In the Name of Love by Patrick Smith Page A

mutandis.’
    ‘No,’ she answered, laughing, ‘I can hear we didn’t.’
    Then one day she was gone. Without a word of goodbye.
    He had reached the little fishermen’s church and he went to the cemetery see to Connie’s grave. An old woman putting flowers in a jar in front of a headstone looked up. He recognized her. She had once told him how she’d lost her husband and two sons, drowned when their fishing boat went down in a storm coming across from the Gulf of Finland. The bodies had never been found, only the boat.
    Now, seeing him alone, she came across and gave him some of the flowers from her jar. While he laid them carefully down she gave a soft murmur of approval. When he turned he saw a fox watching them. The fox’s face was calm, beautiful. In silence he and the fox stood looking at each other. There was something strange about the encounter and for a long time neither gave way. The old woman had gone back to her family’s grave and didn’t seem to notice. Then soundlessly, the fox padded across the graveyard lawn and vanished into the trees on the other side.
    Going past the presbytery he saw the priest’s wife look out her kitchen window and wave. Was it an invitation to come in? If so, he was incapable of accepting. Even to himself he couldn’t say why. He gave a friendly wave back and walked on. The last time they met she had told him that the best memories were the small, unassuming moments, that they were what formed a marriage. Her words had often returned to him in the years since then. That was the day he drove out from Stockholm to tell the priest that Connie had wanted to be buried on the island.
    Over two years had passed and he hadn’t yet put up her headstone with her name and the dates, a life bookended and finalized. The small good things the priest’s wife had spoken of – she was right, of course – they were what had brought him moments of happiness in the line of sterile days. Many were so small as to be almost unnoticeable, like the evening when Connie had caught his eye across a crowded dinner table and winked at him. Now as then the gesture took him fiercely in the chest. Love, he had always believed, was better expressed by behaviour than by words. After all, any third-rate actor could say ‘I love you’ and sound as if he meant it. ‘Well, words count too,’ Connie used to insist at the beginning. ‘But,’ he would tell her, ‘it’s obvious I love you. I love you more than anything on earth. You know that.’ He said it seemed shallow to repeat something to her that she already knew. It embarrassed him. After a time she gave up and said, ‘You are as you are, my Irishman, and I love you anyway.’
    Another dinner came back. Sitting in someone’s summery garden. Several of the guests were Connie’s friends from the hospital. A woman spoke of a moral dilemma about a man at work who had started an affair with a younger colleague. ‘His wife’s a friend of mine. She’s really nice. She hasn’t a clue of course.’ She looked around at the faces. ‘Should I warn her in some way? I don’t know how.’ Giovanni, sitting opposite, said, ‘No, be cool. Let people get on with their lives. Nobody owns anybody else.’ Kerstin, Giovanni’s wife, who sat beside Dan, reached over to entwine her fingers in his and lift both their hands for everyone to see. ‘Still think it’s cool?’ she asked her husband. Giovanni laughed. ‘If I have to be cuckolded, better it be by a man I respect than by some shit.’ He was on form that night, his rich eyes gleaming, his laughter low and musical. Driving home Dan said, ‘You have some great colleagues. You must have a lot of fun at work.’ ‘ Dienst ist dienst ,’ Connie said severely, ‘ und schnaps ist schnaps .’ ‘What the hell does that mean?’ ‘German wisdom. Work is work and Irish whisky is Irish whisky. Don’t ever mix the two.’
    Home at last, at three o’clock in the morning, came an unexpected gift. In bed