Eliza
Would he ask questions first, or just shoot?
‘Uncle Ian.’
Rose’s father eased himself up from the chair and, as he reached standing, he wobbled, gripping the armrests for support. I had been about to step closer to give him a steadying hand but I had checked myself. When you were old the very last thing you wanted, probably, was to be treated as if you were. Instead I stood there, silent, while a quarter of a century’s worth of words formed a disorderly queue at the back of my throat.
Rose and I had thought her father was old twenty-five years ago. To us then, forty, fifty, sixty . . . was all much the same, a minor tragedy that was somehow never going to happen to us. And to Rose it hadn’t. So just as Rose herself was frozen in time, for ever sixteen, Uncle Ian had been fixed in my mind the way he had seemed to me when we last met, old, so there was nothing much now to surprise me apart from perhaps the air of fragility. Like with a piece of porcelain filigree you would handle him with care and worry about breaks and cracks. That and the fact that I had found him reclining in a soft chair doing absolutely nothing seemed to me the only difference. In the old days you would be lucky if you interrupted him in one task, it was more usually two or three: speaking on the phone, reading through a pile of papers, signalling at someone to do something right then, that minute, no hanging about. But he stood tall still, he wore the same kind of wire-rimmed spectacles he had always worn, his hair, though thinner, was more sandy than grey and his nose, a good Roman nose that Rose had feared would sneak up on her one day, still dominated his face. Instead it was I who had changed the most, going from child to middle age in the time since our last meeting. I suddenly felt ashamed of my adult state, as if in having grown up I had done the wrong thing.
Uncle Ian held out his arms towards me and we embraced briefly, awkwardly, armour to armour.
‘Eliza.’
I felt as if I had a face in two parts as my mouth smiled wide and my anxious eyes blinked. I knew of people who couldn’t control their dogs or their children but not to be able to rule over your own face was quite frankly feeble.
‘It’s good of you to come.’
‘It was kind of you to invite me.’
‘Please,’ he indicated the other chair. ‘Sit down.’ He began the process of lowering himself back down on his seat. I put my handbag on the small table between us. Then I picked it up again and placed it at my feet instead.
‘It was good too, to speak to your mother again,’ Uncle Ian said.
I was forty-one years old. My mother lived in Australia. I was used to managing without her, but right then I would have given a great deal to have her there.
‘You’ll want something to eat or drink after your journey?’
‘I’d love some coffee.’ I tried to think of something else to say, something inane, anything at all would do as long as it succeeded in warding off a meaningful conversation. I managed, ‘It’s quite early for snow, even for Sweden.’
Uncle Ian did well with, ‘Quite early, yes.’
‘Though it isn’t as cold as one might have expected. Then again, it’s true that it can be too cold for snow.’ I gave a little laugh. ‘People don’t believe me when I tell them that but it’s a fact.’
Uncle Ian nodded. ‘Is that so.’
I thought I only needed to go on like this, spouting pointless little phrases, avoiding anything smacking of serious purpose, for three more days and then I’d be home and dry, back in my little flat.
‘I’ve missed talking to your mother. We were good friends.’
It was my turn to nod. ‘I know.’
‘Do you get on with your stepfather?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘And he makes your mother happy?’
‘Oh absolutely.’
Uncle Ian sat back and closed his eyes and for a moment I thought he might have dropped off but he opened them again almost immediately and said, ‘When Barbro, that’s my late wife, passed away I was still working. When that all came to an end, well, I’ve had time to think.’
‘That’s no good,’ I said.
‘What do you mean, that’s no good?’
Just then Katarina entered the room. Either she knew people’s minds or she had listened at the door because she was bringing coffee. As well as the coffee there was a plateful of buns and pastries. ‘Seven sorts?’ I smiled up at her.
Eva had told Rose and me about the custom of offering people coffee and seven varieties of cakes and pastries. Of course we had preferred the fairy tales over the niceties of entertaining. From the moment we had seen the picture of Näcken in one of Grandmother Eva’s books we were in love with the beautiful naked boy who lived in the lakes and the rivers, playing his fiddle. Näcken’s hair was a tumble of dark curls. His eyes, set into a face as pale as death, were filled with sorrow. Rose had thought Julian looked just like that picture. I hadn’t seen the resemblance myself but that was infatuation for you; nothing but a mirror of your own deep desires. In the months after the accident I had told myself that Rose was with him, with Näcken, the beautiful boy with the fiddle, and that it was he who had brought her into the deep of the lake to sleep in his arms for ever. Those thoughts had been comforting at times and at others had driven me close to insanity.
‘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.