Chapter 32
Britt-Marie sits alone on a bench on the pavement outside the accident and emergency wing.
She has a bouquet of tulips in her arms, can feel the wind in her hair, and is thinking about Paris.
It’s strange, the power a place can have over you, even if you’ve never been there.
If she closes her eyes she can nonetheless feel its cobblestones under her feet.
Maybe more clearly now than ever. As if when she jumped into the air when Ben scored, she came back down to earth as a different person. The sort of person who jumps.
“Mind if I sit with you?” asks the voice.
She can hear the voice is smiling. She also smiles, even before she has opened her eyes.
“Please do,” she whispers.
“Your voice is hoarse,” says Sven with a smile.
She nods.
“It’s the flu.”
He laughs out loud. She laughs inside. He sits down and holds out a ceramic vase for her.
“Well, yeah, I made it for you. I’m doing a course. You know, I thought you could put your tulips in it.”
She grips it and holds it tightly in her arms. The surface is slightly rough against her skin, like a soft toy you wouldn’t let your parents wash.
“It was quite fantastic today. I have to admit it. Absolutely wonderful,” she manages to say.
“It’s a wonderful sport,” says Sven.
As if life was so simple.
“It’s been heavenly to feel enthusiastic again,” she whispers.
He smiles and turns to her, looking as if he’s about to tell her something, so she stops him by gathering up all her common sense in a single, suffocating breath and saying:
“If it’s not too much trouble I’d be very grateful if you had time to run the children home.”
She sees him sitting there growing smaller in the seconds that follow. Her heart twists inside her. Also inside him.
“I have to assume that this, that this means that, well . . . I have to assume that it’ll be Kent who’s driving you home then,” he manages to say.
“Yes,” she whispers.
He sits in silence with his hands gripping the edge of the bench.
She does the same, because she likes holding it while he’s also holding it.
She peers at him and wants to say that it’s not his fault.
That she’s just too old to fall in love.
She wants to tell him that he can find himself someone better.
That he deserves something perfect. But she doesn’t say anything, because she’s afraid he’ll say she is perfect.
She’s still clutching the vase as she sits in the car, the town and the road swishing by.
Her chest is aching with held-back longings.
Kent talks all the way, of course. Initially about the soccer and the children, but before long his focus switches to business and Germans and plans.
He wants to go on holiday, he says, just the two of them.
They can go to the theater. Go to the sea.
Very soon; a few plans just have to fall into place first. When they drive into Borg he makes a joke about how this place is so small that two people could stand on top of the welcome signs at either end, having a conversation without even having to raise their voices.
“If you lie down here you’ll find your feet are already in the next village!” he guffaws, and when she doesn’t immediately laugh he says it again.
“Okay, pop in and get your stuff now, and then we’ll be off!” he says as the BMW stops outside Bank’s house.
“Right away?”
“Yes, I have a meeting tomorrow. Let’s get going now so we’re ahead of the traffic.” He drums his fingers against the dashboard impatiently.
“We actually can’t just leave in the middle of the night,” protests Britt-Marie, her voice scarcely audible.
“Why not?”
“Well, only criminals drive around in the middle of the night.”
“Oh, good God, darling, you have to pull yourself together now,” he groans.
Her nails dig into the vase.
“I haven’t even handed in notice to my employers yet. I can’t just disappear without handing in my notice. The keys have to be returned, you have to understand.”
“Please, darling, it’s not exactly much of a ‘job,’ is it?”
Britt-Marie sucks her cheeks in.
“It’s a job as far as I’m concerned.”
“Yes, yes, yes, that’s not how I mean it, darling. Don’t get irate now. Can’t you just call them while we’re on the road? It’s not that important, is it? Come on, I have a meeting tomorrow!” He says this as if he’s the one who’s being flexible here. She doesn’t answer.
“Do you even get a salary for this ‘job’?”
Britt-Marie’s nails hurt as they bend against the ceramic vase in her lap.
“I’m not some criminal. I’m not traveling around in the car at night. I just won’t do it, Kent,” she whispers.
“No, no, no, okay then,” sighs Kent. “Tomorrow morning if it’s so important. I can’t believe how this village has got under your skin, my darling. You don’t even like soccer!”
Britt-Marie’s nails start slowly retracting from the ceramic vase. Her thumb dives over the rim and adjusts the tulips inside.
“I was given a crossword the other day, Kent. There was a question about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in it.”
Kent has started fidgeting with his cell phone, so she raises her voice:
“It’s popular in crosswords, it really is. The Hierarchy of Needs. So I read about it in a newspaper. The first stage is about people’s most basic needs. Food and water.”
“Mmm,” says Kent, tapping away.
“Air as well, I have to assume,” adds Britt-Marie so quietly that she’s almost not sure herself whether she says anything.
The second stage of the Hierarchy of Needs is “safety,” the third is “love and belonging,” the fourth is “self-esteem.” She remembers it quite clearly, because this Maslow fellow is remarkably popular in crosswords.
“The highest step of the ladder is self-actualization. That was how all this felt to me, Kent. It was a way of actualizing myself.”
She bites her lip.
“You just think it’s silly, I suppose.”
He looks up from his telephone. Looks at her, breathing deeply and loudly, like he does just before he falls asleep and starts snoring.
“Yes, yes! Of course I can understand the whole darned thing, darling. I get it. It’s superb, really superb! Self-actualizing. Bloody superb. So now you’ve got it out of your system. And tomorrow we can go home!”
She bites her lip and lets go of his hand. Takes a firm grip on the vase and clambers out of the car.
“Damn it, darling! Don’t get annoyed again! I mean how long does this job last? How long will you be employed?”
“Three weeks,” she forces herself to say.
“And then? When those three weeks are over and you don’t have a job anymore? Will you be staying on in Borg as an unemployed person, then?”
When she doesn’t answer he sighs and gets out of the car.
“You do understand this is not your home, don’t you, darling?”
She is walking away, but she knows he’s right.
He breaks into a run and catches up with her. Takes the ceramic pot with the tulips from her, and carries them into the house. She walks slowly behind him.
“I’m sorry, my darling,” he says, with his hands cupped softly around her face, as they stand there in the hall.
She closes her eyes. He kisses her on the eyelids.
He always used to do that, in the beginning, just after her mother had died.
When she was at her loneliest in the world, until one day when he stood there on the landing in their apartment building, and then she was no longer at her loneliest. Because he needed her, and you are not alone when someone needs you.
So she loves it when he kisses her eyelids.
“I’m just a bit stressed. Because of the meeting tomorrow. But everything is going to be all right. I promise.”
She wants to believe him. He grins and kisses her cheek and tells her not to worry. And that he will be picking her up tomorrow morning at six o’clock, so they don’t end up in the morning rush hour traffic.
Then he scoffs: “But you never know, if all three cars in Borg are out at the same time it could get a bit crowded!” She smiles, as if that’s funny. Stands in the hall with the door closed until he drives away.
Then she goes up the stairs and makes the bed. Puts her bags in order. Folds all the towels. Goes down the stairs again, out of the door, and walks through Borg. It’s dark and silent as if no one lives here, as if the soccer cup never even took place.
But the lights are on in the pizzeria; she can hear Bank and Somebody laughing in there.
There are other voices too. Clinking glasses. Songs about soccer, and other songs sung by Bank, the lyrics of which, certainly as far as Britt-Marie is concerned, do not bear repeating.
She unlocks the recreation center and turns on the kitchen light.
Sits on a stool and hopes the rat will turn up.
It fails to do so. Then she sits with her cell phone held in her cupped hands, as if it was liquid and might otherwise be spilled.
She waits for a long time before she can bring herself to make the call.
The girl from the unemployment office answers on her third attempt.
“Britt-Marie?” she manages to say, sounding drowsy.
“I should like to hand in my notice,” Britt-Marie whispers.
It sounds as if the girl is stumbling about and knocking something over at the other end of the line. A lamp, perhaps.
“No, no, Mummy is just talking on the telephone, darling, go back to sleep, sweetie. . . .”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Sorry. I was talking to my daughter. We fell asleep on the sofa.”
“I wasn’t aware you had a daughter.”
“I have two,” the girl replies, and it sounds as if she walks into a kitchen and turns on a lamp and starts making coffee. “What time is it?”
“Hardly a good time to be drinking coffee,” answers Britt-Marie.
“What can I do for you, Britt-Marie?”
“I should like to hand in my notice. I need to . . . come home,” whispers Britt-Marie.
“How did the soccer cup go?” the girl asks after a long silence.