A Winter Book Part 8

He sighed of course, I couldn't hear him sigh in all that din but I saw his broad shoulders rise and fall. Clearly not all was as it should be at home. I know; it's the same with them all. Even this most elegant, cigar-smoking traveller with his gold lighter and his family posing in front of his swimming pool even him! I hurriedly began talking about the first thing that came into my head, the advantages of travelling light, and made up my mind to detach myself gradually from the man; I mean, get away as quickly as possible without seeming brusque. I dropped a hint by taking out my cabin key, laying it beside my gla.s.s and trying to catch the bartender's attention, naturally without success the crush round the bar was worse than ever, increasingly impatient and loud, and the poor man was working like a maniac.

"Two Black and Whites," said my travel companion in a low voice but with the sort of calm, powerful authority that ensures immediate results. He fixed his heavy gaze on me and raised his gla.s.s. Now I was caught.

"Thanks," I said. "How nice a little nightcap. It's getting rather late, I think."

He answered, "Not at all, Mr Melander. My name's Connaugh." And he laid his cabin key beside mine. "An incredible coincidence," I exclaimed, most put out.

"Oh no. I saw you coming out of the cabin. Your bag's very neatly labelled."

Suddenly I was jostled by the young man on my left as he leaned aggressively forward across the bar to demand a Cuba libre. He'd now had to ask three times but, no, everyone else must come first, typical, just what you'd expect... Mr Connaugh gave the youngster a very brief and very cold glance and said: "It seems to be time to get out of this place." But any relief I felt was destroyed by his next words: "I've got some whisky in the cabin and the night is long."

What could I do? Say I needed something to eat? He would have merely waited for me in the cabin. Now I could see him clearly: a forceful, dominating man who radiated unshakeable determination. Naturally I wanted to share the bill, but he dismissed the matter with a gesture and moved towards the door. I followed. We got into a crowded lift. The boat was teeming with people flocking round the fruit machines and sitting on the stairs. Their children were running all over the place and I was overcome by my old fear of crowds; when we finally reached the cabin I was trembling from head to foot. Mr Connaugh moved his luggage aside and took out a bottle of whisky, which he placed on the little table under the window; he had two silver cups as well. When he sat down the bunk creaked; it seemed altogether too puny and fragile for him. The cabin was first cla.s.s, a bit of self-indulgence I'd allowed myself for this trip but which should have been reserved for me alone. It had a minibar, an elegant little arrangement which contained soft drinks, crisps and salted nuts. I opened its door.

"No," said Mr Connaugh, "not mineral water. Drink your whisky with plain water like the Scots. My father came from Scotland." I hurried to the bathroom and filled my toothmug, stumbling a little in the doorway, which had an unusually high threshold. "Ice?" I asked.

He shook his head. When he'd poured a little water into his whisky, he leaned back and drank. My voyage had suddenly been altered and my peace destroyed. I was sure he wouldn't go to bed for hours. "To you," he said. Everything repeats itself. "To you," I said.

"Journeys, journeys, to and fro. And you know exactly where you're going, every time. Home and away again, away and home again." "Not necessarily," I objected. "There are times..." but he interrupted me.

I'd thought of telling him that, so far as I was concerned, I hadn't booked any hotel and had no idea where I was going to end up. I wanted to give him a fairly adventurous picture of my new, virtually self-centred freedom but he'd already launched into an account of his worries: wife, children, grandchildren, house and dog, the last-named having clearly died in very distressing circ.u.mstances. I closed up completely. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I effectively managed to shut off that dreadful compa.s.sion which has given both myself and those round me such fearful trouble, I use that word deliberately: fearful. Now perhaps you can understand why I started on my journey? Perhaps you have some idea of the depth of my fatigue, of my exhaustion and nausea in the face of this constant need to feel sorry for people?

Of course, one can't help feeling sorry for people. Every single one of us is afflicted by some secret, insurmountable disappointment, some form of anxiety or shame, and they sniff me out in no time. I mean, they know, their sense of smell leads them to me... Well, that's why I cleared off.

As I half-listened to Mr Connaugh I felt an enormous, and for me unaccustomed, anger gradually creeping over me. I emptied my gla.s.s and brutally interrupted him by saying, "Well, what d'you expect? Clearly you've driven them away by spoiling them. Or by scaring them! Why not let them be free to do what they want?" Maybe it was the effect of the whisky or whatever, but I added firmly: "Let go of them. The whole lot. And the house too!" But he was hardly listening and the photographs in his pocket-book had appeared again.

Sometimes all manifestations of human anxiety seem very similar to me at least the everyday matters that people continue to worry about when, so to speak, rain is no longer coming in through the roof, there is no shortage of food and no one is being physically threatened if you understand what I mean. Over and above factual catastrophes, miseries of one sort or another seem to repeat themselves with rather monotonous regularity so far as I've noticed: he or she is unfaithful or bored, someone's no longer enjoying their work, ambitions or dreams have gone out of shape, time's rapidly getting shorter, one's family is behaving in an incomprehensible and frightening way, a friendship has been totally poisoned by something trivial. One is frantically busy with inessentials, while what is important and irreparable goes from bad to worse, duty and blame nibble away at us and the whole syndrome is vaguely labelled angst, a spiritual malaise one seldom succeeds in defining or even tries to define. I know. One's opportunities for feeling ill at ease in life are countless and I recognise them, they constantly return, each affliction in its own little compartment. I should be familiar with this state of affairs and by now I should have found the right answer to the problem but I haven't. There is no practical answer, is there? So we just listen. And anyway, it seems no one is really interested in practical solutions; they just go on talking, they come back and talk about the same thing again and again, they won't let you go. And here I was now sitting with Mr Connaugh, desperately trying not to feel sorry for him. It was going to be rather a long journey. At that particular moment he was holding forth about his misunderstood childhood.

The boat had begun to roll, but not too badly. I never get seasick, but I announced very clearly: "Mr Connaugh, I don't feel very well." "Not Mr Connaugh," he said, "Albert. Didn't I say you should call me Albert? Well, that angst I was talking about..."

"Albert, I'm afraid I'm going to have to go up on deck. I need a little air, I'm not feeling well."

"No problem," he said. "What you need is a straight whisky now instantly. And you can have all the air you want." He attacked our window, you know the sort of cabin window they screw down firmly with goodness knows what kind of screw apparatus, but he got it open and a violent and extremely wet rush of ice-cold air took my breath away and blew the curtains horizontal while my gla.s.s fell to the floor. "Not bad," he said, much revived himself. "I've fixed it. Did you know I once dreamed of being a boxer? Now you'll feel better."

I reached for my overcoat.

"Albert," I said, "what is it you actually do?"

"Business," he answered shortly. My question had clearly depressed him again. There was a long silence. We raised our gla.s.ses to each other. Every now and then, salt spray drenched the table. I tried to say something funny about getting extra water in our drinks but it fell flat. To my horror I noticed Mr Connaugh's eyes were full of tears and his face was distorted. "You don't know," he said. "You don't know how it feels..."

It's when they start crying that I'm done for. I promise them anything my friendship for life, money (though naturally not in this case), my bed, to undertake the most disagreeable tasks, and if it's a big strong man who's weeping... I get desperate. I leaped up and proposed G.o.d knows what, the nightclub, the swimming pool, anything, but the boat rolled, making me lose my balance so that I was flung violently against Mr Connaugh. He grabbed me like a drowning man and leaned his great head on my shoulder. It was terrible. From many points of view my position was extremely awkward. I've never known anything like it. Luckily the boat gave an enormous lurch at that moment and a lot of water came in throught the window. Moving with lightning speed, Mr Connaugh rescued his bottle and set about s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g down the window as best he could. I rushed out into the corridor and escaped into blind flight through the bewildering open s.p.a.ces of the boat.

When I eventually stopped, utterly exhausted, I was almost alone and it was completely silent. I looked in through an open door. Deck-places. Of course, a large room full of low chairs, most of them already tipped backwards for the night. A large number of deck-pa.s.sengers lying asleep rolled in blankets. I went in, very carefully picked up a spare blanket and chose a chair as far off as possible, against the wall. Wonderful. To be able to sleep and sink into silence, oblivious of everything... I'd developed a terrible headache and I was very wet, but that was nothing, nothing at all. I pulled the blanket over my head and vanished into a total disinterested peace.

When I woke I had no idea where I was. Someone was trying to pull the blanket off me and kept saying that it was her chair, it was number thirty-one and it was her chair and she had a ticket to prove it... I sat up, dazed and confused, and began saying, "Excuse me, I mean it was a misunderstanding and the lighting's so bad, I really am very sorry..." "Don't mention it," said the woman sourly, "I'm used to misunderstandings, that's exactly what they're always called."

My headache had got even worse and I was freezing cold. As far as I could see, nearly all the chairs were already occupied by sleeping people, so I just sat down on the floor and tried to ma.s.sage my neck. "Haven't you got a ticket?" asked the woman severely.

"No."

"Have you lost it? This part of the boat's full too."

I said nothing. Perhaps they'd let me sleep on the floor.

"Why are you wet?" she asked. "You smell of whisky. My son Herbert drinks whisky. Once he fell in the lake."

She sat and watched me with my blanket up under my chin. She was a bony little grey-haired woman, tanned and with small sharp eyes. She'd put her hat at her feet. She went on: "My suitcase is over there. Please bring it here if you can. It's best to have your things close beside you in a place like this. Mind the cake-box. That's for Herbert."

Afterwards, more people came in, looking for their chairs. The boat was rolling violently and not far off someone was being sick into a bag.

"It'll be different in London," said the old woman, pulling her suitcase nearer. "I just need to find out where Herbert is right now. D'you know where you have to go to find out people's addresses?" "No," I said. "But perhaps the purser..."

"Are you going to sleep on the floor all night?"

"Yes. I'm very tired."

"I can understand." She added: "Whisky's expensive." And a little later: "Have you got any food in you?"

"No. I thought as much. There was food in the grill. But it was too expensive for me."

I huddled on the floor, b.u.t.toned up my overcoat and tried to sleep. It didn't work. How could this person go all the way to London without even knowing her son's address? And they'd be sure to stop her when she landed; these days you had to give references and prove you had enough money before they'd let you in... Where was she from? Somewhere in the country... She'd baked a cake for that son of hers... My G.o.d, how helpless and unpractical can you get!

I slept for a bit and woke again. She was snoring and had thrown an arm over the edge of the chair, her hand looked tired, a wrinkled brown hand with broad wedding and engagement rings. Now lots of people were being sick here and there round the room and the stench was frightful. I decided to go up on deck. My old dislike of lifts came over me at that moment, so I went up the stairs and pa.s.sed the grill. People were still sitting and eating there. I hesitated a moment, then bought several large sandwiches and a bottle of beer and went back down the stairs and managed to find the place I'd just come from. She was awake.

"No, but that really was so kind of you," she said and immediately attacked the sandwiches, "won't you have half?" But I wasn't hungry any more, and sat thinking about how much money she might need to be allowed to land. Wasn't there some sort of Christian hostel that looked after confused travellers? I must find the purser, perhaps he would know...

"My name's Emma f.a.gerberg," she said.

The person lying on the next chair emerged from under a blanket and said: "Shut up! I'm trying to sleep."

She pulled out her handbag from under her pillow. "You've been so kind," whispered Mrs Emma f.a.gerberg. "I'll show you some photos of my son. This is what Herbert looked like when he was four. The picture's a little blurred, but I have several others which are much better..."

Taking Leave.

THERE CAME A SUMMER WHEN IT WAS SUDDENLY AN effort to pull in the nets. The terrain became unmanageable and treacherous. This made us more surprised than alarmed, perhaps we weren't old enough yet, but to be on the safe side I built a couple of steps and Tooti fixed up some guide ropes and hand grips here and there, and we continued as usual but ate less fish.

It got worse: for example, when I no longer felt like going up on the roof to sweep the chimney (and made the excuse that I wanted to work, believe it or not). And that last summer something unforgivable happened: I became afraid of the sea. Large waves were no longer connected with adventure, only anxiety and responsibility for the boat, and indeed all boats that ply the sea in bad weather. It wasn't fair; even in my worst dreams the sea had always been an unfailing deliverance: the danger was after you, but you hopped in and sailed away and were safe and never returned. That fear felt like a betrayal my own.

Gradually we invented a secret game that involved making the objects change place. We imagined where these things, these too long-respected treasures, might be allowed to, as it were, wake up after their sleep whether they had been inherited, captured or found on the sh.o.r.e. Among the finest of them, perhaps, were a door panel with 'Captain's Cabin' in bra.s.s, grandfather's barometer and a mate's certificate washed up by the tide.

We had century-old net-floats with owners' marks and sinkers tied up in birch bark and elegant lettering from the finely dovetailed wooden crates that bobbed up on the beaches now and then Napoleon Cognac, Old Smuggler's Whisky, oranges from Jamaica and also a few items we had been given by well-meaning folk, such as a ship's log, a half-s.e.xtant and an enormous block from a ketch. Now all these more or less esteemed items were to be given to other islands where people still had enough of the pioneer in them to turn their houses into maritime museums.

We knew that now it was time to give the house away. We a.s.sured each other that it was more stylish to leave in time, before one was forced to, but this got a bit tedious if one said it too often.

I sat down and wrote that there is a fine balance between the absolute calm of arrival and the excitement of departure, then crossed out 'fine' and added 'both are indispensable' at the end, and began to wonder what I had really meant.

Gradually we began to put up small, helpful pieces of paper here and there, such as 'Don't close the damper; it rusts and sticks', 'The key is by the door-post', or 'Woollen stockings and socks under the boot rack', and so on. Certain objects had to be explained, for no one could be expected to know that an excrement-yellow lump weighing five kilos was seal fat for the preparation of the wooden jetty.

"How to get to the secret room?" I said, but Tooti considered that they could find it themselves, and one should not underestimate their natural curiosity. All the same, we put a small bottle of rum in there as a surprise and a reward.

It may be noted that in the winter Tooti's secret room contained fifty pistol cartridges, three sparking plugs, Ham's* best bark boat, the tools for the Honda, the barometer and father's statuette.

Tooti loves packing because she is so good at it. In former years, every time spring drew near she began to pack for the island as early as February, slightly embarra.s.sed at her joyful haste. I suppose I knew what was up when, first of all, she oiled Becker's little copperplate press and its rollers with Evergrease. On her list there were usually notes for Sangajol, Swarfega, turpentine and cotton waste, among other things. I knew it: after professional matters came tools, then books and music, then all the other things, such as: Blacking, Caramba Gun oil and lead subacetate Girls' Cookery Book and Book of Handy Hints Emergency pistol Shackle for Victoria + 25,30 Fishing line no. 26, 23, 20, 80cm Sail rings, hooks Copper nails, 2 fish chests (for the cat) 20kg apples Stone wax Mantles for Aladdin lamp Teak oil + 5 litres olive oil Norwegian thermal wear Seed potatoes Gas cylinders 5 and 10 litres, radio batteries Hinges for cellar hatch Gearbox lubricant and Sinol After that came all the food.

Those lists were very useful from one spring to the next, for one forgets more and more things during the winter. Now Tooti was packing for the city. We didn't talk about it much. The weather stayed fine.

One morning I took in the nets that were to be hung away in the cellar and suddenly reflected that I would never need to fish again. I went down to the old sawing-place in the ravine. The wild rose bushes there had grown so enormously that there was not much of the woodshed to be seen. All the same, I went and sat down under the cupola in order to think.

So I never had to fish again. Never again throw the slops into the sea or be afraid about rainwater, never again suffer agonies over Victoria and the fact that no one, no one, had any need to concern themselves with us! Good. Then I began to think: why can't a meadow be allowed to run wild in peace and quiet, and why can't the pretty stones be allowed to tumble down as they want to without being admired, and so on, and gradually I got angry and thought that the cruel bird war could look after itself and as far as I was concerned any d.a.m.ned gull that liked was welcome to suppose that it owned the whole house!

I went home again and began a list, 'Reasons For Not Living On An Island', and Tooti looked in and said: "Are you writing? If it's about Victoria's shipwreck but don't be hurt now..."

"Alright, tell me," I said.

"Well, if you could try to be a little objective for once. Don't set the gale on an autumn night, but tell it the way it was: it came in the middle of the day, in the middle of summer, on 15 July 1991. Report that it was 9 on the Beaufort scale, 2024 metres per second, south-easterly, of course. And write it in the present tense, which makes it seem more dramatic. Like this, for example: the sea rises violently, turning black and speckled, the house gives a shudder, and then it's all over."

I said: "How about 'the birds are silent'?"

"That's alright," said Tooti, "but anyhow, Victoria is taken by surprise, there are a.s.saults from every side, backwash from the stern, water over the prow, she fights bravely on her four ropes write that I fitted new ones every spring and all her shackles. Say that now the sea is coming in over the stern thwart, just a little splash, and then another little splash, but it goes on and on! Draw it out as long as you can."

I knew. Tooti stood on watch at the north window all night; sometimes she would pop below to check that the ropes were slack, then just go on standing. I think that at those times she talked to the boat.

"Continue," said Tooti. "Write that at ten past four Victoria filled with water to the gunwale and sank, slowly and n.o.bly. Write that at eight o'clock I made contact with Pellinge on our newly installed radio telephone. I report, very calmly, that now it has happened and they think it's you who have tumbled down the rock, but I say: 'Victoria has been wrecked.' They bestir themselves and set out at once to see what's up, but can't even contemplate putting to land in that heavy sea, so we just wave to one another. Nonetheless, they come out once again..."

I interrupted her and said wasn't it getting a bit too long, but Tooti went on: "They come out a second time and now they have two sea captains and a pilot aboard. The sea has gone down just enough so they can lift Victoria out of the water and haul her to land by her stern ropes and she glides along on her ropes, undamaged. Imagine that: glides exactly midway between the rocks and the gale and doesn't lose anything but her forward grating and the Yamaha battery! Write that I started up the Yamaha just for the good of the cause and that it ran for almost ten minutes! And that I'd stowed the oars below the thwart so they were still there."

That year, quite late in the autumn, Brunstrom came by. He promised to look after Uncle Torsten's nets, some four-inch planks and half a sack of cement.

"So you'll leave," he said. "Anyone can see there's not much spare stuff left round here any more."

He made a tour around the house in order to make sure that everything was in order and we followed after. The water b.u.t.ts were turned upside down in the proper fashion and secured so they would not blow away, the window shutters ready to be closed with hasps, and various items prepared for the approaching winter.

Brunstrom thought we had left it all very cosy and even inhabitable, though the veranda planks could do with a coating, in view of the snow that was to come. He said: "And now we'll go and take a look at another kind of island I doubt you ever thought of."

It was dead calm. Brunstrom steered straight to the south, quite a long distance. He put in at an islet that was very high and steep, formed from three roundworn rocks close together. Between them plunged deep fissures, in which the water ceaselessly rose and fell, even though the sea was completely still. The islet was made of black rock, not like our part of the world.

Brunstrom waited in the boat, for there was nowhere to moor.

"Well, what do you think?" he said. "Not a blade of gra.s.s grows here; there's nothing and nothing, and in a way I think that's precisely the beauty of it."

Tooti wanted to know what the islet was called, but it had no name. When we got home the timber was loaded into Brunstrom's boat and we got on with coating the veranda planks with tar because the Valtii impregnant was finished.

On the last day, when Tooti was clearing up the cellar, she found one of our kites from the 1960s and took it out onto the slope. Just for fun, she gave it a little push on its tail and at that moment a gust of wind came along and took the kite with it and it flew high, straight up, and continued far out across the Gulf of Finland.

* Ham Tove's mother, the artist Signe Hammarsten Jansson.

Afterwords.

Philip Pullman.

Tove Jansson was a rare and extraordinary writer: a being seemingly composed equally of woman, nature spirit, sea creature and Moomin, whose consciousness was both exquisitely local (the famous island where she lived every summer) and generously universal (her understanding of all the processes of life and the pa.s.sage of time).

These stories show a side of her that may be new to some British readers, who perhaps think of her, if at all, as a writer of charming stories for children. They are as tough as good rope, these stories, as smooth and odd and beautiful as sea-worn driftwood, as full of light and air and wind as the Nordic summer. We are lucky to have them collected at last.

Esther Freud.

These stories are infused with such a strong sense of Tove Jansson's character that by the last page you feel on almost intimate terms with her. Determined, indignant, fearless, as a child, we see how she develops have the luxury of glimpsing her as an old lady too, still determined, still indignant, so that it is with a shock that we catch her for both her and us in a rare moment of fear. But what never changes about Tove Jansson is her pa.s.sion for nature, her love of the bleak rocks and shrieking gulls of the Pelinge peninsular and, above all, the sea. As a young girl she disobeys her father and rows out into a rough sea by moonlight 'all splinters and flakes from precious stones like sailing through a sea set with diamonds', and many years later we recognise the same stubborn core of the woman who declares war on a squirrel, the only other inhabitant of her island home.

Frank Cottrell Boyce.

As a child I knew all there was to know about the world Tove Jansson created the Moominvalley and the Lonely Mountains but nothing whatsoever about her. I never saw a picture of her, had no idea if she was alive, dead, male or female. So meeting the real Tove in these stories has been an exciting and unnerving experience a bit like meeting my own guardian angel.

Luckily Tove seems to have been all that a guardian angel should be wise, stern and flighty. Like an angel, she thinks that humans are funny and vulnerable tiny creatures busily acc.u.mulating grandeur and clutter on the surface of a dangerous and unpredictable planet. In an era when the weather seems to be going haywire, this is an exhilaratingly prescient vision.

But she also has a strong sense that, if we're kind to each other, and if we take the time to learn to how to do things properly if we make sure there's enough firewood, and that the roof doesn't leak then somehow it will all be alright and possibly fun.

My favourite story here is 'The Iceberg'. A little girl sees an iceberg and dreams of riding away on it. The iceberg comes within her reach but, instead of jumping on board, she only wedges her torch in a little grotto at its base and watches it float away, illuminated now with a new inner light, like a great floating emerald. She does not go out and conquer the wilderness. She does not return home with trophies of antlers or wild flowers. She gives away something of herself and somehow gains. And obviously, being Tove, she makes sure the torch has fresh batteries.

I'm very glad I set such store by Tove Jansson as a child. She's been a good guardian angel to me.

Other Tove Janssson t.i.tles.

published by Sort Of Books.

The Summer Book.

The True Deceiver.

Fair Play.

Traelling Light.