英语小说网

Britt-Marie wakes up with a headache of the most spectacular kind. She's lying in her bed in Bank's house. A neighbor seems to be drilling the wall. The whole room sways when she gets up. She's sweating, her body aching and her mouth laced with a sort of sharp bitterness. Britt-Marie is obviously a woman with a certain amount of life experience, so she understands her condition immediately. The day after she has drunk more alcohol in Sami's home than her total intake in the last forty years there can only be one reasonable conclusion:

"I've got flu!" she explains to Bank in a knowing sort of way, when she comes down to the kitchen.

"You smell of spirits," Bank states, without quite managing to stop herself looking amused.

Bank is making bacon and eggs. The dog sniffs the air and moves a little farther away from Britt-Marie.

"That's right. Which is obviously why I feel the way I do today," says Britt-Marie with a nod.

"I thought you said you'd come down with flu," says Bank.

Britt-Marie nods helpfully.

Britt-Marie closes her eyes, holding back her nausea, and gives the eggs to the dog. Bank puts a glass of cold water in front of her instead. Britt-Marie drinks. Flu makes people dehydrated. She's read all about it.

"Flu, right then," mumbles Bank and puts the eggs on the table for Britt-Marie.

"I mean Kent's children."

"Mine and Kent's children were ill all the time; if it wasn't one thing it was another -- but as for myself I am never ill. 'Britt-Marie, you're as healthy as a nut kernel!' That's what my doctor always says, he really does!"

"But my dear, that's precisely what I'm saying! It's the only reasonable explanation. When you drink alcohol your immune system is knocked out, you have to understand. And that's why I've got the flu."

She drinks her water in silence. The dog and Bank have their eggs. They go with her to meet the soccer team, because Britt-Marie is not the sort of woman who bunks off work just because she has flu. The dog makes a demonstrative loop around the flower bed outside the house because it stinks as if someone has vomited there in the course of the night.

When neither Bank nor the dog answer, Britt-Marie breathes deeply and her eyes blink forlornly. Her words seem drained of oxygen when she corrects herself:

Somebody is sitting inside the broken front door of the pizzeria, drinking coffee, when they get there. She grimaces when Britt-Marie comes too close, and Britt-Marie pulls an even uglier face back.

"This tastes of pepper!" splutters Britt-Marie.

"And you, Britt? Have you been, what's-it-called? On fire and trying to put it out with whiskey?"

Bank pokes Somebody's wheelchair with her stick.

The dog goes to sit in the gravel, carefully placing itself upwind. Bank holds out her stick with her arm straightened to make sure she's out of spitting range. Somebody frowns and fetches a cloth to wipe down the table between them, while muttering:

"It stinks in here. Have you been smoking inside?" she asks, almost with a note of accusation.

Somebody wrinkles her nose.

"Stop going on now and give her a Bloody Mary."

"What's that?" asks Britt-Marie as brightly as she's able.

"I'll have you know that I've got the flu," snorts Britt-Marie.

"It helps against… flu," mutters Bank.

Somebody disappears into the kitchen and comes back with a glass filled with what looks like tomato juice. Britt-Marie sips it skeptically, before spitting it out at the dog. It does not look at all pleased about it.

Britt-Marie certainly has no idea what that's supposed to mean. But she makes her polite apologies to Somebody and Bank and explains she has a few things to do in the recreation center and actually can't stay here all morning making a fuss about things. Then she briskly walks across the parking area, continues in a controlled manner into the recreation center toilet, and locks the door behind her.

"Don't know what flu you have, Britt, but do me a favor, huh, what's-it-called? Don't light a match near your breath before you brush your teeth, huh? Pizzeria has no fire insurance, you know."

When she comes out Sven is squatting by the pizzeria door, putting the hinges back in. He stumbles to his feet and removes his police cap when he catches sight of her. There's a toolbox at his feet. He tries to smile.

"I just thought that I, well, that I would mend the door. I thought…"

"Yes, I mean, I'll sweep up here. It was… I'm, I mean, I'm sorry!"

"Ha," says Britt-Marie and looks at the wood splinters around his feet.

He looks as if that last bit is about more important things than wood splinters. He moves out of the way, and she slinks past. Holding her breath even though she has brushed her teeth.

She closes her eyes and nods. Waits until her common sense has silenced the part of her that wishes he'd touch her.

"I'm, I mean, I'm very sorry about yesterday," he says wretchedly to her back.

She stops without turning around. He clears his throat.

"I mean, I never meant to make you feel… the way you felt. I would never want to be the one to make you feel… like that."

"I'll get the vacuum cleaner," she whispers after that. She knows he's looking at her as she walks away. Her steps become awkward, as if she's forgotten how to walk without putting one foot on top of the other. All her words to him are like staying in a hotel, new and curious and tentatively fumbling for switches on the wall, repeatedly turning on different lights than those she wanted to turn on.

Somebody comes rolling after her into the kitchen, where she's opening the broom cupboard to get out the pizzeria's vacuum cleaner.

"Here. Came for you."

It takes years to get to know a human being. An entire life. It's what makes a home a home.

Britt-Marie stares at the bouquet in her hands. Tulips. Purple. Britt-Marie loves purple tulips, to the extent that Britt-Marie can love anything without viewing it as an unseemly burst of emotion. Tenderly she holds it in her hands and does her utmost not to get the shivers. "I love you," it says on the card. From Kent.

At a hotel you're only a visitor. Hotels don't know your favorite flowers.

She doesn't meet Sven's eyes when she comes back out of the kitchen. Is grateful that the noise of the vacuum cleaner is drowning out with its noise all the things that should not be said.

She fills her lungs with tulips; during one long inhalation she is there again, at her own dish rack and in her own broom cupboard and on rugs that she knows the whereabouts of because she put them there herself. White shirts and black shoes and a damp towel on the bathroom floor. All Kent's things. All Kent-things. You just can't rebuild things like that. You wake up one morning and realize that you're too old to check in to a hotel.

The first little tinkle from the friendly bell above the door, after Sven has mended it, rings out when the men with beards and caps come in to drink their coffee and read their newspapers. But one of them asks when the first match is starting and when Omar tells them, the men check their wristwatches. As if for the first time in ages they have a schedule to keep to.

"Ah. That sort of flu. Sami had that this morning as well," laughs Omar.

Then come Vega, Omar, Ben, Toad, and Dino, exactly on time, and Britt-Marie busies herself with fitting them out in their newly washed soccer kits. Vega looks searchingly at Britt-Marie and asks if she's hungover, because actually she looks hungover, says the girl. Britt-Marie makes it clear in every possible way that she's certainly no such thing, that she's merely come down with the flu.

One of them rivets her eyes into Britt-Marie and points at her.

The second tinkle from the bell above the door comes when the two ancient women with walkers come dragging themselves over the threshold.

Britt-Marie can't tell if these are words or sounds. Vega leans forward and whispers:

"She's asking if you're our coach."

"Err yow thoon she oa treena de boos?"

Britt-Marie nods without taking her eyes off the tip of the ancient woman's finger, as if it's about to open fire. At this confirmation, the ancient woman produces a bag from a little shelf under the handle of the walker, and presses it into Britt-Marie's arms.

"Frout aia de boos!"

"She says it's fruit for the boys on the team," Vega interprets helpfully.

"Shera havan esstrofrout!"

The ancient woman glares at her. Then she glares at Vega and the soccer jersey she's wearing. The other ancient woman pushes her way forward and grunts something to the first ancient woman, whereupon the first ancient woman points at Vega and glares at Britt-Marie:

"Ha. I should like to inform you there's also a girl in the team," informs Britt-Marie.

"They're saying I should have extra fruit," says Vega, pleased to hear this and taking the bag from Britt-Marie to peer inside.

"She's saying you and Bank have to take us to town and tell those bastards Borg isn't dead," says Vega, with her mouth full of apple.

When she looks up again the two ancient women are standing so close to her that you couldn't get an A4 sheet of paper between them. The women point at her and Bank.

"Yer yunguns shall teek th' chouldrin un goo ter de blousted folk in toon un tall erm Borg ainnit derd! We ainitt derd hire! Tell doose bastourds dait, hire wha' I see?"

"Ha," says Britt-Marie, frenetically adjusting her skirt in every possible way she can think of.

Bank stands on the other side of Britt-Marie with a grin on her face.

Britt-Marie, who wasn't even referred to as a "young one" when she was young, can't quite think what to say to that. So she just pats one of the women's walkers, slightly at a loss, and says:

"And she called you a 'young one,' Britt-Marie."

"Ha. Thank you, then. Thank you kindly."

The women grunt and drag themselves out again. Somebody fetches the keys to the white car with the blue door and, in between chewing, Vega informs Britt-Marie that they have to pick up Max on the way.

Britt-Marie closes her eyes and squeezes her eyelids tightly until her headache retreats. Then she nervously fidgets with the car keys, coughs quietly, and holds them out to Sven without making eye contact.

Omar laughs loudly and mockingly. Vega chases him out into the parking area with apples and mangos whizzing past the back of his head.

"Ha. I was under the impression that you didn't like him," says Britt-Marie with surprise.

"Are you going to start now as well?!" roars Vega at once, so that the apple sprays out of her mouth and ricochets between them.

"It's not appropriate driving a car when you have… the flu."

Sven removes his cap when they get into the car. He doesn't even need to say he's doing it out of empathy. He doesn't want Britt-Marie to start worrying about what people might think if she's driven to the soccer competition by a policeman. Especially not in a white car with a blue door.

Nor does he say anything about how there are considerably more passengers and dogs in the car than what is suitable from both a legal and a hygienic point of view, especially as the dog and Toad have to sit in the trunk because there isn't any other space available. In the end, he does timidly point out that the car needs filling up. And asks her if she'd like him to do it. She answers that there's certainly no need for that, because she can absolutely manage that bit herself. It's her car, after all, whether it has a blue door or not.

"It's the one in the middle," she says in a low voice to Britt-Marie without herself reaching for the petrol pump.

Britt-Marie looks at her in a panic.

"I didn't think about it until I got out of the car, you have to understand. That I don't know how you…"

Vega points at the pump in the middle. Britt-Marie grabs hold of it as if worried that it might be alive. Vega leans forward and unscrews the petrol cap.

Britt-Marie smiles faintly and tenderly removes a loose hair from the shoulder of Vega's jersey.

Her voice cracks. Vega tries to make herself as broad-chested as she can so Sven can't see anything from the window. She reaches out and touches Britt-Marie's hand.

"Kent always filled up the car. He was always the one who… it's always been him."

"It doesn't matter, Coach."

After she's stood with one hand clasped in the other in front of the petrol pump for ten minutes, the back door opens and Vega crawls out of a tangle of arms, legs, soccer boots, and dog heads, and comes to stand next to her, carefully positioning herself so that she blocks Sven's point of view.

Then she grins so you can see more clearly than ever that she's Sami's sister.

"My mother," says Vega.

"You don't have to support Liverpool from the day you're born, Coach. You can learn to do it when you're grown up."

"Who taught you all this?" asks Britt-Marie.

It's a day for the soccer cup, and for farewells, and it's the day Britt-Marie puts fuel in her own car. She would have been capable of climbing mountains or crossing oceans, if someone had asked her to.