Drowned (2 page)

“Okay?”

I have to finish chewing before I can answer. The sugar snap peas are crunchy, I haven’t eaten them raw for such a long time, not for many years. We used to grow them in the kitchen garden at home when Stella and I were little, we were always so eager to pick them that we used to eat them up while the peas were no more than little granules in the pods. They suddenly feel stringy in my mouth. I swallow.

“I’ve still got a few points left from the spring semester. I haven’t done my assignment yet.”

Stella nods.

“Presumably you have to do that before the start of the fall semester?”

“Yes.”

She nods again.

Stella shows me around after dinner. The sun is just going down, the house is surrounded by fields of crops and the horizon is far away in every direction. The sky is immense and still blue, although it is almost a lavender color now. There are plants growing everywhere, in pots and beds, clambering over walls and trellises, spreading across the ground. Nasturtiums tumble from an old zinc tub, a tangled, sprawling mass with shoots apparently sprouting at random in all directions, desperately searching for something to cling to.

The kitchen garden is over in the corner, full of herbs and vegetables, nervously trembling cosmos and the robust marigolds that were used to decorate the salad, and there are strawberries, just like we used to have in our kitchen garden back home. Stella and I used to run outside first thing in the morning during our summer holidays, barefoot and still in our nightdresses, to see if any strawberries had ripened since the previous evening. I can clearly remember that special feeling of an early summer morning, that freshly washed smell, the chilly dew on the lawn making the blades of grass stick to the soles of our feet. Stella lifts the leaves of a strawberry plant to show me the berries, which are tiny. The plants have been growing in the same spot for several years now, she explains, they will need to be moved next summer. There are no nutrients left in the soil.

The garden is full of wildflowers, farther away I can see clover and lupins and daisies and bright-orange lilies called tiger lilies.

“Old cottage garden flowers,” says Stella, although the house could hardly be described as a cottage. She shows me hollyhocks and mint and hops that were planted long ago, a hundred years ago, maybe more. The house used to be a farmhouse once upon a time, it has been rebuilt and extended since then, the land rented out, the barn torn down, the former
henhouse converted into a toolshed. Next to the shed stands an old greenhouse. Behind it the grass is tall, and the garden ends in a stone wall, which is falling down. There are huge bluebells growing between the stones, Stella says there are snakes there, adders, she has seen them several times basking in the sun, she tells me to be careful.

“Gabriel’s maternal grandparents used to live here,” she tells me. “He inherited the place five years ago. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

I nod. We walk around the side of the house and Stella points up at the big glassed-in balcony.

“That’s where he sits and works.”

We go back inside, it’s quiet, dark in the kitchen too by now. Stella shows me where I’m staying, a little guest room on the ground floor, pleasant in an impersonal way. The wooden floor is painted white, and on a chest of drawers there is a bunch of the same flowers we had on the table earlier. On the bed there is a beautifully crocheted bedspread, perhaps Gabriel’s grandmother made it. A round, milk-white porcelain ceiling light spreads a warm glow.

“I must go to bed,” Stella says. “I have to be at work early in the morning to prepare a planting scheme. If I’m not there to keep an eye on things, they usually go wrong.”

She makes a face, then smiles.

“I’m glad you’re here at last,” she says in a more serious tone of voice.

“Me too,” I say, noticing how my eyes are darting all over the place, glancing at Stella, then looking down at the floor. I fix my gaze on the pattern on an old rug, its colors faded.

“I can finish work a bit earlier tomorrow,” she says. “We could do something together. Would you like to come into town?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll call you in the morning and we can sort something out,” she says, and I nod.

“You ought to close the window when the light is on,” she adds. “Otherwise the mosquitoes come in.”

I go over to the window and lift the catch, it grates and squeaks. Stella smiles.

“Nothing works properly around here,” she says.

“I think it’s lovely.”

Through the window I can see the front garden, the fruit trees like big dark shapes in the twilight.

“If you don’t want to go to bed yet, Gabriel’s bound to be up for a few hours.”

She picks up a few crumpled scraps of a wilting red clover that have drifted down onto the chest of drawers and holds them in her hand.

“I hope you sleep well,” she says, sounding both polite and slightly distant.

“I’m sure I will,” I reply.

She gives me a hug, then goes out onto the veranda to say goodnight to Gabriel. I sit on the bed for a while thinking that I ought to unpack my bags, but I feel tired, slightly drowsy from the food and wine. I open my suitcase and take out a thin cardigan instead and put it on. It’s not cold but it is cooler now, and when I step out onto the veranda it’s growing dark. Gabriel has lit an old paraffin lamp that is standing on the table, the smell reminds me of something, something from when I was a child. He’s sitting reading with a glass of wine beside him, he smiles when he sees me.

“All right?” he says. “How’s the head?”

“Better, thanks. I don’t think I’d had enough to drink, and then it was just so hot.”

“Would you like some more wine?”

“Yes please, if you’re having some.”

“Go and get yourself a clean glass then—I expect Stella has already put the other one in the dishwasher.”

I open the wrong cupboard doors in the kitchen twice before I find the wineglasses, there are several different ones, a few of each, and they all look old. Gabriel is just moving a speaker from the living room onto the veranda when I come back, he puts on a vinyl LP, which crackles as the needle lands on the surface of the record. I don’t recognize the song, but I do recognize David Bowie’s voice. Gabriel sits down
beside me on the sofa and fills up my glass, I take a sip. It’s the same wine we had with dinner, but it seems to me that it tastes different now, rougher.

“So how do you like living in Stockholm?” Gabriel asks.

“Not much, to be honest.”

“Neither did I.”

“You used to live in Stockholm?”

“Indeed I did. For quite a long time.”

We talk about Stockholm for a while, and I tell him about the apartment I’m renting as a sublet, the very thought of it makes me feel slightly uncomfortable as I remember its particular level of oppressive stuffiness on sunny days. It’s actually a lovely apartment, full of details I like: huge marble windowsills, a beautiful parquet floor, a view over pine trees, pine trees that I have begun to think of as functionalist suburban pine trees. I like the fact that they look a certain way, slightly weary after a long life in a residential area, kind of dry and dusty. When the sun shines the apartment feels dusty too, as if the air is standing still, as if everything is immediately covered in a thin film of dust which the sun suddenly reveals, sometimes I think it’s hard to breathe, and I have to push all the windows wide open, go and stand outside on the balcony.

“You and Stella haven’t seen each other for quite a while, have you?” says Gabriel.

“Not since Christmas.”

He nods.

“Do you think it was stupid of her to move out here?”

“No, I mean she got a job here, so …”

A small smile plays around his lips.

“But I’m too old for her—isn’t that what everyone says?”

“No …” I mumble. “Not that I’ve heard.”

He changes the subject, much to my relief. Because I actually have heard people say that Gabriel is too old for Stella, I’ve heard my mother and father say it, and I’ve seen relatives raise their eyebrows, meaning exactly that. He’s at least forty-five, which means there must be fifteen years between them, maybe more. I remember when Stella first told our parents about him, it was at Easter two years ago, we were eating at the dining table in the living room, daffodils on the table and lots of food, we’d been working together in the kitchen all day, Mom and Stella and I. Easter was early that year, and outside everything was cold and gray. The memory has wrapped itself around the Easter celebrations like an unpleasant membrane, I thought about it last Easter too, felt the atmosphere around the table was stiff even though Stella wasn’t there, or maybe that was the reason why. She hadn’t known Gabriel for very long when she told us about him, in
fact she had just finished with Erik, her former boyfriend, he was supposed to have been joining us for Easter, it had all been arranged ages ago. My mother and father couldn’t understand Stella at all when she said she was no longer in love with Erik, that particular line of reasoning didn’t work with them. They said he was always so kind to her, they talked about the apartment, the fantastic condo he’d bought, Stella had only just moved in. Stella said again that she was no longer in love with him, that she hadn’t been for quite some time. My mother asked what Stella was intending to do about all the practicalities: where was she going to live, how was she going to support herself? Stella screamed at her, that hadn’t happened for ages, not since Stella was living at home. When Mom started to cry, Stella left the table. I still hate thinking about it.

“You’re not really alike,” says Gabriel. “You and Stella.”

“She’s more like Mom. Both in her appearance and in her ways.”

“And you’re like your dad?”

“Yes, or our grandmother when she was young … and our aunts.”

Gabriel looks as if he’s about to say something, but changes his mind. Instead he tops off my glass.

“So what is it you do in Stockholm?” he asks. “What are you studying?”

“The history of art.”

“And you’ve got an assignment to do? What’s it about?”

I shrug my shoulders.

“I’m not really sure yet, but something to do with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, I think. The literary themes in his paintings, perhaps. But I haven’t quite decided.”

He nods, smiles at me.

“Good choice.”

I smile back.

“What else?” he says. “Job?”

“No.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Yes.”

He nods again, smiling as if he’s expecting me to tell him more.

“His name is Peter …” I begin. Gabriel is still smiling, and so am I, although I do feel slightly embarrassed at the same time, it’s the expression on his face, it’s hard to read his reaction to the simplest facts.

“Didn’t he want to come with you?” says Gabriel.

I shake my head.

“No, he’s in Spain at the moment. With some friends.”

“I see.”

I like the way he says that, making a simple statement, as if he understands exactly what is behind the
information that Peter is on holiday without me, and there is no need for me to say any more on the subject.

The black cat appears on the veranda, Gabriel entices it over and pats the sofa with his hand. It jumps up and settles down, giving every appearance of falling asleep instantly. It’s called Nils, says Gabriel, it used to belong to his grandmother. Then he starts to tell me a complicated story about someone he used to study with in Stockholm who lived in the same part of the city as me, I’m laughing, we’re both laughing. Suddenly Stella is standing in the doorway with a cardigan over her nightdress.

“Could you turn the music down a little?” she says. “I need to get some sleep.”

Her tone of voice is pleasant, but I can sense an underlying irritation. Stella isn’t as good at hiding her feelings as she thinks she is, I realized that a long time ago. I wonder if Gabriel has realized it too.

“Of course,” he says. “Sorry, darling.”

I get up from the sofa.

“I think I’ll head off to bed as well,” I say.

“Lightweights,” Gabriel mutters, but with a smile. “In that case maybe I’ll try to work for a little while.”

When Stella calls I’m up, busy hanging my clothes in the closet in the spare room. I let the phone ring
for some time before I realize that Gabriel is either asleep or working, and isn’t going to answer.

“That took a hell of a long time,” says Stella. She sounds stressed.

“I didn’t know whether to answer it or not.”

“Did you sleep well? It wasn’t too hot?”

“No, it was fine.”

“Do you still fancy coming into town this afternoon?”

“Yes, of course.”

She starts to give me instructions about what time the bus goes and where we are to meet, then she says she has to sort something out and brings the conversation to an abrupt end. I eat breakfast on the veranda while leafing through a copy of
Dagens Nyheter
that I’ve found in the kitchen, it’s thin and flimsy, as if there’s a shortage of news today. I wonder whether it was Gabriel or Stella who brought the newspaper in, whether Gabriel has already woken up and had breakfast and sat down at his desk on the glassed-in balcony to work, or whether he’s still asleep up there. The house is silent, it’s just as hot again today. It occurs to me that I ought to put on a dress instead of my jeans, but I’m so pale and I don’t want to show my legs yet. Stella has a perfect soft golden tan, she’s spent a lot of time outside this summer even though she hasn’t had any holiday yet. She’s been working outdoors, and has spent the weekends in the garden.
She looked so fresh in her light summer clothes yesterday, she always looks fresh, even in her working clothes; she usually wears an old men’s shirt and jeans and puts her hair up, she looks like something from a fashion magazine even when she’s digging.