英语小说网

It is very, very difficult to be the one who has to stay behind and live without them.

It's difficult ending a fairy tale. All tales have to end sometime, of course. Some can't finish soon enough. This one, for example, could feasibly have been rounded off and packed away long ago. The problem is this whole issue of heroes at the ends of fairy tales, and how they are supposed to "live happily to the end of their days." This gets tricky, from a narrative perspective, because the people who reach the end of their days must leave others who have to live out their days without them.

It's dark by the time they leave the vet's. They used to make snow-angels outside the house on the night before Elsa's birthday. That was the only night of the year Granny didn't say crappy things about the angels. It was one of Elsa's favorite traditions. She goes with Alf in Taxi. Not so much because she doesn't want to go with Dad, but because Dad told her Alf was furious with himself for being in the garage with Taxi when the whole thing with Sam happened. Angry because he wasn't there to protect Elsa.

Alf and Elsa don't talk very much in Taxi, of course; this is what happens when you don't have so much to say. And when Elsa at last says she has to do something at home on their way to the hospital, Alf doesn't ask why. He just drives. He's good in that way, Alf.

"I'm bloody sixty-four years old," grunts Alf.

"That's not an answer."

"Can you make snow-angels?" asks Elsa when Taxi stops outside the house.

Alf turns off Taxi's engine. "I may be sixty-four years old, but I wasn't sixty-four when I was born! Course I can make bloody snow-angels!"

And then they make snow-angels. Ninety-nine of them. And they never talk much about it afterwards. Because certain kinds of friends can be friends without talking much.

The woman in jeans sees them from her balcony. She laughs. She's getting good at that.

Dad is waiting for them at the hospital entrance when they get there. A doctor goes past who, for a moment, Elsa thinks she might recognize. And then she sees George, and she runs across the entire waiting room and throws herself into his arms. He is wearing his shorts over his leggings and he has a glass of ice-cold water for Mum in his hand.

Elsa nods. "I know. That's because you're different."

"Thanks for running!" says Elsa, with her arms around him.

"I'm quite good at running," he says quietly.

"What's that got to do with anything?" the nurse thunders. "No visitors today!" she snaps with absolute certainty before spinning around and marching back into Mum's room.

Dad and Elsa stay where they are, patiently waiting and nodding, because they suspect this will sort itself out. For Mum may be Mum, but she is also Granny's daughter. Remember the man in the silver car, just before Elsa was born? No one should mess with Mum when she's giving birth.

Dad looks at Elsa and you can see he's jealous but trying not to show it. He's good like that. George looks at her too, overwhelmed.

And then she goes with Dad to see Mum. And George stays behind for so long with the glass of water that in the end it's back to room temperature.

There's a stern-looking nurse standing outside Mum's room who refuses to let Elsa inside, because apparently Mum has had a complicated delivery. That's how the nurse puts it, sounding very firm and emphatic when she pronounces the "com" in "complicated." Elsa's dad clears his throat.

"Are you new here, by any chance?"

Thirty seconds was considerably longer than Elsa and Dad thought it would take. But in probably no more than another three or four seconds, Mum adds another roar: "I COULDN'T GIVE A SHIT! I'LL FIND A STETHOSCOPE SOMEWHERE IN THIS HOSPITAL AND THEN I'LL THROTTLE YOU WITH IT!"

"BRING MY DAUGHTER IN HERE BEFORE I THROTTLE YOU WITH THE STETHOSCOPE AND LEVEL THE HOSPITAL TO THE GROUND, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"

It takes maybe thirty seconds before the corridor reverberates until the pictures on the wall are practically rattling.

The nurse steps out into the corridor again. She doesn't look quite as self-assured anymore. The doctor that Elsa thought she recognized turns up behind her and says in a friendly voice that they can "probably make an exception this time." He smiles at Elsa. Elsa inhales determinedly and steps over the threshold.

Mum has tubes everywhere, all over her body. They hug as hard as Elsa dares without accidentally pulling one of them out. She imagines that one of them may be an electrical power cable, and that Mum will go out like a light if that happens. Mum repeatedly runs her hand through Elsa's hair.

Elsa sits in silence for so long on the edge of her bed that her cheeks dry and she has time to think about an entirely new way of measuring time. This whole thing with eternities and the eternities of fairy tales is becoming a bit unmanageable. There must be something less complicated -- blinking, for example, or the beating of a hummingbird's wings. Someone must have thought about this. She's going to Wikipedia it when she gets home.

She looks at Mum, who looks happy. Elsa pats her hand. Mum grabs on to it. "I know I'm not a perfect mum, darling."

"I am so very, very sorry about your friend the wurse," she says gently.

Elsa puts her forehead against Mum's forehead. "Not everything has to be perfect, Mum."

"I work so much, darling. I used to be so angry at your grandmother for never being home, and now I'm just the same myself…"

"No superheroes are perfect, Mum. It's cool."

They sit so close that Mum's tears run down the tip of Elsa's nose.

Elsa wipes both their noses with her Gryffindor scarf.

Mum smiles. Elsa as well.

"I think she talked about your grandfather without your noticing," whispers Mum.

Elsa retracts her hands into her sweater. And slowly swings the empty sleeves in front of her. "Did he laugh a lot?"

"Can I ask you something?"

"You have his laugh."

Mum looks hesitant. As mums get when they are accustomed to being able to predict their daughters' questions, and then suddenly find they were wrong about that. Elsa shrugs.

"Always. Always, always, always. That was why he loved your grandmother. Because she got him to laugh with every bit of his body. Every bit of his soul."

"Of course you can," says Mum.

"How am I like him, then?"

"How am I like your father?"

"From Granny I have the thing about being different. And I'm a know-it-all like Dad, and I always end up rowing with everyone, which I have from Granny. So what do I have from your dad? Granny never told me any stories about him."

Mum can't quite bring herself to answer. Elsa breathes tensely through her nose. Mum lays her hands on Elsa's cheeks and Elsa dries Mum's cheeks with the Gryffindor scarf.

Elsa climbs up next to Mum in the hospital bed and lies there for probably a billion wingbeats of a hummingbird. "Granny wasn't a complete shit. She just wasn't not a complete shit either," she says.

And then they lie there talking about superheroes for quite a while. Mum says now that Elsa has become someone's big sister, she has to bear in mind that big sisters are always idols to their younger siblings. And it's a great power to have. A great force.

"And with great power comes great responsibility," whispers Mum.

Elsa sits bolt upright in the bed. "Have you been reading Spider-Man?!"

"I Googled him," Mum says with a proud grin.

And then all the guilty feelings rush over her face. As they do with mothers who have realized that the time has come to reveal a great secret.

"Elsa! Language!" And then Mum laughs out loud. Elsa as well. Grandfather's laugh.

"Elsa… my darling… the first letter from Grandmother. It wasn't you who got it. There was another letter before yours. Grandmother gave it to me. The day before she died…"

Mum looks as if she's standing on the edge of a high diving board with everyone watching and has just decided she can't go through with it.

But Elsa just nods calmly, shrugs, and pats Mum on the cheek, as you do with a small child who has done wrong because it doesn't know any better.

Mum blinks awkwardly at her.

"I know, Mum. I know."

"What? You know? How do you know?"

Mum laughs so loudly and for so long about it that Elsa starts getting seriously worried about the hummingbird.

Elsa sighs patiently. "I mean, yeah, okay, it took me a bit of time to figure it out. But it wasn't exactly, like, quantum physics. First of all, not even Granny would have been so irresponsible as to send me out on a treasure hunt without telling you first. And secondly, only you and I can drive Renault, because he's a bit different, but I drove him sometimes when Granny was eating kebab and you drove him sometimes when Granny was drunk. So it must have been one of us who parked him in the garage in Britt-Marie's space. And it wasn't me. And I'm sort of not an idiot. I can count."

Mum smiles and Elsa wipes her cheeks again with the Gryffindor scarf.

"What did Granny write in your letter?" asks Elsa.

"Like the X-Men." Elsa nods.

And she thinks, Well, that's nice and all that, but Mum really needs to get out there and meet a few more people.

"You're the sharpest person I know, do you know that?"

"Yes."

"Have you forgiven her?"

Elsa hugs her until the hummingbird gives up and just goes off to do something else.

"For being a bad mother?"

"Your grandmother saved children because she was saved herself when she was small, darling. I never knew that, but she wrote it in the letter. She was an orphan," whispers Mum.

"I'm trying to forgive us both, I think. I'm like Renault. I have a long braking distance," whispers Mum.

"You know whereabouts the next letter is hidden, I take it?" says Mum with a smile.

Mum's lips come together. "She wrote sorry."

"It's enough to say 'where,' " says Elsa, because she can't stop herself.

But she does know, of course she knows. She's known all along. She's not stupid. And this isn't exactly the most unpredictable of fairy tales.

Mum laughs again. Laughs until the evil nurse comes stamping in and says there's got to be an end to this now, or she'll have problems with the tubes.

Elsa stands up. Mum takes her hand and kisses it.

"We've decided what Halfie's going to be called. It's not going to be Elvir. It'll be another name. George and I decided as soon as we saw him. I think you're going to like it."

She's right about that. Elsa likes it. She likes it a lot.

She cups her hands against the glass when she whispers, so he'll be able to hear on the other side. "Don't be afraid, Halfie. You've got a sister now. And it's going to get better. Everything's going to be fine."

A few moments later she's standing in a little room, looking at him through a pane of glass. He's lying inside a little plastic box. Or a very big lunchbox. It's hard to tell which. He's got tubes everywhere and his lips are blue and his face looks as if he is running against an insanely strong wind, but all the nurses tell Elsa it's not dangerous. She doesn't like it. This is the most obvious way of figuring out that it actually is dangerous.

And then she switches to the secret language: "I'll try not to be jealous of you. I've been jealous of you for an insane length of time, but I have a pal whose name is Alf and he and his little brother have been at loggerheads for like a hundred years. I don't want us to be at loggerheads for a hundred years. So I think we have to start working at liking each other right from the start, you get what I mean?"

Halfie looks like he gets it. Elsa puts her forehead against the glass.

"You have a granny as well. She's a superhero. I'll tell you all about her when we get home. Unfortunately I gave the moo-gun to the boy downstairs but I'll make you another one. And I'll bring you to the Land-of-Almost-Awake, and we'll eat dreams and dance and laugh and cry and be brave and forgive people, and we'll fly with the cloud animals and Granny will be sitting on a bench in Miamas, smoking and waiting for us. And one day my granddad will come wandering along as well. We'll hear him from far away because he laughs with his whole body. He laughs so much that I think we'll have to build an eighth kingdom for him. I'll ask Wolfheart what 'I laugh' is in his mother's language. And the wurse is also there in the Land-of-Almost-Awake. You're going to like the wurse. There's no better friend than a wurse!"

She stays by the glass until she realizes that the whole hummingbird thing was probably basically a bad idea, in spite of all. She'll stick to eternities and the eternities of fairy tales for a bit longer. Just for the sake of simplicity. And maybe because it reminds her of Granny.

Before she goes she whispers through cupped hands to Halfie, in the secret language: "It's going to be the greatest adventure ever having you as a brother, Harry. The greatest, greatest adventure!"

Elsa wipes the glass with the Gryffindor scarf. "You've got a good name. The best name. I'll tell you all about the boy you got it from. You'll like him."

Halfie looks at her from the plastic box.

Things are turning out as Granny said. Things are getting better. Everything is going to be fine.

The doctor that Elsa felt she recognized is standing next to Mum's bed when she comes back into the room. He's waiting, without moving, as if he knows that it will take her a moment to remember where she saw him. And when the penny finally drops, he smiles as if there was never any other alternative.

"A doctor first and foremost," says the doctor, and offers his hand as he introduces himself: "Marcel. I was a good friend of your grandmother's."

"You're the accountant," Elsa bursts out suspiciously, and then adds, "And the vicar from the church. I saw you at Granny's funeral and you were dressed as a vicar!"

"Also a doctor?" asks Elsa.

"I am many things," the doctor answers in a blithe tone of voice, with the sort of expression on his face that no one ever had when Granny was around.

"So I understand," Marcel says, smiling.

"You were Granny's lawyer," says Elsa, as one does when remembering details of telephone calls from the beginning of a fairy tale, say around the end of chapter two.

It's a printout from a computer, and it's correctly spelled, so she knows it's Marcel and not Granny who wrote it. But some of Granny's handwriting can be seen on the bottom of it. Marcel folds his hands together on his stomach, not unlike the way Britt-Marie does it.

"I am many things," Marcel repeats, and gives her a paper.

"I'm Elsa."

"And what? Now it's mine? The whole house?"

"If you don't agree then, technically, you're not all agreed. Your grandmother was convinced you would go with what the neighbors wanted if they were all agreed about it, but she was also certain you wouldn't do anything with the house that might bring anyone who lived in it to harm. That was why she had to make sure you'd got to know all your neighbors by the time you saw the will."

Elsa reads the paper. Pouts her lips.

"Your grandmother owned the house you live in. Maybe you already worked that out. She says she won it in a game of poker, but I don't know for certain."

"Your mother will act as your guardian until you're eighteen. But your grandmother has ensured that you'll be able to do what you want with it. If you want to, you can sell the flats as leaseholds. And if you don't want to, you don't have to."

He puts his hand on her shoulder.

"It's a big responsibility, but your grandmother forbade me to give it to anyone but you. She said you were 'smarter than all those other lunatics put together.' And she always said that a kingdom consists of the people who live in it. She said you'd understand that."

"So why did you tell everyone in the house that it would be turned into leaseholds if everyone agreed?"

"ELSA!" Mum interrupts, so distressed that the tubes almost come loose.

"Were you hers?"

Marcel puts his hands together. Nods with sadness, also happiness. Like when one has eaten a very large ice cream and realizes it is now gone.

"Did you and Granny have an affair?" she asks suddenly.

Marcel belly-laughs. You'd have to call it that. A belly-laugh. It's far too noisy to be a laugh. Elsa likes it a great deal. It's quite impossible not to.

Marcel pauses. He doesn't look angry. Or bitter. Just slightly jealous.

"Granny wasn't exactly an uncomplicated person."

Offended, Elsa throws out her arms.

"I can run through the details with you, but it's a very complicated contract," says Marcel helpfully.

"She was the love of my life, Elsa. She was the love of many men's lives. Women as well, actually."

Elsa's fingertips caress Granny's signature at the bottom of the paper. "I understand."

"What's wrong with ASKING?" She turns demandingly to Marcel. "Did you have an affair or not?"

Elsa brushes her hair out of her face.

Tenderly he reaches out and pats Elsa's cheek, as you do when you see someone you have loved in the eyes of their grandchild.

Elsa and Mum and the letter share the silence for seconds and eternities and hummingbird wingbeats. Then Mum touches Elsa's hand and tries to make the question sound as if it's not so terribly important, just something she just thought of spontaneously: "What do you have from me?"

She goes silent. Ashamed of herself as mothers are when they realize they have passed that point in life when they want more from their daughters than their daughters want from them. And Elsa puts her hands over Mum's cheeks and says mildly: "Just everything else, Mum. I just have everything else from you."

Elsa stands in silence. Mum looks despondent.

"No," he says, "That was you. It was always you, dear Elsa."

"I was just, well, you know. You said you had inherited certain things from your grandmother and from your father, and I was just thinking, you know…"

Dad gives Elsa a lift back to the house. He turns off the stereo in Audi so Elsa doesn't have to listen to his music, and he stays the night in Granny's flat. They sleep in the wardrobe. It smells of wood shavings and it's just big enough for Dad to be able to stretch out and touch the walls on both sides with his fingertips and the tips of his toes. It's good in that way, the wardrobe.

When Dad has gone to sleep, Elsa sneaks down the stairs. Stands in front of the stroller, which is still locked up inside the front entrance. She looks at the crossword on the wall. Someone has filled it in with a pencil. In every word is a letter, which, in turn, meshes with four longer words. And in each of the four words is a letter written in a square that's bolder than the others. E-L-S-A.

She spells her name and unlocks it. Pushes the stroller away. And that is where she finds Granny's letter to Britt-Marie.

Elsa checks the padlock with which the stroller is fixed to the stair railing. It's a combination lock, but the four rolls don't have numbers. They have letters.