Finding their killers had not atoned for the women’s deaths, only perhaps offered some comfort to their loved ones, and even that comfort was cold and cruel.
But something of what had begun the previous spring when Lia saw the white Volvo on Holborn Circus was ending.
She sat there for a long time, looking at her home. Lights shone from almost every window in the building, including her own. That sight had always made her feel more at ease, as it did now as well.
45
The weekend was a relief.
As she wandered the city on Saturday morning, Lia found herself glancing around.
She did not know who or what she expected to see in the throngs of people. She did not feel in danger, but at the edges of her consciousness something nasty flickered from time to time. Memories Lia did not want to contemplate but which stayed with her. She knew she needed something else to think about. As she walked in the Christmas crush on Tottenham Court Road, she remembered that the Fitzroy Art Museum was only a few streets away.
The friendly woman at the museum desk recognised Lia, who purchased a ticket and then climbed the stairs to the second floor. She half expected to see Mari sitting on the bench in front of Double O. But the bench was empty. Only a few people meandered through the galleries.
She sat down on the bench and looked at the installation. As the black tape circles floated in the current of air, the quiet sounds made by their fluttering and the blowing of fans reminded Lia of something.
She closed her eyes, listening. Sitting here before with Mari, she had never concentrated on the sounds the artwork made. She had just looked at its unreal beauty.
The soft rustling of the ribbons felt strangely familiar. She knew she had heard the same sound – but where? It had happened long ago, when she was a child. At summer camp, with the fans humming on a hot day? At that big lake in Kajaani. What was its name? Lake Oulujärvi? Oulujärvi, she was sure of that, but her memory did not return anything else. It was too far back.
Is this how Mari experiences this too? The piece doesn’t just include the new thoughts it evokes but also all the memories it calls to mind.
Lia sat on the bench for a long time. When someone walked up, she snapped out of her reverie. It was a gallery guard, a man of about fifty, who had a name tag on his coat: John Norman.
The guard smiled and cast a glance to make sure he was not disturbing her. Lia smiled back.
‘This piece always makes people stop and think,’ Norman said.
‘Indeed it does. I must have been sitting here for half an hour.’
‘More like a full hour,’ Norman said and smiled again.
‘A friend showed it to me. She spends a lot of time sitting here.’
‘I know her well,’ the guard said. ‘Once she asked me to tell her how it works. Whether we have to throw the ribbons in the air in the morning or do something else to start them moving, and how they stay between the fans.’
‘Well, how does it work?’
‘I asked her whether she really wanted to know. Whether it wasn’t more beautiful when you didn’t know how it worked. She said I was right. Sometimes you don’t have to know how something works, just that it does.’
‘That’s a beautiful thought.’
Norman smiled again and then glanced back towards the galleries, intending to continue his rounds.
‘How many times have you seen her here?’ Lia asked.
‘Many. Ms Rautee visits quite frequently.’
The guard said Mari’s family name with considerable familiarity. Almost as a Finn might do. Perhaps Mari had told him how to pronounce it properly.
At the museum they almost considered Ms Rautee part of the staff, Norman said buoyantly.
‘Last year when this piece was set to go to the warehouse, she was here day after day watching it. For hours. And then she joined the museum foundation and made a donation to make it a permanent exhibit.’
Lia tried not to show her astonishment.
‘Yes, she is a friend of the arts,’ Lia said.
‘It’s people like Ms Rautee who make it possible for museums to stay afloat. I asked her why she didn’t just buy a copy of the piece for herself. There are a few in different places around the world. The artist certainly would have sold her one, and it would have been less expensive for her. She said she wanted it to be here. That she wanted to share it with everyone. But she didn’t want her name on a plaque next to it or anything. Most donors do.’
‘That sounds like Mari,’ Lia said.
‘I was surprised,’ the guard said. ‘She likes it so much. You don’t often see a person crying when she looks at a piece of art.’
Lia looked at Norman, lost for words. Crying?
‘Sometimes she cries when she sits here. You know… quietly, to herself. I don’t know – maybe it isn’t appropriate to talk about it. But you are her friend.’
‘Yes, yes I am.’
Norman nodded and set out on his rounds. Lia sat for another moment.
When she left the museum, it was already past noon. It was Saturday, with six days until Christmas. She had not done any shopping. She hadn’t bought anything for anyone. Not even for her family at home in Finland. She had been putting it off, thinking that if she couldn’t manage anything else, she could just make a charitable contribution in their names online. A goat for a family in Africa or something.
She rang Mari.
‘What are you doing tonight?’
‘Hmmm. Nothing in particular. Paddy and Rico are here at the Studio, and we were thinking…’
‘Not tonight. You can work during the day. Come to my place tonight. In Hampstead.’
‘To your flat?’
‘Yeah. We’ll have a Christmas party. I want to buy a present for someone. Even if it’s just something small.’
A few seconds of silence followed on the phone.
‘That’s the best idea I’ve heard in months,’ Mari said.
Sometime after seven, Lia suggested. She would get something to eat, and Mari could bring the wine.
‘I have stronger stuff at home already if we need it,’ Lia said.
‘You bet we will. Kidderpore Avenue?’
‘Yes. Near the corner of Kidderpore and Platt’s Lane. The door to the stairs is locked, but just ring when you get here.’
As she opened the outer door, Lia could see that Mari had understood the intended nature of the night’s event perfectly. She was dressed in one of her best frocks, a dark brown silk. Lia knew that Mari had purchased it years before on a trip to Vietnam and liked it very much. Lia was wearing her best skirt and expensive tights. She had put on her party make-up.
Mari’s arms were full, including two wine carriers that weighed so much Lia had to laugh.
‘These are going to be proper office Christmas party kännit. We’ll drink expensive wine but save on renting the party space,’ she said.
Mari giggled.
She stood at the door of Lia’s flat looking in.
Lia had decorated as best she could. She had wrapped strands of white cotton string here and there to represent snow. She had placed Christmas baubles in selected spots. The room’s main illumination, a boring square ceiling lamp, had been covered with transparent paper with star-shaped holes. It gave off a soft light, which pardoned the room’s many other faults.
Lia looked at her flat and knew how it appeared. A little box of a student flat, with Christmas thrown together on a shoestring.
But Mari made herself at home with an enthusiasm that filled the space.
‘Lovely,’ she said. ‘Is there space in the fridge for the whites?’
There wasn’t room in the refrigerator, so they took the white wines outside to the building’s bicycle shelter. Mari had the champagne already chilled.
That night strengthened many things.
It was a return to the previous summer, to the evenings and nights they had spent out on the town.
They ate the food Lia had purch
ased. She had wanted to offer better in honour of the day than what she could rustle up in her own mini kitchenette: pesto salad, bouillabaisse and lime sorbet.
From the champagne they moved on to other wines. The selection Mari had brought included a companion for each and every dish. After dinner they gave each other their Christmas presents.
‘Can we open them right now?’ Mari asked.
‘We have to,’ Lia said. ‘Otherwise Christmas won’t come.’
From Lia, Mari received two DVD sets: the collected works of the Aardman animation studios and a selection of Lars von Trier films.
‘Marvellous. Thank you.’
Lia knew the films fitted Mari perfectly. Warmth and hardness, both taken to extremes.
From Mari she also received two gifts. One was a set of novelty plastic cubes with flashing lights inside for putting in drinks. Of course they had to mix drinks to use them immediately.
The second gift was a £600 airline gift card.
‘That’s enough to get you to Provence. Or wherever else you want to go,’ Mari said.
Lia was at once moved and taken aback at the expense of the gift.
‘That includes your bonus for your work at the Studio,’ Mari said.
That was a passable excuse. Unanimously they declared that the gifts were exceptional and that Christmas had indeed come.
Lia wanted to show Mari her view of the park. Turning off the lights, they gazed at the church and sculpture garden standing in the dark.
‘Do you want to go out?’ Lia asked.
Mari nodded. Getting dressed for the outside, they went out to the park. Lia amused Mari by telling her the stories about the statues she had read over the years.
The story of the Elgars was full of romantic sacrifice. Caroline Alice had set aside her own literary career to marry Edward, a composer prone to violent mood swings. Her family and friends considered her husband too lower class, but Caroline Alice endured both her relations’ muttering and her husband’s outbursts.
‘She was sometimes heard agonising over how caring for a genius was a full-time job. But to counterbalance it, he dedicated his compositions to her.’
Mari sighed.
They looked at St Luke and Florence Nightingale. Lia felt a pure, peaceful joy: Mari was enamoured in just the right way by everything.
As they walked back to the flat, Lia was also relieved. Mari was the first visitor she had hosted in her small home. Mr Vong didn’t count, and he had mostly only visited to help mend things.
They settled down on Lia’s bed in amongst the pillows, drinking and talking. About work, about people, about everything.
Had Mari done anything regarding Paddy, in a dating sense? Lia asked.
‘No. Who knows if we’re cut out for it?’
Lia understood without asking any more. Mari and Paddy had a sort of battle or playing field between them, in which they made little moves and approaches now and then, and which everyone who knew them, including themselves, could see.
Mari changed the subject: how did Lia feel after all that had happened that week? Lia said she liked the idea that she could turn to the psychiatrist at any time, but she felt as though she would manage without the help.
‘My head says I should be more distressed than I am. But I’m not afraid. Or worried. I’m just… relieved.’
‘Good,’ Mari said.
She said she had been watching the effect of Arthur Fried’s ordination in the media. At first the news had been received with suspicion. The lead editorials in the papers had declared Fried’s new religious fervour a publicity stunt they could not see stopping the party’s downward spiral.
And the new minister would be seen in an entirely new light the following week when Sarah Hawkins’ video came out, Mari added.
They toasted this with French wine labelled with a picture of a pious monk.
‘I’ve never told you that I first met Fried more than ten years ago,’ Mari suddenly said.
They had met in the United States, in Texas in fact. Mari had been touring the country and seeing the world, while Fried was on business.
‘We met in a bar. Everything happened fast. I almost went to bed with him.’
Lia’s wine nearly went down the wrong pipe.
‘I know,’ Mari said. ‘It’s totally unfathomable.’
Arthur Fried hadn’t been the kind of man then that he was now.
‘It was purely sexual. He came to chat me up. For a moment he was very attractive.’
Lia listened silently while Mari told the whole story.
There had been none of the reek of religious hypocrisy around Fried then. None of the cruelty they both sensed in him now. Mari had just seen him as a businessman, an entrepreneurial, quick-witted chap.
‘I was attracted by his ability to get straight to the point. His energy. He said straight away that he was looking for a one-night stand. He seemed genuine – now it feels stupid, but for a moment I believed him.’
Mari had also recognised something disturbing in the man. As she chatted with him at the bar, she had tried to sense what kind of person he was.
‘He was evasive. He wouldn’t talk about himself, just America and everything he had seen. That was smart. He probably didn’t want to talk about himself because he was still married to Sarah Hawkins at the time. Although their marriage must have already been on the rocks.’
After seeing Mari’s interest, Fried had asked whether she was into any kinky stuff.
‘I realised what was bothering me. There was a desire in him to subjugate, but it had nothing to do with pleasure.’
Mari had made it clear that she wasn’t interested. Fried had become indignant and called her a little whore, who didn’t know what was good for her.
‘He moved on to softening up another woman at the bar, and I left.’
Mari had looked into who Arthur Fried was. She did not like what she found. She had begun tracking Fried’s political activities and gradually become convinced he was dangerous.
‘He is a rare person.’
Fried was both extremely gifted and evil to the core. Mari believed that he had no ability to feel sorrow or empathy, or any deeper interest in other people at all. The place where those things should have been in his personality was simply blank, creating a hole he filled with experiences of wielding power.
They did not return to Fried again that night.
It was a good night. They drank a lot, but their time together was about more than drinking and laughing. It was more about all they had shared in recent months.
Lia showed off her travel guide, London, Good For You! Mari’s reaction to it was the same as Lia’s had been: first confusion and then enchantment. They read the best parts out loud. The chapter ‘You Don’t Say, London’ related surprising items of cultural and historical interest: Mozart had composed his first symphony at the age of eight in London, on Ebury Street in Belgravia. Until 1916, Harrods sold cocaine, which was considered medicinal. The ‘Rock bands favoured by the youth’, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, had played at the same show in 1963 in the Royal Albert Hall, at a charity fundraiser for the Printers’ Pension Corporation.
As she laughed with Mari, out of the corner of her eye Lia saw both of their reflections in the darkened window. Next to them floated tiny lights, the flames of the candles Lia had lit. She imagined Elza there with them.
A moment later another form appeared alongside them in the reflected scene. A dark-haired woman Lia had never met. She had only seen her photograph, which she carried with her always now. Daiga Vītola. Brave, reckless Daiga sat with them, drinking and having fun.
The fear was also there, hovering next to them, the spectre of everything that had happened. But the fear was manageable now. By living through all that had happened since the spring, Lia had begun to develop the strength to cope with her fears. Even what had happened in Finland all those years ago, the memories of a relationship turned dangerously sour, felt different now. One phase of
life among all the others.
Lia heard their laughter ringing from the small room’s walls. It was a sound she had never heard in her flat.
At ten o’clock she noticed another sound. She waved to Mari to tell her to be quiet.
‘Mr Vong!’ she whispered, and Mari fell silent, an expectant smile on her lips.
They heard a steady murmur. Water running into the bath. The sound echoed hollowly off the porcelain surface, amplifying it into a muffled roar that filled Lia’s room like small rapids in a stream.
The rushing stopped. Mr Vong had turned off the tap. A couple of tiny splashing sounds came as the last drops fell into the water. Complete silence fell. They heard Mr Vong lowering himself into the water. Mr Vong and his nightly bath.
Mari began to say something, but Lia hissed, ‘Quiet.’ A moment passed.
A rumble. Another.
Lia covered her face with her hands to stifle a laugh, and when she peered through her fingers, she saw Mari gasping for breath in pent-up delight.
Mr Vong was passing his evening gas, which echoed under the water clear, tight and dull like the skilful playing of a brass instrument. They shook with joy.
A sensuous intoxication had settled over them. The wine blunted their senses like a blanket enfolding them.
Mari wanted to get home while she still had the strength. Lia offered a share of her bed.
They repeated the Finnish word, admiring its beauty: Siskonpeti. Sister bed. It brought to mind quilts dug out of the back of the cupboards, the tiny flats of bygone days and the ties of friendship – both those just created and those strengthened over years.
But Mari declined. She needed her own, familiar surroundings.
They ordered a taxi and collected Mari’s presents and other things. They looked at the clutter that filled Lia’s small home. Food and plates, bottles and glasses, wrapping paper and candle stubs.
‘Best Christmas party ever,’ Mari said, hugging Lia.
Cold Courage Page 35