If his father knew of it, he said nothing. But he tended to leave more and more to Anders. Anders, in turn, leaned on Klara. She was willing to share her experience with him, which was a great help as his final exams were now only weeks away.
On a sunny day in June, Patrik Almkvist sat next to his wife Gunilla for their son’s graduation. William had stayed at home because of business commitments, he said. Privately, Anders thought that might just have been a diplomatic retreat. It might have been a miserable ordeal. Instead, Anders was pleased to see, it wasn’t just good manners that kept them all smiling throughout the afternoon and into the evening. He realised that now his parents no longer lived together, they could relax. To his astonishment, a kind of friendship had emerged and they were both able to enjoy their son’s achievements.
The conversation over dinner was filled with talk of the future: for a long time, it had been planned that after his graduation Anders would spend a year in a big American firm of accountants, a place with a distinguished name where he would learn a great deal in a short time. It had all been arranged with the senior partners, and Anders was hugely looking forward to it. Klara had been very helpful with her Boston contacts and had arranged everything. Gunilla had contacts there too, it emerged, and he would have a marvellous time in the city. As they strolled through the streets of Gothenburg, Anders felt that everything was falling into place.
The following morning, Patrik Almkvist collapsed in the hotel lobby.
It was a heart attack.
It was not major, the hospital told them; Mr Almkvist was not in any danger but still he had to rest. Anders and Gunilla sat by his bedside for two days and then, as his mother flew back to London, Anders took his father back home to Stockholm.
Fru Karlsson took charge immediately, and Anders knew his father would be in good hands. He was making arrangements with her for home nursing and support but his father cut straight across.
‘There’s no way you can go to Boston now. You have to go in at the deep end, Anders. I need you in there as my eyes and ears. It’s your time now.’
It couldn’t be his time yet. He was much too young. He hadn’t even begun to live properly.
Boston was cancelled. Soon it seemed as if Anders had always been in charge; he welcomed the challenges, yet he knew he would not have been able to cope without Klara’s expertise and loyalty. She briefed him before every meeting, gave him background information on every client. He did make time to swim at lunchtime each day rather than go to eat the heavy meals in dark, panelled dining rooms that the previous regime had favoured. Once a week he went to listen to some live music but every other evening he sat with his father as Fru Karlsson cleared away their supper, and he spoke about what had gone on at the firm that day.
Little by little, Mr Almkvist’s strength returned. But never to the level it had been. When he came back to work it was for short days and mainly involved meetings in the boardroom, where his presence managed to give weight and importance to the occasion.
The weeks turned into months.
Sometimes Anders felt a bit crushed by it all; other times he felt that out there somewhere was a real world with people doing what they really wanted to do or what mattered, or both. But he realised that he was privileged to have inherited such a prestigious position. In a world of uncertainty and anxiety about employment and the economy, he was amazingly lucky to be where he was, doing a job that presented new challenges every day. Privilege brought duties with it; he had always known this. This was where his duty lay.
It was his father who suggested the holiday to him.
He said that the boy was working too hard and must go to recharge his batteries. Anders was at a loss to know where to go. His friend Johan from the folk club said that Ireland was good. You could just go there and point yourself in some direction and there was always something good to see or to join in with.
He booked a ticket to Dublin and set out with no plans. Unheard-of behaviour from anyone at Almkvist’s, who normally researched everything forensically before setting out anywhere. He missed Erika desperately at the airport. They had set out from here to London, to Spain, to Greece. Now he was on his own.
Had he been mad to let her slip away?
But there had been no other decision he could have made. Anders could not have stayed for ever with Erika in Gothenburg, where she had found the perfect career. And she would not have come to live in the shadow of Almkvist’s and be a complaisant company wife like his mother had done.
He had hoped that he would forget her, and it was easy to find companions for dinner or dancing. As the heir to Almkvist’s he was considered a very eligible catch, but no woman ever held his interest for long. He went to all the social occasions but never cared about anyone enough to seek out their company, and he had been pleased to learn that Erika had not formed any other attachment. Now, at the airport, he wanted so much to speak to her and tell her he was going to Ireland. She answered her phone immediately and was genuinely glad to hear from him. She seemed interested in everything he had to say, but then Erika was always interested in everything and everyone. It didn’t make him special.
‘Are you going with friends?’ she asked.
‘I don’t want to go with friends,’ he said ruefully. ‘I want to go with you.’
‘No, you don’t get the sympathy vote by saying something like that. You have all the friends you need. You have the life you chose.’ Her tone was light but she meant it. He had made his choice. ‘You’ll make lots of new friends in Ireland. I go to an Irish bar here. They have great music. They’re easy people to get to know.’
‘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 k
new 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.