How I came to be in England - Part 36

The Englishman and I set the date for my move to England for 25th February 1984.

I'd take the train through Europe, and then cross the Channel over to Harwich. This way I could send all my worldly possessions separately to my new home country, rather than be limited to carrying it all in suitcases onto a flight.

I bought the train ticket at Helsinki railway station on a cold windy day. Afterwards I picked up two large cardboard boxes from Valintatalo, the cheap food and clothes store opposite my bus stop. I struggled onto the bus, and occupied two seats, getting disapproving looks from the other commuters. The last thing they needed was to abandon a seat to a cardboard box. I ignored the other passengers and looked out of the window. It was just past three but already dark. The little snow that had fallen after the New Year had quickly disappeared, leaving Helsinki dull and rainy.

As I watched more passengers board the bus at the next stop, I thought about the items I'd take with me to England. The two large coffee cups and saucers my Mother had left me when she moved to Stockholm, the pestle and mortar my Grandfather made during the war when he worked at the ammunition factory in Tampere. All my books including the heavy, thick ones for the exams I was going to take at the Finnish Embassy in London, and all my LP's. The Englishman and I had discussed on the phone whether I'd need to take the ones we both owned by Earth Wind & Fire, Haircut One Hundred, Billy Joel or The Police. The Englishman thought I'd be crazy to pack them, but I wasn't sure. These LP's were like my friends, they'd kept me sane at night when lonely and desperately missing my Englishman in my Father's little house in Espoo.

The next day I went to pick up the wedding invitations. The Englishman and I had spent a long time on the telephone drawing up a list of guests. He'd come up with only ten, including his parents, Godmother, sister and brother with their spouses, and the friends who he shared the house in Southsea with. He said the flights were so expensive many of his friends couldn't afford to make the trip to Helsinki. The same conversation with my Father was fruitless. 'Oh, you must decide, how am I supposed to know who wants to come to your wedding?'

Then, after he'd been sitting in front of the TV for half an hour, he shouted, 'Oh my Mother and my step sisters. I guess they'll want to come now that old bastard is dead.'

I sighed. He would always have to put some-one down. Even if my Father was referring to his step-father who'd refused to feed and cloth him when his own Mother re-married. I'd heard the story so many times: how the man had promised my Grandmother that her son would be educated and even get his own room in the new home he'd built for his new bride. And then after only one week he said he would throw the new wife out too if the boy stayed. I'd often wondered what my Father had done during that week after his Mother's wedding to receive such treatment. Or was the new husband just as evil as my Father said he was. I'd never met him; my Father was reunited with his Mother only after the evil step father had died.

The conversation about guests was more enjoyable with my Mother. We made a list of over thirty people, including Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, my friends from school and university. As usual when I spoke on the phone with my Mother I'd made sure my Father was out. I couldn't bear the nasty things he would say about her afterwards, when he'd heard who was at the other end of the line. I had a long talk with my Mother about the wording of the invitations too. The Englishman had given me the words, but I wasn't sure whether the Finnish text should reflect the official tone of, 'Mrs and Mrs so-and-so have the pleasure in inviting you to the wedding of their daughter and Sub-Lieutenant Englishman, RN.' There was nothing similar in Finnish that wouldn't sound pompous and old-fashioned. Eventually we settled on a simple wording, in slightly more formal Finnish.

The printers were in Lauttasaari, in a small industrial park at the far end of the island. As I passed the street where my old flat stood, I felt a little sad. Life with my old boyfriend, fiance, was dull but it was safe. I wondered as I saw a light in my old window, and a new set of dark curtains, whether I was making a grave mistake. What if England turned out to be a difficult country to live in? What if people were unfriendly - even discriminating - against foreigners like me? What if I didn't get a job and ended up being a Navy house-wife like Lucinda in Scotland? What if the Englishman turned out to be equally possessive and jealous as my former fiance?

The man with ink-stained fingers pulled out a copy of the invitations for me to see. He left two dirty fingermarks in a corner of the card, embossed with the heavy, beautiful gold lettering. I re-read the text and blushed. Was this really for me? If only my family lived up to the fine wording and look of the invitation. Especially the 'Mr and Mrs have the pleasure in inviting you to the wedding of their daughter' struck me as false. I wasn't even sure my parents would be able to physically sit in the same room, and here they were portrayed as the most wholesome of happy couples inviting family and friends to their daughter's wedding. I turned the card over and put it down on the counter.

'They're good,' I said to the man. He handed me a plastic bag filled with the fifty heavy cards I'd ordered. I handed the money over and he wrote out a receipt.

When my Father came home from work that evening, I showed him the invitations. I knew he'd be glad the number of guests wouldn't exceed 50, that was at least 25 less than the maximum he was expecting. He sat heavily in one of the plush comfy chairs and perched his reading glasses at an angle on the end of his nose.

'What's this?' he said holding the card and looking at me over his glasses.

I was standing next to him, but now sat down. For some reason my heart started to beat a little faster, 'The wedding invitations.'

He looked down at the at the single card I'd handed him. Frozen to a spot, saying nothing.

'It's in English as well as in Finnish, because...' I started. I wondered if he was offended by the bi-lingual text. 'We speak Finnish in Finland,' he'd often say when my Swedish-speaking friends came to visit the house.

'What's this?' he said, pointing his fine long finger at the sentence, 'Mrs and Mrs X have the pleasure in inviting...'

'It's the English text. I thought since half, or in fact it's much less than a half, but all the same, they don't understand Finnish, so I thought, being that it is...'

'Not that!' he said, loudly. 'It's me who's inviting these people, not your Mother.'

'Yes, I know that...' I was puzzled, what did he mean 'not your Mother'?

'It's me who's paying for it.' His pale blue eyes, over the wonky glasses, were on me. His lips turned downwards. His hand, holding the card was trembling.

'What?' A chill ran down my spine. Even before I heard him say it, I had a premonition about what he was going to say.

'I don't want that Bitch on the invitation.'

I said nothing. My throat felt dry, I felt faint.

'And I don't want her anywhere near the wedding.'

There was a long silence. I struggled to find any words. I felt tears well up in my eyes. 'You mean my own Mother can't come to my wedding?' I said with a trembling voice. I willed it to sound normal, or firm, but I had no breath left in me.

He said nothing for a while. Then there was a dry final comment, 'I'm paying for everything. Not your Mother. Me. And I don't want to see that Bitch there.'

I ran out of the room, clutching the plastic bag of invitations, tears running down my face. The hate I felt for my Father at that moment was even greater than the love I felt for the Englishman.

I thought I might kill him.

How I came to be in England – Part 21

The same Sunday night in late June 1982 I'd said my tearless goodbye to the Englishman I started to be sick. When two days later I still couldn't keep a glass of boiled cooled water inside me, I phoned the student health service in Töölö, in the centre of Helsinki. They told me to come and see them straight away.

The doctor wore a white coat. He had round gold rimmed glasses and grey thinning hair. I sat on his examination table while he took my temperature, tapped my knees, looked into my eyes, felt my glands and my stomach. I hurt all over, but I was so tired from two days and nights of diarrhea and throwing up, I had no energy to even utter a sound. He took two steps back and wrote something on his notes.

‘I think you might have salmonella poisoning.’

I nodded. All I wanted was to be allowed to sleep. The doctor regarded me for a moment. ‘Did someone bring you here?’

‘No.’ I suddenly realised it was the journey from Espoo with a bus, walk to the tram stop and then another long walk to the health centre that had exhausted me.

'You need go to bed, take these and sip a mixture of this,’ he gave me a packet of tablets and a few sachets of something. ‘If you don’t improve within the next 24 hours, get an ambulance to take you to hospital.’ The doctor had kind eyes. 'Can you phone someone to come and get you?' He nodded at his desk phone. ‘You can use that.’

I couldn’t think who to phone. My friend was traveling around Europe for the summer and my mother and sister were in Stockholm. I hadn’t seen my father since Midsummer, didn't know if he was back at work. I dug in my handbag for my address book.

‘Yes?’

‘It’s me. I’m not very well, I’m in Töölö Health Centre and the doctor said I should have someone to pick me up.’

‘Oh.’

‘There’s no-one else I can call.’

‘Can’t you take a taxi?’

I was close to tears. My father sounded so irritable.

‘I haven’t got any money.’

My Father inhaled loudly. ‘Of course not,’ he said dryly. ‘What’s wrong with you anyway?’

When I told him he said he’d come and meet me at home and pay for my taxi there. ‘I don’t really want to catch it so I’ll stay away until you're better.’

I was ill for two weeks. I slept for most of it and had nightmares about sinking U-boats, nuclear mushroom clouds and men in uniform laughing at the suffering women and children. I didn’t go anywhere, I didn’t see anybody. My father phoned half way through the second week and when he heard I was still not able to eat anything, he told me he’d stay away for another week just to be safe. ‘You do that,’ I said and decided I would never forgive him for abandoning me like this. My mother didn't know how ill I was. She was too far away anyway.

During those strange summer weeks in 1982 I didn’t hear from the Englishman. There was no letter, or phone call. I didn’t even know if he had reached his new nuclear submarine in Scotland, or whether he was away at sea, or on dry land at the base. I didn’t know if we were still together, or if his disastrous week in Helsinki had finished our two year romance. It was strange, but I wasn’t sure I cared one way or the other. Not worrying about him, not longing for his touch, hearing his voice, or reading his letters seemed oddly liberating.

When I returned to my internship at the bank in mid July, I’d lost 10 kilos in weight. All my clothes hung off me and I loved it. Something good had come out of the suffering. The nice doctor at the health centre had signed me off the sickness register and given me a note to take to my bank manger. ‘I was quite worried about you, young lady,’ he said and smiled. Why couldn’t my father be worried about me if the doctor who doesn’t even know me was?

Finally three weeks and three days after the Englishman had returned home, he called.

‘You OK?’ he asked after we’d said the usual hellos. I noticed he hadn’t said he missed me.

I told him about the salmonella poisoning. ‘You didn’t get it?’

‘No.’

Hearing the Englishman’s voice I realised I was angry with him. Angry for spoiling our week together, angry for being an officer in the Royal Navy, angry for not being here with me, angry for not understanding how angry I felt. I said nothing.

‘So…’ he said.

‘Yes?’ I said.

‘You OK now, right?’ he tried again.

‘Oh yes.’

‘Right.’

I’d had enough. ‘Look, I’ve made a decision.’

He said nothing. I could hear noises in the background. Was he in a pub? ‘Where are you phoning from?’

‘Oh, the mess. I couldn’t get away, we’ve been at sea all this time and I couldn’t even get a letter to you.’

‘Oh.’

‘Hold on,’ he said and I heard him talk to someone. ‘Five minutes,’ I heard him say.

Now there was a time limit, of course. Foreign calls were expensive. ‘Anyway, as I was saying, I’ve decided it’s probably best if we stop this.’

‘What?’ the Englishman sounded absentminded, then his voice sharpened. ‘What did you say?’

I inhaled deeply and repeated my words, even though as I said them a strange lump formed on my chest, as if a heavy weight had been placed against it. It made me struggle for breath.

‘You can’t say that.’

‘I just have,’ I said breathlessly.

There was a silence. ‘Oh my God.’ He sounded truly shocked and I felt dizzy. Surely I was only saying what he thought too? Or…?

‘We never see each other. I’ve got another year at uni. How am I going to get a job in England when I’m finished? And you’re always away at sea. And…’ Tears were running down my face. I sniffled.

There were more voices behind the Englishman. ‘Look, I have to go, but please don’t cry. We have to talk about this, OK? Can I call you tomorrow night? Please.’

I could never say no to the Englishman.

With shaking hands I replaced the heavy telephone receiver on the hook and sat down on the floor. My heart was racing against my rib cage, it felt as if the lump had now engorged and was crushing the whole of my upper body with its weight. My heart had no space to beat and no air was reaching my lungs. What had I done? What if the Englishman didn’t call back, what if having thought about it he knew I was right? Our relationship was doomed, our future together hopeless. I put my head in my hands and howled like an animal.

How I came to be in England - Part 3

The first letter was a wonderful surprise. It arrived ten days after I’d said goodbye to the Englishman and twelve days after I’d met him at the Embassy cocktail party. When I found the blue oblong air mail envelope on my doormat, I nearly screamed. I held it in my hand for just a moment. It was thick and silky, and I recognised the handwriting immediately. The first sentences took my breath away.

‘It rained when we sailed from Helsinki and the weather seemed to echo my mood. I am sure I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. I miss you so much.’

The Englishman was a poet. I read the pages over and over. Then I carefully folded the three full sheets of writing back into the envelope and held it against my chest. I hadn’t been dreaming. He was real and he missed me as much as I missed him.

My life since he’d left had been far from poetic. When, on the same night I’d parted with the Englishman, I opened the door to my flat, it looked empty. There were no lights on. I inhaled deeply. I had another night to dream about the Englishman before having to confront my boyfriend. I jumped when I heard him call my name. He was sitting in the dark on my bed.

At first my fiancé was quiet. As his silence grew, my talking increased. I tried to explain. 'It's as if I’d known this stranger all my life, I didn’t go to the cocktail party in order to meet some-one. It was just an accident.'

'Accident?' After the silent shock came his anger. My boyfriend, who’d I’ve known for four years to be a calm, controlled man, started to shout at me.

‘But you went to see him again!’ he bellowed. ‘You’re no better than those girls who hang around ports, prostituting themselves to sailors. How much did he pay for you?’

‘We didn’t do anything!’

‘Oh yeah? You expect me to believe you!’

I’d never seen my fiancé like this. In spite of the love for guns, he was not a violent man. He was a lot older than me, and I guess that had been his attraction. When the boys at school and University drank too much and hardly remembered what they’d done with you the morning after, my fiancé would cook a wonderful meal, or take me for long walks in the forest, or read me poems. He was never in a hurry and he never did anything without considering the consequences. And he’d never said a cross word to me. Until now.

‘You know he’ll have a girl like you in every port.’

I felt sick. Tears were running down my face. We were still sitting on my bed, fully clothed.

‘And what do you know about him – nothing! I bet you’ll never set your eyes on him again.’

I sobbed. I couldn’t look at him.

Suddenly his tone changed, ‘So what are you going to do?’

I looked at the brown eyes. It was as if the man I known so well was back again. ‘I don’t know.’

We were both silent for a long time. I could hear a lonely car somewhere in the distance. I wished I was in it, I wished I was anywhere else but here.

My fiancé put his arm over my shoulders. ‘Let’s get into bed.’ He was pleading now.

I nodded. It was late. I grabbed my nightie and went into the bathroom. I needed to be alone. In his fury my fiancé had expressed all the worries I had. What did I know about the Englishman? He was only 18 days older than me. He didn’t have a girlfriend, but he’d been writing to someone who he’d been seeing before. I hated her already. He was, tall, dark and handsome. He loved books and believed that character is fate. He told me to read Thomas Hardy. His lips tasted of the cigarettes he smoked and mint. He laughed a lot and when he did his eyes sparkled. He looked at me as if he wanted to wrap me up and protect me and devour me at the same time.

As I sat on the loo seat, shivering in my thin nightie, I realised I’d never felt this before. This was love. The stuff I’d read about in books since I was a teenager, and before. This was how Ryan O’Neal felt about Ali McGraw in ‘Love Story’, and Barbara Streisand about Robert Redford in ‘The Way We Were’. I grinned. I had wanted to pose the same question to the Englishman that Katie did to Hubbell, ‘Do you smile ALL the time?’ I sighed and flushed the empty loo and ran the water for a second or two. I didn’t want my fiancé to think I was doing what I was doing in there – daydreaming about the Englishman.

My fiancé was in bed already. When I lay beside him, he turned his face close to mine. I knew what he wanted. ‘I’m really tired,’ I said as gently as I could and turned my back to him. For a moment I could feel his body tense. He was lying on his back and from his breathing I knew he had his eyes open. I curled myself into a ball and forced my eyes shut. I felt his body move and press against mine. I remained motionless until I could hear his breathing steady and knew he was asleep.

How I came to be in England - Part 2

On a Thursday in mid October in 1980, I was baking bread in the small kitchenette of my Helsinki flat. It was two days after the Embassy Party where I'd met the Englishman. Who'd promised to phone and hadn't.

I knew sooner or later I'd have to come clean to my boyfriend. But not tonight. I started mixing flour with water and yeast. That's when the phone went. The Englishman sounded so elated when he heard my voice.

'You're late.'

'Sorry?' Now there was a serious tinge to his tone.

'Exactly 48 hours late.' We Finns don't beat about the bush. Nor do we do small talk. Not even with potential lovers, especially not with the unreliable ones.

I balanced the avocado coloured receiver between my neck and shoulder and listened. Even when he was being serious I could hear the smile in his voice. He'd rung the wrong number for two days. The digit 'one' that I'd written in lipstick on his napkin looked like a seven, he explained. A mate had told him Europeans write numbers differently.

'I see.' How could I believe this foreign sailor? They had loose morals, everyone knew that. I thought about my fiancé. Meeting up with the Englishman would end it. Was I really prepared to do that?

'Please, please come and meet me?'

'But it's impossible.'

There was a short pause. I held my breath, was he giving up on me?

'If I phone again in half an hour, you'll think about it?'

When I manoeuvred the receiver down with my floured hands, I thought, 'What if he doesn't call back?'

While I'd listened to his apologies I was already planning what to wear. Luckily I'd completely lost my appetite and my weight had plummeted. I rushed to wash my hands, phoned my mother, sister and best friend to canvass opinion on a) Whether to meet him and b) What to wear. I only really needed an answer to the latter.

We did all the things would-be lovers, who have nowhere to go, do: walked along the Esplanade under the steel coloured sky, flitted from one Helsinki bar to another. I was petrified we’d meet anyone I knew, especially as the handsome English Naval Officer insisted on holding me close to him. So I steered him to places I didn't think my boyfriend's posh family would be frequenting. Of course we bumped into his shipmates everywhere we went, causing hilarity and cheering.

‘We sail tomorrow,’ the Englishman said and asked me if he could kiss me. I couldn’t resist him.

'Can’t we go to your flat?’ he asked breathlessly

‘My boyfriend might be there. He has a key.’

When he insisted I had to tell him my fiancé had a hobby: guns. ‘He shoots moose, rabbits, wood pigeons, whatever he can find in the forest. He has a favourite handgun which he sometimes carries.’

The Englishman didn’t ask about my flat again.

When, gone past midnight, he put me into a taxi, I cried all the way home. I was convinced I'd never see the Englishman again. I felt very alone. Next day, or even that same night, if he was in my flat waiting for me, I’d have to confess all to my fiancé, and that would break off the engagement.

I shivered when I thought what his mother would say.