‘Well, I’ll send you a postcard if I find an Irish bar when I get there.’
‘I believe it will be hard
not
to find one. But do that anyway.’
Did she sound as if she really would like to hear from him, or was she just being Erika – easy, relaxed and yet focused at the same time?
He walked glumly to the plane.
Erika would have loved the Dublin hotel, which managed to be both chaotic and charming at the same time. They advised him to take a city bus tour to orientate himself and to go to a traditional Irish evening in a nearby pub that night. Then, at breakfast the next morning, he met a group of Irish Americans who were discussing renting a boat on the River Shannon. It was proving to be more expensive than they had hoped. They really needed another person to share the cost. Would he like to make up the numbers?
Why not, he thought? The brochure looked attractive – lovely lakes and a wide river, little ports to visit. Before he realised it he was en route to Athlone in the middle of Ireland, going aboard a motor cruiser for a lesson in navigation. Soon they were cruising past reeds and riverbanks and old castles, and places with small harbours and long names. The sun shone and the world slowed down.
His fellow passengers were five easy-going men and women from an insurance company in Chicago. They were meant to be looking for ancestors and relatives, but this sat lightly on them. They were more interested in finding good Irish music and drinking a lot of Irish beer. Anders joined in enthusiastically.
He bought three postcards at a tiny post office and sent them to his father, his mother and Erika.
He puzzled for a long time before he wrote the few lines to his father. There was literally nothing to say that would interest the old man. Eventually, he decided to say that the economy of the country had taken a serious hit because of the recession. That at least was something his father would understand.
When the river cruise was over, the Irish Americans had gone off on a five-day golfing tour. They invited him to come with them but Anders said no. Bad as he was at manoeuvring a boat on the Shannon, he didn’t want to upset real golfers by going out on the course with them.
Instead he found a coach tour of the West of Ireland.
John Paul, the cheerful, red-faced bus driver, claimed that he knew all the best music pubs on the coast, and every night they found another great session. John Paul knew all the musicians by name and told the coach party their history and repertoire before they got to the venue each evening.
‘Ask Micky Moore to sing “
Mo Ghile Mear
” for you, it’ll make the hairs rise on the back of your neck,’ he would say. Or else he knew when some old piper was going to come in from retirement and do a turn. Anders was interested in it all.
It turned out that John Paul played the pipes himself. Not bagpipes. No, indeed, bagpipes were Scottish. Real pipes were the uilleann pipes. You didn’t have to blow into them like the Scots did; instead there was a kind of a bellows under your arm which you pressed with your elbow.
Uilleann
was actually the Irish word for elbow.
The music was haunting, and Anders was mesmerised by it all.
John Paul said that if ever he got some money together he would open his own place and welcome all kinds of musicians there.
‘Here, in the West?’ Anders wondered.
‘Maybe, but then I don’t want to take the bread and butter away from the people who are already here. They are my friends,’ he said.
John Paul and Anders talked about God and fate and evil and imagination. He asked John Paul how old he was. The man looked at him, surprised.
‘You speak such good English, I forget you’re not from round here. I was born in 1980, nine months after Pope John Paul visited Ireland. Nearly every lad who was born that year was called John Paul.’
‘And will you go on driving the bus all your life?’ Anders wondered.
‘No, I’ll have to go home to the old man sometime. The others have all gone far and wide, done well for themselves. I’m only John Paul the eejit, and my da is not really able to manage the place on his own. One of these days I’ll have to face it and go back to Stoneybridge and take over.’
‘That’s hard.’ Anders was sympathetic.
‘Ah, go on out of that! Haven’t I bricks and mortar and beasts in the field and a little farm waiting for me? Half of Ireland would give their eye teeth for that. It’s just not what I want. I’m no good at going out looking for sheep that have got stuck on their back with their legs in the air and turning them the right way up. I hate having to deal with milk quotas, and what Europe wants you to plant or to ignore. It’s lifeblood for some people; it’s drudgery for me, but it’s a living. A good living, even.’
‘But your own place with the musicians?’
‘I’ll wait until I’m reincarnated, Anders. I’ll do it next time round.’ His big, round, weather-beaten face was totally resigned to it.
On the last night of the coach tour, the passengers all clubbed together to take John Paul out for a meal. And as a thank you, he played them some airs on the uilleann pipes. He got a group photograph taken and everyone wrote their names and email addresses on the back.
Anders had a cup of coffee with John Paul on the last morning.
‘I’ll miss your company,’ Anders said. ‘Nobody to discuss the world and its ways like you.’
‘You’re making a mock of me! Isn’t Sweden full of thinkers and musicians like ourselves?’
Anders felt absurdly flattered to be thought of as a musician and a thinker.
‘It probably is. I just don’t meet them, that’s all.’
‘Well they’re out there,’ John Paul was very definite. ‘I’ve met great Swedes travelling here. They can play the spoons, they can all sing “Bunch Of Thyme”. And wasn’t Joe Hill himself from Sweden?’
‘Maybe you’re right. I’ll let you know when I find them.’
‘You keep in touch, Anders. You’re one of the good guys,’ John Paul said.
Anders wondered if he really was one of the good guys when he went back to work at Almkvist’s. He learned within an hour of his return that his cousin Mats, who had had the problem with alcohol, had apparently revisited that part of his life in spectacular fashion. Moreover, one of Almkvist’s most prestigious clients had absconded with a very young woman and a great deal of assets weeks before a major audit.
His father looked more grey-faced and concerned than ever. Only a few hours after he was back, Anders felt the benefits of his holiday in Ireland slipping away from him. He played some of the music he had brought home with him. The lonely laments played on the uilleann pipes, the rousing choruses where everyone had joined in, reminded him of the carefree days and the easy company, but he knew it was only temporary. It was like a child wanting a birthday party to last for ever.
His father showed no interest in any stories of his trip, no matter how he tried to tell them.
‘Why don’t you let me show you some of the photographs I took?’ he suggested. ‘Would you like to listen to some of the music with me? We were listening to some marvellous traditional Irish music . . .’
‘Yes, yes, very interesting but it was just a holiday, Anders. You’re like Fru Karlsson who wants to tell you what she dreamed about last night. It’s not relevant to anything.’
He decided at that moment that he would move out of his father’s apartment. Get himself a small place of his own, break this never-ending cycle of discussing work from morning to night.
He hoped he would have the energy to make the move. Everyone was going to resist it. Why leave a perfectly comfortable, elegant place which would be his one day anyway? Why disrupt Fru Karlsson and her ways? Why leave his father alone instead of being his companion in these latter years?
Anders thought of John Paul going to look after
his
father, setting sheep back on their four legs again and abandoning his dream of a musicians’ haven in order to do his duty. But even John Paul would have some time off to himself. Maybe he could go and play his pipes of an evening. He didn’t have to discuss farming with his father as the moon rose in the sky.
If Anders ever had a son of his own he would tell the boy from the outset that he must follow his heart, that he would not be expected to play his role in Almkvist’s. But it didn’t seem likely that he would have a son. He could never see himself settling with anyone but Erika. And he had thrown that away.
Nevertheless, he telephoned to tell her about his trip to Ireland.
Erika was interested in everything and knew a lot about Irish music already. She had bought a tin whistle and was teaching herself to play.
‘Come and stay for a weekend and I’ll take you to The Galway. You’d love it,’ she suggested.
A weekend away from Almkvist’s; away from dramas about his cousin’s rehab, the client who had absconded with funds and girlfriend, his father’s anxiety, the general downturn in business . . . it was just what he needed.
As he drove towards Gothenburg, where he had been so happy as a university student, Anders wondered if he would stay at Erika’s apartment. Nothing had been said. She might have booked him into a hotel. If he
did
stay at the flat, then would they share a room? It would be so artificial if she made up a mattress for him on the floor. And after all, Erika didn’t have any partner or companion these days – nor did he, so there would be no question of cheating on anyone.
But then he couldn’t expect things to return to the way they had once been. He sighed, and knew that he would have to wait and see.
Erika looked wonderful, her eyes dancing and her words tumbling over each other as she told him about how successful the conservation project was; they had got serious recognition and an important grant. She cooked supper for him, the Swedish meatballs which had always been their celebration meal. The apartment hadn’t changed much – new curtains, more bookshelves.
After supper they went to The Galway, the bar where Erika was greeted as a regular. She introduced Anders to people on both sides of the bar, and then they settled in for a music session. Suddenly he was back in the West of Ireland, with the waves beating on the shore and a new set of faces bent over fiddles, pipes and accordions every night. The music swept him away.
Later, he talked to the people who had played. Particularly to a man called Kevin, the piper.
‘Do you know the theme from
The Brendan Voyage
?’ he asked.
‘Indeed I do, but I don’t usually play it because whenever I played it in the London pubs it made people cry.’
‘It made me cry too,’ Anders said.
Erika looked up, surprised. ‘You never cry,’ she said.
‘I did in Ireland,’ he said wistfully.
‘We have a habit of upsetting people,’ Kevin said ruefully. ‘Come in tomorrow night and I’ll play it for you, then we can have a bawl over it together, and a pint.’
‘That’s a date,’ Anders agreed readily.
Later, back in Erika’s flat, they drank beer and picked at some of the leftover food. She lit candles on the coffee table and they sat opposite, suddenly acutely aware of each other. She gazed at him seriously.
‘You’ve changed,’ she said.
‘I haven’t changed about being very fond of you,’ he said.
‘Me neither, but you are still sleeping in the spare room,’ she laughed.
‘It seems a pity.’ He smiled.
‘Yes, but I’m not going to spend yet more weeks and months regretting what might have been.’
‘
Did
you spend weeks and months regretting it?’
‘You know I did, Anders.’
‘But you still wouldn’t consider coming to live with me and just putting up with Almkvist’s.’
‘And
you
wouldn’t consider giving up Almkvist’s and coming to live with me. Listen, we’ve been through all this before. It’s well-trodden ground.’
‘You know I had responsibilities. Still do.’
‘You don’t like it, Anders my friend. You’re not happy. You have told me not one word about your life there in the office. That’s my one complaint. If I had thought that it was what you wanted then I might have considered it.’
‘You call me your friend . . .!’ he said.
‘You are. You will always be my friend, when you and I are long married to other people.’
‘It won’t happen, Erika. I’ve looked around. There’s no one out there.’
‘Well, then we will have to look harder. Tell me more about Ireland.’
He told her about the Irish Americans on the Shannon, and about John Paul who had to go back to look after his father. And then he went to bed in the brightly painted guest room. He stayed awake for a long time.
At The Galway next day, Anders and Erika sat and listened while Kevin played the pipes. As he listened, Anders again heard the waves breaking on the wild Atlantic shore and he felt a surge of misery overwhelm him. He suddenly saw his life stretching in front of him in an unending straight line: getting up in the morning, putting on a suit, going to work at the office, coming home to a lonely apartment, going to bed, getting up the following morning . . . Responsibility. Loyalty. Duty. Rules. Expectations. Family tradition. And when the musicians took a break, Anders tried to explain to Erika why he had to stay with his father, but the words weren’t there. He found his sentences trailing away.
‘It’s just that . . .’ he began, then faltered. ‘It’s the family tradition. I mean, if I don’t . . . There are these expectations . . . It’s who I am. And I can do it. I
am
doing it. I am the next Almkvist. They’re all waiting for me. All my life . . . And in any case, if I’m not that, who am I?’
‘Anders, stop, please. Look, it isn’t that you are in your father’s business that I don’t like. It’s that you hate it and always will. But you won’t do anything else. It’s your decision, not theirs. It’s your life, not theirs. You can do anything with your life. At least think what else you might do. When you find what the something else is, then you will consider leaving.’
She leaned over and stroked his hand. ‘Leave it for now,’ she suggested.
‘Which means leave it for ever,’ he said sadly.
‘No, you’ve gone as far as you can down the road and you always reach the same fork. Maybe something will happen. Something that you will want more than that office. Then when that day comes, you can think about it again.’