The English Heart

by Helena Halme

  ‘Yes please!’ Kaisa realised she could have just asked him to do that straight away, but felt so much better for having told someone about the catastrophe. She exhaled slowly and waited for the man to come back to the phone.

  ‘Well, I do have a date this coming Friday, but then the next weekend date I have is the 9th of June.’

  It was Monday 30th of April 1984. Kaisa had woken up that morning remembering it was Walburgh Night and felt very homesick. That same night all her friends in Helsinki would be going out to celebrate, wearing their student caps and drinking too much. Meanwhile, Kaisa was trying to organise something that felt very much like a shot-gun wedding. Then it dawned on her: she’d be married this Friday, in four days time, not in five weeks time!

  ‘Would you like me to book this?’

  Kaisa thought for a fraction of a moment. ‘Yes, please.’

  The man went through the cost and asked if Kaisa could post a cheque as soon as possible.

  Next Kaisa called the number in Italy that Peter had given her. They never telephoned each other during the day and Peter sounded surprised when he heard Kaisa’s voice.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  Kaisa realised she was unbearably annoyed with him. She’d been nagging Peter about the certificate during almost every phone call from Finland, and again when she arrived. Then he didn’t get around to doing anything about it until he was already in Naples. And then he’d only managed one measly phone call to the naval padre.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ Kaisa said.

  ‘Really?’ Peter sounded worried.

  ‘The padre told me this morning that he can’t issue the certificate. You know the Certificate of Non-Impediment you need in order to marry me.’ Kaisa told Peter the whole sorry tale.

  ‘We’d be getting married this Friday?’ Peter said. He sounded very calm, considering.

  Kaisa was even more furious now. Didn’t he understand how serious the situation was. Or was he having doubts? ‘Yes.’

  Neither of them spoke for a moment. Then, trying to control herself, Kaisa said, ‘This was the ONLY thing you needed to organise, and you couldn’t even be bothered to do that!’ She was holding back tears. She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to tell him that if he didn’t want to marry her, he should say so. While Kaisa listened to Peter’s breathing, she felt cold. Peter had been late at the train station when Kaisa arrived in England. He’d been posted abroad as soon as she arrived in Southsea. Now he’d not bothered to get the certificate. Was it possible he was subconsciously trying to stop the wedding from going ahead?

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ Peter said. His voice was barely audible. ‘Look, I’ll call you back in an hour. I need to arrange a pass. But I’m going to do it, don’t worry, everything will be alright.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes, it will. And,’ Peter put his lips very close to the receiver. Kaisa knew he was trying to say something without being overheard, ‘I love you, don’t ever forget it. And I can’t wait to be married to you. The sooner the better.’

  Twenty-Five

  Two days after the padre came to visit Kaisa, exactly one month before they were due to marry in Finland, Peter came back from Naples. He stepped out of the taxi as the evening sun was about to set at the end of the tree-lined street in Portsmouth. He looked tanned, and so handsome in his Navy jumper and trousers that Kaisa had to catch her breath. The anger she felt for him dissipated. Peter kissed Kaisa outside the front door, dropping his brown holdall on the pavement. He took her upstairs and before they had a chance to talk, they made love. His eyes seemed darker against his tanned skin and his body more taut.

  Afterwards, as Peter and Kaisa lay in bed and she was resting her head on his shoulder, taking in his scent, which included something new, an addition from the heat of the Italian sun, they talked about the wedding.

  ‘So this time on Friday you’ll be my wife,’ Peter said and kissed Kaisa again. Then he jumped out of bed. Kaisa watched him in silence as he opened a new carton of Silk Cut and lit one. ‘Sorry, I’ve been smoking a lot more in Italy, everyone on the base does.’

  Kaisa smiled. Italy suited him; his body was bronzed and muscular; the black hairs that covered his legs had turned slightly lighter. The effect was mesmerising. Peter came back to bed and started telling Kaisa about his journey from Naples to Rome, where he’d caught a plane to Heathrow. ‘The driver they gave me was Italian. He drove like a maniac, on roads that had sheer drops down to the sea, littered with tunnels and traffic lights, which he ignored. He scared the living daylights out of me. He drove through all the red lights. He said you didn’t have to follow traffic signals in Italy, that they were just advisory. My God, I though I’d never make it to you alive!’

  Kaisa looked at him and laughed. But the thought that she could have lost him in a stupid car accident made her fall silent. What difference would an early ceremony in a registry office have made then? Wouldn’t she rather have her Englishman hopelessly disorganised than not have him at all?

  ‘What did the others say when they found out about the certificate?’

  ‘The Italians just shrugged their shoulders and the English said what a prat I was.’ Peter gave Kaisa a sheepish look.

  ‘They were right.’ She play-punched his side.

  Peter took Kaisa into his arms and kissed her, ‘But I’m happy because it means I can marry you sooner.’ He got out of bed and put on his boxer shorts and a worn out T-shirt that he dug out of the wardrobe. Kaisa had tried to arrange their clothes as best she could, though there was very little room for their things. Once they were married, Peter said, they’d get a large three-bedroom married quarter right in the centre of Southsea, though he didn’t know exactly where. Kaisa couldn’t wait to move into their own place.

  ‘Thank goodness we’re alone this weekend,’ Peter said. James had gone to see his parents somewhere in the country. ‘I’ll phone around to let people know and then we’ll go to the pub, shall we?’ Peter was halfway down the stairs and shouted to Kaisa as he took them two at a time. She stretched herself on the bed and listened to his footsteps. Through the open door, she heard him dial a number and talk to someone, ‘Yeah, this Friday, can you make it?’

  Once at home, Peter sprang into action. His second call was to his best friend, Jeff, who was also his best man. He was going to try to get weekend leave from his posting in Northern Ireland. His friend’s parents, who owned the house they lived in, also ran a pub and B&B in Old Portsmouth and they offered to give Kaisa and Peter a small reception after the registry office wedding, in the breakfast room upstairs.

  Peter laughed when he told Kaisa how the conversation with his friend had gone, ‘Me: Listen, I’m getting married. Him: Yes I know; I’m your best man. Me: No, I’m getting married this Friday. Him: WHAT?’

  In all Peter managed to gather about twenty people for the wedding at short notice. Kaisa was amazed by his capacity to get things done, and she watched in silence as he made his phone calls, laughing with people, joking with them about his inability to organise the certificate, and about how angry Kaisa was.

  ‘But I’m not mad at you anymore,’ she said to him after one such jokey call. She’d put on a pair of jeans and one of Peter’s old submarine jumpers.

  ‘I know, darling,’ he said, looking at her, ‘My clothes suit you.’ He gave her another quick kiss. Then, leafing through his black notebook, he dialled a number. The truth was, Kaisa wasn’t even slightly annoyed any more. She was simply blissfully happy; happy to watch him organise everything, happy just to hold him, happy to be married to him sooner than planned. Then it occurred to her; what would her mother and sister say? How could Kaisa tell them she was already married when she walked down the aisle in Tampere Cathedral?

  * * *

  The day of the registry office wedding was gloriously sunny. During the two days of frantic organising, Peter had managed to enrol the help of their neighbours in Southsea, a couple who lived opposite, people whom Kaisa hardly knew. Th
e husband had deep sideburns and grey hair. He’d got very drunk at the parties she’d been to in their house, which was a mirror image of the one they stayed in. In his inebriated state, he’d get his guitar out and sing. His wife was a short, jolly woman called Sally. She was in her forties and had jet-black hair, with white roots at the parting. Sally was incredibly kind to Kaisa. When she found out about the wedding, she immediately crossed the street from her house opposite and demanded to know if Kaisa needed her help.

  ‘You have to have something, old, something blue and something borrowed,’ Sally said, ushering Peter out of the way. The next day, she took Kaisa shopping on Palmerston Road, a small high street in Southsea, and said she’d be over the night before the wedding to make sure Kaisa had company. Peter was planning to go out with his friends, ‘to celebrate his last night of freedom.’ He was going to stay the night in the bed and breakfast rooms Jeff’s parents had above their pub. ‘It’s bad luck for you to share a bed the night before your wedding,’ Sally said.

  Peter squeezed Kaisa’s shoulders, ‘You going to be alright on your own?’

  She nodded. She’d lived in the house in Southsea more or less on her own for months. Why would this one night be any different?

  But on the night before the wedding Kaisa was glad of company. She and Sally sat on the velour sofa in the front room of the terraced house and emptied half a bottle of Smirnoff that Sally had brought with her. ‘I remembered you saying Finns drink vodka.’ Kaisa told her about her old fiancé, Matti, about the night at the British Embassy when she met Peter, about his ‘accident’, about the tennis player, about her father, and about her mother and sister. Kaisa had never told anyone so many secrets before. Sally held Kaisa’s hand and listened.

  The next day, in the back of the neighbour’s car, clutching the posy of white and pink roses Sally had ordered for her, Kaisa took her hand and thanked her. When Sally noticed that the whole of Kaisa’s body was shaking, she put her arm around her shoulders. Her husband, who was driving, turned around and gave Kaisa a worried look. She felt the black curls of her new friend’s hair touch her cheek and smelled the strong musk perfume she wore, ‘You’ll be fine, girl. You know you love him and he loves you, so there’s nothing to worry about,’ Sally said and smiled.

  Sally’s husband nodded vigorously from the front seat, as if to confirm her words.

  Kaisa smiled. She knew they were both right, but suddenly in the night, alone in the large bed, listening to the empty house creak all around her, she’d panicked. It dawned on her that in the morning she was going to marry and there wasn’t going to be a single person there who knew her – if you didn’t count a neighbour who’d known her for only a matter of days. Kaisa was abroad and utterly alone. She’d not had the heart to tell either her sister or mother about the wedding. She didn’t want the real wedding in Finland to be spoilt for them, but when Kaisa lay there, drunk on the vodka and wide awake, she realised that the next morning was the actual wedding. This was going to be when she and Peter would be joined together in law.

  Forever.

  ‘You look lovely,’ Sally said and gently helped her out of the car. Kaisa was wearing a new white hat she’d bought while shopping with Sally and a white skirt and top Kaisa’s friend in Finland, Heli, had made. The blue in Kaisa’s outfit was a lacy garter that she’d bought at the same time as the hat. Her white shoes were the old item; they were the same shoes she’d worn to the cocktail party where she’d met Peter. Finally, Sally had lent her a gold bracelet, which was the only item of jewellery, apart from a set of pearl earrings and her diamond engagement ring, that Kaisa wore.

  Outside on the pavement there were a few smiling faces she knew. When the guests saw Kaisa, they hurried up the steps to the registry office and disappeared inside.

  But Kaisa’s nerves would not let her be. When she saw Peter standing next to Jeff, his best man, at the top of the mahogany staircase, her legs almost gave way. He kissed Kaisa lightly and said, ‘You ready?’

  Kaisa looked into Peter’s eyes and held onto him. She couldn’t speak but nodded instead. He placed Kaisa’s hand in the crook of his arm and nodded to Jeff, who disappeared behind a set of double doors.

  ‘We’ll wait here just for a second, and then we go in,’ Peter whispered in Kaisa’s ear.

  Twenty-Six

  Kaisa and Peter fell sound asleep in the vast bed at The Portsmouth Hilton Hotel at about five in the afternoon. They were both exhausted after the ceremony at the registry office, where, with her trembling voice and in his confident, sure words, they’d promised to love and honour each other for as long as they lived. When at the end of the ceremony Kaisa had been told to sit down at a desk and sign a large book, she was glad to rest her trembling limbs. Peter took hold of her shoulders and, bending over Kaisa, also signed his name. There were pictures; everyone wanted to take one. At the end of the day, when they’d stood at the reception to receive the congratulations, had lifted their glasses of champagne for the hundredth time, and had cut the cake with a naval sword acquired by Jeff, Peter’s best man, Kaisa’s jaw ached from all the smiling.

  Most of all Kaisa was relieved she’d been able to go through with the day without bursting into tears or collapsing in a heap. She’d worried she was going to somehow forget to breathe, that she’d not be able to say anything at all during the ceremony or afterwards at the reception. Kaisa was afraid the right words would not come out of her mouth when she spoke to all the kind and happy people who’d gone to such trouble to make the day special for her, a foreign girl no one really knew, and Peter.

  Everything had been new to Kaisa; she’d never been to an English wedding. The sword, which should have been bought with the money the Navy had given him for kitting himself out (spent on other things, ‘ beer and cigarettes’, as he reluctantly admitted to her), was the traditional way for a naval officer to cut his wedding cake. The cake itself was different too; it was dark and fruity, a tea cake rather than a sponge, which was usual in Finland. The ceremony, Kaisa guessed, was the same; although as soon as she’d said the words she forgot them. The small paper flowers that were thrown over them, ‘confetti’, Peter had called it, was also different. In Finland they threw rice at the newly-weds.

  Then there was the strange tradition of spoiling the bed at the hotel. Jeff had somehow got into the hotel and put sand between the sheets. ‘It’s what you do,’ Peter laughed, as they stripped the bed. Lying on the duvet cover, unable even to drink the champagne the hotel had left for the newly-weds, they fell asleep.

  When Kaisa awoke early the next morning, the first thought that entered her head was that in only a few hours’ time she’d have to say goodbye to her new husband. It was pitch-black in the room and for a moment she had to remind herself where she was. A thin strip of light came from somewhere between a set of dark, heavy curtains.

  ‘What time is it,’ Peter murmured next to her.

  He got up and fell over, ‘Bloody hell!’

  Kaisa giggled. He cursed once more and after a few minutes finally managed to crawl into the bathroom and switch on a light. When he pulled open the curtains Kaisa could fully appreciate the vast size of the bridal suite. It occupied the corner of the top floor, with large floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides. The hotel itself was ugly; a seventies high-rise situated on the outskirts of Portsmouth, but it was the best one in the city. It had been a complete surprise to Kaisa when, at the end of the lunch reception, Jeff had led Peter and Kaisa into a taxi. A small holdall had been packed for her, and Peter said, ‘I’m taking you for the shortest honeymoon in the history of naval weddings. It will only last 24 hours but I promise it’ll be memorable.’

  Now that the honeymoon was nearly over, Kaisa went and stood next to Peter as he gazed out of the window towards the harbour. The sun was about to rise and the sky was separated into steel-grey clouds at the top and bright-white light below, where it dipped into the sea. Peter put his arm around Kaisa’s shoulders. She pressed herself against
his body, ‘What time do you have to go?’

  ‘The flight leaves at five thirty.’ Peter’s body shifted and he turned to face her. He looked into her eyes and said, ‘But I’ll be back before you know it.’

  * * *

  After the registry office wedding Kaisa suddenly became somebody in England. She had a banker’s card and a chequebook, which her new husband had organised for her. Kaisa also had a title, Mrs Peter Williams, which immediately brought respect, whether she was paying with her brand-new chequebook in the local butcher’s or arranging driving lessons over the telephone.

  During the following two weeks, which Kaisa spent in the house in Southsea, with the occasional company of the polite and friendly James, she forged a new life, a new set of rules to live by. Gone was her solitary life with her father, her nights out with Tuuli, the long hours spent in the Hanken library, cramming for her exams. Instead Kaisa spent the mornings writing her thesis with her grandmother’s old typewriter on the rickety table. At around noon she’d walk down to the end of the road to buy food for the day and post that day’s letter to her husband. In the evenings she’d either watch TV, or pop over to the neighbour’s house, where they’d chat, sitting at her kitchen table. Kaisa would tell her the latest news on getting a married quarter. Peter was waiting to hear when they could move in and, more importantly, where. Even with her elevated position as a naval wife, Kaisa still couldn’t find out from the Navy’s housing officer which flat they’d been allocated. She wanted to know where their new life as a married couple would truly begin; to picture their home together. Continuing to live in the terraced house in Southsea seemed like being in limbo.