The Good Heart

by Helena Halme

  ‘No,’ Kaisa said. ‘I don’t think I want to put my foot in that place ever again.’

  ‘I understand,’ Tuuli said, and gave Kaisa’s arm another squeeze. ‘But we’ll still go out tomorrow night, OK?’

  * * *

  Tuuli had a studio flat a few streets south of Sirkka’s place. She’d bought a bottle of wine to share before they went out. The price of drinks in bars was so high in Helsinki, it was usual to have a drink or two at home beforehand.

  ‘So where are we going?’ Kaisa asked. Tuuli looked very slim and tall in her black satin trousers and glittery gold jumper, with a narrow gold belt tied at the waist, highlighting her perfect figure.

  ‘Oh, definitely start at the Sky Bar, then Happy Days and Helsinki Club. We’ll see how long Mrs Williams will last,’ she said and lifted her glass in a salute.

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ Kaisa grinned. She was wearing trousers too, with boots underneath — it was minus ten outside — but she’d decided on a frilly satin blouse after Sirkka had persuaded her out of the black jumper she’d tried on first. ‘You’re trying to look like a bloody nun, are you?’ Sirkka had said.

  Kaisa had acquiesced, though she didn’t like the inference that Tuuli was taking her on a night out to find a man. Men had caused her enough trouble as it was. Plus she was still married. But she didn’t say any of those things to Sirkka. She suspected her sister all but believed that her marriage to Peter was over.

  As planned, Tuuli and Kaisa went to the Helsinki Club after they’d been to three other clubs. In each place, they ordered a Lonkero, a bitter lemon and gin drink that they had always drunk in the student’s bar, for old times’ sake. The place was half-full, and Kaisa wasn’t at all surprised to see the old group of rich boys from Hanken there. It was as if time had stopped and her life in England hadn’t happened at all.

  ‘C’mon, come and say hello,’ Tuuli said and grinned. She walked confidently towards the group of ten or so people, sitting on a dark-blue velvet sofa in the corner of the bar. A few couples were on the dance floor, leaning into each other and moving slowly; others were buying drinks at the bar. The lighting was dim and the music loud. The bar, which was lit from underneath, made the faces of the people standing against it seem unreal and spooky.

  Tuuli sat down next to Tom’s blond friend, Ricky, and the two kissed each other on the mouth. Kaisa was so amazed that she couldn’t move. She stood in front of the group, trying not to gape at her friend.

  ‘You remember Ricky?’ Tuuli said nonchalantly — too nonchalantly.

  The good-looking blond boy, whom Kaisa knew Tuuli had tried to resist at Hanken, got up and reached out to Kaisa. ‘Nice to see you again.’ He turned around and pointed at Tom, who was sitting in the middle of the group, next to a dark-haired girl, his arm on the top of the sofa above her shoulders. ‘You remember him, don’t you?’ Ricky’s eyes had a mischievous look, which Kaisa could spot even under the dark lighting of the club.

  Tom looked up and their eyes locked. He nodded and, removing his hand from the top of the sofa, took a packet of cigarettes and made a gesture of offering one to Kaisa.

  ‘No thanks,’ she mouthed and shook her head. She bored her eyes into Tuuli, who was ignoring her.

  ‘Sit down, Kaisa,’ Ricky said and he and Tuuli shuffled along the sofa, making a space next to Tuuli.

  ‘Would you two ladies like a drink?’ Ricky said.

  ‘Yes, I’d love one. Gin and tonic, please.’ Kaisa had decided she was going to have one drink with the group, not wishing to make a fool of herself, and then leave. With Ricky gone to the bar, Kaisa whispered into Tuuli’s ear, ‘What the hell?’ But Tuuli just shrugged her shoulders. ‘I’ll explain later,’ she whispered back.

  It was typical of Tuuli to keep something momentous like this under her hat, Kaisa thought, as she sat back against the blue velveteen sofa. A mention that she was seeing Ricky might have been expected, seeing the amount of time the two of them had once spent talking about the group of rich boys. It had been Ricky and Tom who had come onto them in the student’s bar during Kaisa’s and Tuuli’s first week at Hanken, and whose advances they’d repeatedly rejected during their four years there. Or was this a set-up? Kaisa looked along the sofa to where Tom, the lanky boy with a wolfish smile, who’d been interested in Kaisa, sat. His head was bent close to the dark-haired girl’s face. No, Tuuli must surely know that Tom, whose only goal in life during his leisurely studies seemed to be to bed as many girls as possible, was the last thing Kaisa needed now? And what was Tuuli doing with Ricky? Was it serious?

  * * *

  The next day was a Sunday, and the weather had turned even colder. The sun, high in the pale blue sky, nearly blinded Kaisa when she opened the venetian blinds in her sister’s living room. It was already noon, so the pale winter light flooded the small flat. Kaisa shivered, even though the flat was suffocatingly warm. She felt sorry for her sister who’d left the flat at 6 am, when it was still pitch black, for an early shift at the hotel. She watched a green tram trundle past on the road below, and a woman, holding the hand of a small child, walk briskly over the road. The toddler wore a pink and white snow suit and a stripey woollen balaclava, with strands of blonde hair escaping over her pale blue eyes. Being dressed in layers of clothing made her shape round and her struggle to keep up with her mother seem impossible. She tried to brush away the hair with one fat mitten. Kaisa’s mind wandered to children, and she thought about how different it would be to have them here in Finland. The winter clothing must be a pain, but childcare was easier, she guessed. Plus it was a safer society in which to bring up a child, surely? She shrugged herself free of baby thoughts – she couldn’t even keep a marriage alive, how did she think she could look after a baby?

  Kaisa was drinking coffee and eating a rye and cheese sandwich for breakfast when the telephone in the hall rang out.

  ‘You want to meet up for coffee later?’ Tuuli’s voice sounded a bit hoarse, and Kaisa wondered how long she’d stayed on at the Helsinki Club after Kaisa had left, having had her one drink.

  The two friends met up at the Fazer café in the centre of Helsinki. Tuuli was wearing jeans and a long mohair jumper under her camel coat. She wore a scarf wrapped around her head to keep the cold out. The sun had gone behind a thin layer of cloud and there were a few sporadic flakes of snow falling. Looking at the glass display of cakes, Kaisa couldn’t resist a Berlin bun – a deep-fried jam doughnut covered in pink icing.

  ‘Do you remember how we could just afford one of these for our lunch at Hanken?’ Kaisa asked Tuuli when they’d sat down. They both laughed. They’d found a table by the large windows overlooking Kluuvikatu, a road linking the main Helsinki shopping streets of Aleksi and South Esplanade. Kaisa hadn’t yet dared to walk along the Esplanade park, where she and Peter had kissed properly for the first time. She could hardly believe it was nearly five years ago.

  ‘So, what’s the score with Ricky?’ Kaisa said after her friend had been silently munching on her Berlin bun for a while. She’d decided that instead of mooning over her own disastrous love life, she was going to go straight to the point with Tuuli.

  Tuuli lifted her blue eyes at Kaisa. ‘I’m sorry about last night, but I’d agreed to meet him there and I couldn’t say no, and then you turned up and I wanted to go out with you too, and …’

  ‘That’s alright, but you could have told me!’

  Tuuli put down her half-eaten bun and looked down at her hands. ‘Yeah, I know.’

  ‘So, what’s the score; how did you meet up again? Or did you have something going on with him at Hanken?’ Kaisa was leaning towards her friend, who was still looking down at her hands. ‘Oh my God, he stayed over last night didn’t he?’

  Tuuli lifted her head up, looking sheepish. ‘OK, I’ve been seeing him for about a month, on and off.’

  Kaisa’s friend told her how she’d seen Ricky outside Stockmann’s department store during her lunch hour one day and how he’d seemed so nic
e, so much nicer than he had at Hanken. He’d asked for her telephone number and she’d given it to him there and then. He’d called her the next evening, and that same Friday night they’d gone out to eat at a small Italian restaurant near where she lived in Töölö Square. ‘One thing led to another and he came home with me,’ Tuuli said.

  Kaisa was quiet. She wondered how much her own tumultuous time in England had been the reason for the lack of letters between her and Tuuli, and how it had made her blind to the lives of others around her.

  ‘We’re not seeing each other, though,’ Tuuli now said. ‘It’s casual, and that’s how I want to keep it.’ Kaisa’s friend closed her mouth and leaned back in her chair. Her face told Kaisa that was the end of the matter; there was no more to be said. But Kaisa couldn’t help asking about the other rich boy.

  ‘What about Tom, is he seeing the short black-haired girl?’

  ‘No, I don’t think he’s attached. He’s only just back from Italy. I was as surprised to see him there as you were. You still fancy him?’

  ‘God, no!’ Kaisa said and laughed. ‘He’s the last person on my mind. Can you imagine what trouble he’d cause?’

  Kaisa felt her friend’s piercing eyes on her. Tuuli’s demeanour had changed and she was far more relaxed now the conversation had turned away from her own life. ‘You could use him for a bit of fun, though, couldn’t you?’ she said.

  Six

  Kaisa was having breakfast alone at the small table in Sirkka’s narrow kitchen when she heard the post thump onto the doormat in the hall. It had become a self-imposed routine of hers to try to get up before the postman began his rounds in the block of flats. She’d make herself read the main broadsheet paper, Helsingin Sanomat, to see if there might be some jobs she could apply for. Usually, there was nothing she could even imagine doing. She had her degree from Hanken, that was true, but no work experience to speak of. She got up with a sigh. Three of the letters were for Sirkka, but one, with a postmark from Dorset, was for her. The original address on the thick envelope was for the married quarter in Helensburgh. Just seeing ‘Smuggler’s Way’ written, and then crossed out, on the blue paper made Kaisa shiver. She turned the thing over in her hand, but there was no return address on the back of the envelope. She examined the handwriting and suddenly knew who the letter was from.

  Kaisa dropped the envelope onto the table and stared at it. She went to pour herself more coffee, to buy time. To let her think more clearly, and consider her options.

  Why would he write to her? And was she sure the handwriting was his? The upright style was very similar to Peter’s; in fact it seemed to be a kind of style most people in England had. But Kaisa knew for sure the letter wasn’t from Peter; she’d recognise his handwriting anywhere. So, what did he want with her? Wild thoughts began circulating in her mind. Perhaps he was deadly ill? Or what if the letter wasn’t from him, and was from one of Peter’s fellow officers? What if something had happened to Peter?

  Kaisa tore open the envelope. There were two pieces of paper. She began to read. Kaisa snorted at the words she was reading. She dropped the sheet onto the kitchen table, but curiosity soon got the better of her and she continued reading.

  * * *

  Dear Kaisa,

  I hope this letter finds you well.

  I wasn’t sure if I should write to you at all, but felt I needed to contact you this last time to tell you how sorry I am about everything that has happened. I now understand that, however much I wish it were otherwise, you love your husband, and I wanted to reassure you that I respect your decision.

  You may not be aware that knowing you has changed my life beyond recognition. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I still love you, Kaisa, and keep the fond memories of our short, but intense, liaison close to my heart. I have now left the Navy, and am living with my uncle, trying to make a go of it as a farmer. (Address below.) Surprisingly, I’m enjoying life in the country rather better than anticipated. Of course, there is a distinct lack of female company, but I have been assured next month’s Young Farmers Spring Ball should rectify that problem! Not that I will ever feel the way I feel about you, Kaisa, for anyone else. But, we must all move on, and rest assured, unless you approach me, this will be my last communication with you.

  Of course, I very much hope we can remain friends. I understand if right now, so soon after the terrible events in Faslane, you would find it difficult, but you know, time is a great healer. As an aside, I must admit, I feel a little wronged by the powers that be in the Navy. It was your husband who attacked me after all! But I shall keep to my word and not pursue the matter – if only for your sake, and for the sake of our continued friendship, Kaisa.

  It is late here on the farm, and I have to be up early to supervise the milking. We have a herd of 50 cattle, and a few acres of land, and I have grown quite fond of the cows. I call them my ‘girls’! So if you are ever in the neighbourhood, you must come and visit me and my girls. It is rather beautiful here, and very peaceful. You know I would welcome you with open arms as a dear friend.

  I’ve rambled on long enough. Please write to me and tell me your news. I cannot wait to hear back from you.

  Yours always,

  Duncan x

  * * *

  Kaisa stared at the few pieces of paper for a long time. She examined the handwriting on the envelope again. Was that Peter’s hand that had crossed out the address at Smuggler’s Way, and replaced it with Sirkka’s in Helsinki? If so, had he recognised Duncan’s handwriting? Oh, that man! Why would he continue to pursue her even after everything that had happened? If Peter was still in Helensburgh, and had seen that Duncan was writing to her, would he think they were still in touch? Her hand holding the envelope began to shake, and her breathing became shallow. She tried to calm down, to take long breaths in and out, but her heart was racing. This was so bad, so bad. If only she knew where Peter was, but she hadn’t heard from him since they parted at Glasgow train station. He hadn’t replied to the letter she’d sent the day after she arrived in Helsinki.

  When she’d first seen the envelope with the British postage stamp on the mat, she’d thought it was from Peter. Even the thickness of the envelope had made her hopeful that he’d written a proper letter, telling her his news, and perhaps that he missed her.

  But as soon as she’d seen the crossed-over address, she’d known it wasn’t from Peter. Tears began welling up inside of her, but she resisted them. She really must stop crying all the time. She put the letter in the bin, throwing the wet coffee grains over it. She refilled the percolator and stood listening to the dripping water, trying to forget about Duncan. But thoughts of the two of them in bed in the dank, cold flat in Helensburgh filled her mind. She remembered how terrible she’d felt afterwards, and how Duncan had still pursued her even after he’d had his way with her and she’d made it clear she wanted nothing more to do with him. Or had she made it perfectly clear? Perhaps she’d still flirted with him, pleased to have his attention? Kaisa felt her head ache. She needed to forget about Duncan, about that awful night and about all the terrible consequences on her life. When the second pot of coffee was ready, Kaisa poured a cup and, determined to find a job and forget all men, sat down at the table and began reading that morning’s Helsingin Sanomat.

  Seven

  When Kaisa had spent three weeks sleeping on her sister’s sofa, Sirkka came home from work one evening and asked to speak to her. It was just past seven and Kaisa was watching Coronation Street. There seemed to be nothing but English programmes on Finnish TV, which reminded Kaisa of her old life in Portsmouth and Helensburgh. It seemed utterly unfair to her, but at the same time she thought it was a punishment she deserved.

  ‘Have you thought about what you’re going to do?’ Sirkka asked after Kaisa had made coffee for them both. They were sitting facing each other at the small table in the kitchenette. Her sister looked tired; she’d just finished a week-long shift of ten-hour days, two of which had begun at 6.30 am.

/>   ‘About what?’ Kaisa asked.

  Sirkka sighed. ‘About your future!’

  Kaisa stared at her sister.

  ‘It’s really lovely to have you here, but you can’t stay here forever, watching English soap operas.’

  Kaisa tried but couldn’t stop the tears that began running down her face.

  ‘Oh, Little Sis, what are we going to do with you?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t seem to …’

  Sirkka stood up and hugged her sister. ‘Look, I’m doing this for your own good. I know it’s hard, but I think it’s time to decide what you are going to do.’

  Kaisa cried a little more against her sister’s shoulder and then, taking the piece of tissue Sirkka offered, wiped her tears away and blew her nose. ‘I’ve been looking at the job adverts in Helsingin Sanomat, but they all want you to have work experience, and I don’t have any.’

  Sirkka sat down again and took Kaisa’s hands in hers. ‘Look. You have a good degree from a good university – something a lot of a people would kill for – but you do need to take the job search seriously if you want to stay here.’

  Kaisa nodded.

  ‘Mum and I’ve been talking. There is a chance she could find you a job at Neste. They’re growing and need staff, especially graduates.’