Eliza
I returned to Sweden the day before the festival of Lucia. Fresh snow had fallen the previous night and the air caught between each crystalline flake trapped sound and held it captive, leaving the world silent.
I had asked the driver to let me off at the bottom of the track leading up to the house. I only had a small overnight bag to carry and I needed some air. The pine trees looked like snow sculptures, some with their frosted limbs stretching towards me, others twisted as if they were trying to turn tail and flee. I thought one of them might be the Huldra in disguise, waiting for her doomed swain. Did she do girls? I wondered. I quite liked the idea of following a Rose-like beauty into the fathomless depth of the woods, unthinking, unquestioning until, exhausted, I lay down to sleep for ever on my mattress of snow.
‘Eliza!’
Not the Huldra but Katarina, a more solid temptress, calling me to the house.
‘Look at you,’ she said as we met up at the top of the track. ‘You’re dressed for London weather.’
I dressed pretty well the same wherever I was, sticking to soft materials and muted colours. I particularly liked grey, grey in all its handsome shades: sky, dove, sea, asphalt, granite, cloud, and black of course. Today I was wearing a grey and black dress in something silky that was not quite silk and a plain dark grey sweater that had cashmere in it, together with black woollen tights. ‘My jacket’s warm,’ I said.
‘But look at your shoes.’
I looked down at what I could see of the black patent leather shoes with bows on from under the snow. I liked those shoes because they made me think of Minnie Mouse. If you wanted to compile a list of Best Dressed Cartoon Characters, I thought as I followed Katarina to the house, Betty Boop would win, but only just, with Minnie Mouse coming a very close second. Olive Oyl would obviously end up with the booby prize in spite of her size zero figure.
Uncle Ian was in his favourite chair by the window facing the fields and the wood beyond. He must have been listening out for me because he was already halfway out of his seat by the time I entered the room.
Uncle Ian had always had a good smile. He did not deploy it much, but when he did, it was to great effect. It was a focused smile, not just for anyone. It made you feel favoured. He directed this smile at me now and held out his hands. I thought he looked markedly better than when I had last seen him, only a few days ago. His complexion was fresher and his eyes were clearer.
‘So what have you decided about my proposal?’
I had forgotten his habit of launching straight into a subject without pausing for even a ‘Lovely day, isn’t it?’ or ‘Chilly for the time of year?’ or ‘My gout is playing up something terrible.’
‘I am incredibly grateful for your generosity . . .’
Uncle Ian stopped me with a wave of his right hand. ‘Let’s have some coffee. You must be tired after your trip.’ He eased himself down towards the seat of his chair, gathering speed as his arms gave way. As seat touched seat the look on his face went from surprised to relieved; one tiny victory in the unwinnable war against age and decrepitude. It had to take a lot of energy to remain true to the person you used to be once age made you grateful simply to have made it down on to your seat.
‘Your mother tells me that there is a house you like up for sale.’
I was beginning to be in awe of my mother’s ability to interfere across continents and time-zones. I nodded. ‘They haven’t dropped the price, though. It’s incredibly expensive.’ I sat down myself and for a moment I felt a strange mix of pleasure and embarrassment at the ease with which I, still a young woman, moved.
I said to him, ‘I really don’t want anything from you, anything material, I mean. Please.’
He frowned. ‘I don’t know why you have to make this so difficult?’
I closed my eyes for a second. I opened them again and looked out over the snow-covered ground and the small patch of light left by the struggling sun. ‘It’s money Rose should have had,’ I said. ‘Surely you can see how that makes me feel?’ There was a pause and I relaxed a little.
‘I can see that you are allowing yourself to be irrational.’
‘Is it irrational not to want to profit from your best friend’s death? A death for which you carry responsibility?’ I realised that not only had I spoken out loud the thoughts that had filled my mind since he first made his suggestion but I had raised my voice as well. I sat back in my chair, my hands gripping the armrests.
‘I’m a very wealthy man. What do you think I should do with my money? Maybe I should arrange to be buried with it like some long ago potentate?’
I couldn’t help laughing at the thought. ‘Of course not. But you could give it to charity. You could set up a charity trust in Rose’s memory.’ I felt excited by the idea. ‘Wouldn’t that be wonderful?’
Uncle Ian sighed. He used to sigh just like that when, as a child, I just would not stop arguing my childish point. ‘I did that years ago, Eliza. The Rose Bingham Foundation. The money goes towards the education of girls on the Indian subcontinent.’
I felt stupid, put in my place. I should have known that anything I thought of Uncle Ian would have thought about already.
‘I was born in India, did you know that?’
‘I think I did but I’d forgotten.’
‘The work with the foundation has been the most rewarding thing I’ve done. Although it took Barbro to make me see that it was the right thing to do.’ His smile was wry as he continued, ‘I went through my own period of irrationality and to me, then, helping others when I hadn’t been there to help my own child seemed like a betrayal. Though, as I said, Barbro made me see that that was perverse thinking.’
‘I can do perverse thinking,’ I said.
I thought of how, after the accident, I had scurried around like some creature from Aesop’s fables looking to others for answers. The school chaplain had told me that the best way to make amends and to receive forgiveness for one’s sins was to dedicate one’s life to God and to helping one’s fellow man. I remember arguing with him. I had sinned against Rose. Was it not a false equation to think that you could make up to X for what you had done to Y? If it were me who had been sinned against I wouldn’t like it. ‘Oh Eliza, sorry to have cut off both your legs but you will be delighted to hear I’ve just given your next-door neighbour a couple of state of the art artificial ones and a turbo-charged wheelchair with cup holder.’
Of course the chaplain had not seen it that way. To him any sin was a sin against God and any good deed, a homage. That all made perfect sense. If you believed in God.
‘I know you listen to the local vicar but do you believe in God?’ I asked Uncle Ian.
‘Yes I do,’ he said. ‘Do you?’
‘I don’t know. I think I’m with Woody Allen when he says “To you I’m an atheist; to God, I’m the Loyal Opposition.” ’
‘I know the fellow,’ Uncle Ian said, although it wasn’t clear if he meant God or Woody Allen.
‘You’ve done so much good with your life,’ I said.
‘You’re a kind girl,’ Uncle Ian said.
I shook my head. ‘Oh dear no. Or perhaps in the little things that are easy. Were I a properly good person I would go and work for a charity in some war-torn hellhole or in a third world orphanage. I’d be feeding the starving, myself, with my own hands rather than simply sending a bit of cash now and then. But I don’t. Instead I choose to sit at home in comfort and feel bad about not being good enough.’
‘I could say the same. Most people could. You should talk to Ove. He’s very good at putting things in perspective.’
I smiled in a non-committal way.
‘Don’t just smile. Do it.’
I stopped smiling. ‘OK.’
‘So you will speak with him?’
‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’
‘Well, make your mind up.’
‘Yes.’ I nodded emphatically, hoping that would be enough for now at least.
And thankfully Uncle Ian let the subject of the Almighty drop, for then at least. ‘It’s waste I can’t stand,’ he said instead. ‘And there’s so much of it about. Wasted opportunities, wasted talent, wasted lives. That’s what the foundation is for, to stop some of that dreadful waste.’
We were silent for a while. Then I said, brightly, as if I had just thought of it. ‘Why don’t we give the money you so generously want to give me, who doesn’t need it, to the foundation instead?’
Uncle Ian gave me a long look. Then he got to his feet, leaning heavily on the armrests of the chair as he raised himself up. Then he sighed. ‘Well, if that’s what you’d prefer.’ And he walked out of the room.