Mind's eye

14

Why the mother?

He didn’t know the answer to that himself. Perhaps it was a question of geography. Mrs. Ringmar lived in Leuwen, one of the old fishing ports on the coast. It meant an hour in the car through the polders, and perhaps that was what he needed right now. A lot of sky, not much earth.

He arrived at the precise moment the clock in the little town hall struck three. He parked in the square and asked his way to Mrs. Ringmar’s house.

The air was full of sea.

Sea and wind and salt. If he wanted, he could allow it to remind him of his childhood summers, but there was no reason why he should.

The house was small and white. Wedged in a confusion of shacks, sheds, fences, and net racks. He wondered if there could be any room for integrity in a place like this. People lived in each other’s kitchens, and every bedroom must be surrounded by listening ears.

The higher the sky, the lower the people, he thought as he rang the doorbell. Why did there have to be people in every kind of landscape?

The woman who peered at him through the barely open door was small and thin. Her hair was short and straight and completely white, and her face seemed to be somehow introverted. Van Veeteren recognized the expression from lots of other old people. Perhaps it had something to do with their false teeth. . As if they had bitten into something thirty years ago, and stubbornly refused to let go ever since, he thought.

Or was there more than that to this woman?

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Ringmar?”

“Yes.”

“My name’s Van Veeteren. It was me who phoned.”

“Please come in.”

She opened the door, but only wide enough for him to be able to squeeze through.

She ushered him into the drawing room. Indicated a sofa in the corner. Van Veeteren sat down.

“I’ve put the coffee on. I suppose you’d like some coffee?”

Van Veeteren nodded.

“Yes, please. If it’s not too much trouble.”

She left the room. Van Veeteren looked round. A neat, attractive room. A low ceiling and a degree of timelessness.

He liked it. Apart from the television set, there was not much about it later than the fifties. The sofa, table, and armchairs all in teak, a display case, a little bookcase. The windowsill tightly packed with potted plants-to prevent people from seeing in, presumably. A few paintings of seascapes, family photographs.

A newly married couple. Two children, at various stages. A boy and a girl. They looked to be similar in age. The girl must be Eva.

She returned with a coffee tray.

“Please accept my condolences, Mrs. Ringmar.”

She nodded and clenched her teeth even more tightly. She made Van Veeteren think of a stunted pine tree.

“There’s been a police officer here already.”

“I know. My colleague, Inspector Munster. I don’t want to inconvenience you, but there are a few questions I’d like to ask you, just to complete the picture.”

“Fire away. I’m used to it.”

She poured out the coffee and slid a plate of biscuits toward Van Veeteren.

“What do you want to know?”

“A bit about. . the background, as it were.”

“Why?”

“You never know, Mrs. Ringmar.”

For some reason she seemed happy with this answer, and without his needing to prompt her, she set off talking.

“I’m on my own now, you know-are you a chief inspector?”

Van Veeteren nodded.

“I don’t know if you can understand, but it’s something I always seemed to know would happen. I’ve always sort of known I’d be the last one left.”

“Your husband?”

“Died in 1969. It was better that way. He wasn’t. . wasn’t himself those final years. He drank a lot, but it was the cancer that got him.”

Van Veeteren slipped a small, pale-colored biscuit into his mouth.

“The children didn’t miss him, but he meant well. It’s just that he didn’t have the strength to do what he should have done. Some people are like that, aren’t they, Chief Inspector?”

“How old were the children then? Am I right in thinking there was Eva and a son?”

“Fifteen. They are twins. . were twins, or however I should put it.”

She took a handkerchief from her apron pocket and blew her nose.

“Rolf and Eva. Ah well, it was a good job they had each other.”

“Why was that?”

She hesitated.

“Walter had what you might call old-fashioned ideas about bringing up children.”

“I see. You mean, he beat them?”

She nodded. Van Veeteren looked out the window. He

didn’t need to ask any more questions. He knew the implications; he only needed to think back to his own childhood.

Locked in the attic. Heavy footsteps on the stairs. That dry cough.

“What happened to your son? Rolf?”

“He emigrated. Signed on with a ship when he was only nineteen. It must have been a girl, but he never said anything about it. He was introverted, a bit like his father. I hope he grew out of it.”

There was something in her tone of voice that suggested. .

well, what did it suggest, Van Veeteren wondered. That she had already given up on everything, but nevertheless was determined to live life through to the end?

“Do you go to church, Mrs. Ringmar?”

“Never. Why do you ask?”

“It doesn’t matter. What happened to Rolf?”

“He settled down in Canada. I have. . I’ve never seen him since that evening he left.”

Even though she had been living with that fact for a long time, she found it difficult to say so, that much was obvious.

“He wrote letters, presumably?”

“Two. One came in 1973, the year he left. The other came two years later. I think. .”

“Yes?”

“I think he was ashamed. It’s possible he wrote to Eva. She claimed he did, in any case, but she never showed me anything. Perhaps she made it up, to make me feel better.”

They sat in silence for a while. Van Veeteren sipped at his coffee; she slid the cookie plate in his direction.

“When did Eva leave home?”

“Six months after Rolf. She did well in her school-leaving exams and won a place at the University of Karpatz. She was the bright one, I don’t know where she got it from. She read modern languages, and became a teacher, French and English-

but you know that, of course.”

Van Veeteren nodded.

“And then she married that man Berger. Maybe it would have turned out all right, despite everything. After a few years they had a child. Willie. Those were happy years, I think, but then came the accident. He drowned. Our family is jinxed, Mr.

Van Veeteren. I think I’ve been aware of that the whole of my life. That’s the way it is for some people. . There’s nothing you can do about it. . Don’t you think so too?”

Van Veeteren drank the rest of his coffee. Thought fleet-ingly of his own son.

“Yes indeed, Mrs. Ringmar,” he said. “I think you’re absolutely right.”

She smiled wanly. Van Veeteren realized that she was one of those people who have learned to find a certain grim satisfaction in the midst of all the misery. A sort of: What did I tell you, God! I knew You had led me up the garden path from the very start!

“I gather they divorced after the accident?”

“Yes, it wore Eva down, and Andreas couldn’t cope with it all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the loss of Willie, and Eva turning to drink and carrying on. . she was in a home. . for six months-I suppose you know about that?”

Van Veeteren nodded.

“Ah well, that’s the way it went.”

She sighed. But there again, it was not total dejection. Only resignation, a sort of stoic calm in the face of the repugnant realities of life. Van Veeteren found himself feeling something that must have been sympathy for this long-suffering little woman. Warm sympathy. It was not an emotion he was normally prone to feeling, and it was totally unexpected. He sat in silence for a while before asking his next question.

“But she got back on her feet again, your daughter?”

“Oh yes. You could certainly say that. I thought her husband could have helped her a bit more, but she pulled through.

Oh yes.”

“Did you have a lot of contact with your daughter, Mrs.

Ringmar?”

“No, we were never close. I don’t know why, but she had a life of her own. She didn’t turn to me for help, not even then. I think. .”

She fell silent. Chewed at a cookie and appeared to be searching through her memory.

“What do you think, Mrs. Ringmar?”

“I think she thought I had let her down. And Rolf as well.”

“In what way?”

“That I could have protected them more from Walter.”

“Didn’t you do that?”

“I tried to, I suppose, but perhaps it wasn’t enough. I don’t know, Chief Inspector. It’s hard to know things like that.”

There followed a short pause. Van Veeteren carefully brushed a few crumbs onto the floor. He had only two questions left, the ones he had actually come here to ask.

“Do you know if Eva met a new man? Before Janek Mitter, I mean?”

Mrs. Ringmar shook her head.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. She didn’t mention anything of the sort, but then she never did. She lived in Gimsen for a few years, she had a post at a Catholic school for girls. I used to phone her once a week, but we never met.”

“Why did she move to Maardam?”

“I don’t know. The job, perhaps. I don’t think she liked teaching only girls. The atmosphere became a bit like a nun-nery, I should imagine.”

“I can understand that. And Janek Mitter-what do you think about him?”

“Nothing. I’ve never met him. My daughter sent me a post-card from Greece saying that she’d remarried.”

“Were you surprised?”

“Yes, I think I was. I was pleased as well. But then things went the way they did. .”

She shrugged again.

As if life were nothing to do with her, Van Veeteren thought. Maybe that wasn’t such a silly approach.

“So you don’t know anything about their relationship? Eva didn’t tell you anything?”

“No. I think I only spoke to her twice on the telephone since she came back from Greece. Oh, Mitter answered the phone one of those times. I thought he sounded nice.”

When he emerged into the square it had started raining again.

A few of the stall-holders were busy pulling plastic covers over their wares: vegetables, an array of fish, some glass jars with what looked like homemade confectionery. They nodded as he passed by, but that was the limit of their contact.

He pulled up his collar and sank his hands into his pockets.

Stood beside his car for a while, wondering what to do next.

The rain was merely drizzle, not really falling, just floating around in the wind like a damp veil. Like a caring and sensitive hand stroking the low roofs, the modest, whitewashed town hall, caressing the lonely church spire-the only thing that dared to stand up and challenge the all-powerful sky.

The meeting with Mrs. Ringmar had not really gone

according to expectations. It was not easy to say exactly what he’d expected, but he had certainly had expectations. .

He left his car keys in his pocket. Glanced at the clock and set off toward the sea. Walked out to the end of one of the jetties, stood at the extreme edge, and watched the choppy waves thudding apathetically against the concrete foundations. The air was a trinity of dampness, salt, and seagull cries. He suddenly noticed that he was freezing cold.

There’s something, he thought. Something compelling me to stay here.

Then he dug his hands even deeper into his pockets, and started walking back toward land.