. She smiled and fought the tears again. It was only six o’clock, but she felt tired and drunk from the beer so she decided to go and lie down in the cabin.

  Kaisa slept for twenty-three hours. She woke once or twice to the movement of the ship and to people coming in and out of the cabin.

  ‘We were worried about you,’ said the woman whom she’d met when the ship was still docked at Newcastle. She had bloodshot eyes and smelt strongly of alcohol. ‘Thought you’d died on us!’ she giggled.

  The woman told Kaisa the sea had been heavy during the long crossing and that many people had been seasick. Kaisa wondered how she could tell the difference between being sick from alcohol and the motion of the sea, but said nothing. The woman told her she’d spent the time in the bar and had met a great guy. Why is she telling me all this, Kaisa wondered wearily. She felt slightly odd herself, as if she’d been drugged. Then Kaisa remembered the seasickness pills. Perhaps she shouldn’t have taken alcohol with them.

  The short train journey up to Stockholm passed quickly. Kaisa’s mother greeted her warmly and Kaisa spent two nights with her. Sirkka was home from Lapland and the two sisters slept on the floor of the living room, on two thin mattresses side by side. Kaisa told her sister everything about the trip to Edinburgh, and Sirkka told Kaisa about a man she’d met up in Rovaniemi.

  ‘He’s Swedish and the same age as father!’ she whispered. Kaisa could hear the faint sounds of her mother snoring in the room next door. ‘I’ve never felt like this about anyone, not even the bastard in Finland.’

  Kaisa hugged her sister. Suddenly she was alarmed, ‘He’s not married is he?’

  Sirkka told Kaisa the man had three grown-up children but was divorced. He had his own restaurant on the Swedish side of the border and drove a huge Mercedes.

  ‘But what will father say?’ Kaisa asked.

  Sirkka shrugged, ‘Why should I care about him?’

  After two nights talking with her sister about everything, and planning weddings that hadn’t even been spoken about with the prospective grooms, Kaisa had to return to Helsinki. Her father met her at the ferry terminal, together with the girlfriend. It was a Sunday morning and the sun was bright against the white snow at South Harbour.

  ‘The wanderer returns!’ Kaisa’s father said. He hugged her and she felt as if he was truly glad to see her. Marja giggled, and Kaisa’s father said, ‘I’m going to take you both out to lunch!’

  Kaisa nodded and thanked him, though she wasn’t at all hungry. In her ruined suede jacket Kaisa felt the cold and shivered. They walked towards her father’s dark-blue Saab.

  ‘Happy New Year,’ Marja nudged herself close to Kaisa, ‘How did you celebrate the arrival of 1983?’

  ‘We went to the pub.’

  Marja launched into a long tale about a language course she’d attended years ago in Eastbourne. How she’d survived the month on Mars bars because English food was inedible. But she’d loved the pubs, and the beer in particular. Kaisa was bored and tried not to listen. Besides, this woman knew nothing about England, not the real England. There was no proper coffee, that was true, and the whole country seemed to smell of milk that had gone bad, but there was some good food. Kaisa had never had chips that tasted as good as the ones Peter’s mother made, or the cabbage salad, called coleslaw, served with ham in pubs. And the ham was thickly sliced and tasty, not like the thin over-salted stuff that Kaisa’s father bought from the local shop. And there was no Cheddar cheese in Finland. Kaisa closed her eyes and thought about the Gorgonzola she’d eaten with Peter, sitting on the floor of their temporary home in Edinburgh.

  Next day at the School of Economics, Tuuli was glad to see Kaisa, too, ‘I thought you might not come back,’ she said when she hugged her.

  Kaisa looked at Tuuli’s serious eyes. That must have been what everyone thought. Her mother, even Sirkka, her sister, her father, his girlfriend. That’s why everyone was so glad – relieved – to see Kaisa back in Finland. What did they think, that she’d just stay, marry Peter and abandon her studies for good?

  The possibility hadn’t even occurred to her. Or to Peter.

  Why hadn’t it?

  Eighteen

  In February 1983 Kaisa got a part-time job at Stockmann’s department store, selling fabrics on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings. She was short of money after all her travelling the previous winter. In spite of all the time spent away, her studies at the School of Economics were going well and she’d passed the exams she took on her return from Edinburgh. Kaisa continued to get good marks for the coursework, even though she had less time to study because of the new job. Every week Kaisa also went out with Tuuli to the university disco. Once or twice she bumped into the fourth year guy who’d been flirting with her, but his attentions didn’t bother Kaisa anymore. Once Kaisa even saw the tennis player there; he’d walked towards her and their eyes met. Trembling, Kaisa just nodded and turned her back to him. She’d feared he would come and talk to her – Tuuli was on the dance floor and it looked like she was alone again, just like in the summer – but Kaisa held her breath and was glad when he didn’t. ‘Well, at least he recognised me,’ she thought, and smiled to herself. But Kaisa had no desire to speak to him, or see him ever again.

  Kaisa missed Peter wherever she found herself
.

  He wrote nearly every week, his words full of longing and love for her. Occasionally there’d be a late-night phone call. Sometimes a fortnight would pass without any communication, and all Kaisa could assume was that he was away at sea, onboard his nuclear submarine. Kaisa replied to each letter, but often their messages to each other would cross in the post, and a question would take two or three letters to be answered. They didn’t write about the future or anything important though: just what happened to each of them during the week. Kaisa told Peter how Russian customers at Stockmann’s would try to buy dress fabric with a bottle of vodka, or what marks she’d got in her exams. Peter told Kaisa about nights out with his mates, and about a trip down to Portsmouth to see his old friends. He said very little about his work, merely referring to ‘refits’, ‘work-ups’, or ‘programmes’. Kaisa didn’t understand what the ‘boat’, as he referred to the submarine, did when it sailed, nor what Peter’s job was. She assumed she wasn’t supposed to know or understand.

  In April, Peter told Kaisa he’d visited his parents and they’d given him money towards a new car for his birthday. He sold the yellow Spitfire and bought a more reliable car, a Ford Fiesta. Kaisa mourned the open-top sports car and couldn’t imagine her Englishman at the wheel of anything else.

  Kaisa spent her twenty-third birthday later the same month with her father and sister, who’d travelled down from Lapland to see Kaisa.

  ‘If I were you, I’d move to England now,’ Sirkka said.

  Kaisa asked her about the new boyfriend, but she said it was finished.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Little Sister, I don’t think he’s the one for me after all.’

  They were sitting in the Happy Days Café, where their father had taken his two daughters for a buffet lunch. The place was full of memories of Kaisa’s first date with Peter. It seemed an age ago now. For once, her father’s girlfriend wasn’t with them, even though it was a Saturday. Kaisa looked at the uneaten gravad lax and pickled herring on her plate and sipped at the half litre glass of beer Sirkka had insisted she should have. ‘It’s your birthday and he’s paying, for goodness sake,’ she whispered in Kaisa’s ear when she’d hesitated about what to order.

  ‘But it’s different for you, you’re in love,’ Sirkka now said and took hold of Kaisa’s hand, ‘so move to England!’

  ‘But I won’t be able to get a job without a work permit.’ Kaisa said.

  ‘Get a work permit, then.’

  ‘You can’t get one. There’s huge unemployment in the UK, just like here, and no one outside the EEC gets a work permit. Unless you’re a brain surgeon or something.’ Kaisa looked at her sister’s blonde curly hair and dark-green eyes. Living in Lapland obviously suited her. She looked slim and athletic in her short black skirt and stripy jumper with a deep v-neck. Kaisa continued, ‘I’d have to marry him to be able to live and work there.’

  Sirkka smiled broadly. ‘So, what’s the problem? You love him, he loves you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Besides, he’s already asked you to marry him once, so just say yes!’ Sirkka lifted her glass and clinked it with Kaisa’s.

  Their father sat down heavily next to Kaisa in the leather booth. He’d brought a plateful of food from the buffet. ‘Yes to what?’ he said, looking suspiciously at Sirkka.

  ‘I think someone should marry and leave this godforsaken city and country for ever.’

  Their father’s nostrils flared as he took a deep breath in. Kaisa wondered if she could ask them not to fight on her birthday. But it was already too late.

  ‘You’d think that, wouldn’t you! You, who scarpered over to Sweden to follow that bitch of a mother of yours. Foreign men, that’s what you’re after, just because no Finnish man would have you. I bet you’ll marry some soft, milk-drinking Swede.’

  There was a silence. The little appetite Kaisa had had vanished. She didn’t know what to say. Sirkka was looking down at her plate. She glanced at Kaisa. Her eyes were dark, dangerous-looking. Father was staring at Sirkka, holding his knife and fork upright. Like a man-eating giant about to pounce, waiting for the retaliation. But Kaisa’s sister was silent, for once not rising to the bait.

  A waitress came to the table. ‘Any schnapps here?’

  Father’s eyes lit up. ‘Yes, we’ll have a round of Koskenkorva.’

  Kaisa glanced at her watch. It was barely 11.30am.

  ‘I don’t care what he thinks,’ Sirkka said later. They were walking along the Esplanade to a restaurant where a friend of Sirkka’s was working. In the restaurant business everyone seemed to know each other, even in different countries. It was a sunny, almost warm day. Trees along the park were beginning to bud; spring was definitely on its way, at last.

  They’d left their father to drink himself stupid at Happy Days Cafe. Luckily his mood had improved with the first round of Koskenkorva. After they’d eaten, he told Sirkka and Kaisa to go out and have fun, pressing a few hundred Marks into each of their hands.

  The same old routine.

  ‘Might as well use the money as His Pisshead Lordship wishes,’ Sirkka laughed and took Kaisa’s arm.

  Peter phoned later that night, to wish Kaisa a happy birthday. She very nearly told him what Sirkka had said about moving to England and marrying him, but at the last minute she hesitated. It was for the man to ask the woman, not the other way around.

  ‘I’ve only got three weeks of term left,’ Kaisa said instead.

  ‘Right, and then what?’ Peter said.

  ‘I start at the bank on Monday 23rd May.’

  ‘Ok.’

  That was it. Kaisa couldn’t get any more out of him. She tried not to worry that he had stopped loving her or that he’d ‘accidentally’ slept with another girl, or even the same mysterious girl. In bed that night, Kaisa reread his last letter, in which he’d sworn undying love for her. Perhaps he truly didn’t know or couldn’t tell Kaisa what he was doing in the next few months, or even weeks. There was a Cold War on after all. Goodness knew who might be listening in on their telephone conversations. It always sounded as if several lines were open when the overseas connections were made, and Kaisa often heard a click or two, like someone putting the phone down during their call. Peter’s jokes about sleeping with a spy, or the famous ‘honey traps’ that the ship’s company had been warned about when they met, still rang in Kaisa’s ears. Surely Peter didn’t suspect her of being a Soviet spy after all this time? After two and a half years?

  * * *

  A month later, when Kaisa had already started her fourth summer internship at the bank, a letter from Peter was waiting for her on the doorstep at home. Just that day, she’d discovered the British Council Library in a building next to the bank and had borrowed Graham Greene’s spy novel The Human Factor, in English. She was looking forward to curling up in bed reading about England in English, but first Kaisa ripped open the thin blue envelope.

  * * *

  ‘I have been so miserable here without you all this time. But now I finally know what my schedule is going to be for at least the next few months. As you know, our refit has been delayed so many times now, and as a consequence they’ve decided to send me on an OPS course in Portsmouth. I’ll be on dry land and away from Scotland for six months! The course starts early June and ends at Christmas.’

  * * *

  Peter was going to live in his friend’s house in Southsea again, and he wanted Kaisa to come over ‘for as long as you can, as soon as you can make it.’

  Kaisa sat down on her bed. Her father was still at work, or perhaps he wasn’t going to come home that evening. Kaisa was glad, she needed to be alone to think. She had no idea what an OPS course was, but it didn’t matter. How could she ask for time off at the bank when she’d only just started? Would they understand she needed to go and see Peter? For once Kaisa had some money; she’d saved up from the part-time job at Stockmann’s. At the end of the month she’d have her first pay cheque from the bank. Even though
it was just for one week’s work, it would cover the cost of the flight.

  The next day Kaisa went to see the manager at the bank.

  ‘Young love,’ he muttered and smiled. Kaisa had known him since her first summer internship. He’d graduated from the same university as Kaisa ten years earlier and kept calling her ‘The Lady Economist’. He thought Kaisa very smart and she feared the day when he’d find out the truth about her academic abilities.

  ‘Take two weeks paid leave. I’m sure we’ll manage without you.’

  Kaisa was amazed. It was unheard of for summer interns to get leave, paid or unpaid. The interns were there to cover the permanent staff’s holidays, after all. Kaisa shook the manager’s hand and thanked him. She danced out of his office.

  That afternoon, walking back to the bus stop along Mannerheim Street, Kaisa hummed to herself. Straight after work she’d gone to the Finnair travel agent in the corner of Aleksanterinkatu and reserved her flights to Heathrow. In only two weeks’ time she’d be on the plane, on her way to London. In only fourteen days’ time Kaisa would be in Peter’s arms.

  Kaisa arrived at Helsinki airport only twenty minutes before the flight to London was due to leave. She’d missed the bus from Espoo, where it stopped outside her father’s house, by a whisker. The nasty old bus driver had, she was sure, seen her running for it, dragging the heavy suitcase, but had driven off anyway, leaving her breathlessly cursing the bloody man. Kaisa saw his face through the side mirror as he sped away from her. He had something against Kaisa, even though she’d barely exchanged one word with him during the two years she’d been living with her father. After that, Kaisa had to wait twenty minutes for a Finnair bus at the terminal in Töölö.

  ‘The flight is full,’ the heavily tanned, red-haired woman at the check-in said. Her bright-pink lipstick clashed with her colouring, and with the sky-blue Finnair uniform.