The Story of My Face (31 page)

‘One child, actually, and under particular circumstances –' My voice is tired. And, in any case, the students have joined the fray.

‘Setting himself up as a moral authority –'

‘But if he did not act upon those feelings –'

‘The fact is, you have to consider the historical context –'

‘Actually, that kind of relativism is a choice, not a given –' They're off.

I gather my talk together and replace it in the recycled-paper document wallet I bought from Oulu, where Tuomas got his paints. I step down from the platform. A young man in a rather shabby jacket and expensive spectacles comes up to me and explains that he is from the local newspaper. What in the first place gave me my interest in this minor historical figure? he asks – It's a question I'm saved from by Mrs Lohi:

‘A very enjoyable evening,' she says, holding out her hand, chill to the touch, despite the hand-knitted woollens she's dressed in. ‘I am glad you came to see us.' She leans into her lap and fumbles with the catch of her handbag. ‘The spoon –' she says, ‘you remember? Here –'

It's a tiny thing, just bigger than a teaspoon, no use for soup. A child's spoon, in juniper or birch, the twisted handle worn smooth. I find myself oddly tearful as I walk to the door with her and her niece, and then back into the room, papers in one hand, spoon in the other.

Heikki is pulling up the blinds. Then he opens a pair of sliding glass doors so that the smell of summer can come in and people can drift out into the trees. The academics from Oulu decamp
en masse
, their glasses refilled, their voices growing loud. Others crowd about the refreshment table, where platters of cheese and smoked fish on crispbread have appeared. The room is awash with movement and there's a steady buzz of conversation, not much of it, so far as I can work out, connected to the talk.

I should find Christina, I think, and talk to her properly. But she seems to have gone, and before I know it I've had three glasses of wine.

Heikki and I drift away from the rest, beyond the playing field, right to the edge of the real woods.

‘So –' Heikki says suddenly, taking my wrist in his hand. ‘So – what happens now? I know all about Tuomas Envall. Do you tell me a bit more about who you are? Or do I just wave you goodbye on the plane? Or maybe not even that? Perhaps you're pleased enough with the outcome and want to move on?'

‘You're holding me too hard,' I tell him, twisting my arm away.

‘It is hard,' he tells me, letting go. ‘It is hard not knowing anything. Being in this damn dark all the time. What am I supposed to do? If you trusted me –' and now he's smoothing the fabric of my shirt front with one hand, slipping his fingertips between the buttons, pulling me into him with the other, ‘we could make love right now, here, outside: feel better, celebrate, as the case might be –'

‘I can't!'

‘I know,' he says, falling still. ‘It's because of your face, your skin. The accident you had. But can't you even tell me what it was? Not all of it, just something, to start with? For example, where did it happen? How old were you?'

It's 10 p.m., and still midday-bright. Nowhere to hide.

‘I was thirteen –' I tell him. And it strikes me that one of the reasons I've thought so long and hard about The Story of My Face must be so as to be able to tell it to someone else, to the person who needs to know it and will see what it means. But the moment I do so, it will change again.

34

I've talked and drunk and talked and drunk. It's late, the sky is the rich blue that passes for dark at this time of year. Countless stars. We sit together on the grass, the empty bottle between us.

‘Barbara came with me in the ambulance,' I tell Heikki. ‘The first hospital sent us straight on. We had to go to Billericay, two hours perhaps. I know it started to rain; I heard it on the roof. Sometimes I was there and sometimes I wasn't, but I did hear her, telling me all the time in a calm voice how it wouldn't be long, how everything would be all right. Then we were somewhere bright and hot where no one said anything about all right. She was gone, and I never saw her again, even though she did once try to visit. No further contact, the social workers said. Start over.'

Heikki takes my hand again. He listens well. I can feel the heat of his touch, even though I've more or less drunk my body out of reach.

‘I don't remember anything very clearly for quite a while. Just the feeling of the anaesthetic closing over my head. Sinking deep. Then it's just bits.' Now that I've begun, I do want to tell him everything. I want to finish, but at the same time I am so very tired and my lips seem too clumsy for some of the words I need to use –

I'm in Billericay Burns Unit: the door invisibly opens and closes, and in other rooms beyond mine people talk with blurred voices, and right next to me clothes rustle and rubber wheels and shoe soles peel themselves from the floor; something huge – like a pump, the heart of the hospital – is humming all the time.

‘Natalie, my name is Caroline,' she tells me, as my breath goes in and out, in and out. ‘We're very hopeful that you will be able to see again,' she says. ‘Can you tell me if you're feeling any pain in your hand? Your chest? . . . Have you ever had an operation before? –'

Of course, I can't move my lips. I signal my replies with a faint grunt, from the very bottom of my throat. I go away and come back, but she's still there, talking in her soft, low voice: ‘Your mother,' I think she's just said, ‘your mother will soon be here –' And then I'm not sure and in any case can't prevent myself from sinking back into nothingness –

Some time later, I think I hear Sandra herself, hoarse, almost sharp: ‘Natty, can you hear me?' But I still can't be sure, and in any case there's something new wrong with me and I can't even make the throat noise I was using any more. But she
might
be real, and the possibility is enough to make me want to cross whatever is ahead of me that I can't possibly imagine, just in case. Hope – not a singing bird or a gushing spring, as poets would have it, but a man with a whip, driving you on.

Whatever they're giving me begins to wear off and the pain drives me into the centre of my body. I drift on under the skin of darkness, borne up by the tides of my medication, half of one world, half of another. Days pass. I manage to raise my eyelids. And now I am sure: masked and gowned, blurred, Sandra sits in a chair to my right, her head tilted back, her hands lying still in her lap. She's asleep. I watch as her chest rises and falls, rises and falls, just as I can feel mine doing. I keep my eyes open for as long as I possibly can. I have lost almost a third of my body weight, which, they say, will come back soon, and I have lost one and a half fingers on my right hand, which obviously will not. But I have Sandra back. She watches over me while I sleep; she observes my every movement. She follows every upturn and downturn in my progress, and feels her well-being bound inescapably to it.

‘I stayed in Billericay almost six months. I screamed when they moved me at all, every day, for weeks. But the thing is, my mother came,' I say to Heikki. ‘She came every morning, exactly like the mothers of the other children there, but of course she was far, far better than they: prodigal, penitent, but gorgeous still in her heels, make-up and jewellery, even though her hair was different, cut in a short bob to save time in the mornings. Sometimes she'd go off and spend an hour on the payphone. Sometimes she'd flirt too much with the doctor. To begin with she needed Aunt Sue and the social worker to keep her in line. But even so, I knew she wouldn't ever leave me and I didn't care how much knowing that had cost me. In the end, I still don't, even when she's at her worst. I got her back. She's a part of me now.

‘Now you know!' I tell him. It's not just drink, the lightheadedness I feel, but a bewildering absence. ‘Feel better?' I start to laugh, haven't got the strength to carry it through.

‘Come inside, now,' he says, helping me up. One foot has gone to sleep. I'm shivering. ‘We must go home.' But first, we share the stewed coffee left in the machine, and, when we put the cups down, hold each other tight in the empty hall. While he stacks the last few chairs and locks the windows and doors, I let myself into the jeep, plug in the belt and lean back gratefully into the big bucket seat.
Heaven knows
, I think,
what
will come of all this
.

Heikki touches my knee when he gets in, and then the engine coughs and shakes me right awake.

‘It's OK,' he says, ‘sleep if you want.' We pull out, turn left into the village, where everything is dark except the minimart. I watch Heikki as he drives; his hands relaxed on the wheel, the grey eyes shifting, in text-book fashion, from mirror to road and back again, and just occasionally meeting mine.

‘I couldn't live round here,' I tell him.

‘Really?' he says, in mock surprise, grinning. ‘Are you sure?'

But I don't want to go back either.

We're soon out of Elojoki proper and passing the first of the outlying farms. I'm wondering how my mother will take all of this – will she come round to the idea, can she let me go, and how should I best begin to tell her? – when Heikki jams on the brakes. The belt cuts into my chest, then the seat thuds into my back. We come to a halt just a few yards beyond Christina's farm.

‘Idiot!' Heikki yells at the figure standing in the road. It's Pekka Saarinen, ghost-faced, fumbling now at the door of the jeep.

‘It's my mother!' he tells us. ‘I've called the ambulance. They said to keep her awake but I can't!'

35

The farmhouse sitting-room blazes, every light and lamp switched on. Christina is on the floor, unconscious, lying on her side. She's soaking from the water Pekka has splashed uselessly on her face.

‘The others are all out drinking. She knocked a vase over and it woke me up. Once she went under I just couldn't hold her up –' he says. ‘How long can it take them to come?' A Swedish DJ gabbles away on the radio; Heikki turns it off. ‘Please!' Pekka says. ‘Do something!'

So I go over and kneel on the floor next to Christina. She is still breathing, very shallowly, her face sickly and blank, her lips drained of colour. Her jaw sags open. A trickle of saliva is running out on the lower side. A swatch of hair is stuck to her cheek with sweat; I scrape it away then grab hold of her shoulders with both hands, dig my fingers in and shake as hard as I can, knowing it'll be no use.

‘Christina!' I shout. ‘Wake up, damn you! How dare you do this!'
So what if you think you've been mistaken, so what if you've
wasted a few years
, I'm thinking
. What about the ones you've got
left! What about your children!
My heart's a runaway engine in my chest as I stop shaking, shove her over onto her back and slap her cheek as hard as I can. My hand stings. Her head lolls from side to side a few times, taking up the impact. I do it again, again, this side then that, quite a few times. Then I grab a handful of hair and pull –

‘No – it's too much!' Heikki shouts.

Actually, it's not enough. I make a fist and punch, right in the middle of her body, the softest part.

There's a kind of rippling echo of the blow in her neck. She splutters in her sleep; a gobbet of thin fluid comes out of her mouth. Breathing hard, I stop to watch.

‘On her side!' Pekka says, pushing me away.

‘Sit down, Natalie!' Heikki orders. And when, just minutes later, the ambulance arrives, he stops me from going with them: ‘No –' he says, putting himself, it seems, between me and my past. ‘Look. They'll pump her out. She'll probably be all right. It's not your business, is it?'

36