When I stopped speaking she looked at me for a long time, presumably trying to decide whether to believe me or not. Trusting what a person says is always a risk. The truth is always provisional, while lies are often solid.
‘I came here because I want to explain,’ she said. ‘At the moment I don’t care whether or not you got lost in the night. You’re wrong if you think I was trying to hide something.’
She got to her feet.
‘Can we go outside? It’s not raining or windy. I need air; it’s so cramped in here.’
I pulled on my wellingtons, grabbed my jacket and opened the door. The sun was shining; late autumn in the archipelago was still mild.
We walked around the island and eventually sat down on the bench at the top of the hill.
She began to talk. Her family came from Germany. Her grandmother Ulrike had married Karl Madsen, a member of the infamous Waffen-SS. He had belonged to one of the units responsible for appalling outrages in Poland while Ulrike had remained in Bremen. Lisa’s mother Roswita was born when the war was over, in the autumn of 1945, following Karl’s last visit home towards the end of 1944.
Ulrike, who had been born in 1917, died at the end of the 1970s. Until that day Roswita had believed that her father had died while defending Berlin, before the city fell in May 1945. However, as she went through everything her mother had left behind, she realised that Ulrike had lied to her. Karl Madsen had been lynched in Krakow a few months before the end of the war, hanged on a makeshift gallows in one of the city’s squares. He had been recognised because of his involvement in indescribably brutal actions during the conflict in Poland. There was no indication in Ulrike’s papers of what he had done, nor was there any explanation as to why the photograph of Karl Madsen had been taken somewhere on the Eastern Front. It seemed likely that he had fought on the front line for a short period; a soldier’s life was always full of gaps.
We set off for a brisk walk around the island again because Lisa was cold. When we got back to the bench, she continued her story.
‘I hardly remember my grandmother. I was only six or seven when she died. We were already living in Sweden by then; I was born in Uddevalla. My mother met a sailor called Lars Modin, who was fifteen years older than her and had moved here from Germany. Ulrike came too, with her few memories of my grandfather. My first recollections are of sunshine: warm summer days, a great stillness. My grandmother had her own apartment on the top floor of our house. She used to eat with us, but I never went up to visit her; she wanted peace and quiet. I was frightened of her — not because she was strict, but because she hardly ever spoke. I don’t remember her voice. Then she died, and my mother passed away too when I was thirteen. She was only forty, but she had a massive brain haemorrhage. I stayed with my father until I was twenty; he died a few years ago. A lovely old man who kept himself smart in his room in a care home. I didn’t learn much from Roswita about my German heritage; it was only when my father died that I found the items that you came across in my wardrobe. There isn’t really any more to say.’
I had no reason to doubt the veracity of what she said. I realised that was the most important thing I could tell her.
‘That’s a remarkable story, and I believe you. And of course I won’t tell anyone else.’
‘I had to explain, but I don’t want to talk about it any more. It’s my story, not yours, not ours. Mine.’
I offered to cook her a simple meal, and to my surprise she accepted the invitation. Louise had left a fish pie in the freezer compartment; I put it in the microwave and got out the cans of beer I had bought. We ate and drank and talked about anything apart from what she had just told me.
We said nothing about her journey home, we just carried on chatting and finished off the beer. I had a lot of questions I wanted to ask her. I was convinced that she would soon move away; I felt as if she didn’t fit in at all in the small town where she lived and worked. However, I didn’t mention it. I had come to realise that she liked to choose the moment when it came to sharing information about herself.
‘I’ll have to stay the night,’ she said when it was almost midnight.
I had been expecting her to say that.
‘We’ll manage somehow,’ I said. ‘You take the bed and I’ll put a mattress on the floor. It’s a bit cramped, but it’s OK.’
I put a pan of water on the hob and gave her a towel.
‘I’ll go and see to the boats; when you’ve had a wash and got into bed, turn out the light. I can find my way around in the dark.’
‘I’ve never slept in a caravan,’ she said with a laugh. ‘I’ve never even slept in a tent.’
I picked up my jacket and was just about to leave when she touched my shoulder.
‘I can take the mattress,’ she said. ‘The bed is yours. But don’t expect anything.’
I just shook my head and went outside. When I turned I saw that she had drawn the curtain.
I switched off my torch and stood motionless in the darkness. I could hear the sound of a cargo ship in the distance, ploughing through the waves, although I couldn’t work out in which direction it was going. It was a moment of absolute timelessness. I have always felt that time, the passage of the year, was a growing burden, as if days and years can be measured in grams and kilograms. The timelessness I experienced as I stood there on the jetty was almost like weightlessness. I closed my eyes and listened to the night breeze. There was no past, no future, no worry about Louise, no burned-out house. Above all there was no botched operation, no young woman who had lost her arm.
I felt tears scalding my eyes.
It wasn’t me, standing there on the jetty. It was the child I had once been.
I managed to pull myself together. I wiped my eyes and noticed that the light in the caravan had gone off. I went into the boathouse and fetched a bar of saltwater soap, then I stripped off and climbed down into the ice-cold water. I worked up a good lather, then dipped under the surface. By the time I got dressed my fingers were blue, my legs were shaking and my teeth were chattering.
I jumped up and down on the jetty to get my circulation going; only to get cramp in one leg. I had to massage my calf muscle before I was able to walk back up to the caravan. The pain had driven home the truth: I was a man of almost seventy who was tired, slightly hungover and wanted to sleep more than anything. Softly I opened the door; the light from the small lamp in the kitchen area cast a faint glow over the room. Lisa had turned to face the wall; only her head was visible above the covers. No doubt she was awake but wanted me to think she was asleep. I rolled out the mattress, fetched a pillow and a blanket from the cupboard, undressed to my underpants, switched off the lamp and lay down.
When I was studying medicine, before I met Harriet, a group of us went to a bar. It was someone’s birthday; he had plenty of money, and was treating us. At the end of the evening I joined forces with one of the female students because we were going in the same direction. It was winter, cold and icy. She was a fairly anonymous member of the group; not pretty or funny, just pale and quiet. She spent most of her time alone and seemed perfectly happy to do so; she never really sought out the company of anyone else. Just before we were about to say goodnight, she slipped on a patch of ice. I caught her before she fell, and suddenly I was holding her close. It happened in a second. We could feel each other’s bodies through our thick winter coats. Without either of us saying anything, I went home with her. She had a small bedsit; I can still remember the scent of soap. As soon as we got through the door she was tearing at my clothes. I still think she was the most passionate woman I have ever met. She raked her nails down my back and bit my face. When we finally fell asleep at dawn, the sheets were spattered with blood. A glance in the bathroom mirror told me that I looked like someone who had been hit by a hail of shotgun pellets.