Jansson glided up to the jetty, switched off the engine and began wriggling out of all his coats and hats. He was red in the face, his hair was standing on end.
‘A Happy New Year to you,’ he said when he was standing on the jetty.
‘Thank you.’
‘Winter is still very much with us.’
‘It certainly is.’
‘I’ve been having a few problems with my stomach since New Year’s Eve. I’ve been finding it hard to go to the toilet. Constipation, as they say.’
‘Eat some prunes.’
‘Could it be a symptom of something else?’
‘No.’
Jansson had difficulty in concealing his curiosity. He kept glancing up at my house.
‘How did you celebrate New Year?’
‘I don’t celebrate New Year.’
‘I actually bought some rockets this year. Haven’t done that for years. Unfortunately one shot in through the door of the woodshed.’
‘I’m usually fast asleep by midnight. I see no reason why I should change that habit simply because it’s the last day of the year.’
Jansson was dying to ask about Harriet. No doubt she hadn’t told him who she was, just that she wanted to visit me.
‘Have you any post for me?’
Jansson looked at me in astonishment. I’d never asked him that before.
‘No, nothing,’ he said. ‘There never is much in the way of post at this time of year.’
The conversation and consultation were over. Jansson took one last look at the house, then clambered down into his hydrocopter. I started walking away. As he switched the engine on, I put my hands over my ears. I turned and watched him disappear in a cloud of snow round the headland generally known as Antonsson’s Point, after the skipper of a cargo boat who’d had a drop too much to drink and ran aground while on the way to beach his craft for the winter.
Harriet was sitting at the kitchen table when I went in.
I could see that she had been making herself up. In any case, she was less pale than she had been before. It struck me again how good-looking she was, and what an idiot I’d been to ditch her.
I sat down at the table.
‘I shall take you to the forest pool,’ I said. ‘I’ll keep my promise. It’ll take two days to get there in my old car. We’ll have to spend one night in an hotel. And I should say that I’m not sure I’ll be able to find my way there. Up in those parts, the logging tracks keep changing, according to where the felling is taking place. And even if I can find the right track, it’s by no means sure that it will be passable. I might need to find somebody with a plough attachment for his tractor who can open up the road for us. It will take at least four days altogether. Where do you want me to take you, when it’s all over?’
‘You can just leave me at the side of the road.’
‘At the side of the road? With your walker?’
‘I managed to get here, didn’t I?’
There was an edge in her voice, and I didn’t want to persist. If she preferred to be left at the side of the road, I wasn’t going to argue.
‘We can set off tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Jansson can take you and your walker to the mainland.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’ll walk over the ice.’
I got up, as it had dawned on me that there was an awful lot for me to do. First of all I needed to make a catflap in the front door, and make sure that my dog could use the kennel that had been abandoned for many years. I would have to provide them with enough food to last them for a week. Needless to say, they would eat everything as soon as they could. Saving for the future was not a concept with which they were familiar. But they’d be able to manage without food for a few days.
I spent the day fixing a catflap in the front door and trying to teach the cat to use it. The kennel was in a worse state than I thought. I nailed some felt on to the roof to keep out the snow and rain, and laid out a couple of old blankets for the dog to lie on. I’d barely finished doing that before he had lain down inside it.
I phoned Jansson that evening. I’d never rung him before.
‘Ture Jansson, postman.’
It sounded as if he were reciting a noble rank.
‘Fredrik here. I hope I’m not disturbing you.’
‘Not at all. You don’t often ring.’
‘I have never rung you. I wonder if you could do a taxi run tomorrow?’
‘A lady with a wheeled walker?’
‘As you charged her such a disgraceful amount when you brought her here, I take it for granted that there will be no charge tomorrow. If you don’t go along with that, I shall naturally report you for running an illegal taxi business out here in the archipelago.’
I could hear Jansson’s intake of breath at the other end of the line.
‘What time?’ he asked eventually.
‘You won’t have any post to deliver tomorrow. Can you be here for ten?’
Harriet spent most of the day lying down and resting while I made all the preparations for the journey. I wondered if she’d be able to cope with the strain. But that wasn’t really my problem. I was only going to do my duty, nothing else. I thawed the hare steak and put it in the oven for dinner. My grandmother had placed a handwritten recipe for preparing a hare steak inside a cookery book. I had followed her instructions before with some success, and this time was no exception. When we sat down at the kitchen table, I noticed that Harriet’s eyes had glazed over again. I realised that the clinking noise I’d heard coming from her room was not from medicine bottles, but from bottles of alcohol. Harriet kept retiring to her room in order to knock back the booze. As I started to chew the hare steak, it occurred to me that the journey to the frozen forest lake might turn out to be even more problematic than I had first thought.
The hare was good. But Harriet poked around rather than eating much. I knew that cancer patients are often afflicted by a chronic lack of appetite.
We rounded off the meal with coffee. I gave the remains of the steak to the dog and the cat. They can generally share food without resorting to scratching and fighting. I sometimes imagine them as an old couple, something like my grandmother and grandfather.
I told her that Jansson would be coming to collect her the next day, handed over my car keys and explained what the car looked like and where it was parked. She could sit in it and wait while I walked ashore over the ice.
She took the keys and put them in her handbag. Then, without warning, she asked me if I’d ever missed her during all those years.
‘Yes,’ I told her, ‘I have missed you. But missing something only makes me depressed. It makes me afraid.’
She didn’t ask anything more, but disappeared into her room again; and when she came back, her eyes were even more glassy than before. We didn’t speak much to each other at all that evening. I think we were both worried about spoiling the journey we were going to make together. Besides, we had always found it easy to be silent in each other’s company.
We watched a film about some people who ate themselves to death. We made no comment when it was over, but I’m sure we shared the same opinion.
It was a very bad film.
I slept fitfully that night.
I spent hours thinking about all the things that could go wrong on the journey. Had Harriet told me the whole truth? I was wondering more and more if what she really wanted was something else, if there was another reason why she had tracked me down after all those years.
Before I finally managed to go to sleep, I had made up my mind to be careful. I couldn’t know what was in store, of course. All I wanted was to be prepared.
Uneasiness was persisting, whispering its silent warnings.
Chapter 6