My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(93)

He seems to be looking for the right word. Elsa gives it to him.

“Needed.”

“Yes.”

“And then Mum grew up?”

“She moved away. Went to university. The house went bloody quiet, for a bloody long time. And then she came back with your father and was pregnant.”

“I was going to be all of Britt-Marie’s second chances,” Elsa says in a low voice, nodding.

“And then your grandmother came home,” says Alf, and stops by a stop sign.

They don’t say a lot more about that. Like you don’t when there’s not a great deal more to be said. Alf briefly puts his hand on his chest, as if something is itching under his jacket.

Elsa looks at the zip.

“Did you get that scar in a war?”

Alf’s gaze becomes somewhat defensive. She shrugs.

“You’ve got a massive scar on your chest. I saw it when you were wearing your dressing gown. You really should buy yourself a new dressing gown, by the way.”

“I was never in that sort of war. No one ever fired at me.”

“So that’s why you’re not broken?”

“Broken like who?”

“Sam. And Wolfheart.”

“Sam was broken before he became a soldier. And not all soldiers are like that. But if you see the shit those boys saw, you need some help when you get back. And this country’s so bloody willing to put billions into weapons and fighter jets, but when those boys come home and they’ve seen the shit they’ve seen, no one can be bothered to listen to them even for five minutes.”

He looks gloomily at Elsa.

“People have to tell their stories, Elsa. Or they suffocate.”

“Where did you get the scar, then?”

“It’s a pacemaker.”

“Oh!”

“You know what it is?” Alf asks skeptically.

Elsa looks slightly offended.

“You really are a different damned kid.”

“It’s good to be different.”

“I know.”

They drive up the highway while Elsa tells Alf that Iron Man, who’s a kind of superhero, has a type of pacemaker. But really it’s more of an electromagnet, because Iron Man has shrapnel in his heart and without the magnet the shrapnel would cut holes in it and then he’d die. Alf doesn’t look as though he entirely understands the finer points of the story, but he listens without interrupting.

“But they operate on him and remove the magnet at the end of the third film!” Elsa tells him excitedly, then clears her throat and adds, slightly shamefaced: “Spoiler alert. Sorry.”

Alf doesn’t look as if this is concerning him very much. To be entirely honest, he doesn’t look as if he knows exactly what a “spoiler” is, unless it’s a part of a car.

It’s snowing again, and Elsa decides that even if people she likes have been shits on earlier occasions, she has to learn to carry on liking them. You’d quickly run out of people if you had to disqualify all those who at some point have been shits. She thinks that this will have to be the moral of this story. Christmas stories are supposed to have morals.

Alf’s telephone rings from the compartment between the seats. He checks the display, but doesn’t answer. It rings again.

“Aren’t you going to answer?” wonders Elsa.

“It’s Kent. I suppose he wants to mouth off about some crap to do with the accountant and those leasehold conversion bastards, that’s all he ever thinks about. He can bloody go on about it tomorrow,” mutters Alf.

The telephone rings again; Alf doesn’t answer. It rings a third time. Elsa picks it up, irritated, and answers even though Alf swears at her. There’s a woman at the other end. She’s crying. Elsa hands the phone to Alf. It trembles against his ear. His face becomes transparent.

It’s Christmas Eve. The taxi makes a U-turn. They go to the hospital.

Alf doesn’t stop for a single red light.



Elsa sits on a bench in a corridor talking to Mum on the telephone, while Alf is in a room talking to a doctor. The nurses think Elsa is a grandchild, so they tell her that he had a heart attack but he’s going to be all right. Kent is going to survive.

There’s a young woman standing outside the room. She’s crying and she’s beautiful. Smells strongly of perfume. She smiles faintly at Elsa and Elsa smiles back. Alf steps out of the room and nods without smiling at the woman; the woman disappears out the door without meeting his eyes.

Alf doesn’t say a word, just marches back to the entrance and out into the parking lot, with Elsa behind him. And only then does Elsa see Britt-Marie. She’s sitting absolutely still on the bench, wearing her floral-print jacket although it’s below freezing. She’s forgotten her brooch. The paintball stain is shining. Britt-Marie’s cheeks are blue and she’s spinning her wedding ring on her finger. She has one of Kent’s shirts in her lap; it smells freshly laundered and has been perfectly ironed.

“Britt-Marie?” Alf’s voice rasps out in the evening gloom, and he stops a yard from her.

She doesn’t answer. Just lets her hand wander over the shirt collar in her lap. Gently brushes away something invisible from a fold. Carefully folds one cuff link under the other. Straightens out a wrinkle that isn’t there.