Alex Gray: The Swedish Girl

‘Shall we let him in?’ She turned to her father.

Henrik shrugged. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he said. ‘It obviously lives here.’

As she put the key into the lock, Eva noticed a row of names, some badly faded, printed to one side of the doorway, tiny grilles beneath. She nodded, recognising the security entry system.

‘We’ll need a bigger space for all the names once I get some flatmates,’ she observed, looking at the blank space right at the top of the list. Then, pushing open the heavy wooden door, they entered the close. Eva took off her designer sunglasses and looked around.

Inside was surprisingly light. A short corridor to the rear of the building ended with a glazed door, and the half landing above them had a long window that provided another source of daylight. Henrik Magnusson followed his daughter up the stone stairs, smiling as she exclaimed over the arrangements of carefully tended potted plants on each landing, the shining brasses and etched glass on the front doors on either side, the storm doors painted in cheerful shades of red. It was an old property, but one where the existing residents evidently took a pride in their homes. Henrik had asked the estate agent questions about the people who lived at number twenty-four and the man had been surprisingly knowledgeable about some of them. Several were retired people and others would be out at business during the day; there was a residents’ association and each of the owners had to pay their share of repairs to things like slates falling off the roof or damage to the stone steps. It was a far cry from the modern blocks that Henrik owned in his native Sweden, where factors took care of everything, charging the tenants sweetly for the privilege.

‘Here we are!’ Eva turned to her father with an excited grin as they reached the top storey and turned to the door on the right.

‘Go on then,’ Henrik told her. ‘Open up your new home.’

There were two doors to the flat: a heavy storm door that Henrik hooked back into a latch on the wall and an old-fashioned inner door, framed in dark mahogany with opaque glass set in from waist height. Eva Magnusson turned the set of keys in her hand until she found the one that matched the Yale lock.

The door opened noiselessly and she stepped over the threshold, marvelling at the spacious hall within and the adjacent staircase that wound its way upwards.

Eva grinned over her shoulder. ‘It’s huge!’ she said, then laughed out loud, turning to one room after the other, exclaiming at their particular features.

‘Any place looks big when it’s empty.’ Henrik shrugged, but even he was impressed by the proportions of these apartments now that the previous owner’s furniture had been cleared out.

‘Wow! Look at this!’ Eva had reached the end of the hallway and was standing in the kitchen gazing upwards at a set of false beams, her blue eyes twinkling with delight.

Henrik nodded. So. They had left them after all. The plants cascaded down from their hooks on the wooden beams, making the entire ceiling appear to be a hanging garden. The Swede had haggled and offered a bit extra but he had been given the impression that the owner wanted to take her late mother’s precious plants away. Perhaps, after all, there had been no room for them in her own home? Well, his daughter was happy with them as Henrik had known she would be.

‘We’ll need to find at least one tall young man to reach up and water them for you,’ Henrik joked.

Eva made a face but it turned into a smile again almost immediately. ‘How many should I be sharing this with?’ she asked. ‘Another girl and a boy, maybe?’

Henrik shook his head. ‘There is enough space for five of you,’ he said. ‘Three bedrooms on this floor and two upstairs. And,’ he shrugged again, ‘you can have it all girls if you like but I think a mix would be better.’

Eva did not reply, simply nodding her agreement as she always did.

They turned together as a train rattled past, momentarily shaking the kitchen windows. Eva walked across and looked out over the kitchen sink to where a line of trees marched away beyond the railway line. Looking down she noticed that there was some sort of a yard between the tenement buildings and the railway. Several vans were parked side by side and she could see a heap of used tyres piled untidily into one corner. As she watched, a man in dark blue overalls crossed the yard and opened the door of the van at the end of the row. He was quite unaware of being observed by the girl from the top flat above him, Eva realised. He was simply going about his business. She took a deep breath, savouring the moment. Life was all around her, real life, from the work going on in the yard to the day-to-day business of people on every floor of the building. And now she, Eva Magnusson, was a part of that life.

She wandered back into the hall and immediately entered the main reception room, recognising the bay windows she had admired earlier from the street below. Sunlight poured into this room as the windows were almost ceiling height. Eva’s eyes followed the line of coving: the egg and dart plaster mould was perfectly intact, as was the ornate rose in the centre of the ceiling with its grey coil of electric flex ready and waiting for whatever her father might choose in the way of a light fitting. Before she knew it, her feet had taken her right up to the windows where three tired-looking boxes on the sill outside held a few hopeful pansies. She would plant them up as soon as she could, put in scarlet geraniums instead. Eva looked across the street at the houses opposite and blinked, a sudden memory surfacing. It was a painting she had seen in a gallery. What was it called? Windows on the West , that was it, where the artist had captured moments in the lives of folk in a tenement flat, just like this. And for a moment she frowned at the idea of someone staring across at her, seeing into her own life.

‘It’s darker on the other side of the house,’ she remarked, hearing her father’s footsteps come into the room. ‘I think I would like a bedroom with less light. You know I can never sleep when the sun streams in my window.’

The girl kept staring out of the window even when she felt the pressure of Henrik’s fingers close upon her shoulder. She smiled, seeing the reflection of her face in the glass, as she calculated how many weeks it would be before she would be here as a student, free from the constraints that had held her for the past nineteen years of her life.

Colin Young picked up the dishcloth and wiped around the edges of the industrial-sized sinks. God knows how many times he had cleaned up after the chefs since the start of his shift, but he supposed that was what his job was, kitchen hand. It had been all that Colin could find as far as a summer job was concerned and he needed the money if he was going to get anywhere decent to stay next session. His face brightened suddenly as he remembered the appointment with the Swedish man, Larsson, or something. No, he was confusing him with one of his childhood football heroes, Henrik Larsson. Magnusson , that was his name, Henrik Magnusson. It was the Henrik bit that had muddled him up. Colin’s smile broadened as he cast his thoughts back to when he had been a wee lad eagerly following his dad and big brother, Thomas, up the slope to Parkhead football stadium. The boys’ Celtic strips had been worn with the kind of pride that was hard for those outside the game to comprehend. Then there was the singing; thousands of voices raised along with the green, gold and white scarves, a sound to make the hairs on his neck stand on edge even thinking about it so many years later.

Well, perhaps this other Henrik would come up trumps for him. The monthly rental was okay, so the flat was bound to be fairly basic, plus it was out at Anniesland, not exactly on the doorstep of the university and he’d have to factor in the cost of a bus or train on top of everything else. Colin gave the stainless steel sink one final rub then put the used cloth into a plastic tub full of bleach before stripping off the industrial rubber gloves that the boss had insisted he wear.