The sound of a heavenly choir filled my bedroom and for a while I stayed where I was, warm in my bed, listening to the high clear voices and waiting to wake up. When I realised I was awake already and that the music was coming from outside, I scrambled out of bed and over to the window. A procession of white-clad figures was making its way up the track towards the house, their voices high and clear in the dark still morning. The young woman leading the way wore a crown of candles on her fair head. She looked as if she were cut in two, and I thought again that I had to be dreaming until she came closer, into the circle of light from the porch, and I realised that it was the blood-red ribbon tied round her slender waist that had caused the illusion. The other young women were dressed in similar long white gowns and so were the two boys bringing up the rear, but instead of the crown of candles the other girls wore garlands of tinsel in their hair and the boys wore pointed white hats decorated with gold stars, like magicians in a Disney cartoon. Then it dawned on me, thirteenth of December was the festival of St Lucia, the coming of light in the season of darkness. I threw on a dressing-gown and hurried downstairs.
Katarina, also in her dressing-gown, was standing by the front door. Her usual calm seemed to have abandoned her. ‘Jäklar ocksa. Damn.’
‘St Lucia,’ I said.
‘Ian can’t stand it. Happens every year. They go to the old folks’ home down the road and then, not content and scenting further prey, they continue on up here.’ She crossed her arms over her chest. ‘They’re ruthless.’
‘Maybe they’ll just pass on by,’ I said.
‘On the way to where?’ Katarina asked. Then the doorbell rang. We looked at each other. Katarina remained where she was, an uncertain look on her face. There was a loud knock, followed by a young woman’s voice rising above the singing.
I couldn’t understand what she was saying but I expect it amounted to ‘We know you’re in there.’
Uncle Ian appeared on the stairs in a similar tartan dressing-gown to Katarina’s, his thinning but usually immaculate hair standing on end. It was the hair of a baby just woken, a style that suited the plump freshness of a young child. On Uncle Ian, it made you feel embarrassed, as if you had caught sight of something private. I didn’t recall ever seeing him unshaven either. The grey stubble growing in uneven patches made him look years older. I hurried up to him and ignoring the fact that one simply did not touch Uncle Ian, I smoothed down his hair. He barely noticed.
‘Katarina,’ he looked past me at her. ‘What the hell’s going on here?’
‘Lucia,’ she whispered.
‘Bugger. I’d forgotten it was the thirteenth. Don’t open. We’ll pretend to be away.’
The sweet singing changed to something more rhythmic – the same words, ‘Hej Tomtegubbar . . .’ repeated over and over.
‘Too late. They already know we’re here,’ Katarina whispered.
Uncle Ian came down the last steps on bed-stiff legs and with a sigh said, ‘All right, let them in, but wait until I’m in my chair. Eliza,’ he beckoned to me to follow.
We didn’t make it in time. The door opened behind us and the hall was filled with singing and candlelight. Like bees to their queen, the maidens and star-boys swarmed round St Lucia, tall and fair, then formed a procession. I turned to see them come towards us, the tips and heels of their boots visible beneath their white gowns. Within moments we were surrounded.
Lucia took Uncle Ian by the arm and led him to a chair, the wrong chair, the one he found it hard to get up from. She turned to me. ‘Har Ni en filt?’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t speak Swedish.’
She switched seamlessly to English. ‘I think we need a blanket.’ She turned back to Uncle Ian. ‘Brrr. It’s cold in here.’
‘I don’t like an overheated room,’ Uncle Ian said.
I looked around for Katarina but couldn’t see her.
‘Say you’re contagious,’ I hissed in his ear.
‘Tried that last year. It doesn’t make any difference.’
St Lucia directed her steel-blue gaze at me. ‘Blanket?’
I plodded off in search of a rug, the soles of my sock-clad feet getting soaked by the little puddles of melting snow from the boots of the choir.
I returned with a paisley silk throw to find the maidens bustling round the room, lighting every candle in the room with their own. It was a beautiful scene: the white-clad young people with their tinsel and flickering flames, the perfectly proportioned room with its soft colours and warm wooden floors. Feeling like a collaborator, I handed the throw to Lucia, who arranged it round Uncle Ian, tucking it in at the back. He offered no resistance. A star-boy tried to hand him a mug of coffee. Uncle Ian waved it away. The star-boy turned a questioning face to Lucia, who turned to me.
‘It’s the cream,’ I said. ‘Mr Bingham drinks his coffee black.’
‘Cream’s good for the bones, you know. Caffeine leaches away calcium, that’s why we add the cream.’
‘But he doesn’t . . .’
‘If you show me the kitchen I will make some tea.’
‘I think he’s fine. Really. We’ll have some later. When you’ve left.’
Lucia signalled the maiden with the basket of buns. ‘We’ll try him with a Lucia bun,’ she said. ‘Ni skall val ha en lussekatt I alla fall?’
The choir sang ‘We Wish you a Merry Christmas’ in perfect English.
I spotted Katarina standing at the back behind the spare star-boy. I went over to her.
‘We have to do something.’ I whispered.
She shrugged helplessly. ‘It’s better just to let them get on with it.’
‘Why are they so determined? I mean, what’s in it for them? Do they get paid per pensioner or something?’
‘I don’t think that’s the case. I believe it’s all arranged through the council. As part of the care for the elderly.’
‘Have you tried opting out?’
She looked at me. ‘There is no opting out.’
Uncle Ian sat as far back in his seat as was possible, his own back pressed against the back of the chair, the saffron bun in his hand and his gaze fixed on the Munch painting above the fireplace. It was a favourite of his, an original etching, one of only three and made by the artist himself. Two faces, one red and one blue, leaning towards each other. They were the faces of Munch himself and of his mistress, a violinist. The sight of the painting seemed to give Uncle Ian strength and he heaved himself up from his chair. As he did so the throw fell from his knees and his dressing-gown came apart, exposing the gaping flies of his pyjama trousers. I didn’t know what to do. Had anyone else noticed? It was impossible to tell. Katarina seemed to have disappeared again. Then Uncle Ian himself looked down and spotted the gaping flies and the tuft of grey curly hair. His gaze shot back to me and I looked away, pretending not to have noticed.
When I turned round once more Uncle Ian was back in the chair, the dressing-gown and throw wrapped tight around him. His face had no colour; it wasn’t white or pink or even grey. His gaze avoided mine.
The choir sung ‘Hosanna’, their soprano voices singing the harmony and reaching the high notes with ease. I leant back against the doorpost and closed my eyes.
It was almost lunchtime and Uncle Ian, who had retired to his room the moment the Lucia choir had left, still had not appeared. I was in the kitchen with Katarina, helping to prepare lunch.
‘It’s hard when the phone stops ringing,’ she said.
‘But he has friends?’
She shook her head. ‘He had business acquaintances. It was extraordinary – comical almost, the way the phone stopped ringing and the invitations stopped coming practically the day that he gave up his last directorship. Not being asked his opinion, I think is what he finds most difficult. People used to queue up to get his advice and now he can’t give it away for free.’
‘I’ll be his friend. I’ll phone. He doesn’t need to buy me a house. Has he told you about wanting to buy me a house?’
She nodded. ‘And I think it’s a good idea. It’ll give him something to do, something to think about other than the past.’
‘I don’t need him to wave his magic wand, that’s the point. Of course I would love to have more money or to own my own home but not this way. Really not this way.’
‘And is it all about what you want?’
I startled. I frowned. It’s all very well for people to speak their mind but we barely knew each other.
Katarina didn’t seem to notice my surprise or my disapproval; instead, she simply continued frying the meat patties as the kitchen filled with smoke. I wanted her to go on frying until we couldn’t see each other, until I was enveloped in my own little cloud of veal patty haze.
Uncle Ian came downstairs at one o’clock just as Katarina was bringing the food through to the dining room. He had nicked himself shaving but his hair was slicked back and he was wearing a cravat tucked into his Vyella shirt. I wasn’t sure what would be the best thing to do, to refer to the events of the morning or to say nothing and wait for his lead.
In the end I plumped for clueless gushing. ‘What a stroke of luck to be able to experience such a typical Swedish celebration,’ I said.
He frowned. ‘You think so?’
‘I expect they go around the whole neighbourhood.’
‘No, just the old people,’ Uncle Ian said. He gave the word ‘old’ an ironic emphasis that fooled no one.
I said, ‘You’re not old. Look at the Queen Mother.’
‘She’s dead.’
‘There is that,’ I agreed, ‘but I meant before she died. She was over a hundred. So thinking back to when she was your age, well, she would have to go back almost fifteen years. Just imagine. Anyway, age isn’t what it used to be,’ I said, adding to my impressive tally of platitudes.
‘Age is what it’s always been,’ he said.
I pointed to the window. ‘It’s amazing the way the sunshine makes the snow glitter silver. You would have thought gold. The sun being more yellow.’
Katarina had prepared one of Uncle Ian’s favourites, a kind of hamburger named after a Swedish financier and made from prime cuts of veal, minced finely and mixed with egg yolks and thick cream. I could see that if you were tired of life, eating Wallenbergare would be a fine way to go. Katarina served boiled potatoes and peas and low alcohol lager with the Wallenbergare and for a while we ate in silence. I had been known to be a noisy eater so as not to embarrass myself I kept my lips firmly shut between mouthfuls and chewed as if my teeth were scared of meeting. I watched Uncle Ian surreptitiously. He might look all spruce and dapper but I could see in his eyes that he hadn’t recovered from the morning.
Katarina asked if the food was to our liking and Uncle Ian and I both quickly assured her that it was delicious. ‘I asked,’ she said then, ‘because you both look as if you’re chewing cardboard.’
I turned to Uncle Ian, waiting for a response, irritation, a smile, a protest, but he just speared a piece of potato on his fork and raised it to his mouth, concentrating as if he were doing something important.
‘If I phone the estate agent and ask him to email you the details of the house, would you take a look?’ I asked him.
He raised his head and I saw a glint of interest in his faded eyes. ‘Of course.’ He speared another piece of potato and I thought I’d lost him again when he said, ‘Make sure he includes a floor plan as well.’
Did I imagine it or had his voice grown stronger? He reached beneath his sweater for his shirt pocket. ‘Have you got a pen, Katarina?’
Katarina got to her feet and returned with a piece of paper and a biro. Uncle Ian wrote down his email address and passed it on to me before running through a short history of domestic property investment. Maybe I was getting carried away by my imagination but by the time he got to the part where investing in a high-end area if at all possible was always a sound bet, even his sparse hair had begun to look fuller.
Katarina lent me a pair of fur-lined boots and after lunch I walked to the lake. By now the water was frozen solid and, pushed by the wind, the overhanging branches of the trees scratched the ice like fingernails.
We had loved skating, Rose, Portia and I. We hadn’t been any good at it but that had not been the point. The point had been to wear white fur-trimmed skating boots and play at being Christmas card Edwardian young ladies and perchance to stumble helpless into the outstretched arms of Julian and David and – oh I could not recall the names of the others. They had been handsome boys and we had been pretty girls and that had been about the sum of it. Or it should have been. What it should not have been was a matter of life and death.