by Helena Halme
As he leads the three of them toward a bar, Hilda and Uffe see someone they know and are pulled into a conversation.
'Just you and me, then,' Patrick laughs.
Twenty-One
Patrick takes Alicia to a small bar set up in the main living rooms inside the house. Most people are staying outside, taking advantage of the brilliant summer weather, and the vast room is empty. Alicia gasps when she steps inside after Patrick. The decor is stunning; pared down with a gray color scheme, with just the occasional pop of color—a red scatter cushion here, or a bright yellow throw there. The floor is slate, and the walls, in which there are two massive fireplaces, are constructed out of gray stone. Patrick asks her if she would like champagne, and Alicia nods. A popping sound brings her attention back to Patrick, who is pouring the Moet into two long flutes.
'Is this where you stay when you're in Åland?' she asks when he hands her a glass. 'Yep,' he replies.
Alicia wishes she could put her sunglasses back on. She can feel his eyes on her, but she fears looking at him in case she betrays the speed of her heartbeat. Every time he comes near her, she wants him to move away, yet come closer at the same time. She can feel the heat of his body too well through the damned dress, which makes her feel naked.
'That really suits you,' Patrick says.
It's too revealing, I knew it.
Alicia lifts her eyes briefly. He isn't smiling anymore, but his lips are slightly parted.
'Shouldn't you be looking after your guests?' she says quickly.
'They're not my guests. Besides, I'm looking after you.'
Alicia sips the drink, glad to have the glass to hide behind, and to have something solid between her and Patrick. She looks up, trying to admire the high-ceilinged space, when she sees a figure leaning on a banister that runs between two oak staircases on either side of the room.
Mia.
'Hello Mia!' Alicia says and lifts her glass toward her old schoolfriend.
Well, not so much a friend.
Mia gives Alicia a quick glance and begins to make her way down one of the staircases. She's wearing an all-white jumpsuit made out of some silky fabric, Alicia notices. A belt made out of the same fabric is tied around her small waist. On her feet, Mia has high-heeled gold sandals, and she wears matching hooped earrings. Her dark curls are tied up in an up-do, with a few strands falling over her shoulders. She has barely any make-up on, just a dab of red color on her full lips. Her body is perfect for the outfit, as is her make-up. When she reaches them, she gives Alicia two air kisses and turns to her husband, 'A glass of that bubbly would be lovely, darling.'
Patrick looks back at the bar and realizes there are no champagne flutes left.
'Umm,' he says and looks at Mia.
She crosses her arms and lifts one eyebrow. 'Well, go and get some then! I'm sure Magda has some in the kitchen.'
'Men,' she smiles at Alicia when Patrick has disappeared through an opening in one of the stone walls.
'Amazing place!' Alicia blurts out. She desperately wants to take another sip out of her glass, but doesn't think it would be polite when her hostess is without a drink.
Mia smiles, but her eyes remain cold and almost hostile. She waves an arm into the room. 'Oh, this is where Mamma and Pappa stay. We're over by the cove. In a converted boathouse. It's tiny compared to this.'
'Right.'
Alicia is relieved to see Patrick re-enter the rooms with a small dark-haired woman wearing an old-fashioned white lace pinny over a dark-colored dress.
These people have servants?
The woman is carrying a silver tray filled with champagne flutes. She puts it down and looks up at Patrick. 'Here, let me, Magda,' he says, dismissing the woman with a friendly smile.
'At last!' Mia says, taking a full glass from Patrick. She gives Alicia another of her unfeeling smiles and then turns to wave at somebody in the garden through the open door.
'Excuse me,' she says to Alicia and turns to Patrick, adding, 'It's the Wikströms!' She floats out of the room, expecting Patrick to follow her.
On his way past, he whispers into Alicia's ear, 'See you later.' His lips almost brush her skin, and for a while Alicia stands still, trying to calm her breathing. She gulps down the rest of her champagne and decides to empty the bottle into her glass.
They can afford it, she thinks.
Twenty-Two
As the day wears on and turns into a glorious evening, Alicia's fears are confirmed—none of her friends are at the party. There must be at least a hundred people milling around the vast grounds of the house, but most of the guests are Kurt and Beatrice's friends, it seems. Hilda and Uffe also seem to know absolutely everyone. Her mother introduces Alicia to so many people that she cannot retain any of the names however much she tries. Hilda laughs and chats with everyone, and Uffe appears be in his element too, drinking beer and then red wine and schnapps when the food starts to flow. There's fish roe and sour cream served on tiny blinis, marinated herring with beetroot and pickled cucumbers, lobster tails on rye toast, new potatoes and delicious reindeer steak.
Occasionally Alicia spots Magda peering out from the main house, controlling the younger waiters and waitresses in similar old-fashioned outfits, as they weave in and out of the groups of people, filling glasses and offering food. Small frozen tumblers of different flavored vodka are passed around and men and women throw them down their throats.
Alicia steers clear of any strong drinks, but accepts the seemingly free-flowing champagne when it's offered. She's keeping herself away from Patrick, and clings onto her mother as if she is a child at an adult's party. She cannot trust herself around Patrick sober, let alone tipsy. Besides, she's always been a lightweight. It was Liam who could match Uffe's vodka-drinking, and sometimes Alicia wonders if that is the only thing Uffe admires about her husband. Her husband. Was she still strictly married to Liam? Or were they now separated?
Only occasionally does she glimpse Patrick, often in conversation with a group of men. Once she lifts her head and he is looking right at her. She is sure she blushes but hopes Patrick is too far from her to see it.
At around eight o'clock, when the sun approaches the horizon, Mr Eriksson stands up on a stool and gives a speech.
'Dear friends and islanders,' he begins in a low, quiet tone. The guests hush suddenly and all strain to hear their host’s words.
'My family and I are delighted that you have been able to come and celebrate Midsummer with us in our small cabin.' Here Kurt Eriksson pauses and looks around the guests, most of whom burst into laughter.
'Small cabin indeed,' Hilda whispers loudly in Alicia's ear. She turns around and returns her mother's smile. But there's something about Kurt Eriksson that Alicia doesn't like. He is a tall man, with a slight paunch. In spite of this, he looks fit and handsome in his white linen trousers and striped blue-pink shirt. Alicia sees his Rolex glint in the sun and spots the almost compulsory footwear for wealthy islanders—Docker shoes. Mr Eriksson's hair is gray-blond and his eyes are pale, as if both have been bleached by a life spent in the sun. He's wearing a pair of expensive-looking sunglasses on top of his head. On the whole, he looks as if he's just stepped off an exclusive sailing yacht, which Alicia guesses he probably has. Alicia remembers her mother saying something about Kurt Eriksson speaking Russian and convincing some oligarch or other to come to the islands for a holiday. Many more followed in his wake, making the islands a prime holiday destination for Russians.
'He's a good man,' Hilda told Alicia.
Alicia is suddenly aware that Mr Eriksson's eyes are on her and she widens the smile on her face. The host nods toward their group, where Alicia stands with her mother and Uffe, a little apart from the other guests.
Turning his head away, Kurt Eriksson scans the lawn where the people are arranged below him. He invites all the guests to come down to the lower level of the garden, where a fully decorated Midsummer pole lies on its side. The Erikssson children, with the help of staff, have
attached flowers and paper lanterns to the pole and now it's the job of two men to lift it up. One of them is the young guy who parked Uffe's car. Everyone cheers the lifting of the pole, raising their glasses to sing, 'Hurrah, hurrah', and then Mr Eriksson leads the crowd in the little frog song. When she was a child and living in Åland, it seemed completely natural to sing about frogs at Midsummer, but now it strikes Alicia as very strange. But funny. She smiles as old and young leap up to sing,
* * *
'Små grodorna är lustiga att se,
små grodorna är lustiga att se
Ej örön, ej örön,
Ej svansar have de.'
* * *
Most people also do the actions, waving their hands around their ears to show a lack of them, and on their backside to show the lack of a tail. Alicia laughs and catches Patrick's eye. He dances with his daughters until the end of the song, when Mia leads the two girls away. Alicia looks toward Uffe and Hilda, who are laughing with a group of their friends—or acquaintances—Alicia has never seen them before. When she looks back to where Patrick had been standing, he has disappeared.
Twenty-Three
All through the party, Patrick watches Alicia's slight frame appear from behind a group of people, or around the corner of the house, her pale eyes looking at him from a distance. If only Mia, in her ridiculous white boiler suit, wouldn’t keep pulling him further away from her to meet this and that person. He doesn't understand why she still cares.
After the ridiculously overdecorated Midsummer pole is lifted up by the East European boys, and the frog song and dance is over, Mia decides it's time for the girls to go to bed. At first, both Sara and Frederica protest, but their mother is firm. Patrick sees that the girls are over-excited but tired, and he promises to go and kiss them goodnight when the party is over.
'Even if I'm asleep, will you do it, Pappa?' says Frederica, her eight-year-old eyes grave and her blond curls messy after the party.
Patrick kneels down in front of his two daughters and looks from one to the other. 'I promise.' He gives them both a kiss and adds, 'You have to promise to be good for your mother.' The two little girls both nod gravely, and as Mia takes their hands, she gazes at him and gives him an almost kind smile.
* * *
Patrick watches his wife and daughters walk toward their cabin. He suspects Mia will not read the girls a story, or tuck them in. She’ll leave all that to the Finnish au pair she has employed for the summer. She's a nice girl and both Sara and Frederica like her. He knows that if he had offered to do the bedtime routine, it would have caused a further row. Deciding to make his escape from the party, he slips down toward the water, where he knows there's a little cove among the rocks that is not visible to anyone. When the girls were little and learning to swim, his father-in-law shipped in a truck full of sand to make a little beach. He also paid a fully trained lifeguard from one of his sports charities to come and give the girls lessons.
Patrick remembers how his own father taught him to swim the summer he turned five, well before anyone else in his neighborhood in Luleå. He and his parents lived in a two-bedroomed flat in a working-class part of the city. They both worked full-time for the city council, and he attended nursery school from the age of one. He was lucky that his granny had a small summer place in Kalix on the coast. It was a little hut with just two small rooms, a tiny kitchen, and an outside toilet, built by his grandfather. But it was close to a beach and that's where Patrick's dad taught him to float for the first time. It was a far cry from a private beach and a qualified private tutor.
Of course, neither girl used the cove beach anymore. The novelty wore off a summer or two ago, and now they liked to dive into the sea from the sauna at the tip of the peninsula, which formed part of the Eriksson family summer place. Or 'cabin'. As if! More like an estate, and the biggest one in Åland, of course.
What a ridiculous man my father-in-law is!
With his hands in his pockets, Patrick makes his way across the lawn, then down some steps and finally to a narrow path on a small triangle of land between two large boulders, where the sea laps onto the imported sand. Patrick kicks off his shoes and pulls his socks off. The cool sand feels good as it spreads through his toes. Toward the end of the day, the clouds had gathered and the sun is now hidden behind them, leaving pink streaks visible between the white, fluffy shapes. Suddenly Patrick gets an urge to jump into the sea. He takes off his jacket and pulls his shirt over his head without bothering to undo more than the first few buttons. He unzips his linen trousers and pulls them off with his boxers.
Running into the water, he ignores the cold. He feels like a boy again when the water reaches his calves, then thighs. There's a bit of shallow water, and then the ground drops dramatically where the artificial beach ends. Patrick dives in and the shock of the chilly water nearly makes him turn back again. It's early summer, and the few days of bright sunshine and temperatures above 20°C haven't yet managed to warm the seawater. Patrick perseveres and swims, taking long, regular strokes in a front crawl like his late father taught him.
Twenty-Four
When the traditional games and singing around the pole have finished Alicia walks away. Even though she was quite young when she and her mother moved to Åland, she still thinks the Midsummer celebrations on the islands are wrong somehow. Her Finnish roots make her want to be by the shore, watching a bonfire being lit, as she must have done as a baby, when her mother and father were together. She didn't know her father at all; all she has is a photograph Hilda gave her when she got married. It's a picture of a man with a serious face in army uniform. Hilda said it had been taken when her father, Klaus, was doing his military service. He was just eighteen.
A year older than Stefan.
Growing up in Åland, Alicia would imagine her father living in the house by the sea in Helsinki in which she was born. She wonders now why Hilda never took her to see her father before it was too late. Hilda never wanted to talk about Klaus; the little Alicia knows has all been extracted with difficulty. When she was seven years old, Hilda took her to Svarta Katten café after school and told her gently that Klaus had died. Nothing more was said about Alicia's father. As far as she knew, Hilda didn't even go to the funeral in Finland.
* * *
The light is fading a little now, helped by the shroud of gray clouds. She walks toward the shoreline, down a path to a small cove with a tiny sandy beach. As she gets closer, she spots someone in the water. The person turns around and Alicia sees who it is. Surely it can't be ...?
Twenty-Five
Patrick is swimming back toward the beach. He doesn't spot the woman standing by one of the boulders until he has nearly reached the shallow water by the shore. He stands up and smiles at Alicia. The water comes just above his hips.
'Come in, it's wonderful!' he shouts.
He can't see her face properly, but he thinks she's considering it. Then he can see she's shaking her head. She forms a funnel with her hands and replies, 'Do you have a towel?'
He shakes his head and continues walking toward the shore, aware that he is naked. He wants her to see him, even though he knows the cold water will have diminished his manhood somewhat. As he gets closer, he is holding her gaze, and to his delight he sees she is not shy, but looking at him. He goes to the gym at least three times a week, plays football regularly and knows he's in good shape. Suddenly Alicia, in her thin dress that the slight sea breeze has plastered to her body, revealing a slim but shapely figure, bends down and picks up his shirt.
He walks toward her and she hands him the shirt.
'To preserve your modesty.'
'Thank you,' he says but instead of placing it over his hips, he takes the linen shirt and uses it to dry first his face, then his chest and finally between his legs. All the while Alicia is looking out to sea, but he knows she is trying to keep her gaze away from his body, because just now, when he lowered the shirt from his face, her eyes shifted quickly away from him.
&nbs
p; Patrick rushes to pull on his pants, not bothering with underwear, because he can feel a movement in his groin. Looking down, he sees he's just in time, and tucks himself in.
'You missed out,' he says, sitting down next to her on the rock. He means the swim, but knows she will get the double entendre.
And he is rewarded with a smile.
He sees she's taken off her sandals and is burrowing her toes in the sand.
'Did I now?' she says, and her smile reaches her eyes and widens.
Patrick is so close to her that their thighs are touching. He wants to put his arm around her, but is afraid she will bolt.
'How did you find this place?'
'Has the beach always been here?' Alicia and Patrick speak at the same time and both laugh.
'My father-in-law made this for the girls.'
'Ah,' Alicia says. 'Lucky girls.'
'Yeah, not that they appreciated it. Not then, not now. I'm the only one who comes swimming here nowadays. It's my secret place.'
Alicia turns her head and looks at him, 'What are you escaping from?'
For a moment Patrick considers Alicia, noticing the thin lines around her mouth and how her eyes have a sadness etched into them even though she is smiling. He wants to touch the curve of her jaw, pull her face close to his and kiss her.