Frozen Music

by Marika Cobbold

  ‘Astrid wasn’t very practical, either,’ Ulla went on. ‘But you wouldn’t expect her to be. She was an artist.’

  It was obvious that I had no such excuse, but I tried. ‘I write short stories, occasionally. And some people would call journalism an art form.’

  ‘Really?’

  I twisted a little to one side, making myself more comfortable. ‘Why did she kill herself?’

  There was a pause, which Ulla filled with sighs, before saying, ‘I don’t think now is the time to talk about it; you’re hanging from a cliff.’

  ‘I’m not really hanging, more perching. It would take my mind off it.’

  There was another pause, then Ulla asked, perfectly politely for her, ‘Are you mad?’

  I told her that I wasn’t. Not really. Disturbed, maybe, I mean who wasn’t these days? But mad, no, I didn’t think so. ‘I’m just really curious. I want to know. I hate not knowing. It’s by way of being a compulsion. But I’m being rude. I should respect your wish not to talk about it.’ I looked up. The clouds had cleared and there were stars everywhere, little holes of light as if a thousand moths had eaten away at the fabric of the sky. I could smell the sea. No wonder Astrid had loved this island and her home on it. What had made her leave it all behind? And what about her child? How could she have done it, abandoned him so completely?

  Ulla’s head appeared again, gargoyle-like in the moonlight. ‘We all failed her. None of us understood.’

  In the silence that followed I tried to imagine her, Astrid of the full-blown, heavy-scented roses, Bertil’s young bride, Linus’s mother.

  ‘She was a singer, you know that. They say her voice wasn’t strong enough ever for her to have made the big league, but what do they know? It takes time for a voice to mature and she had so little time.’ Ulla’s voice had been brittle, coated in ancient resentments, but now it softened and became dreamy. ‘Her parents died in an aeroplane crash when she was just a baby. The poor little thing grew up being passed from relative to relative like an unwanted parcel. Then my parents took her in and gave her a home. My father and her mother were brother and sister. Of course I was almost grown up by that time. She was happy with us, but her early childhood had left its scars. A feeling of being in the way, of being unwanted. She felt her parents’ death as an abandonment. Logic had nothing to do with it. “Why wasn’t I with them?” I remember her saying. “Why did they go off without me?” When it came to love she was like a leaking vessel; she could never have enough. I think she thought that having a home and a family of her own would be the solution to everything. Bertil offered her all the things she needed so badly. He was older, steady and successful. He was ready to have children and had the money to look after a family. And at first everything was good. Then she met him.’

  ‘Who’s him?’

  ‘We’re here.’ I heard Bertil’s voice. ‘We’ll have you up from there in no time.’

  ‘So then what happened?’ I asked Ulla as we trailed behind Bertil and Gerald on the road home.

  ‘I’m tired,’ Ulla snapped. The spell had been broken and she had turned back into a toad. ‘Is it not an English expression Curiosity killed the cat?’ she said.

  ‘It was a car,’ I said. ‘I have it on good authority that it was a car. Anyway, you’ve told me so much, you can’t just leave it like that, all up in the air.’

  ‘Oh can’t I,’ Ulla muttered into the night.

  I was in bed, still cold under the thin duvet, when there was a knock on my door. ‘It’s me, Linus. Can I come in?’

  I sat up in the bed. ‘Yeah, sure.’

  There he was. I would like to say that he was framed in the doorway, but he was too big, it was more as if he were prising it apart to get in. ‘You’re in bed, I’m sorry.’

  I could have pointed out that it was to be expected that I was in bed at one o’clock in the morning, especially after the night I’d had, but I didn’t. Instead I sat up straight and pulled the duvet up under my chin. ‘Did Ivar get to sleep all right?’

  ‘Like a lamb.’

  ‘I’m afraid I was pretty useless.’

  ‘You weren’t useless at all,’ Linus protested. It was the kind of polite throwaway line one reaches for to avoid embarrassment (unless one’s Ulla, of course) but coming as it did from Linus, I plucked it out and held it close, smiling with unexpected happiness. ‘You really mean that? You don’t think I was useless?’

  ‘By what Ivar tells me we’ve got you to thank that nothing worse happened. I’m the one who’s sorry, leaving you quite literally hanging. Ivar was in such a state he didn’t think to tell me until he was safely tucked up in bed. I can’t believe I didn’t hear you calling.’

  I shrugged, still smiling idiotically as if the air between us was made up of illegal substances. ‘I was in a bit of a state myself. At first I didn’t want to deflect you from getting to Ivar and then, well I kind of lost my voice, temporarily. You know I’m no good in a crisis any more. It’s like any action has to be put before a judge and jury residing permanently inside my head, examined and argued over until no reasonable doubt remains.’

  ‘Can’t you just accept that life is a bit of a muddle?’

  ‘No.’ I banged my fist down on the bed, forgetting for a moment that I was in love with him.

  Linus, leaning against the doorpost, gazed down on me like some benevolent deity, or so it seemed to me because I had remembered again. ‘Try looking at it this way…’

  ‘What way?’ I interrupted in my eagerness to follow his every word.

  ‘Think of it like this vast mural covered in so many layers of grime that you can’t actually see the picture underneath. But you know it’s there, all of it, that’s the important thing and that all you can do is to get on and rub away at your own little corner, cleaning it up, making it clear. The thing is, you know the picture is worthwhile, just from the glimpses you get as you work away. The chance of you ever getting to see the whole is infinitesimal, but you know you have to keep going even unto your last gasp of breath.’

  I had been busy visualising that darkened mural – I’d always enjoyed listening to stories – but now I had to ask why. ‘Why should you keep trying when you know you’ll never get there?’

  ‘I told you, because otherwise all there is is darkness.’

  ‘That’s a cop-out ending,’ I complained. ‘It’s like saying, “and the hero and heroine lived happily ever after… unless, of course, you know differently, in which case we’d like to hear from you on e dot lin dot inc dot.”’

  ‘What do you want me to do? Lie?’

  I sat there looking at him and thought I could always say yes, then ask him really quickly if he loved me.

  But before I got a chance he said, ‘But all that matters right now is that you’re both all right.’ All at once there was such unexpected tenderness in his eyes that I had to look away. It was either that or throwing off my duvet and rushing into his arms. That would have been a high-risk strategy at the best of times, but tonight especially, because Kerstin had lent me her warmest pyjamas and they were baby-blue and had the legend Cute and Pretty embossed on the chest. Personally I think a black-and-white striped number with Alcatraz printed on it would have been more alluring.

  ‘But you’re tired. I must leave you to get some sleep.’

  ‘No! I mean, I don’t think I could sleep. I’d like the company.’

  Linus smiled at me, then perched on the empty bed opposite. He looked funny, sitting there among all that lace. ‘What are you grinning about?’ he asked.

  ‘You look funny, and… I’m just happy,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m glad Ivar is all right. I’m glad you think I was of help after all and…’ I shrugged.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Being with you right now makes me happy, all right?’

  ‘Very all right.’

  In the silence that followed I thought the beating of my heart could be heard right across the room to where Linus w
as sitting. He stood up. ‘I suppose I should be off back to my own bed.’ But he lingered for a moment and looked down at me, and now the tenderness was mixed with something else, was it amusement? What was so funny? I smiled back at him and put out my hand. He stepped forward and took it, turning it over in his larger ones. Then he bent down and kissed it lightly. ‘Goodnight.’

  He was gone so quickly, but I stayed sitting up in bed, resting my hand, the right one, the hand that he had kissed, reverently in my left one. If I closed my eyes I could still feel the warmth of his lips against my skin.

  Twenty-six

  ‘Aren’t they beautiful?’ I pointed at Astrid’s roses. Audrey, squinting against the morning sun, bent down awkwardly over her crutches, muttered agreement, but there was no doubt she would have preferred to have seen them on telly or read about them in some beautifully illustrated book.

  ‘You must be up and about at least for some part of the day,’ I said, touching her elbow to make her move on. ‘You know what the doctors said. Stay in bed and you’ll most probably develop a blood clot.’

  I walked a reluctant, hobbling Audrey along the gravel path and on to the lawn, an older, thinner Audrey in spite of all the Swedish syrup bread and custard buns and platefuls of fish and smoked sausage. I helped her to sit down on the small wooden bench beneath the apple tree, which was covered now with tiny leaf-green fruit, little sour promises of things to come. I sat myself down next to her on the grass, leaning my back against the seat. Soon Audrey was asleep, the trouble-free sleep of the just, or in the case of Audrey, the just-not-troubled-by-much-thought. I listened to her soft snoring and leant back on my elbows, my face lifted to the sun.

  I must have gone over the events of the night before so many times I had worn a groove in the memory: the look of tenderness in his eyes, his lips pressed against my hand. He had gone into town this morning, Olivia had told me over breakfast. I was quite content not to see him because daylight might have changed the look in his eyes and for now I was happy with my dreams. Closing my eyes, I lifted my hand to my lips in a tender second-hand kiss.

  I must have dozed off like Audrey, because I looked up with a start as Ulla, black in thought and tooth (yes really, she had slipped in the shower that morning and blackened her front tooth) stood over me. ‘How are you today?’ she asked.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. I noticed a small book in her hand and it reminded me of the diary I’d found the day before on the sitting-room shelves. ‘Do you keep a diary?’ I asked her.

  ‘Yes, yes I do.’ She didn’t actually say what has it got to do with you, but I could see that was what she was thinking.

  ‘I think it might have been an old one of yours that I found when I dusted the bookcase.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. I keep only my current one with me, the others are in my little flat in Gothenburg.’ She stomped off towards the cottage.

  A few minutes later I got to my feet; Audrey was still snoring softly in her chair. I wiped off a silvery thread of saliva from the corner of her mouth – I knew she liked to look good at all times – and went over to the house. I could hear Gerald’s voice from the veranda, but no one else was about as I wandered into the sitting-room, scrabbling around behind the Reader’s Digests until I found the diary.

  Later that morning, once I’d settled Audrey back in her bed, I went into my room and had a good look at it. Once I saw the name Jonas coupled with Bertil and Linus, I was convinced it was Astrid’s diary. Snooping in other people’s diaries was not nice, but I understood very little. I could either put the little book back where I’d found it or I could show it to one of the family: to Linus or Olivia? It worried me that its existence might in fact be unknown to them as neither of them seemed very clear about what drove Astrid to take her own life. Checking the dates of the last entry I saw that it was made the year Linus would have been seven, so just before she died. But even as I went in search of Olivia, I changed my mind. I had no idea what was hidden among those pages, but it was bound to concern Bertil. The picture painted of a man by his first wife might well be one best not shown to his second, especially given what happened. So should I hand the diary to Linus, Astrid’s son? But what reasons might she give for abandoning her son and were they reasons he could live with? He would know the truth and so would Olivia, but truth left corpses in its wake and I was frightened of what might be set in motion. And what about Astrid? Would she have wanted her son, let alone her husband’s new wife, to read her heart and soul? What to do? Oh, what to do for the best?

  I should give the diary to Bertil. He probably knew of its existence anyway. But if he didn’t? Bertil had not been well. Reading his dead wife’s thoughts on him and their life together, and of the man she left him for, could hardly be conducive to peace of mind.

  There was a tentative little knock on my door and Ivar appeared with a message that my mother wanted me. I got up, complimenting him on his pale-green-and-turquoise chiffon scarf, and put the diary away at the bottom of my underwear drawer.

  ‘Why did you hide that book?’ Ivar wanted to know.

  ‘What book?’

  ‘The book you hided.’

  ‘Hid,’ I corrected to gain time as we wandered across the grass.

  ‘Hid,’ Ivar repeated, and then his attention was caught by Linus and Pernilla struggling through the gate with a cartload of bags and boxes. I stared at them too and the little bubble of delight in which I had resided since Linus left my room the night before burst and I was left shrouded in a sticky film of disappointment. How good they looked together, how at ease with one another. To anyone but me they would be ‘that lovely couple’. And the lovely couple waved at me, each with their free hand, and Ivar rushed off to greet them. I went on my dark and jealous way, wanting badly, in the midst of all that bruising of the heart, to know what was in that diary.

  The next two hours were taken up with trying to coax Audrey into doing her exercises. ‘Why?’ asked my mother.

  ‘Because if you don’t move you’ll die,’ I said.

  ‘It was because I moved that I almost did die. None of this would have happened if I had stayed at home in my own bed.’

  ‘But you didn’t and…’

  ‘… and whose fault is that?’

  ‘Don’t blame me. Roll the ankle, roll it. Just roll it for heaven’s sake.’

  I needed to take a long walk after that. The sun was out, turning the sea into that bright blue temptress once more. ‘Come into my arms,’ she called to me as I walked alongside her, turning the western corner of the island and continuing towards the woods. But I knew better than to trust that sincere blue, that free-of-jellyfish, clear and sparkling sea. ‘I know you,’ I muttered. ‘You’re cold.’

  The boat bringing passengers from Gothenburg out on to the islands of the archipelago turned the southern point and steamed towards the harbour. The deck was crowded with holidaymakers and the vast sky-blue-and-yellow flag at the bow of the boat moved in the soft breeze. It was a day for optimists, so what was I doing out? I made my way back towards Villa Rosengård, the harbour way this time, weaving between the trippers and the helmeted children on bicycles and the shoppers with their baskets. The shoppers on this island were not like ordinary ones, I had noticed. These were Brigadoon shoppers, smiling, chatting, unhurried and unfrazzled, but set to disappear, to sink without trace once the month of July came to an end.

  At the newsagent I stopped and bought the American edition of Vogue for Audrey. As I stepped outside, I bumped into Linus. He was alone, Pernilla-less, but, I thought bitterly, he probably carried her in his heart, like a little picture… or a malign growth…

  ‘Hi there, Esther.’

  ‘Hi there, Linus.’ We started walking back together. I asked him what was in all those boxes he and Pernilla had carted up to the house.

  ‘My office,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how you’ll take this, but I’ve just had a fax from Stuart Lloyd. He wants to resurrect the plans for the People’s Glyndebourne. I s
hould really have stayed in town, but I don’t want to leave Ivar. He’s due to go back to his mother next week anyway. So the work had to come to me.’

  I said nothing so he asked me again if I minded. I thought about it and the more I thought the more confused I got; this was often the way. But I did know that I loved Linus and I also knew that two old people should not be evicted from the only home they’d known because they were in someone’s way. So I answered truthfully, ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘People fighting causes are the most dangerous ones,’ Audrey had said to me the other day. She had looked stern. ‘They feel they answer to a higher authority than the rest of us. You caused havoc with your articles about Linus’s building, havoc, that’s what you caused.’ She had sighed and leant back against her pillows, closing her eyes. Opening them again she looked at me and said, ‘Then you always did.’ Out of the mouths of babes and demented old bats, I had thought at the time, but then I had been stung.

  Linus stopped walking. ‘You’re not sure! You say that now?’ His smile had vanished and his cheeks were slowly turning pink. ‘I’m not sure, you say. After everything you did. I believed you were passionate about what you were doing. I mean, I could understand someone acting out of passion, but to all but destroy someone’s dream on an “I’m not sure”?’

  Did the sun disappear behind a cloud? Like hell it did. Did the waves cease their beating of the rocks? They most certainly didn’t. But I felt an icy hand grip my heart and squeeze and as it squeezed the tears rose in my eyes. They felt as if they were blood.

  Doesn’t that just show how fanciful love had made me?

  I trundled on a couple of steps behind him, like a child in the wake of an angry adult. I loved him, but not even the most determinedly pastel-clad Swedish optimist could have found anything promising in Linus’s and my relationship: my relationship with the man I loved. ‘Oh Pastel-clad Swedish Optimist,’ I’d query. ‘Pray tell me what my chances are to live happily ever after with the man of my dreams?’