How I came to be in England - Part 22

The Englishman didn't phone the following day, or the day after that. On the Saturday morning, three days after I’d told him I wanted to finish it, I was woken up by a knock on my door.

A strong light filtered through the half-closed Venetian blinds on my bedroom window. The weather was continuing to mock me. That summer of 1982 was the sunniest I’d ever seen in Helsinki. It made everyone smile on the streets and in the bank, where, as the young summer intern, I was processing people’s mortgage applications. I had no desire to join them in their happiness. I just wanted to go to work, come home, watch TV and go to bed, where I’d lie awake trying not to think about the Englishman.

This weekend was supposed to be the hottest of the summer so far and, by the looks of it, the sun was already high up in the sky. I climbed out of bed and opened the door.

Even my Father looked happy. 'We're taking the boat out to the archipelago. Do you want to come?'

I thought for a moment, then nodded to him and closed the door. ‘Don’t forget your swimming trunks or whatever you women wear,’ he shouted through the door.

Without wondering too much about his good humour, or the strange desire to include me in the first outing of his latest purchase, I got ready and was soon on board the legendary ‘Paula’ as he’d christened his speed boat. The girlfriend and I sat at the rear while my Father, proudly wearing a blue seaman’s cap, steered the thing at high speed under the bridges on the Western shore of Helsinki. He was behaving like a child with a new toy, veering it this way and that, making us scream as he accelerated and made the boat bounce on the surface of the sea.

The girlfriend had made a picnic. ‘Did you have a nice time in Aulanko,’ she asked when we sat around a checked tablecloth she'd placed on the ground. I didn’t know what to say, but instead looked down at the food: a plateful of my father’s Gravad Lax, a packet of thinly sliced smoked ham, a loaf of rye bread, butter, salted gherkins. She handed me a paper plate and my Father picked up slices of ham with his fingers and stuffed them into his mouth. ‘Don’t talk about that Englishman,’ he mumbled to the girlfriend.

She stared at him, the sea breeze making her messy hair blow over the dark brown eyes. ‘I just wondered, because the weather…’

‘She doesn’t want to talk about it – can’t you see that?’ my Father barked.

Here we go, I thought and lay down shutting my eyes. The deserted cliff, which my Father had finally settled on, was warm against my bare back. I was so tired. I hadn’t slept through one night since the phone call from the Englishman.

‘Give her a Lonkero,’ I heard my Father say. The girlfriend handed me a cold bottle of the gin and bitter lemon drink. I smiled. I felt sorry for her. She had no idea what she was taking on with my Father. And I felt a pang of guilt – should I warn her about his drinking and his moods? Should I tell her that he’d hit my Mother? But all men were pigs. She was old; surely she would've worked that out herself by now?

As I lay in the warm sunshine, I wondered how it was that I’d let myself be completely steered by men. First by my Father, then by my fiancé and now by the Englishman. Wasn't it high time I took decisions on my own life without considering a man?

We stayed on that small, rocky island all day. We swam in the sea and talked of old times. My Father told stories about when I was little. How he had to buy me a large box of chocolates to stop me crying when my older sister started school. How, lying on his back, he used to rock me on his belly when I was a little baby, and how my hair was wispy and thin. How I’d been ill with diarrhoea and vomiting and nearly died when I was four. How useless my Mother had been, just crying, and how he had to be the one to take me to hospital. I looked over to his large frame splayed on the rock, the round, smooth shape of his belly mirroring that of the cliff, and wondered if he remembered what happened just a few weeks ago when I was sick with a similar virus. But there was no sign that he’d made the connection. So I listened and smiled and laughed when required to. But I knew this brief interlude of good humour with my Father would not last.

At the end of the day, when he steered the boat into harbour, my Father pressed a few purple hundred Mark notes into my palm and said, ‘There’s a bit of money for a Lonkero or two. Go and enjoy yourself!’ He'd decided to stay with the girlfriend for the rest of the weekend. On the bus home, I though for once he was right. But how did he know about me and the Englishman? He wasn’t at home during the fateful telephone conversation. How, when he didn’t even remember that I was seriously ill a few weeks ago, did he notice that I was in need of cheering up now?

But I took his advice. When I got home it was only seven o’clock. I looked at myself in the mirror and noticed how the day spent in the sun had bronzed my face and limbs. There was no-one around to go out with, so I decided to do something I’d never done before.

Wearing a bright green miniskirt, with a matching scoop neck top and black lace-up sandals, I walked alone into the University disco. It was half-full even though it was a Saturday night. Most students must be either travelling around Europe on Inter Rail or at their parents’ summer places. At least that’s why my friends were out of town. I went up to the bar and ordered a Lonkero. As soon as I turned around I spotted him. Leaning against the railings of the bar upstairs on the mezzanine floor was the 4th year boy I’d flirted with since I started at the School of Economics. He was looking at the dance floor, but hadn’t spotted me. I ducked out of his sight. My heart started racing. I realized it was him I'd come out to find. But now I didn’t have the courage to go and talk to him, or even invite him over with a covert glance or gesture. I lit a cigarette and tried to look cool. I gulped down the drink and ordered another. I needed get drunk. Fast.

‘What’s the hurry?’ the guy at the bar said and handed me the second bottle. I stubbed out my cigarette and said, 'No hurry, I'm just thirsty.' The barman smiled and in his eyes I saw that I looked good. I smiled back and holding an unlit cigarette and the drink headed for the stairs to the mezzanine level.

How I came to be in England - Part 20

It wasn't until June that year of the Falkland's War in 1982 that I and the Englishman finally managed to see each other. We'd been apart for four long months, during which I'd feared for my submariner's life my every waking hour. He telephoned me very rarely. When the news of the sinking of the HMS Sheffield came, I didn't sleep until I had a letter confirming he was OK. How, during those war months, I wished I'd have someone I could call, someone who would've understood what I was going through. Instead I tried to study hard, and by the end of the term I'd passed all my exams with good marks.

Watching him collect his bag through the glass wall at the Helsinki airport arrivals lounge, I thought about the two years I'd spent waiting for his letters and phone calls, counting the days till I'd again be able to lean against his warm body. It seemed strange how my life had changed so dramatically, and so quickly, at the British Embassy cocktail party in October 1980. Before the handsome British Naval Officer had come over and talked to me, my life had seemed settled, pre-planned even. I was going to complete my studies, marry my boyfriend, move into a house his parents had promised to buy us in the same leafy area of Helsinki they lived in. As long as I didn't upset his mother, I had nothing to worry about. And of course she and my boyfriend wanted me to produce grandchildren, three to be exact. Instead I now stood in the deserted arrivals hall, again nervously waiting for my Englishman to see me, with no idea what the next year would bring let alone the next month, week or even day.

It was a hot, sunny afternoon, two days before Midsummer. In Finland the third Friday in June marks the start of the holidays. Everybody flees Helsinki for the weekend to go somewhere by the sea, lake or forest. Most stay away for two or three weeks leaving the city quiet and dusty. I'd booked us a room at a lakeside hotel an hour's train journey from the city. My parents had taken us there when I was little. It was an all-inclusive package which my father, uncharacteristically, had paid for. 'Show the Englishman how beautiful Finland is,' he said.

On the posh Finnair bus home from the airport, with the air conditioning on full blast, making me shiver in my thin cotton dress, the Englishman didn't seem impressed with my plans.

'We're going where?' he demanded. I tried to explain, but the Englishman sat next to me on the velveteen bus seat, holding my hand with his face turned away from me, towards the front of the bus. I looked at his profile, at the dark stubble on his chin. 'Don't you want to go,' I asked nervously.

The Englishman turned his eyes to me and kissed me lightly on the lips, 'Of course I do. No problem, let's do it.' But he didn't sound at all sure.

The Rantasipi Aulanko wasn't as I remembered it. The vast, low ceilinged lobby was shabby. There was a large mark on the carpet right by the reception desk. The room, for which a surly woman at reception had handed us a key, had two single beds arranged head to toe. The Englishman saw them and laughed. I wanted to cry. Instead I went to open the curtains of a large window at the end of the small room and saw what we'd come for. The lake, Vanajavesi, opened up in front of us. The sun, still high up in the afternoon sky, was blinding.

I went to hug the Englishman and tried to kiss him, but he turned away from me to put his bag down. 'Let's go, I'll show you around.' I said grabbing his hand.

I was eleven when my Father took the whole family to have lunch at the newly built Rantasipi Hotel. It was a drive away from Tampere, but it was Mother's Day. We had the buffet from a long table laid out with various dishes on a crisp, white linen tablecloth. The dining room was a square space with a high ceiling and large windows, which reached down to the floor. I wondered if the restaurant too would look shabby to me now as I led the Englishman around the paths through the Häme National Park, at the edge of which the hotel was built.

The Englishman was unusually quiet. When we first kissed at the airport, it felt the same as before. When we'd made love that night, it had felt the same as before. But today he had hardly touched me. Perhaps he really didn't want to come to this place with me? When I felt a few drops of rain fall onto my bare arms, I began to regret the whole idea myself. I ran into an old, circular shaped wooden summer house, with chipped paintwork, and sat on a half rotting bench to wait out the light shower. The warm summer rain fell softly against the old pointed roof. I felt close to tears. Even the weather connived to spoil the Englishman's week in Finland. Why had I not consulted him before booking this midsummer package? I looked at his straight back. He was leaning against the railing looking out to what I thought was the most beautiful view of the lake. But he didn't seem to be admiring it. Instead he turned around and looked at me. His face was serious. An awful thought entered my mind. Perhaps he was not upset about the hotel at all. Perhaps it was me - us? Perhaps he'd come over to finish it and didn't want to do it in a hotel? That was probably why he hadn't even wanted to do it with me on one of the ridiculous single beds just now. I shivered.

The Englishman came to sit next to me and put his arm around my shoulders, 'What's the matter?' His voice sounded soft.

'Nothing.'

The Englishman let his arm drop. We sat in silence until the rain stopped. When I got up, he took hold of my arm and said, 'What's really wrong?'

I sat back down and looked at the shifting clouds. The sun peeked out from behind the tops of tall, dark pine trees on the other side of the lake. 'You know the sun won't even set tonight? It'll never get properly dark. It's supposed to be a magical night.'

'Oh,' the Englishman said.

'It's you!' I said, 'Something's wrong with you, not me!' I was nearly shouting.

The Englishman looked startled. Now he'll have to say it, I thought. Now I've made him do it.

'It's this hotel...' he began.

I couldn't speak.

'It's expensive isn't it?'

I stared at him. 'Money?' I said. 'You're worried about money?'

The Englishman looked down at his hands and said very quietly, 'Yes'.

I wanted to laugh. 'Oh, that,' I said lightly. 'I've already paid for it, or rather...'

The Englishman looked at me surprised, 'How...?'

'My father paid for it.'

The Englishman's face changed. His jaw became more square than it already was, and his eyes became even darker than they were when he looked at me just before he kissed me. 'Your father has paid for me to stay here?' he asked with a steely voice.

That midsummer's night was all but magical. The Englishman told me he would pay my Father back for the hotel, and then refused to discuss it further. I couldn't understand him. As far as I was concerned my Father owed me big time for all the years my mother had to skimp and save for our school fees and food bills, when all he contributed was the occasional fifty Marks for a birthday or a Christmas present. And even those he sometimes forgot. But the Englishman wouldn't let me explain. We left the hotel almost without speaking to each other. I felt as if he'd suddenly turned into someone else.

Back in Helsinki, at night, my Englishman returned. As long as I didn't look into his eyes, where something had changed, he was as before. He whispered lovely things into my ear as before, his touch was as wonderful as ever and his kisses as sweet as always.

On the Monday after Midsummer I had to go back to work in the bank, where my annual summer internship had already begun, and leave the Englishman alone. He didn't seem to mind but stayed asleep in the morning while I tiptoed out of the house. In the evening I cooked him steak and salad while he read his book. We watched Finnish TV, which he thought was funny, and retired to bed where my old Englishman returned.


The night before the Englishman was due to fly home, he told me he was joining a new submarine at the Scottish base in Faslane. 'It's a nuclear sub,' he said. I'd been reading about the women protesting at Greenham Common against nuclear weapons. I was against them too. As a Finn you felt vulnerable between two superpowers wielding their nuclear armaments. I shivered at the thought the Englishman would be part of that deadly machinery.

'Don't you think the nuclear arms race should be stopped?' I said.

The Englishman regarded me for a moment. 'It's not for me to decide.' he said firmly and continued packing his things.

When we parted at Helsinki airport, we didn't discuss the future. The Englishman bought me a red rose, but I didn't cry.