Following on from Fiona and Harriet's story I've decided to continue the domino theory and focus on Helena, the headmistress at Fiona's school. In the First Domino I mentioned that Helena was also questioning her sexuality but still married, so let's see where this one leads us. I've included English translations of Swedish words within the story.
*****
I've always been a voracious reader even when I was a child and thankfully my parents were liberal minded enough to let me read just about anything and that's why I can teach English today despite the appalling dearth of basic grammar in the Australian school system when I was in school. I was taught that correct grammar wasn't nearly as important as speaking your mind but that has bred an entire generation of people unable to express themselves properly and with that little rant over let me begin my tale.
My name is Helena Young. My mother was born in Gothenburg and she emigrated here in the late 1980s to pursue a career in teaching. She met my father, Barry at a parent teacher night. He was a single father with one daughter, Erika and dad has always said he paid more attention to her than to the other teacher present at the meeting. To cut a long story short they started seeing each other and moved in together in 1988, I was born the following year. 1989 was a momentous year, the Eastern European countries that had been controlled and occupied by the Soviet Union rose up, starting first with Poland and like dominoes the rest fell peacefully with the exception of Hungary. These events had a great effect on my parents who'd grown up during the Cold War. When my brother was born the following year she called him Michael, the Anglicised version of Mikhail. Both he and I have inherited our mother's blonde hair and blue eyes.
We lived in the mountain suburb of Belgrave and my earliest memories are of hearing the steam train Puffing Billy, which ran just past our house. It's a popular tourist attraction because the track is the original line used when steam trains were the only trains in existence. It wends its way through the hills to Gembrook and as it crosses bridges over roads you'll often see tourists with cameras as hordes of screaming, chattering children wave from windows. I've been on that train a number of times as a child, and later on as a teacher and mother.
My childhood was pleasant and I can't recall hearing or seeing dad and mum fight, and the only time I ever saw my mother raise her voice was when my half sister Erika's mother, Toni tried to take Erika back. I was too young to know much at the time but later on I learned about Toni's struggles to overcome heroin addiction. She died when I was nine years old and mum kept me home from school that day. Erika had some problems adjusting the loss of her biological mother but mum has always been the maternal kind and we seemed to ride over that particular incident relatively easily.
One my favourite subjects at school was foreign languages. My mother raised us to speak Swedish at home, and at school I learned Spanish and Indonesian. In my last year of high school I also learned German from mum, which makes me a bit of a polyglot. I can't recall any upsets apart from the usual teenage angst. I dated in high school but my first sexual encounter wasn't until I turned eighteen and that had nothing to do with morals or ethics and more to do with my desire to get a good pass mark so as I could enrol in Teachers college.
Thus, my first sexual encounter was with a guy and I can't say it was an unpleasant experience but it wasn't what I expected. After he'd come inside me I found myself staring at the ceiling a little bemused at all the fuss. Wasn't there supposed to be more to it than this? Subsequent encounters did arouse me but I always felt as if there was a lot of fuss for thirty seconds of frantic pushing and the ejaculation thing. Suffice it to say I moved on from James and onto a succession of guys over the next few years and only one of them, Jules stands out. I met Jules when I was doing a night course in Mandarin. Jules had a fondness for going down on a woman, both before penetration and also afterwards. It was unusual to have a guy pay that much attention to my genitals, but he also had a wandering eye and hands, so that one ended swiftly.
I came out of college with itchy feet, I'd resisted the urge to travel to Europe but now that I was free to do my own thing I signed up to an agency and thanks to my love of languages and the fact that I was fluent in Swedish I wound up with a nine month position in Stockholm, which was exciting for me because I'd only been there once when I was ten years old. I had been raised with stories about Sweden and now that I was an adult I was determined to explore the country in depth and connect with my heritage.
It wasn't a difficult choice by any stretch of the imagination, I was a Primary school teacher in Broadmeadows so it was a hell of a commute from Belgrave and while I could have rented a house there fairly easily, Broadmeadows has never appealed to me. Thus when this opportunity came up I grabbed it with both hands and after an interview at the agency I was accepted. They were really impressed that I could actually speak Swedish! That interview sticks in my mind for another reason though, because I felt physically drawn to one of the women interviewing me. Anna was quite a few years older than I, probably closer to mum's age but it was the first time I'd ever felt a sexual pull towards another woman.
I touched down at Arlanda in February, 2009 and it's a cliché but one of the first things I noticed was the weather. I'd come from a country that was at the tail end of a particularly hot summer and into a country that was still firmly in the grip of an icy winter. I'd thought I was wearing warm clothes on the plane but when I got off the plane at Arlanda I realised I'd need extra layers. I was freezing!
And that brings me to one of my colleagues, Kristina. She was some seven years older than me. She was from Gothenburg but as I settled into my new job my attraction to Kristina started morphing into a physical one as well. Kristina had a healthy head of long blonde hair, blue eyes and a fresh complexion. Her dress sense was impeccable, what I would loosely term, atypical Stockholm with her fondness for stylish blouses and dresses. She was married to Bjorn, a young stockbroker who split his time between Stockholm and Hamburg.
For my part, I was initially drawn to Kristina because she was from my mother's old home. She was adventurous and very tactile, which is unusual for a native Swede, they aren't known for being touchy feely. Thus, despite the fact I spoke Swedish I felt a little like an alien and having a friend who wasn't afraid to slip a hand into the crook of my arm at work was comforting. It was truly enlightening to listen to her stories about growing up in Gothenburg, because I could see why mum was the way she was, hard working, industrious and quite minimalistic.
It evolved slowly from there because we caught the same train home to Hornstull where we'd part company, I was living with my aunt Sylvie on the island of Reimersholme. Kristina wasn't far from me, she lived not far from the subway station.
Because she was so close to home we used to bump into each other in Hornstull, which is to the west of central Stockholm and before too long I was accompanying her on walks along the canal known as Pålshundet. The canal branches off from the larger body of water, Riddarfjärden and separates two islands, trendy upbeat Södermalm and the much quieter Langholmen, where the old prison was located. It's now a budget hostel and we used to toss a coin when we met at the bridge to decide if we were going east towards Gamla Stan or over the bridge to Langholmen.
Before too long she started inviting me back for fika, which for non-Swedish people is just coffee and cake, it's an obsession with us and if you're invited for fika it's not so much an invitation as a requirement unless you've got very very urgent business elsewhere. The first time I was in her house I went to remove my shoes because, that's what you do in Sweden. Trust me, they may not say it to your face but they are masters at being passive aggressive. Kristina merely looked at my shoes and said, "leave them on, that's why I have a doormat."
Even so I felt a little out of place walking into the kitchen with my shoes on because Bjorn was standing at the breakfast bar with his coffee and a laptop. Kristina merely introduced me as her friend from work and then directed me to the sitting room while she made fika. Nonetheless, I could feel Bjorn's eyes boring into the back of my head at this faux pas but it was obvious he was either too proud or too afraid to risk a confrontation in front of Kristina.
That incident drew me in deeper along with her way of breaking tradition just to see what would happen next. Scandinavians in general are known for their addiction to routine and procedure. She also had an inquiring mind and knowing that I could speak and read Mandarin and Indonesian gave her the chance to learn some basic phrases. During those early months though I also discovered that whilst she'd been married for six years she was deeply dissatisfied with Bjorn.
"It is like we are two different people, they say that opposites attract but opposite poles also repel each other. It is like we are just going through the motions, all our friends said we were the perfect couple but about the only time we ever talk is about money or the house."
"Maybe you should have children," I suggested.
"With Bjorn?" Kristina winced, "I think not, imagine being stuck at home while he went about his own way. He suggested it once and I laughed at him. His mother wants grandchildren but she lives in Kiruna, so we cannot rely on her to babysit and my mother says it is up to me," she tucked her hand into the crook of my arm.
"Perhaps I will have an affair."
"An affair?" I must have looked shocked but she simply giggled.
