The English Heart

by Helena Halme

  Kaisa turned around, ‘You don’t even mean that any more!’

  ‘But I do, darling, please, I’m so tired…You’ve been sick all night and…’

  ‘Oh yeah, it’s because I’m so uncivilised, foreign girls do that you know. Especially we Finns, we’re barely human, so we can’t really be trusted to attend fancy balls like tonight. Unladylike freaks, we drink pints of beer, not tiny glasses of sherry like the lovely Tashes of this world.’

  Peter got up. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ He looked angry, standing there in his boxers, his arms by his side, his fists tightly bunched.

  Tears started to run down Kaisa’s face. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, swallowed hard and said, ‘That man, the Commander, he told me you knew you’d never be able to marry me.’

  Peter came to sit at the edge of the bed, next to Kaisa. He put his arm around her shoulders, but she shook it off. She didn’t want his pity. She was shivering, thinking and hoping he’d soon tell her it wasn’t true. That he loved her and would marry her as soon as she wanted, that he’d never been in love with that pretty Tash, that he would die rather than lose Kaisa forever.

  ‘Look, I wasn’t going to tell you…’

  Kaisa couldn’t believe this. It was true, or was he talking about something else? ‘Tell me what?’

  Peter was looking down at his hands. Kaisa couldn’t see his face when he spoke. ‘I wrote to my Appointer and asked him if there was a problem with marrying someone from a near-Communist country.’

  Kaisa could hardly breathe. She stood up and shouted, ‘Finland is not a Communist country!’

  ‘I know that, but as far as the Navy is concerned…’

  Kaisa was speechless. She was staring at Peter, sitting there with his head bent. How long had he known about this? How long was he going to string her along, without telling her that she would never be able to move to England and be with him?

  Peter came up to Kaisa and took her into his arms. She was stiff in his embrace while he spoke, ‘I was told by someone that marrying a girl, from, you know,’ Peter took a deep breath, ‘You’ve got to admit Finland is a bit different, so close to the Soviet Union. Anyway, they told me marrying you may end my career in the Navy.’

  Kaisa wriggled out of Peter’s grip, but he took hold of her arm and held onto it. She was losing her hearing again. To Kaisa Peter’s words sounded as if he was speaking in a cave, or a deep tunnel.

  ‘So I thought I’d ask directly, you know from the one person, my Appointer, who makes the decisions on my career.’

  He stopped there.

  Kaisa looked at his face. His lips were in a narrow line, his complexion pale. ‘So what did he tell you?’

  ‘I’m still waiting for his reply.’

  * * *

  It was raining when the plane landed at Helsinki airport. The goodbye at Heathrow with Peter had been even more difficult than usual. Kaisa lost count of how many times they’d said, ‘I love you.’

  On the last day together they didn’t get out of bed until the afternoon. They talked about how they met all that time ago. The two and a half years Kaisa and Peter had known each other seemed like an eternity.

  Kaisa had been sitting on the double bed, trying to pack. Sheets were strewn everywhere, her clothes mingled with Peter’s. He came out of the shower, with a towel around his angular hips. His hair was wet and he smelled of the special coconut shaving cream that his relatives in America sent him. He sat next to Kaisa and took her hands into his. ‘I wanted you so much that evening we spent wandering in the cold park in Helsinki. But you kept saying, “It’s impossible”’

  Kaisa remembered the passionate kisses, the way Peter had looked deep into her eyes. And here they still were. Still in love, still longing for the day they could be together forever. ‘Our relationship is still impossible,’ Kaisa wanted to say, but she didn’t utter a word. She didn’t want to go back to the discussion about the future when it seemed they had no control over it.

  ‘I thought I was going to die if I couldn’t make love to you.’ Peter took Kaisa’s face into his hands and kissed her. He promised to phone as soon as he heard from the Appointer.

  After a brief silence, he said, ‘I heard there is an engineer who married a Czech girl, but I think he’s a skimmer.’

  Kaisa looked at him, ‘A skimmer?’

  ‘A lieutenant on surface ships. They skim on top of the sea, not under it, like us.’

  ‘And why is that different?’

  ‘It just is,’ Peter kissed the top of Kaisa’s head. She didn’t want to ask any more.

  Sitting in the Finnair bus, Kaisa now realised submariners must have a higher security clearance. But she could see he didn’t want to talk about it. Instead, during those last 48 hours he held Kaisa close and said he couldn’t imagine life without her. Peter kept taking Kaisa’s face between his hands and kissing her, telling her she was beautiful.

  But was that just because he felt bad about putting his career before their future together? Or because he thought it might be the last time they saw each other?

  Kaisa remembered Peter telling her sometime in the beginning, perhaps at the embassy cocktail party, how he loved the Navy even if it meant being away at sea for long periods. ‘Even if it means being away from loved ones; it’s what I’ve always wanted to do,’ he said. In his eyes Kaisa saw loving what he did, being good at his job, meant a lot to him. It was what he lived for. The Royal Navy was his life.

  So what if the Navy said he couldn’t marry her?

  If they didn’t get married Kaisa wouldn’t get a work permit in the UK. And she couldn’t just move to England and not work. She needed to be good at her job too. One of the many things they had in common: they were both ambitious.

  The rain ran down the windows of the Finnair bus. There was a lightning strike. How Kaisa wished she could be back in Sunny Southsea, as Peter called the part of Portsmouth where they’d been staying. When Kaisa said she thought it true, Peter laughed at her and said, ‘It rains a lot here!’

  ‘But you call it “Sunny”’ she protested.

  ‘It’s called sarcasm, or British humour. You’ll get the hang of it,’ he’d said and pulled Kaisa close to him.

  * * *

  The bus driver was listening to a sports programme on the radio. Barbra Streisand came on singing A Woman in Love. The way the Finnish announcer pronounced both the artist and the song, in his heavily accented English, made Kaisa smile. She thought how it would make Peter laugh. She allowed herself to listen to the soppy song and dream of life in England, together with Peter. How could she bear being without him?

  Kaisa looked at the wet Helsinki streets, through the sodden bus window. People were walking fast, with their heads hidden underneath black, sombre umbrellas. No one was smiling, no one holding someone else’s hand, everyone just on their miserable own. Kaisa couldn’t believe she was back here again. The city, with its tall, utilitarian buildings, its unhappy people, oppressed her. None of the people she saw on the street can have known love like she had, she was sure of it. The Barbra Streisand song got cut off halfway through when some sports results were announced. Kaisa looked at the front of the bus and noticed the luggage tag dangling from her suitcase in the rack at the front of the bus – ‘Hel’.

  She was back in Helsinki, ‘Hell’ for short.

  * * *

  The rest of that summer in Helsinki was again glorious. The second warm summer in a row. But the weather didn’t suit Kaisa’s mood. If it hadn’t been for her good friend Tuuli at Hanken, she wouldn’t have survived the latter part of that year. By the end of July Tuuli had finished her finals and submitted her thesis, which she’d written in record time. Now she was ready to party. So party they did. During the day Kaisa worked at the bank and at night the two friends were out in the university disco, or in the Helsinki Club, or a popular summer place called the Pikku Parlamentti. It was near the Finnish Parliament and only open from June to August. With some table
s outside and sliding glass doors facing the park, which sloped down to the sea, it was a perfect place to celebrate a graduation. There, and elsewhere, Tuuli and Kaisa often bumped into the old gang of rich boys, and sometimes exchanged a few words with them. Who spoke with whom didn’t seem to matter so much anymore, although, unlike her friend, Kaisa would still have to see everybody at Hanken in the autumn. She had a few exams to take, as she’d lost time with the change of subjects in her second year. But, as usual, her future depended on Peter.

  The ‘If we can marry, I can have a work permit and move to England, but if we can’t, what then?’question was always on Kaisa’s mind. But when Peter phoned, which he did at least twice a week, they skirted around the issue. At first, she asked him every time if he’d heard from the Appointer. But when after a few times the reply was a short ‘No’ she didn’t ask again. Peter was in the middle of a tough course and he, too, had exams to study for. He told Kaisa it was very important for him to do well, so she let him be.

  But he kept telling Kaisa how much he missed her and loved her. How much he longed for the day she moved to England. They speculated whether she might get a work permit through the bank where she’d been a summer intern. The bank was opening a commercial branch in London, and she got an interview with the man heading the new venture. But when Kaisa attended the interview, in plush offices just a few blocks from where she’d worked, it was clear she had no idea what the job entailed. The man, with dark hair, combed back and shiny, asked Kaisa what she knew about hedge funds and Eurodollars. Kaisa had never heard these terms before and couldn’t deny it.

  There was still no word from the Navy. Whether they’d allow a marriage to a girl from a country so near the Eastern Bloc, or whether it would prove too much of a security risk to an English Naval Officer, Kaisa didn’t know. It was as if her life was hanging in the balance. She couldn’t even decide on a subject for her thesis. Kaisa had narrowed it down to three choices. The one she really wanted to do was about British party politics. But for this she needed to be based in England. Handy if she was living there, impossible if it all fell through.

  As the nights drew in and Helsinki descended into its depressing winter hibernation, Kaisa returned to lectures at the School of Economics. Her professor pressed her on a decision on her thesis, but Kaisa kept putting off meetings with him. It was October 1983; Kaisa was 23 years old and had no idea what was going to happen to her life.

  Twenty

  A little over a month later, in the middle of November, Peter called, ‘I have Christmas and New Year off! Can I come over to see you?’

  Kaisa spoke to her father the next day. ‘Christmas? Here?’

  ‘Yes, I thought we could get a ham and I’d cook the Karelian stew and the swede bake, and you could make your gravad lax...’

  Her father didn’t hesitate, ‘I’m not having any guests here. Christmas is a commercial invention anyway, for shops to sell more stuff.’

  He’d been in an unusually bad mood for weeks. Kaisa guessed he’d had a fight with his girlfriend again, because he was spending all his evenings and nights at home, drinking Koskenkorva, monopolising the TV and complaining if she watched anything after he’d gone to bed.

  Kaisa looked at him. She wanted to say, ‘What about me?’ or ‘Please can we have a family Christmas here, just like we did when I was little?’ but she didn’t. What if he sneered at her or worse, started to complain about her mother. Tell Kaisa some story or other about how awful Christmas was with her. Kaisa wanted to hold onto her childhood memories and not have them spoiled by her bitter father.

  Kaisa spoke to her mother instead. She was delighted and said it would be a special Christmas with Peter in Stockholm.

  There was no snow in Helsinki when Peter’s plane landed on the Saturday before Christmas. The city looked grey with the lights over Aleksanterinkatu, reflecting on the black pavements instead of the sparkly whiteness of snow. Kaisa took the bus to the airport and prayed the weather would turn colder. Everything looked so much prettier with freshly fallen snow. Peter had two weeks off and flew first to Helsinki. Their plan was to fly together to Stockholm for the holidays and then back again to spend New Year with Kaisa’s friends in Helsinki. When she saw him through the glass at the arrivals hall, giving her a shy wave and rushing towards her with a bag over his shoulder, Kaisa didn’t give a thought to the distant future. The next fourteen days were all that mattered.

  Kaisa’s father was waiting in the kitchen when they arrived. In front of him was a half-full bottle of Koskenkorva and an empty tumbler. He shook Peter’s hand and took another glass out of the drying cupboard. With a nod to Peter he filled the two glasses up to the brim and lifted one to his lips. Peter glanced at Kaisa and emptied his glass. He made only the slightest of sounds as the strong vodka flowed down his throat.

  ‘We’re going out tonight,’ Kaisa lied and took Peter’s hand. He coughed.

  ‘Even more reason to start the evening off with style,’ Kaisa’s father poured another round. She looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was just past four o’clock in the afternoon.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Peter said. He’d placed his hand on Kaisa’s knee under the kitchen table. With his free hand, he lifted the second glassful to his lips.

  ‘C’mon we have to go,’ she replied.

  Her father looked up. His eyes looked very blue and he smiled, ‘You don’t have to go. I’m off to Lapland today.’

  ‘What?’ Kaisa said.

  * * *

  Peter looked from one face to the other. Kaisa and her father had switched to Finnish. After three years, he still struggled to understand the most basic words in Kaisa’s mother tongue. He’d tried – he’d even managed to order a Linguaphone course in Finnish through the Navy. But, however much he practised by listening to the tapes with the dead-pan female voice, he just couldn’t get to grips with the language. He could say, Kiitos, which meant ‘thank you’, and Anteeksi for ‘sorry’, and, of course, the inevitable, ‘I love you’, or ’Minä rakastan sinua’, but as far as understanding anything anyone said in conversation he was at a loss. It didn’t help that when you tried to talk Finnish to them, most people, in Helsinki at least, immediately spoke English back to you.

  Peter sighed. The vodka was beginning to have an effect on him. He surveyed Kaisa’s profile. Her small features looked so delicate, those rosy little lips so beautiful, made even more attractive by her pale skin and blonde hair. He wanted to move his hand further up her leg under the table, but was afraid her father might see. If only he’d leave them alone, so he could take her to bed. He’d been thinking about nothing else but sex during the long journey from Scotland. Now Kaisa’s father’s Koskenkorva made him fit to burst. There was no way he could wait until the evening.

  ‘I won’t see you until next year,’ Kaisa’s father said, again in Finnish, and took a wad of hundred Mark notes out of his wallet. ‘Have a few drinks on me, or even a meal.’ He laughed, bear-hugged Kaisa and shook Peter’s hand.

  When the door shut behind her father Kaisa shook her head. Peter’s face was a question mark. She told him what her father had said. ‘He didn’t tell me he was away for Christmas. They must have made up and are going up to see his girlfriend’s family in northern Finland.’

  Peter pulled Kaisa close to him. His eyes looked cloudy. He kissed her and said, ‘Can we go to bed now?’

  They woke late the next morning, the 21st of December 1983.

  ‘What do you want to do today?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Go into Helsinki for some Christmas shopping?’

  It was drizzling with cold rain, almost sleet. They spent an hour walking around Stockmann’s department store, holding hands. Peter kept stopping to kiss Kaisa. He didn’t seem to mind how people everywhere stared when he did that. And he didn’t speak much. Suddenly, when they were queuing up to pay for some Fazer chocolates for her sister, he said, ‘So your father. Am I going to see him again?’

  Kaisa looked at him. Peter
was wearing a thick Puffa jacket, jeans and a thick jumper. Even when he wasn’t kissing her, with his dark hair he looked foreign and attracted sideways glances from other shoppers. ‘Again?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, before I go back.’ Peter looked uncomfortable. A man in front of them in the queue turned around when he heard English being spoken. His eyes wandered from Peter’s dark features to Kaisa’s blonde head. There was strong disapproval in his gaze. Kaisa stared at him and eventually he turned back to face the till.

  Peter widened his eyes and directed them towards the man’s back. ‘What’s his problem,’ he mouthed to Kaisa silently.

  She shrugged and said out loud, ‘No, don’t think so, my father’s away for the whole of the holidays. Why?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Peter said and pulled Kaisa towards him for another kiss.

  ‘Can we go for lunch somewhere?’ Peter said when they were walking out of the store.

  The sleet was still falling and even though it was only twelve o’clock, and in spite of the bright Christmas lights, the street looked dark. Kaisa spotted the sign of the new American hamburger bar opposite and started running towards it, dragging Peter behind her.

  ‘It’s not McDonald’s but they do a rye burger.’ she said.

  Inside Peter looked around the small space. ‘You sure this is OK?’ he said.

  The place was called Hesburger and being new, it was fairly full. As usual people stared when Peter and Kaisa entered. She looked at Peter. ‘Yes, we just want a quick bite, yeah? And it’s raining.’

  After some translation of the menu, they got the bags of food.

  ‘Let’s sit by the window,’ Kaisa said and nodded to one of the red plastic tables and chairs.

  Peter looked at Kaisa across the table. He hadn’t touched his burger.