by Helena Halme
Alicia swallows a lump in her throat, trying to control herself. Not that she could cry anymore. There are no tears left, just the pain in her chest, the lump that won't go away however much she cries, or tries to calm down. She makes an effort to concentrate on the familiar, but still stunning, view of the dark wooded islands resting like tufts of carpet on the teal-colored sea. They are entering the calmer seas, thank goodness.
Three
Hilda has another new car; a red low-slung BMW. Liam's feet almost hug his chin as he settles himself on the back seat. He had insisted Alicia sit next to her mother in the front so that they could chat away in Swedish. It's safer that way. Liam never enjoyed being driven by his mother-in-law. He knows the journey from the ferry port in the capital Mariehamn to his father-in-law's farm in Sjoland takes only 15 minutes—unless the swing bridge over the canal is open—but anything could happen even during the short journey. Hilda's driving is as erratic as her character. If she has to lean back to talk to her daughter, her concentration would suffer even more. Besides, Liam has never learned the language they speak on the islands, a version of Swedish that sounds like Finnish but isn't.
After nearly twenty years of holidaying on the islands, he can understand a little of the Swedish conversation, but Finnish is still incomprehensible to him. Alicia keeps telling him how lucky he is that she and her mother speak Swedish to each other. Alicia never got to learn her mother tongue, because she was just a baby when Hilda moved to the islands.
Liam thinks about Stefan and how fluent he’d been in Swedish, and how much effort Alicia had put into his bilingualism. Although she disliked the Swedes for some curious reason only known to her, for years she had sent Stefan to language lessons at the Swedish Church in Marylebone. When Stefan was fifteen, he’d gone on a week-long confirmation camp in Åland and had fallen in love for the first time. Liam remembers picking his son up from the station in Mariehamn, watching the teenagers spill out from a bus, their heavy bags slung over their shoulders.
Stefan was holding hands with a slim girl with straw-blond hair and bright eyes. Liam could well understand his son's infatuation with her; she had a pale complexion yet was tanned. Her fair eyelashes fluttered as she shook Liam's hand and introduced herself as 'Frida'. Of course, that romance hadn't lasted, but Stefan said they were still friends. Liam had seen her again the previous summer, when the group from the confirmation camp had met up for a drink in Mariehamn. Liam remembers how grown up they had all looked when he’d dropped Stefan off at Torggatan. He’d watched the group of teenagers greet his son with hugs and high-fives through the rear-view mirror as he drove away.
Liam wonders if Stefan's friends have been told. He hopes so, for Alicia's sake. With another pang of guilt, he remembers how Stefan had begun talking about getting a moped; he'd begged and begged to be allowed to ride on the one belonging to Alicia’s stepfather, and at last Liam had agreed. Of course, both Alicia and Hilda were against it, so he'd colluded with Uffe to allow Stefan to ride around the farm, and then take a trip on his own into Mariehamn on a day when his mother and grandmother were shopping in Stockholm.
But Liam knew regrets were useless. He made himself concentrate on the road. He would at least try to prevent an accident while in the car with his mother-in-law, and get safely to the farm.
* * *
Uffe stands outside the large wood-clad house that he was born in over 65 years ago and watches his stepdaughter and her husband get out of Hilda's car. He decides to let Liam carry the bags; he is young and strong, whereas Uffe's own back has been in spasms all morning. Although he now has enough workers on his farm to do the heavy lifting, he still likes to get involved and has been knee-deep in mud all day. He should have stayed in the fields, overseeing the first crop of potatoes being lifted onto the lorry, but he knows what Hilda's reaction to his absence at the visitors’ arrival would be. At a few minutes past five, he hastily got into his Subaru and drove the couple of kilometers home along the road. He had just changed his shirt in the bedroom, when he saw the BMW turn into the drive through the window.
Uffe waves when he sees Alicia walking up to him. Suddenly noticing how dirty his hands are, he places them quickly behind his back.
'Uffe,' his stepdaughter says and buries her head in his chest. Uffe hugs her hard and feels a tightening in his chest as he thinks about the handsome lad, his grandson. Or step-grandson to be precise. (Uffe has never considered Alicia anything but his daughter even if he didn't officially father her.) It's incomprehensible that the young lad would no longer be coming here; that he no longer exists.
Of course, Uffe and Hilda went to the funeral. They stayed in Alicia and Liam's silent house in London and tried to help as much as they could. Alicia seemed distant then, asleep most of the time. Uffe only hugged her once during their two-night stay in the small house in a pleasant suburb. Even when they left, the day after the funeral, Alicia stayed in bed while Liam ordered a taxi to take them to Heathrow. It had been foggy during their stay, and they didn't see the sun once, even though the grass in the nearby park was a lush green, which Uffe marveled at. The landscape in London was so vibrant compared to the gray and brown at home, making a mockery of the reason they had been visiting Alicia.
He and Hilda had spent a lot more time together than they usually did on their visits to London. Normally he'd be stuck with Liam, trying to communicate with his schoolboy English that he'd long since forgotten. While Alicia and her mother shopped in the fancy stores in the West End, Liam usually took Uffe to the pub, or once to see a football match with Stefan. Stefan was a keen supporter, and Uffe had been surprised at the passion he'd displayed when his club, the name of which Uffe now forgets, scored—or missed—a goal. Usually the boy was quiet, a bit like his mother: a thinker.
After Stefan’s death, Uffe had been concerned about his stepdaughter; he saw the pills she was taking, but Hilda told him in no uncertain terms that Liam was a doctor and knew how to medicate his own wife. Uffe wasn't so sure. As he now watched his son-in-law struggle with the bags, smiling at Hilda, while glancing furtively back at him, looking for assistance, the older man wondered what it was about Liam that he so disliked. There was just something shifty about his dark eyes, and his unnaturally thick hair. It was as if when he spoke to Alicia, or to Hilda and Uffe, he wasn't fully there, as if he didn't want to be there. Uffe had thought that it was something to do with his profession; how could a man deal with death all day without losing his faith in life along the way?
* * *
'Would you like a sauna before dinner?' Hilda says as they stand awkwardly in the newly decorated hall. Two years previously, on the advice of their young, female architect, the old steep stairs, which had been in the house since it was built in the 1920s, had been removed and replaced by a set of modern wide steps in light wood. The boxed design with a small landing made the hall look so much cleaner and bigger, even though the new stairs took up more space than the old narrow staircase had. They made Hilda finally feel at home in this, her in-laws, house.
Hilda sees Liam look at Alicia before responding to her query and almost imperceptibly shake his head, but her daughter ignores him and says, smiling, 'Yes please. You'll come with me, won't you, Mamma?'
Whenever her daughter uses the Swedish term for 'Mother,' Hilda feels tears well up inside. This has started happening more and more, getting sentimental over silly little things. She must pull herself together, for her daughter's sake, Hilda thinks and nods. She goes into the downstairs bathroom to fill a basket with towels and toiletries. In the large kitchen, which has also been refurbished, she takes a few cans of cold beer from the large American-style fridge.
'Would you like a Lonkero?' she asks, turning around to address her daughter.
Alicia is in the middle of what seems like a heated conversation with Liam on the other side of the kitchen island, where Hilda has a collection of fresh herbs neatly arranged under a low white lamp. Between the plants and the light, she can see Lia
m shaking his head at Alicia. His lips are in a straight line and his hands are crossed over his chest. Hilda walks around the kitchen island and stands in front of her daughter. 'Everything alright?' she says, feeling her throat constrict, making her voice sound tight and hostile.
Liam looks down at her; he is such a tall young man, or is it that she has shrunk, as happens to so many older women? She straightens her back and extends herself, realizing with relief that she had kicked off her heels when they entered the house and is now in her stockinged feet, whereas both Alicia and Liam are still wearing their outdoor shoes.
'No problem,' Alicia says, putting her arm around Hilda's shoulders. She attempts a smile but all that she manages is a straightening of her mouth. 'Will Uffe want a sauna?' Alicia continues.
Uffe has disappeared. Hilda suspects he's gone into the old milking parlour, which he converted (badly, in Hilda's opinion) into a little farm office just after his mother died. He does all his paperwork there, although how he manages when he doesn't even have a computer, Hilda never understands. Mostly, she suspects, he sits there, reading the paper and listening to the radio. It's his escape from her nagging, she knows. But she doesn't mind, not really. It's good to be rid of his clutter in the house. She avoids the 'office' as much as she can, only glancing in when she goes into the small utility room next door, where there’s a large freezer and the washing machine.
'Oh, I'm sure he will,' Hilda says, turning to her son-in-law, 'but it's no problem if you don't want one. Uffe is quite used to going to the sauna on his own.'
Four
Liam realizes for the first time how much he hates this sauna ritual. He feels awkward having to slip his clothes off in the small dressing room, trying to avoid looking as the naked body of the older man is slowly revealed in front of him. Uffe may be in good shape for his age, if you ignore his pot belly, which seems to grow larger each year, but he still feels awkward with him. But to say 'No' to the first-night sauna would upset everyone, as Alicia said between tight lips to him in the kitchen earlier. Liam doesn't really understand why; all he can think is that it's like refusing a cup of tea when you are guests in the UK. Which, by the way, he is never offered in Åland.
Liam sighs and sits down on the slatted bench.
Uffe is bent over, leaning on his knees, looking out of the small window, at a slice of the sea and the beautiful, cloudless sky above.
I'm definitely refusing a dip in the freezing water.
As the heat seeps into his skin, a sudden image of large full breasts comes into Liam's mind, and he sees her smile, that naughty, raunchy smile Ewa has when she's on top of him. He feels guilt about his son all the time, and now about Ewa, but he's not sure how he would have coped for the past six months without her. Being with the soft-skinned nurse, her body so different from his wife’s slim, athletic figure, has given Liam his only respite from grief. He knows he should stop the affair, and that to anyone on the outside, his actions look unforgiveable, to say the least. But he can't help himself. When he is better, when Connie's sessions begin to work, and his mind is clearer, not full of guilt about the moped, then he will stop seeing her.
Liam is rudely brought back to the present when Uffe, before he has time to protest, throws water on the hot stones and a stinging steam hits Liam's face. It catches in his throat and he struggles to breathe, so he ducks, and now the heat is spreading over his shoulders, back, thighs and eventually his legs. How the locals think this torture is pleasurable, he will never understand.
'Hot, hot, hot,' Uffe says in English and gives a short laugh, throwing more water on the stones. His watery eyes, now almost gray, matching the thin wisps of hair that are now damp and stuck to his skull, gaze at Liam. It's as if the old man knows what his son-in-law has been thinking about.
Liam turns his face away from the old man's scrutiny. Sweat drips from his temples into his eyes, stinging them too. Turning back to Uffe, he wipes the corners with his thumbs, and tries to smile at him, but only manages a grimace. It's their joke and the only words that pass between the men during their annual sauna sessions. Liam has often tried to speak to Uffe, but Uffe’s English is nonexistent and although he nods enthusiastically, Liam suspects he doesn't understand a word of what he says. Over the years, the two men have settled on a silence that in Liam's mind is all but comfortable. They manage to communicate with nods and gestures, like now, when Uffe gets up and moves his head in the direction of the sea to indicate that it's time for a swim. Liam knows from past years that the sea will be bitterly cold this early in the summer, and he wonders what the old man would say—or rather do—if he refused to participate in the ritual. But he doesn't, and the two men walk the few yards toward the jetty. Liam is barefoot and remembers too late the advice Ewa gave him about ticks and Lyme's disease. 'They perch on the blades of grass and just wait to hop on you.'
'Like you,' Liam had said, taking hold of Ewa's waist.
They'd been standing in the basement landing of St Mary's East wing, outside the Chapel, a place they often used if they needed some privacy at work. Ewa was his theater nurse, and Liam had been on his way home, having just finished seeing his private patients. It was nearly 10pm, he'd been running late all day and was exhausted. But he wanted to say goodbye to Ewa. He knew she expected it, and for the first time he felt he would miss her during the two-week holiday with Alicia and her family. He'd seen her more than the usual one evening a week (Wednesdays after his private clinic), and not just for sex, even though that was the main reason Liam couldn't keep away. The sex with Ewa was satisfying. It made Liam forget. Alicia hadn't let him into her bed since Stefan's accident, and even before that their love-making had been—to say the least—sporadic.
'Lyme's disease is very dangerous, you know,' Ewa had said, stroking Liam's cheek.
They were in an embrace, Liam trying to get close to her, to take a piece of her with him to Åland. He kissed her, not caring if someone might open the door to the corridor and see them there. The people using the small room set aside for grieving family and friends of patients, would mostly likely not know Liam, and even if they did, tonight he didn't care.
'I do know, and I will be careful, I promise,' Liam said. 'What time do you finish?' he added, nuzzling her neck, taking in the scent of sandalwood and sweet lipstick.
'Midnight,' Ewa sighed, arching her back and pressing her breasts against Liam's chest.
He knew her neck was her most erogenous zone, and just a few kisses or caresses would be too tempting for her. He thought briefly about his consulting room; it would be empty now and if they were quick, and careful, they could use it again. He wondered if the other consultants had finished their appointments. He decided to take the risk. He'd tell the other nurses he'd forgotten something. Ewa could take the stairs and slip into the room unnoticed, if she was lucky.
'Is this your long break?' Liam said into her eyes, his voice hoarse, his erection hardening in his pants.
'You're impossible,' Ewa laughed, throwing her head back and making her delicious curls shake.
* * *
The sea, as Liam feared, is extremely cold, and he manages just a few strokes in the water. Uffe on the other hand, swims expertly further away, to the other side of the line of reeds in front of the wooden jetty. Liam gives the old man a wave and walks briskly back to the sauna, holding the towel he's taken to cover himself. He sits on the porch and watches a family of mallards approach the jetty from further along the shore. It's past seven o'clock but the sun is unnaturally high in the sky, bright in a near cloudless sky. There's no wind, and the surface of the sea beyond the band of reeds is still. It is beautiful here, Liam thinks as he watches the mother mallard, ahead of her family of four, take a sharp turn on seeing Uffe's head bob up and down on his way back to the jetty. The pale blue sky, broken only by the cottonwool strips of white clouds, and the three dark green islands on the horizon—one large, two smaller—contrast breathtakingly against the deep marine color of the water. Liam thinks ag
ain about Ewa and wishes he could bring her here. But that would never be possible. Liam inspects his feet and toes for ticks and decides that what he needs to do is be braver.
Five
Alicia feels pleasantly tired. She's had far more to drink than usual. In the sauna she had two cans of Lonkero, the gin drink she’d liked when she was underage in the park in Mariehamn, and later when visiting the islands from Uppsala, where she'd gone to university. It was the drink of her youth. Her mother always remembered to buy some when Alicia was back home. Although sweet, the Lonkero tasted delicious after the sauna, as she and her mother sat outside on the porch, watching the calm sea. Alicia had also had wine during the excellent meal her mother had prepared. They had eaten venison, shot by Uffe the previous fall, with lingonberries, a creamy mushroom sauce and new potatoes grown by Uffe. Alicia ate heartily, more than she had since. Since. She could see Liam look at her approvingly; he was always telling her she was too thin.
Now up in the attic bedroom that Hilda always prepared for them, Alicia fights back tears when she thinks how much Stefan would have loved the perfectly cooked game prepared by his grandmother, bloody in the middle just as he liked it. Instead, Alicia forces a smile, undresses in the narrow en-suite bathroom, and thinks about Uffe’s description of Liam in the sauna. How he was like a baby deer, with his thick hair turning curly and his large eyes fixed on Uffe in horror as he poured more water on the stones.
Alicia translated what her stepfather had said, wanting Liam to laugh too. It was an annual joke of theirs, how Liam hated the sauna but suffered it in silence. Usually he took the Mickey out of himself and got drunk on the vodka schnapps Uffe poured for the two men, but tonight he didn't join in. All through dinner Liam was quiet, hardly saying a word even to Alicia, or Hilda, who always made an effort to speak English to him. He is hurting, Alicia thinks. Or, was he missing her?