‘I don’t know why,’ she said, ‘but nothing scares me as much as the lightning flashes and then the thunderclaps they fling at me.’
‘Did Caravaggio paint thunderstorms?’ I wondered.
‘I’m sure he was just as scared as I am. He often painted things he was scared of. But not thunderstorms, as far as I know.’
The rain that followed the thunderstorms freshened up the soil and also the people who lived here. When the storm had passed over, I went to check on Harriet. She was lying with her head high in an attempt to ease the pains coming from her spine. I sat on the chair by the side of her bed and took hold of her thin, cold hand.
‘Is it still raining?’
‘It’s stopped now. Lots of angry little becks are running down from the rocks into the sea.’
‘Is there a rainbow?’
‘Not this evening.’
She lay quietly for a while.
‘I haven’t seen the cat,’ she said.
‘She’s vanished. We’ve looked for her, but haven’t found her.’
‘Then she’s dead. Cats hide themselves away when they sense that their time is up. Some tribesmen do the same thing. The rest of us just hang on for as long as we can while others sit around and wait for us to die at long last.’
‘I’m not waiting for that.’
‘Of course you are. You have no choice. And waiting makes people impatient.’
She was speaking in short bursts, as if she were climbing up an endless staircase and had to keep stopping to get her breath back. She reached tentatively for her glass of water. I handed it to her, and supported her head while she drank.
‘I’m grateful to you for taking me in,’ she said. ‘I could have frozen to death out there on the ice. You could have pretended not to see me.’
‘The fact that I abandoned you once doesn’t necessarily mean that I’d do the same again.’
She shook her head, almost imperceptibly.
‘You have told so many lies, but you haven’t even learned how to do it properly. Most of what you say has to be true. Otherwise the lies don’t work. You know as well as I do that you could have abandoned me again. Have you left anybody else besides me?’
I thought it over. I wanted to answer truthfully.
‘One,’ I said. ‘Just one other person.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Not a woman. I’m referring to myself.’
She shook her head slowly.
‘There’s no point in going on and on about what has passed. Our lives turned out as they did, it’s all behind us. I shall soon be dead. You’ll carry on living for a while longer, but then you’ll be gone too. And all traces will fade away.’
She reached out her hand and took hold of my wrist. I could feel her rapid pulse.
‘I want to tell you something you’ve probably gathered already. I’ve never loved another man in my life as much as I’ve loved you. The reason why I tracked you down was to find my way back to that love. And to give you the daughter I robbed you of. But most of all, I wanted to die close to the man I’ve always loved. I must also say that I’ve never hated anybody as much as I’ve hated you. But hatred hurts, and I’ve more than enough pain to be going on with. Love gives a feeling of freshness, of peace, possibly even a feeling of security which makes facing up to death not quite so frightening as it would otherwise be. Don’t respond to anything I’ve just said. Just believe me. And ask Louise to come. I think I’ve wet myself.’
I fetched Louise, who was sitting on the steps outside the front door.
‘It’s beautiful here,’ she said. ‘Almost like the depths of the forest.’
‘I’m scared stiff of big forests,’ I said. ‘I’ve always been frightened of getting lost if I strayed too far away from the path.’
‘What you’re scared of is yourself. Nothing else. The same applies to me. And Harriet. And the lovely little Andrea. Caravaggio as well. We are scared of ourselves, and what we see of ourselves in others.’
She went to change Harriet’s pad. I sat down on the bench under the apple tree, next to the dog’s grave. In the far distance I could hear the dull thudding from the engines of a large ship. Had the navy already started their regular autumn manoeuvres?
Harriet had said that she’d never loved anybody as much as she’d loved me. I felt touched. I hadn’t expected that. I was beginning to appreciate just what I had done.
I abandoned her because I was afraid of being abandoned myself. My fear of tying myself down, and of feelings that were so strong that I couldn’t control them, resulted in my always drawing back. I didn’t know why that should be. But I knew that I wasn’t the only one. I lived in a world where many other men were just as afraid as I was.
I had tried to see myself in my father. But his fear had been different. He had never hesitated to show the love he felt for my mother and for me, despite the fact that my mother wasn’t easy to live with.
I have to come to grips with this, I told myself. Before I die, I must know why I’ve lived. I have some time left — I must make the most of it.
I felt very tired. The door to Harriet’s room was ajar. I went upstairs. When I’d gone to bed, I left the light on. The wall behind the bed had always been decorated with sea charts my grandfather had found washed up on the shore. They were water-damaged but you could make out they depicted Scapa Flow in the Orkney Isles, where the British fleet was based during the First World War. I had often followed the narrow channels surrounding Pentland Firth, and imagined the British ships sitting there, terrified of the periscopes of German U-boats.
I fell asleep with the light still on. At two o’clock I was woken up by Harriet’s screams. I stuck my fingers in my ears and waited for the painkillers to kick in.
We were living in my house in a silence that could be shattered at any moment by a roar of intense pain. I found myself thinking more and more frequently that I hoped Harriet would die soon. For all our sakes.
The heatwave lasted until 24 July. I noted in my logbook that there was a north-easterly wind and the temperature had started to fall. Troughs of low pressure queuing up over the North Sea brought changeable weather. In the early hours of 27 July, a northerly gale raged over the archipelago. A few tiles next to the chimney were ripped off the roof and smashed on the ground below; I managed to climb up on to the roof and replace them with spares that had been stored in a shed since the barn was demolished in the late 1960s.
Harriet’s condition grew worse. Now that the weather had started to deteriorate she was awake for only short periods of every day. Louise and I shared the chores, but Louise washed her mother and changed her pads for which I was grateful.
Autumn was creeping up on us. The nights were getting longer, the sun was losing its strength. Louise and I prepared ourselves for the fact that Harriet could die at any moment. When she was conscious, we would both sit by her bed. Louise wanted her to see the pair of us together. Harriet didn’t say much. She might ask about the time, and if it would soon be time to eat. She was becoming more and more confused. Sometimes she thought she was in the caravan in the forest, at other times she was convinced she was in her flat in Stockholm. She was not aware of being on the island, in a room with an anthill. Nor did she seem to be aware that she was dying. When she did wake up, it seemed to be the most natural thing in the world. She would drink a little water, perhaps swallow a few spoonfuls of soup, then drop off to sleep again. The skin on her face was now stretched so tightly round her cranium that I was afraid it might split and expose her skull. Death is ugly, I thought. There was now almost nothing left of the beautiful Harriet. She was a wax-coloured skeleton under a blanket, nothing more.