The English Heart

by Helena Halme

  Later the same day Peter called. Kaisa feigned excitement when he told her the news. ‘I’ve got the whole of my programme set out for next the twelve months. First at the NATO base in Naples until the last week of May. Then two weeks off and the rest of the year I’ll be based in Pompey. So, our date could be Saturday the 2nd of June!’

  ‘The 2nd of June.’ Kaisa tasted the date on her lips. Could this be true? Would it really happen?

  ‘So when can you finally come over to England for good?’ Peter asked.

  ‘My Professor says I can take the final exams at the Finnish Embassy in London, so I can come as soon as I have arranged everything here. I think perhaps the middle of February.’

  ‘Great! I’m going to Italy in March, but you can stay in the house in Southsea. I’ll be home every other weekend at least.’

  The words ‘I’ll be home’ rang in Kaisa’s ears for the rest of the evening. How would it be to wait for Peter to come home in England when he was away? Would Kaisa be as lonely there as she was in her father’s house in Espoo? Though more often than not Kaisa was glad her father stayed away, especially today after their disastrous outing.

  At least it would be warmer in Southsea, Kaisa thought. And she’d be working just like Peter’s sister-in-law and sister, taking the bus or the train to an office, where she’d do important work. As yet Kaisa had no idea what that job would be. First she needed to marry the man, she thought, and pulled out the Yellow Pages. She ran her finger down the names of printers. Now Kaisa knew the date, she could have the invitations made. And she needed to let everyone know. Kaisa lifted the receiver and dialled her mother’s number in Stockholm.

  Kaisa set the date for her move to England for 25th of February, 1984.

  She’d take the train through Europe, just as before, and then cross the Channel over to Harwich. This way she could send all her worldly possessions separately to her new home country, rather than be limited by the number of suitcases she could take on a flight. The only snag was that instead of taking the ferry from Helsinki she’d have to start the journey by rail from Finland. This meant travelling to Turku on the Western coast of Finland and taking a ferry from there to Stockholm. This was the official Finnish Railways route and as much as Kaisa tried to negotiate, there was no veering from official policy. The man in the ticket office at the Central Station reminded Kaisa of Matti. With his neatly cut hair and same beige uniform, he could have have been his double. So Kaisa didn’t argue with the official. Besides, personal luggage sent this way was free, whereas sending it by international mail would have cost money Kaisa didn’t have. As it was, when in England she’d have to live off Peter’s salary; something she tried not to think about.

  Kaisa bought the train ticket at Helsinki railway station on a cold windy day. Afterwards she picked up two large cardboard boxes from Valintatalo, a cheap food and clothes store opposite her bus stop. She struggled onto the bus, and occupied two seats, getting disapproving looks from the other commuters. The last thing they needed was to lose a seat to a cardboard box. Kaisa tried to ignore the other passengers and looked out of the window. It was just past three but already dark. The little snow that had fallen over the city after New Year had quickly disappeared, leaving Helsinki dull and rainy.

  As she watched more passengers board the bus at the next stop, Kaisa thought about the items she’d take with her to England. The two large coffee cups and saucers that her mother left behind when she moved to Stockholm, the pestle and mortar her grandfather had made during the war when he worked at the ammunition factory in Tampere. All her books, including the thick heavy ones for the exams she was going to take at the Finnish Embassy in London, and all her LPs. Peter and Kaisa had discussed on the phone whether she’d need to take the ones they both owned by Earth Wind & Fire, Haircut One Hundred, Billy Joel or The Police. Peter thought Kaisa would be crazy to pack them, but she wasn’t sure. These LPs were like her friends, they’d kept her sane at night when she was lonely and desperately missing Peter in her father’s little house in Espoo.

  The next day Kaisa went to pick up the wedding invitations. Peter and Kaisa had spent a long time on the telephone drawing up a list of guests. He’d come up with only ten, including his parents, godmother, sister and brother with their spouses, and Jeff, Oliver and Sandra, the friends with whom he’d shared the house in Southsea. He said the flights were so expensive that many of his friends couldn’t afford to make the trip to Helsinki. The same conversation with Kaisa’s father was fruitless. ‘You must decide. How am I supposed to know who wants to come to your wedding?’

  Then, after he’d been sitting in front of the TV for half an hour, he shouted, ‘Invite my mother and my step-sisters. I guess they’ll want to come now that old bastard is dead.’

  Kaisa sighed. He would always have to put someone down. Her father was referring to his step-father, who’d refused to feed and clothe him when his mother remarried. She’d heard the story so many times: how the man had promised her grandmother that her illegitimate son would be educated and have his own room in the home he’d built for his new bride. And how, after only one week, he had threatened to throw out the new wife, too, if the boy stayed. Kaisa had often wondered what her father had done to receive such treatment. Or was the new husband just as evil as her father claimed. Kaisa had never met him; her father didn’t see his mother again until after the evil step-father had died.

  The conversation about the wedding guests was more enjoyable with Kaisa’s mother. Over the phone, they made a list of over thirty people, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and Kaisa’s friends from school and university. As usual when she spoke on the phone with her mother, she’d made sure her father was out. Kaisa couldn’t bear the nasty things he would say about her afterwards, when he heard who was at the other end of the line.

  Kaisa had a long conversation with her mother about the wording of the invitations, too. Peter had given Kaisa the text used in the UK, but she wasn’t sure whether the Finnish translation should reflect the official tone of ‘Mr and Mrs so-and-so have the pleasure of inviting you to the wedding of their daughter and Sub-Lieutenant Peter Williams, RN.’ There was nothing similar in Finnish that wouldn’t sound pompous and old-fashioned. Eventually they settled on a simple wording, in slightly more formal Finnish.

  The printers were in Lauttasaari, in a small industrial park at the far end of the island. As she passed the street where her old block of flats stood, Kaisa felt a little sad. Life with her old boyfriend, or fiancé, had been dull but it was safe. When she saw a light in her old window, and a new set of dark curtains, Kaisa couldn’t but wonder whether she was making a grave mistake. What if England turned out to be a difficult country to live in? What if people were unfriendly – even prejudiced – against foreigners like her? What happened at the Dolphin Summer Ball could happen everywhere Kaisa went, on the bus, at work, in the pub in the evenings. What if she didn’t get a job at all and ended up being a Navy housewife like Lucinda in Scotland? What if Peter, once married, turned out to be as possessive and jealous as her former fiancé? What if Kaisa found married life as unbearable as Martha Quest had in Doris Lessing’s books?

  At the printer’s, a man with ink-stained fingers pulled out a copy of the invitations for Kaisa to see. He left two dirty fingermarks in a corner of the card, embossed with heavy, beautiful gold lettering. She reread the text and blushed. Was this really for her? If only her family lived up to the fine wording and look of the invitation. The ‘Mr and Mrs have the pleasure of inviting you to the wedding of their daughter’ struck Kaisa as false. She wasn’t even sure her parents would be able to sit in the same room without falling out, and here they were portrayed as the most united of happy parents, inviting family and friends to their daughter’s wedding.

  When Kaisa’s father came home from work that evening, she showed him the invitations. Kaisa knew he’d be glad the number of guests wouldn’t exceed fifty. It was at least twenty-five fewer than the maximum h
e was expecting. He sat down heavily in one of the plush comfy chairs and perched his reading glasses at an angle on the end of his nose.

  ‘What’s this?’ he said holding the card and looking at Kaisa over his glasses.

  She was standing next to him, but now sat down. For some reason her heart started to beat a little faster. ‘The wedding invitations.’

  He looked down at the single card Kaisa had handed him, frozen to the spot, saying nothing.

  ‘It’s in English as well as in Finnish, because...’ she started. He must be offended by the bilingual text. ‘We speak Finnish in Finland,’ he’d often say when Kaisa’s Swedish-speaking friends came to visit the house.

  ‘No, what’s this?’ he said, pointing his fine long finger at the sentence, ‘Mr and Mrs Niemi have the pleasure of inviting...’

  ‘It’s the English text. I thought, since half, or in fact it’s much less than half, but all the same, they don’t understand Finnish, so I thought, being that it is...’ Kaisa was stammering now, her heart was beating so fast she could hardly get the words out. Her father looked extremely angry.

  ‘Not that!’ he said, loudly. ‘It’s me who’s inviting these people, not your mother.’

  ‘Yes, I know that...’ Kaisa was puzzled, what did he mean ‘not your mother’?

  ‘It’s me who’s paying for it.’ His pale-blue eyes, over the wonky glasses, were on Kaisa. His lips turned downwards. His hand, holding the card was trembling.

  ‘What?’ A chill ran down Kaisa’s spine. Even before she heard him say it, she had a premonition about what he was going to say.

  ‘I don’t want that bitch on the invitation.’

  Kaisa said nothing. Her throat felt dry, and she felt faint.

  ‘And I don’t want her anywhere near the wedding,’ Kaisa’s father said, handing back the card.

  There was a long silence. Kaisa struggled to find the right words. ‘You mean my own mother can’t come to my wedding?’ she eventually asked. She willed her voice to sound normal, or firm, but she could hear the tremble in it.

  He said nothing for a while. Then there was a dry final comment, ‘I’m paying for everything. Not your mother. Me. And I don’t want to see that bitch there. That’s my final word on the matter.’ He took his glasses off and turned the volume up on the TV set.

  Kaisa ran out of the room, clutching the plastic bag of invitations. The hate she felt for her father at that moment was even greater than the love she felt for Peter.

  Back in her room Kaisa thought she might kill him.

  Twenty-Two

  Kaisa was lying face down on her bed, with her head spinning, trying to make sense of what had just happened, when she heard the front door slam shut. She waited for a few minutes. It was quiet. Kaisa crept out of her room and walked into the darkened kitchen. The parking space where her father’s Saab was usually parked was empty. She took a deep breath and wiped her face with the threadbare tissue she had in her hand. She went to the telephone in the hall and lifted the heavy receiver.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  Hearing her mother’s concerned voice brought up the tears again, but Kaisa tried to stop the flow. ‘Dad, he...’ Holding back the tears took such an effort she couldn’t finish the sentence.

  ‘What’s he done now?’ Kaisa’s mother sighed heavily.

  But suddenly Kaisa hesitated. How much of what her father had said could she tell her mother? She didn’t want to upset her, but then she needed to speak to someone. ‘He said you wouldn’t be allowed to come...’ Now Kaisa couldn’t hold back. Tears were running down her face. The cream-coloured receiver stuck to her chin. ‘He said because he’s paying, you are not welcome at the wedding. He said I’m not to invite you.’

  ‘What!’ Kaisa could almost hear her mother get up from the chair in the hallway of her flat, and then straighten her back, in readiness for a fight. She was like a lioness when it came to her daughters. Kaisa felt a little better; a little safer.

  ‘Oh Mum!’ Kaisa was crying now, there was no stopping her. What would she do? Get married in England? But how could they pay for the wedding? There was no money and she couldn’t ask Peter’s parents. Without Kaisa’s father there was no way she’d be able to marry Peter.

  There was a short, shocked silence at the other end of the phone. Kaisa heard her mother’s quick intake of breath. ‘I cannot believe it.’

  ‘I know.’ It was such a relief to hear that her mother felt equally strongly about what her father had said. And she hadn’t even heard the awful words he’d used. Perhaps she guessed.

  But very soon Kaisa’s mother recovered, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll pay for your wedding.’

  ‘But you don’t have the money!’

  ‘I do. It’s not a problem.’

  Kaisa leant her weary body against the wall and sat down on the floor.

  Her mother continued, ‘I knew he was going to be trouble. Always the same, he just doesn’t change.’

  Half an hour later Kaisa got a call from her sister.

  ‘Bastard!’ Sirkka said. ‘But don’t worry, mum and I have discussed everything. We’ll organise the wedding in Tampere, it’s where you were born after all. You can stay at grandmother’s place and the English guests can be in a hotel. I’m thinking of the Cathedral for the wedding. I can’t imagine the date is a problem, we have nearly six months to organise things. I also think that we should have the reception at Rosendahl Hotel by Lake Pyhäjärvi, it’s perfect for foreign visitors.’

  Kaisa’s sister went on; she had ideas about the menu, the wines and champagne they were going to serve. Kaisa listened and relaxed. She hadn’t realised that, of course, as a qualified maître d’ she was perfect for the job of organising a wedding. Kaisa smiled as she thought how her big sister liked nothing more than to direct things. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? Sirkka said all Kaisa needed to do was turn up; she’d take care of everything.

  Kaisa’s mind started to wander and her thoughts turned to the gown. A schoolfriend, Heli, was a good dressmaker and had promised to make it. Kaisa couldn’t wait to consider designs with her. She’d saved several magazines and patterns. At Stockmann’s, dress patterns were sold next to the fabric department, where she’d worked at the weekends. Kaisa had only two Saturdays left there. The lady in charge of the patterns concession gave Kaisa several pictures from the ones she sold, including a Vogue pattern of a simple silk tulle dress. That was Kaisa’s favourite, but she had no idea if her friend could make it or where she’d find the correct fabric. There was nothing even close at Stockmann’s. There must be places in London where that sort of soft, feathery tulle fabric is sold, Kaisa thought.

  ‘You still there?’ Sirkka’s voice was concerned.

  ‘I’m just tired.’

  ‘I’ll call you tomorrow with more details,’ she said and hung up.

  Kaisa went off to bed and slept soundly for over nine hours.

  The next day there was no sign of Kaisa’s father. She had to be at Heli’s place at nine, so Kaisa hurried out of the house. She hoped her father would stay at his girlfriend’s, where she presumed he was hiding, as long as possible. Kaisa didn’t think she could endure one more evening with him. She couldn’t wait to leave his house and Finland for good.

  There was little snow left on the ground, just a few dirty patches on the side of the road. But there was a harsh northerly wind as she walked along the streets of Lauttasaari, where Heli lived. For the second time that week Kaisa was back on the island, and walking past her old flat. Was this some kind of torture designed to make Kaisa consider the consequence of her actions? She shrugged off this fatalistic thinking, although sometimes she wondered how many obstacles would be put in the way of her and Peter.

  Would they ever walk down the aisle together?

  Kaisa spent her last few days in Helsinki arranging the practical details of a move to another country.

  On the Thursday she had an oral examination in methodo
logy with the professor at Hanken. Kaisa was ill-prepared for the exam. The old man, with his untidy grey hair and small round glasses, had to prompt her several times to extract the correct answer. At the end of the session, Kaisa was surprised when he told her she’d passed. He shook Kaisa’s hand warmly as she left his stuffy office on the top floor of the School of Economics building. ‘Don’t be a stranger,’ he said and smiled.

  Closing the door behind her, Kaisa stood for a moment in the wide, empty hall. It was suddenly flooded with bright sunshine through the large windows to one side of the sixties-style building. Kaisa realised this could be the last time she’d stand here. When she first stepped inside this building, four years previously, she’d been proud to get a place here, but scared of not being accepted by the other students. Kaisa had known next to nothing about the Swedish-speaking community in Finland and was full of prejudices. That her life would be turned upside down during her first year there never occurred to her, nor that it was the start of the end of her life in Finland. How much older and wiser she felt now; yet as Kaisa stood there in the empty space, listening to the familiar echoing sounds from the stairwell, of students milling about on the floors below, she was more unsure of her future than she’d ever been in her life.

  Kaisa glanced at her watch and saw she was running late. For old times’ sake Tuuli and Kaisa were going to go to the university disco that evening, even though they went there rarely these days. Tuuli had finished her degree, and was now working in a bank in the centre of Helsinki. She still had the flat in Töölö, a couple of tram stops away from Hanken. Kaisa was due to be at her place in five minutes’ time. When Tuuli had suggested that Kaisa stay the night she hadn’t hesitated. Kaisa didn’t want to spend any more nights in her father’s house than she had to.

  Kaisa ran down the stairs, taking two at a time and headed out of the glazed double doors of the Hanken building. She just made the tram approaching the stop on the other side of the street. The yellow and green vehicle screeched as it took the sharp corner from Arkadiankatu to Runeberginkatu and headed downhill towards Töölö.