Authors: Marika Cobbold
‘Not quite seven. Five, I think.’ Katarina’s voice brought me back.
‘I seem to remember,’ I said, ‘that in Sweden, what we in England would call a biscuit counts as a cake. So it isn’t quite as extravagant as it might at first appear to be. Of course a biscuit in America is what we would call a roll.’
‘Really,’ Katarina said. As she walked out of the room, the empty tray in her hand, I looked after her with long eyes and a sigh escaped me.
Uncle Ian said, ‘I feel acutely at this stage, near the end of my life, that I have to settle with the past.’
I was biting into a moon-shaped butter biscuit when he said that and the crumbs caught in my dry throat. I choked and coughed. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘frog in my throat. Do you ever wonder where that expression comes from? I mean, whoever would get a frog in their throat? And if we are dealing in unlikely scenarios why not go the whole hog and make it a toad. A toad sounds even more dramatic. Or a hog. I’m sorry, I’ve got a hog in my throat. Or would that just be silly? It would, wouldn’t it? Because it is just about possible to swallow a frog or even a toad if it’s small but a hog, never.’
‘As I was saying,’ he was speaking loudly and his sparse sandy eyebrows knitted together in a frown. ‘I need to put things right before it’s too late. That’s what Rose was trying to tell me.’
‘Rose?’
‘I told you I had seen her.’
‘Yes. Yes, you did.’
‘Well then, there’s no need to sound so surprised.’ He changed the subject the way he always did when he was bored with an argument. ‘Your mother filled me in on what has been happening in your life. Not that there was very much.’ Uncle Ian always was one of these people who pride themselves on telling it as it is.
‘Oh I don’t know . . .’
‘Don’t be vague, Eliza. I can’t be doing with vague.’
I had always irritated him. It had been good when that was the worst I could do to him.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t really know what to say.’
‘Say what you think.’
Such an easy-sounding request yet almost impossible to acquiesce to. What would the world be like if everyone went around saying what they thought? Much like a city where all the traffic signals were broken and the cars had no brakes.
‘I think not having had a lot happen is a good thing,’ I said finally.
‘I was in the bath this time.’
I took a gulp of coffee and scalded my tongue.
‘It was a little awkward but luckily I had a towel to hand.’
‘Sorry, I’m not quite following.’
‘That’s because you weren’t paying attention. There were bubbles. Katarina insists on it. She says they’re relaxing. I’m grateful now or it could have been embarrassing.’
I burst into a high-pitched laugh. I clamped my hand across my mouth, embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry but it’s just all been rather overwhelming. Your phone call, coming over to see you, Rose speaking to you. It’s a lot to take in.’ I decided not to say that I still had no idea where, in all of this, the bath came in.
Uncle Ian’s frown relaxed. ‘Your reaction is understandable. But as you get older you cease to be surprised because you realise how much there is out there and how little of it you could possibly know.’
I dabbed at my eyes with the little paper napkin. It had tiny blue forget-me-nots on it and lacy edges. ‘We don’t make such pretty paper napkins in the UK.’
‘They’re very keen on their paper in Sweden,’ he said.
There was another silence. It was hard to make conversation when there was so much to say.
I drank some more coffee and my tongue stung from the earlier scalding.
‘Ove, that’s the new vicar,’ he said finally. ‘He explained that it’s all about the need for closure.’
‘Closure?’ Hearing that particular buzzword from Uncle Ian’s lips was as incongruous as finding him curled up with the latest issue of
Hello
!
‘I’m not a well man.’
I forgot to be wary of him and reached out and touched his arm. ‘I’m sorry.’
His gaze met mine. Then he smiled, a pale smile. ‘It’s Ove’s theory that letting go will be a lot easier once I’ve put matters right with you. He says that most people struggle against death, not because of fear of death itself but because of leaving things undone, important things.’ There was another pause as the gilt clock on the bureau struck three. Apart from that and the sound of the old man’s laboured breathing it was quiet.
Are you really here, Rose? Darling Rose. I rested my head against the back of the chair and my eyes, staring at the ceiling, watered.
Uncle Ian spoke and I dabbed at my eyes and mimicked a smile before looking at him. ‘I blamed you for what happened,’ he said. ‘And that was unfair.’
‘It was entirely fair,’ I said. I turned away, gazing out of the window. It was snowing. Thick fluffy flakes dropped and danced before the outside light like down from an eviscerated duvet.
I woke up with a start to a landscape of silence. I had left the curtains open as, when I had gone to bed, there had been nothing to breach the impeccable darkness. It was still dark now so I switched on the bedside lamp to check the time. It was gone seven. There was no hurry to get up so I turned the light off again and lay back down against the pillow, closing my eyes. When next I woke there was noise; purposeful footsteps, water running, muted voices. Late dawn was spreading its rosy light across the sky, melding with the red of the barn opposite to lend the snow drifting against the wall a pink glow. I could smell coffee.
I threw on my dressing-gown and dashed across the landing to the bathroom, my sponge bag and some fresh clothes in my arms. There was no shower so I ran a bath. I lay back in the hot water feeling worn out, although the day had only just begun.
Before I went downstairs I checked the mirror. I looked grim, pasty-hued and puffy-eyed, with a tight little mouth on me. I patted on some lip gloss the colour and transparency of red currants and rubbed some more into my cheeks. I walked down the stairs like a small child or someone old, waiting to take the next step until both feet were firmly together on the one above. I studied the pictures running down the wall. They were by a Swedish artist, Ivar Arosenius, a favourite of Grandmother Eva’s. Poor Arosenius had died aged only thirty, at the beginning of the last century. He had known he was going to die young through an inherited illness that had carried away his two brothers. So in his thirty years on earth he painted and married and had a child and his paintings depicted life as a tender tragicomedy and his small daughter as a fragile source of light in a grown-up world of dark and giant objects. If I had been able to paint like Arosenius maybe then I would have deserved my place on earth even after what had happened. But I couldn’t.
I reached the hall and in the kitchen they had heard my footsteps and Katarina called my name.
Uncle Ian was sitting at the kitchen table, eating porridge. He had been having porridge for breakfast for as long as I could remember. He said it made you live long. I knew there was a reason I liked Cheerios. Katarina poured me coffee which, like the day before, was black and bitter, and again like the day before I drank it down like medicine. I liked my coffee milky and best of all when sweetened with caramel syrup. I was sometimes told that I was lucky I wasn’t fat when I had such a sweet tooth. I said luck had nothing to do with it; I simply cut back on real food. It was a simple enough measure available to anyone.
Looking out of the window, we all agreed it looked like it was going to be a lovely day and Uncle Ian and I retired to the glass veranda. My body had noted the word ‘veranda’ and anticipating cold, shuddered, but although three of the walls were glass it felt snug enough as we sat down side by side each in our white painted wicker armchairs that faced the snow-covered garden and the fields beyond. The sun had risen as far as it would go, hanging exhausted just above the tree line, shedding its pallid light.
‘I have no one to talk to about her, about Rose. I speak of her and people look at me with a mixture of pity and boredom and I think that to them all she means is the social awkwardness of a long ago tragedy. The worst of it is, sometimes I can’t remember. Talk to me about Rose, Eliza.’
Talk to him about her, my shadow companion. I closed my eyes. I searched my mind, but to my distress all I could see was my own guilt and shame like a grubby overlay obscuring the view of Rose herself.
He turned his head slowly as if he were pushing something heavy with the side of his face. Age was working against him, age that acted as a counterweight to everything he wanted to do. ‘I know you remember.’
I felt so ashamed now at how hard I had worked
not
to remember. Ashamed of how I had skipped nimbly over memories that lay like jagged stones in my path. The lighter I stepped the less I felt.
I said, ‘She was very beautiful.’
‘Of course she was. That much is obvious from any photographs.’
‘She loved parties,’ I said. ‘And dressing up. Do you remember the trunk full of old clothes and costume jewellery and hats and bags that Grandmother . . . your mother kept for us?’
He sighed impatiently. ‘You could be talking about any one of a thousand sixteen-year-old girls.’
I closed my eyes. If I could just think of Rose up until that night and no further. If I could allow her to live in my mind how she had been up until that night then slam a door on what followed.
‘What else do you remember?’ Uncle Ian was growing impatient.
‘She was funny.’
‘Was she funny? I don’t remember her being particularly funny. You were the funny one. You were precocious, quick. I’m afraid that used to annoy me. Rose’s mother always accused me of turning everything into a competition and she was right.’
‘I always knew I annoyed you.’ I smiled. ‘I just assumed it was because I was an annoying child.’
He gave a dry little laugh. ‘Well, there was that too.’
‘I don’t mean she was particularly funny as in telling lots of jokes or saying funny things but she was so sweet, so other-worldly, in a funny way. She was funny-sweet.’
‘Funny-sweet. I don’t know what that means. What did she want to do with her life? What were her plans? Her hobbies? She liked ballet, I remember that.’
‘She wanted to be an actress.’
He sighed. ‘All young girls want to be actresses. Did she display any particular talent to mark her out in that field? And I don’t want a whole load of polite waffling, Eliza. I don’t have time for that.’
‘I think she did.’ I smiled as I did recall something concrete. ‘Our drama teacher, Mr . . . Oh . . . Mr Whatever, I remember him saying that Rose reminded him of Vivien Leigh.’
‘Did he really? Vivien Leigh.’ He gave a delighted little laugh. ‘You know now you point it out I can see similarities.’
‘It wasn’t just the looks but Rose had that same air of fragility. And these days people agree that Vivien Leigh was a much better actress than her contemporaries gave her credit for.’
‘And she didn’t like maths.’ Uncle Ian’s voice held a triumphant note as if he had found something he had lost and had been searching for. ‘I remember her coming to me once when she was a little slip of a thing, crying and holding out this exercise book. “My head doesn’t like sums,” she said.’ He was smiling. ‘ “My head doesn’t like sums.” You’re right, she was funny.’ But he was hungry for more. ‘She was a good friend to you?’
‘Of course she was. The best.’
‘Was she kind?’
‘To me?’
‘Generally. Was she a kind girl?’
I thought about it. ‘She was to me, of course. And she loved animals.’
‘All young girls love animals,’ he said.
‘Kind?’ I thought for a moment. ‘I don’t suppose you think about kindness very much when you’re that age. You notice if people are kind to you directly, but I reckon that’s about as far as it goes. I’m sure she was, though.’
‘Why? Why are you sure? You just said you hadn’t thought about it.’
I felt as if I were in court. ‘I’m sorry if I’m not precise enough.’
‘Don’t be sorry, just be more precise.’
‘I suspect, though, that we were all rather self-centred. It goes with being a teenager. It’s not that you don’t care about others, it’s more that you forget that there
are
others. I think we were a bit like that, Rose and I and our friend Portia Dennis. You remember Portia?’
Uncle Ian nodded. ‘What became of her?’
‘You know, I have no idea.’
‘You didn’t keep in touch?’
I didn’t know how to explain, to him or to myself for that matter, how, far from finding comfort in the company of someone else who’d known and loved Rose, I had done everything to avoid her until we had lost touch altogether.
‘It was my fault. Being with her hurt. Looking at her I didn’t see her, only . . . well, things I didn’t want to think about.’
Uncle Ian nodded. ‘I can understand that.’
Of course he could.
There was another pause and then Uncle Ian said, ‘Rose wasn’t very academic.’
I relaxed. ‘Oh I don’t know. She was very good at English Literature and her spelling was brilliant.’ I nodded. ‘Really excellent.’