In the Name of Love by Patrick Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

didn’t laugh.
    ‘It’s so ridiculous,’ she said instead. ‘I came here out of curiosity. I don’t even know why I thought you might be here. You’re strange.’
    ‘No, I’m not.’
    ‘You are! Anders thinks it’s because you’re floating around like a rudderless boat. You can’t decide what to do with the rest of your life. Is that true?’
    The question caught Dan off balance. He hadn’t expected such directness from her.
    ‘You discuss me with Anders?’
    ‘Of course I do! He’s my husband. Do you see how strange you are?’
    ‘But why would you discuss me at all? I don’t understand.’
    ‘I told him I ran into you and that we had tea together. And so we talked about you. It’s the most natural thing in the world. Don’t you have anyone you talk to out on that island?’
    ‘And he said I was a rudderless boat?’
    ‘He meant you haven’t found your bearings yet. Not in your new life.’
    ‘What new life? I’ve moved house is all.’
    ‘And become a mysterious hermit in the archipelago.’
    ‘You’re having me on,’ he said. ‘The two of you.’
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘Just me.’
    And now she did laugh.
    After that they met every Wednesday. There was nothing secret about these encounters. Tösse’s, the konditori they met in, was always busy with afternoon shoppers, some of whom she knew. He saw these meetings as inconsequential, small events woven into the fabric of his life.
    Only occasionally did something intimate slip in, like the time when he said that Anders had always seemed someone who led his life exactly as he wanted, realizing too late how the remark might sound to her. After a brief silence she ignored it and instead asked him about growing up in Ireland. To cover his embarrassment he answered carefully, trying to be as objective as he could.
    ‘By and large, fairly standard stuff for the time. We were taught the things the children of middle-class parents were taught all over Europe. Emotion must be disciplined, rationality alone gives constancy, civilization means curbing nature’s unpredictability, man’s success depends on imposing his order, his logic on the world around him.’
    ‘It does?’ she said. ‘Goodness.’
    He looked at her dark eyes, the black hair hanging close by her cheeks, and she burst out laughing. She was laughing at him and he found himself relieved she could do it so openly.
    ‘Was it really like that? It sounds like a training programme for – I don’t know. Some sort of übermensch .’
    ‘I think all boarding schools probably are. Training for something or other is almost always going on.’
    ‘Didn’t you like your school?’
    ‘We had some good teachers. And plenty of games. It was very anglophile.’
    ‘In Ireland?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘What did being an anglophile school involve?’
    ‘Rugby in winter. Cricket and tennis in summer. No Irish sports of any kind. There were four hundred of us so we could have our own leagues and divisions. The disadvantage was there was no contact with girls. None.’
    ‘Ah! Now I understand.’
    ‘Understand what?’
    ‘Why you’re so hopeless. No, really, you are! You seem so gauche sometimes. Other times you’re full of charm, of course.’
    On the way home, thinking of this, what he remembered was less the words than the special quality of her voice, a little provocative, a little tantalizing, above all, intimate and trusting. He sensed a joy held back in her, a joy that at moments like this bubbled up and might, if let free, transform her and the world around her.
    The first weeks of March were cold and beautiful. The days ran past like an elusive stream. On one Wednesday, an afternoon with sunlight sharp as glass, he waited for her outside her yoga club and suggested they go for a walk instead of going to the konditori . She shook her head.
    ‘You don’t want to?’
    ‘It’s not a question of wanting.’
    ‘You’re worried about what people might think? Is that it?’
    ‘What does it