by Helena Halme
Kaisa kept apologising to Peter for complaining all the time. He was so happy and it hurt her that he couldn’t see Kaisa’s unhappiness. Every time she as much as hinted that she was less than blissfully content, she felt like she’d cut him with a sharp knife. So, in the end, she acted stupid and irritable, to avoid telling him the truth about how she felt. It always led to an inconclusive argument that only ended when they made passionate and exhausting love. They repeated this spiral about once a week. Sex seemed to counterbalance the process, but for Kaisa it acted like a drug. The more they made love, the more Kaisa was sinking into a dream world and wanted to forget all of her real worries.
Twenty-Two
Kaisa passed her driving test on the first attempt. It was a Friday, and the small town of Helensburgh was busy with traffic, but Kaisa kept a cool head and managed all the hill starts, did a near-perfect three-point-turn, and even parallel parked the car on the seafront. She was so pleased and relieved that, after her delighted driving instructor had dropped her off, Kaisa couldn’t wait for Peter to come home. She knew the submarine was going to sail any day now, so the timing couldn’t be better. Now she could drive to the shop or even go to the cinema in town. Peter hugged her and said she should drive out to the shops in Helensburgh the next day. With Peter about to sail, they’d planned to fill the larder and the fridge full of food, so that Kaisa wouldn’t have to worry about doing a big food shop. In case she’d failed her test, Phoebe had offered to drive her to the base and to the shops, but with her new baby and her two small girls, Kaisa really didn’t want to trouble her.
When Peter sailed, only two days later, there was a dusting of snow on the hills on the opposite side of the Gareloch. Peter had told Kaisa there was no point in coming to the base to say goodbye, because they didn’t know the exact time they’d be leaving. ‘Stay here in the warm bed,’ Peter said, and gave Kaisa a long, lingering kiss. So, with her dressing gown wrapped tightly around her body, she watched Peter get dressed and pack his Pusser’s grip at 5am on a cold November morning. After Peter had gone, Kaisa tried to sleep, but couldn’t, and sat in the lounge, waiting for HMS Restless to come into view. At a few minutes past seven, she was rewarded with a magnificent view of the submarine making its way slowly past her window. It was flanked by two tugs to keep other boats away. Kaisa thought that it truly looked like a ‘sleek black messenger of death’, an expression she’d read in the papers. Her husband, her love, was inside that vessel, and tears began to run down her face. Of all jobs, why did Peter have to be a submariner, and a submariner in a Polaris sub to boot? In vain, Kaisa waved, even though she knew nobody, certainly not Peter, would see her. She wished she’d gone down to the base after all, to see Peter one more time. What if he never came back? What if there was some kind of incident, and they had to fire the missile? They’d all be dead by then, Kaisa thought, and decided to pull herself together. Nothing would happen, as Peter had said over and over. Still, how would Kaisa manage on her own for two months – or more – without him?
Peter had told Kaisa that Phoebe would find it too difficult to manage with the baby and her other two children when the submarine sailed, and Kaisa had promised to help her look after the bigger girls on some afternoons. After the submarine had disappeared from view, Kaisa decided to get dressed and go and see Phoebe – she needed to get out of the empty house, and thought Phoebe might want some company too.
‘Ah, Kaisa, come in,’ Phoebe said, balancing the baby on her hip. Phoebe’s girls, aged just two and three and a half, were sitting in front of the TV, still in their pyjamas. They were nice children, but Kaisa didn’t really know what to say to them. Luckily, they totally ignored her, and were engrossed in a Disney cartoon on the telly. There were two other women in the lounge, sitting next to the girls. Kaisa had met both of the Navy wives, whose husbands were on the same crew as Peter, fleetingly at the Christmas Ball. ‘Hi, Kaisa,’ they both said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to be gathered at Phoebe’s house early on a cold Scottish morning.
‘You know Pammy and Judith?’ Phoebe asked. Kaisa nodded.
‘The first day of patrol is the worst, believe me,’ Phoebe said, and added, ‘Tea?’
‘Sorry, I don’t drink tea,’ Kaisa said.
‘Oh, OK … what would you like instead, water?’
‘Coffee if you have it, please,’ Kaisa said and felt awkward with the two other women looking quizzically at her.
‘Did you see them sail?’ Phoebe asked her, and Kaisa was glad of the change of subject.
‘Yes, Peter told me not to go to the base, but I saw the boat on the Gareloch.’
Phoebe lifted her face up from the baby on her lap. ‘Oh.’ The other two women also lifted their faces, away from the children’s programme on TV.
‘I always used to go and wave them off before the children. But now, with baby Millie, it’s just too cold,’ Phoebe gave Kaisa a curious look, and Kaisa felt that she’d broken another kind of English – or possibly Navy – code.
Phoebe told Kaisa that her husband, Bernie, was an engineer on HMS Restless, and that they couldn’t wait to move back down to England. Phoebe was a nurse before she met Bernie, but she didn’t think she’d ever get back to nursing now.
‘Perhaps I’ll go back to work, but to something else, when the girls start boarding school,’ she told Kaisa now. Kaisa didn’t say anything but wondered how on earth she could even think about being parted from her lovely daughters.
‘There are no private schools in Finland,’ she said instead, and in case Phoebe and the other two wives wondered why she was being so quiet all of a sudden.
Pammy, who had very dark hair cut in a bob, was very friendly, in an English way; distant but polite. She told Kaisa that her husband was new on HMS Restless, just like Peter. ‘They’re the same rank, aren’t they?’ said Kaisa.
‘Yes,’ Phoebe said.
‘There are no jobs for the English here,’ Pammy sighed. She was really slim, and Kaisa didn’t even realise she was pregnant until Phoebe gave baby Millie to her.
‘Here you go Pammy, you might as well start practising now!’
Pammy must have seen Kaisa’s surprise, because she touched her flat tummy underneath her tweed skirt. ‘I’m just six weeks along.’
‘Oh,’ Kaisa said. She was thinking that she hadn’t met any other wife on the Rhu estate who worked, didn’t have children or wasn’t pregnant.
‘So congratulations are in order,’ Phoebe said and lifted her tea mug. She was also holding onto the wriggling body of her two-year-old, Sarah, whose chocolatey face Kaisa was dying to wipe clean.
‘Yes, well done you!’ said the third Navy wife, Judith. She’d brought her one-year-old baby, Sophie, a fat little thing with wispy blonde hair, who sat sturdily on the floor alternately eating a pink plastic toy and banging it on the floor. Kaisa worried about the bacteria she must be transmitting into her body, but the mothers around her didn’t seem too concerned.
Kaisa noticed there was a sudden silence and everyone was looking at her, as if she should be saying something, ‘Oh, yes, congratulations, sorry.’ Kaisa muttered, and cursed the straightjacket of English manners.
The women around Kaisa began a steady chatter. They talked about nappies, how difficult something called Pampers were to get from the one shop that sold them in Helensburgh, and how much more expensive the nappies were in Scotland than in England. Pammy complained about the lack of lettuce, or fresh vegetables, and this Kaisa agreed on. She told them how she and Peter had been trying to get some courgettes for one of her vegetarian recipes, but had given up when the only thing they found was a box of large, hollow-sounding marrows.
‘Oh how sweet young love is. Did you hear that girls? He goes food shopping with her!’ said Phoebe, and they all laughed. Kaisa could feel her cheeks grow red and was sure she’d blushed.
‘We mustn’t tease her,’ Pammy said, and Kaisa shot her a grateful look.
‘More tea, anyone?’ Pho
ebe said and began to heave herself up. She’d already told them she was still sore from the birth.
‘Never again, ladies, never again,’ she’d said laughingly. ‘I don’t care how much Bernie craves a son, ‘this shop is well and truly shut.’
‘So how was it, Phoebes?’ Pammy asked.
Phoebe shot Kaisa an enquiring look, as if to ask, ‘Can she take this?’ Kaisa said nothing, but wondered if they wanted her to leave. Instead, she sat still and began to think about Peter and how soft his lips had been and how badly she’d slept the night before, because she was already treading the empty space in their bed, while half listening to Phoebe tell the tale of the birth. Her waters had broken at home, after which they’d rushed to hospital. ‘It was fast, but my God it was painful,’ she said. ‘And a new record for the hospital, the midwife told me – 33 minutes from me getting into the hospital and this little beauty arriving.’ She touched her daughter’s cheek. Baby Millie had fallen asleep on Pammy’s lap, and responded to her mother’s touch with a soft gurgle and faint movement of her fat little legs and arms. Kaisa was surprised how much she wanted to hold her, and for the umpteenth time she wondered why it would be so wrong to have a baby now. Peter and she loved each other; he had a good job and career and could support a family; whereas Kaisa didn’t even have a job.
But now, with a driving licence, the world would be Kaisa’s! She remembered that she hadn’t even told Phoebe. ‘Oh that’s nice,’ Phoebe said absentmindedly. The baby had started crying, while one of the older girls was whingeing about something and pulling at her mother’s sleeve. Pammy stood up, gave Millie to her mother and began talking to the little girl about the cartoons. She was a natural mother, Kaisa saw, and thought how alien motherhood seemed to her. Perhaps it was just as well that Kaisa planned to concentrate on trying to find work – any work – rather than rush into the world of nappies and babies.
When, after endless cups of tea and coffee, the women began to leave Phoebe’s, with promises to keep in touch, Kaisa returned home and phoned her sister in Helsinki to tell her she’d passed her driving test.
‘Wow, that’s fantastic! Have you told mum yet?’
‘No, I just got back, you can tell her, can’t you?’
There was a silence at the other end. Sirkka knew Kaisa hadn’t spoken to her mother for a few weeks now. There just hadn’t been time with the ball and Peter’s impending departure. But really Kaisa was afraid of the emotions that calls to her mother stirred in her. ‘Go on, just ring her,’ Sirkka said.
‘OK,’ Kaisa said.
They didn’t speak for long because international telephone calls were even more expensive from Scotland. Kaisa had wanted to talk to Sirkka about having a baby, but she didn’t seem to be in the mood to talk. So Kaisa lifted the receiver again and started dialling her mother’s number, but at the last minute she lost her nerve. Kaisa was afraid her mother would start asking what jobs she’d applied for and what the prospects were like in Scotland. Her mother had the idea that there were many opportunities for her in Scotland and if she knew Kaisa could now drive, she would think she could take a job further afield. But Kaisa was tired of applying for jobs and getting only rejections. Besides, Kaisa couldn’t even pretend she’d stay here if Peter was posted back down South. Everyone knew the score, and no company in Helensburgh, or even Glasgow, was stupid enough to employ Navy wives.
Twenty-Three
It was midnight and Kaisa was already in bed. She must have just fallen asleep when she heard the phone. Stumbling in the dark to get down the stairs and reach it reminded her of the night calls Peter used to make when she was in Helsinki. This time, however, she immediately thought something must be wrong.
‘Hello, Kaisa!’
‘Hello,’ she replied, but couldn’t place the voice. She was still half asleep. It wasn’t Peter.
‘What’s happened?’ Kaisa said, the feeling of dread rising inside her.
‘Nothing, you silly thing.’ The voice laughed at the other end of the phone.
‘Duncan!’
‘Yes, I thought I’d see how you are settling in up there in the dark North.’
Duncan and Kaisa hadn’t spoken since the ball at the base.
Duncan told Kaisa he was coming up to Faslane again. She told him Peter was away at sea. ‘Oh, that’s a shame, I really wanted to see him, too, but if it’s OK by you, I’ll pop in for one night with you?’
He told Kaisa that he was doing a week-long course on the base in Faslane, and he’d be sharing a married quarter with some of the other guys, but because of a ‘Royal Navy cock-up’ the place wasn’t available until the day after they started. ‘I could stay in the Wardroom, but …’ he said.
‘Of course you must stay with us, or me.’ Kaisa said. ‘I’ll come and get you from the station.’ Those words sounded so good.
‘What, you’ve passed?’ Duncan said, ‘Congratulations!’
‘Thank you,’ Kaisa said, trying to sound bright and charming, although she felt groggy and sleepy. She brushed aside what Peter might think about Duncan staying in the married quarter alone with her. She wanted to see Duncan, and as long as she was careful, it would be alright, she was sure of it. Besides, if he was the way he’d been during the ball, she would have nothing to worry about.
* * *
A couple of days after Duncan’s phone call, and less than a month after she’d passed her test, Kaisa dared to drive all the way to Glasgow. Each week she’d driven a little more each day, reaching Dumbarton the week before, and now Glasgow. Her new friend Pammy, whom she’d invited for coffee after they met at Phoebe’s place, came with Kaisa and showed her how to park in a multi-storey car park just off Buchanan Street, the main shopping street in the city.
‘You’ve got to be a bit careful where you go in Glasgow,’ she said, ‘especially if you are English.’
‘But I’m not,’ Kaisa said.
Pammy laughed and replied, ‘By the way you sound, you may as well be!’ She told Kaisa that there were very rough areas in Glasgow, where women on their own shouldn’t go, and that the Scots could be aggressive, particularly to the English.
‘They hate us,’ she said, and Kaisa was again glad she was born in a country that hadn’t gone around conquering and pillaging other nations.
They had lunch in the top-floor restaurant of the House of Fraser department store.
‘You did really well today,’ Pammy said. ‘It took me months to pluck up the courage to drive into London and park in a multi-storey.’ Pammy told Kaisa she’d grown up in Surrey, which was close to London. She’d met her husband Nigel while they were both still at school. When Nigel had gone to Dartmouth, she’d started secretarial college and had briefly worked for a fashion designer before marrying Nigel. She had worked in various part-time jobs since, but preferred to move around the country with her husband. They’d been married for two years and Smuggler’s Way was their third married quarter. ‘Now, with this little one on the way, I’ll have my hands full,’ she said and smiled.
Pammy was small and slim, and during the past month, when Kaisa had got to know her better, her little tummy had expanded slowly. Kaisa hoped that when she got pregnant she’d look as pretty and slim as Pammy did. In the car on the way back from Glasgow Kaisa told her so, to which Pammy just laughed and said, ‘Oh God no, I’m huge!’ But Kaisa could tell she was pleased, because she said, ‘You know, Nigel really likes his girls to be slim, so I’ve started to measure my ribcage just below my boobs, and my thighs, to make sure I’m not going to be vast afterwards.’
Kaisa looked down at her sturdy legs. Although she was a lot taller than Pammy, she knew her thighs were like tree trunks compared to Pammy’s thin pins under her checked pinafore dress.
That evening Kaisa wrote her first Familygram to Peter.
* * *
I drove to Glasgow with Pammy today and parked in a multi-storey car park. We had lunch in the city and drove home. I feel so proud of myself and Pammy said I did well t
oo. I miss you terribly. Lots of love Kaisa x
* * *
Kaisa looked at the brief note and hoped it would pass the Captain’s inspection. She sighed and folded the thin blue paper, and glued the sides together. She’d drop it off on the base the next morning, before her usual swim.
Twenty-Four
The day after Duncan’s overnight stay, Kaisa stayed in bed. She was very hungover after all the vodka they’d drunk, and she wanted to stay in bed in the hope that she’d wake up into a different world, a world in which the night before hadn’t happened. She feigned sleep when she heard Duncan lean over her, to see if she was awake. She didn’t get up when she heard him in the bathroom, or when he put the kettle on and made himself a cup of tea. She wished he would just go, disappear, and that she’d never have to see him again. When he finally shut the front door behind him, Kaisa crawled out of bed and saw the note he’d left on the kitchen table.
* * *
‘Thank you for last night, love Duncan x’
* * *
Kaisa ran into the bathroom and emptied the contents of her stomach.
She was a bad, bad person.
Kaisa didn’t go out at all that day, but the next day, when Peter had been away for exactly three weeks, Kaisa drove the short distance to Phoebe’s house. She didn’t want to go to the base for a swim, because she feared she might bump into Duncan. She would normally have walked up the hill to Phoebe’s house, but it was pouring with rain.