Apparently, her silence had disconcerted Lilly Hedqvist, too. ‘You know of me, I believe?’ asked Lilly.
Emily’s response was automatic, unsteered by thought. ‘Yes, I know about you.’
‘Mr. Craig came to me last night to speak of you, and to tell me what happened between you. You may believe it is none of my business, but it has been on my mind today, and I believe it is some of my business. This call is not easy for me to make, Miss Stratman, but my conscience tells me I must make it. I do not know you, but I do know Mr. Craig, and if he thinks highly of someone, then I tell myself that someone must be a good person. I would like to meet you for a few minutes today, Miss Stratman.’
Emily did not know what to say. The voice sounded younger and cleaner and more simple than she had imagined it in her fantasies. After Craig’s revelation, the name Lilly Hedqvist had become the name of all on earth who were abandoned and wanton and experienced. But this was not Lili Marlene or Cora Pearl or Märta Norberg. This was a girl.
‘I-I don’t know-I don’t know if it’s possible,’ said Emily. ‘I wouldn’t know what to say to you.’
‘You do not have to say a thing,’ said Lilly. ‘I want you to see me. I want you to hear me. For a few minutes. And that is all.’
At once, Emily was recklessly tempted. She did wish to set eyes on a girl who could give Andrew Craig kindness and love with nothing in return. She did want to see this girl and to hear her. But it was less these desires than another that was now influencing Emily. Above all, she wanted to find out about herself, why she still was as she was, and why yesterday had happened, and Lilly might be her fluoroscope. And then one more faint thought. If she said no to Lilly, that was the end of it forever. On the other hand, the Swedish girl was a part of Craig now, and to see her would be to see Craig one bitter time more.
‘All right,’ she said suddenly, and it was as if another person had uttered the sentence on herself. ‘All right, I’ll see you. Where and when?’
‘I work in the Nordiska Kompaniet, the biggest department store, only a few blocks from your hotel. You turn to your right when you leave the hotel, and follow the pavement, and go across the park diagonally, and it is the seven-storey store on the other side of the street. It is only a few blocks. If you are lost, ask someone for En Ko-that’s how Swedes pronounce NK-and they will direct you. Inside, there is an escalator in the centre. It will take you to the eating grill-lunchrummet. You pick a table if you are there first, and I will come. Can you be there at ten minutes to five?’
‘Yes.’
‘I will sneak off from my work at ten minutes to five, and we will have coffee and talk a little.’
Emily began to panic. ‘I still don’t know what we can possibly say-’
‘Then we will say nothing,’ said Lilly. ‘But the meeting will be good. Good-bye, Miss-oh, wait-one thing I almost forgot. How do you look?’
‘How do I look?’
‘So I can find you.’
‘I-I’m a brunette-bobbed hair-and-I don’t know-I’ll be wearing a jacket, a suede jacket.’
‘If I am first, you will see me with blonde hair, also a white sweater and blue skirt. We will find each other.’
‘Yes.’
‘Good-bye then, until ten minutes to five.’
All the interminable time after that, Emily had meant to call the store pronounced En Ko and ask for Miss Hedqvist and cancel the meeting, but in the end, she had not. And now here she was in the half-filled grill-room, at the table beside the window, with her red eyes and suede jacket, and her desire to run from here, quickly and far away.
It was four minutes to five, and she told herself: I will give her one more minute and that is all.
‘You are Miss Stratman?’
Emily’s head tilted upward with genuine alarm, and there was a child of a girl, with golden hair, long and caught by a blue ribbon, and alive blue eyes, and a young mouth and attractive beauty mark above it. She wore a thin white sweater that hung straight down from her breast tips, and a pleated dark blue skirt, and low-heeled shoes, and she extended her hand and said, ‘I am Lilly Hedqvist.’
Emily accepted the firm grip, but briefly, for this was the hand that had caressed Craig, and then watched with wonder as the Swedish girl, so fresh and flaxen and blue like the Swedish flag, matter-of-factly took the place opposite her.
‘You have ordered?’ inquired Lilly.
‘No-’
‘I will order. Is there anything with the coffee?’
‘No.’
Lilly waved to a passing waitress, who appeared to know her, and called ‘Kaffe,’ holding up two fingers.
Now she returned her attention to Emily, leaning elbows on the table, cupping her chin with her hands. She considered Emily frankly. ‘You are very beautiful,’ she said.
‘Well, I-well, thank you.’
‘It does not surprise me. I knew you would be beautiful, but I did not think in this way.’
‘In what way?’
‘Like the lovely fawns I have seen in Värmland. They are delicate and withdrawn. And besides, you look like you are nice. I thought you would be more bold and sure.’
Had she not been so tense, Emily might have been amused, remembering as she did, after the phone call, her first imagined image of Lilly as the one who might be bold and sure.
‘Now it is easier to understand,’ Lilly went on, ‘because you are beautiful.’
The irony of it came to Emily’s mind-we are always, she thought, not what we are through our eyes, but only as we are to other eyes-for she felt anything but beautiful. In fact, she felt more inhibited than ever by Lilly’s peach-coloured natural freshness, and it seemed incredible that Craig could have been so attentive to her after spending time with this bursting, outdoor child, and suddenly she was glad that Craig could not see them together like this.
‘Mr. Craig is beautiful, too,’ Lilly was saying, ‘in the same way. He is secretly shy. It is appealing. I do not know how you could send him away yesterday, when he loves you from the heart so much.’
‘What makes you think he loves me?’
‘My eyes and ears and woman’s sense.’
The waitress had arrived with coffee, silver, and napkins, which she dispensed from a tray. Neither paid attention to her, and when she left, Lilly resumed.
‘When Mr. Craig went away from you last night, he became very drunk, which is natural. Then he visited me and offered to marry me because that was like committing suicide.’ She had said the last with a twinkle, and then with tiny laughter. ‘He was not serious, and I knew he was not serious. I made him confess the truth, and he admitted how much he loved you, and he told me everything about that.’
‘I-I cannot believe he means it.’
‘Why, Miss Stratman? You cannot believe a man loves one woman from the heart, when he is also in another woman’s bed?’
The naked question seemed to carry with it some implication of a personal failure in Emily, and she was less appalled by its asking than by this implication. ‘I wish I knew the right answer. I only know my answer. I was-yes, it upset me.’
‘You are now an American woman,’ said Lilly, ‘and I am a Swedish woman, and we are different. I must explain to you how I behave as I behave. On the outside, the Swedish girl is like the Swedish man-she is stiff, formal, with traditional manners. But with sex, she is open and free, because she is raised up with no prudishness. Education is honest about sex. In the country, we swim naked in summer. In the magazines, there is no censorship. And because there are so many women for so few men, it is a necessity not to make sex so difficult and rare-if you hold back the sex love, the man will find it easy in the next woman he meets. But that is not the main thing.’
She paused and sipped her hot coffee, and Emily waited.