• • •
I REMAINED RIGIDLY IMPASSIVE, betraying my discomfort as surely as if I’d opened my mouth in shock. It wasn’t the subject of sex – it was my mum’s unstinting honesty. I couldn’t match it, not yet, not right now. Without the correct information, my mum misconstrued my discomfort as a merely juvenile response.
This might be embarrassing for you, but to understand what took place in Sweden you need to know every detail, even the very difficult ones, particularly the very difficult ones. After the collapse of our finances I lost interest in sex. So much of sex is about feeling good, not just about each other, but about your life in general. Many couples struggle to maintain sexual relations over a long marriage. Chris and I had been lucky. He was a handsome dark-haired young British man who hated authority and I was a pretty young blonde Swedish woman who’d never met someone so anarchic. We were lost souls who’d found a home in each other’s company. Our sex became a celebration that we were a team, the two of us against everyone else. As long as we had each other we didn’t need anybody else.
It went wrong when we bought those flats. Chris trusted me, he wanted to retire – he’d worked hard all his life, he was ready to take it easy. He started fishing more, he spent hours planning holidays abroad, reading travel books, wanting to visit the places we’d never seen. He never had any affinity with the banks or with estate agents and gladly accepted my decisions. When the market crashed he sat, helpless and silent, as I tried to unravel our investments. We weren’t a team any more. I was alone. He was alone. I began to go to bed early in order to wake early. He went to bed late and woke late. Our lives fell out of step. Part of our ambition for Sweden was to recover our rhythm, our camaraderie as well as our passion, to rediscover sex as though it were an archaeological treasure buried under the dust and rubble of four awful years.
On the ferry ride to Sweden, under the stars, Chris and I kissed, not a kiss on the cheek, not the nervous kiss of young lovers, but the kiss of overly familiar life-partners afraid they could never be as passionate as they once were. We didn’t just kiss: we had sex, in a public place, on the top deck, in a cold secluded spot behind a lifeboat, on a ferry in the middle of the English Channel. I was apprehensive, we could’ve been caught, but when Chris made his advances I could see him expecting me to say no, to make some excuse, to worry, so I went along with it, more than anything as a symbol of change, to let him know that things were going to be different for us – we’d be an unbreakable team once more.
Afterwards, standing on the bow of the boat, waiting for sunrise and the first sight of land, I genuinely believed this was our time – our biggest adventure but also, realistically, our last adventure together. And this one was going to turn out great because we were due our share of contentment. Everyone’s owed a slice of happiness, that’s sentimental, happiness isn’t a human right, but it should be.
With the stress of the farm, the contamination of the well, the problems with Håkan, there were a number of distractions, but there’d always been distractions. Chris and I made a pact that we’d be disciplined, we’d schedule sex – we’d make appointments. There’d be no excuses. We’d use events such as this barn dance to force us into the mood.
That night I wore a faded pink dress that must have been thirty years old, saved from a time when Chris and I used to dance in London clubs. Chris wore a bright silk shirt, it didn’t date back as far as my dress, but dressing him in anything that wasn’t jeans and a jumper was a positive sign. I didn’t have any perfume and we couldn’t afford to buy more, so I made my own by crushing pine needles from the forests, which give out an intense oil, dabbing it behind my ears.
We left the farm hand in hand, walking up the road, through the dark countryside, following the sound of the music. We arrived late, unable to see into the barn because it didn’t have a single window. A string of dim orange bulbs spotted with giant moths hung above the door, marking the entrance, a huge sliding door made out of heavy timbers. Chris was forced to grip it with both hands, heaving it back, and we stood there like travellers from an ancient time arriving at a bustling country inn, seeking refuge from a storm.
Inside it smelled of good times: alcohol and sweat. There were so many people dancing that the whole floor trembled and glasses on the tables rattled. No one stopped to stare at us: they were too busy dancing. The band was set up on the stage, five men in cheap black suits with skinny black ties and Ray-Ban sunglasses, a Blues Brothers tribute band. However foolish they might have looked to unkind eyes, they could really sing and they were determined that we should have a good time. Those who wanted to sit out the music were at the back, at tables, feasting on the food they’d brought, but mostly they were drinking. There was no paying bar, the venue didn’t have a licence to serve alcohol, you were supposed to bring your own. This came as a surprise to Chris and me since we hadn’t brought anything and we were looking forward to a drink. It didn’t matter. Within minutes we were offered plenty by the other guests, schnapps poured from a giant Thermos mixed with strong black coffee, served with a wink and a nudge, as though we were in a Prohibition dive and, my God, it was strong, caffeine and sugar and alcohol, and soon I was drunk.
Håkan didn’t own the barn, or have anything to do with the organisation of this event. I’d made sure of that earlier in the week. After kindly thanking him for his delivery of the pork, giving him no indication that his intimidation had been a success, I’d asked whether he liked to dance. He’d scoffed and said never. I could relax. He wouldn’t show. After several cups of cloudberry liquor and coffee, my laughter became louder until I didn’t even know why I was laughing any more. Everyone seemed to be laughing. The crowd was there for one reason only – to have fun. They were from all over the region. Unlike the petty local politics of the barbecue, this random group readily accepted anyone of the same mind, anyone who wanted to dance. No one was an outsider here.
With a couple of drinks in our bellies Chris and I joined the dance floor. Whenever the music stopped my thoughts were in a wonderful whirr and everyone around me was in a similar state, simultaneously catching their breath and embracing whoever they happened to be standing beside. On the dance floor everyone had the right to kiss anyone. That’s when I saw Mia at the door. I don’t know how long she’d been in the barn. She was standing against the back wall, wearing rough-cut denim shorts and a white shirt. She was the only young woman there, the only woman under the age of twenty. She was alone. I couldn’t see Håkan, or his wife. Despite our long conversation, I felt curiously shy. In the end she walked towards us, tapping Chris on the shoulder, asking if she could have the next dance. Obviously I thought she meant could she dance with Chris, the pair of them, and so I smiled and told him to go ahead. But Mia shook her head, saying she wanted to dance with me! Chris laughed and said that was an excellent idea – he was going outside to smoke.
The band began to play. The song was fast, the fastest they’d played so far, and we were dancing – Mia and me. I was drunk, wondering if Mia had come to this dance to talk to me. To test the theory I asked whether she attended these events often, and she shook her head and said this was the first she’d ever been to. At that point I asked if she was okay. Her poise and confidence fell away. She seemed young and lost. I felt her fingers press against my back – like this—
• • •
PULLING ME UP FROM THE CHAIR, my mum positioned me in the middle of the living-room floor as though we were dance partners. She placed my hands on her back, re-creating the scene.
We continued to dance but she didn’t want to talk any more. When the music finished Mia let go. She turned to the band and whistled, clapping loudly, enthusiastically showing her appreciation, pausing only to brush her hair behind her ear.
People were watching us.
Without a word to Mia, I returned to the tables at the back of the barn, leaving her whistling and applauding. Chris was holding a full glass of schnapps to his lips, holding it there, pressed against
his bottom lip, but not drinking. He looked at me as if I’d behaved inappropriately, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had somehow behaved inappropriately. I poured myself a glass, raised a toast, finished it in one, and turned around. The huge barn doors were wide open. Moths were fluttering for the light. And Mia was gone.
• • •
MY MUM BROKE FROM THE DANCE STANCE. Briefly she appeared to have forgotten about me. For the first time her flow faltered, and only when I rested my hand on her shoulder did she start again, slowly at first, her tempo building, recovering her lost momentum.
Chris and I danced a few more numbers. For me, it was no longer with the same joy. My heart wasn’t in it. The drink didn’t make me happy. It made me tired. Before long Chris and I walked back to the farm. As for the sex, I tried. I hoped to be everything he wanted. But it had never felt like work before. Chris told me that I should have a smoke, to help me unwind. He proceeded to roll a joint. I wasn’t opposed to the idea. I hadn’t smoked the drug for many years. Maybe it would help. Anyway, this was a night of fun. So I waited for him to finish and took a drag, counting down the seconds until my head turned light. When it happened, I stood up, the sheet slipping off me, standing naked, blowing smoke in an imitation of a sultry seductive figure. Chris lay on his side, watching, telling me to finish the whole joint, wanting to see what I’d do next. I tried to imagine what else I could do, what was sexy – I’d known once, instinctively known without having to think – and then it occurred to me that Chris had brought only a little weed with him from London. That small amount was surely gone: we were a month at the farm. I wondered where he could have found this weed and how he could have paid for it. I asked him, not angry, not accusingly, but curious, where did the weed come from? He took the joint from me. His reply was barely audible, his lips hidden by smoke. All I heard was:
‘Håkan.’
As Chris gestured for me to return to bed, this fact split into two, the fact that Håkan had given him the weed meant that Chris and Håkan must have met without my knowing. These two facts then split, now four. They must be friendly enough to discuss the availability of weed and they must have been intimate enough for Chris to discuss our finances since he didn’t have the money for drugs and couldn’t access the little money we had without me knowing. It follows that he must have explained our predicament to Håkan, the man strategising to steal our farm. I was certain that Håkan had made Chris a gift of the drug not out of generosity but as a reward for his indiscretion. These disturbing facts began to multiply, out of control, budding and splitting, filling my mind until I couldn’t stay in the room any more, not with the smell of Håkan’s stinking weed burning in our home – in our farm!
I hastily threw on some clothes and ran out with Chris standing naked on the steps, bellowing to me:
‘Come back!’
I didn’t stop, I ran, as fast as I could, past the deserted barn where we’d danced earlier, past Håkan’s farm, past the hermit in the field, reaching the foot of the hill around which all of our farms were arranged.
The slopes were wild meadow: the top was dense forest. By the time I reached the tree line I was dripping in sweat and collapsed into the long grass, catching my breath, staring out over the landscape. I lay there until I began to shiver. That was when I saw headlights on the road, not one set of lights, but two, not two, now three, not three, but four sets of headlights. At first I thought it was the drug playing tricks on my eyes, so I counted again, four cars travelling one after the other, creeping slowly through the countryside, in convoy, in the dead of night, in a part of the world that might normally only see four cars pass by in a single day. Snaking round the narrow country roads, they moved as if joined together, a nocturnal monster searching for prey. Reaching Håkan’s drive they turned, all four cars parking in his drive. The headlights were switched off. The world was dark again. Then, one by one, the beams from four torches flickered over the fields, and finally a fifth beam emerged from the house, joining this gang, taking the lead. I couldn’t see the people, just their lights, and watched them walk towards the river in single file, except they never reached the river. Instead, they disappeared into the underground cellar, the wood-carving shed – five sets of lights turning off the path, disappearing into that underground cellar in the dead of night, a cellar filled with trolls and knives and an unexplained padlocked door—
• • •
MY PHONE RANG. Though I’d switched it to silent, the image of my dad appeared on the screen. It was the first time he’d rung since I abruptly cut him off. Leaving the phone on the table, I said to my mum:
‘If you want, I’ll ignore it.’
Answer it. Take the call. I already know what he’s going to say – he’s changed his mind. He no longer intends to remain in Sweden. His bags are packed. He’s ready to drive to the airport. Or he’s there already, ticket in hand.
• • •
IT STRUCK ME AS MUCH MORE likely that my dad was ringing to check how we were. In the circumstances he’d shown considerable patience. More to the point, it had been his idea to remain in Sweden, providing me with the space to talk to Mum. A flight to London would be a provocation. I understood that now. He’d admitted as much. He couldn’t help her. She’d run from him. If he came to my apartment, she’d try to escape.
In the end I spent so long weighing up the situation that I missed his call. My mum gestured at the phone:
Call him back. Let him prove he’s a liar. He’ll claim to be concerned with how you’re holding up under the strain of listening to my sinister allegations. He’ll offer comforting certainty, there’s been no crime and no conspiracy, there are no victims, and there will be no police investigation. All that needs to happen is for me to swallow pills until these allegations drop from my mind.
• • •
MY DAD HAD LEFT A VOICEMAIL. Despite numerous missed calls he’d never left one before. Wary of hiding anything from my mum, I said:
‘He’s left a message.’
‘Listen to it.’
‘Daniel, it’s Dad, I don’t know what’s happening – I can’t stay here, doing nothing. I’m at Landvetter airport. My flight’s in thirty minutes but it’s not direct. I fly to Copenhagen first. I’m due to land at Heathrow at four this afternoon.
‘Don’t meet me. Don’t mention this to your mum. I’ll come to you. Just stay at home. Keep her there. Don’t let her go . . .
‘There’s so much I should’ve told you already. The stuff she’s been saying – if you listen to it long enough it starts to sound real, but it’s not.
‘Call me, but only if it doesn’t unsettle her. She can’t know that I’m on my way. Be careful. She can lose control. She can be violent.
‘We’ll make her better. I promise. We’ll find the best doctors. I was slow off the mark. I couldn’t talk properly with the Swedish doctors. It will be different in England. She’ll be okay. Don’t lose sight of that. I’ll see you soon.
‘I love you.’
• • •
I LOWERED THE PHONE. By my dad’s own assessment, if he walked into the apartment, taking my mum by surprise, there was the possibility of a violent confrontation. My mum would turn against both of us.
My mum said:
‘How long do we have?’
My dad had set in motion a ticking clock, upsetting the already fragile calm. I felt no inclination to follow his instructions. In order to preserve my privileged status as someone she trusted, I handed her the phone. She accepted it as if it were a precious gift, cupping it in her open palms. She didn’t raise it to her ear, saying to me:
‘This show of faith gives me hope. I know we haven’t been close for many years. But we can be again.’
I thought upon my mum’s assertion that we weren’t close any more. We met up less frequently. We spoke less. We wrote less. Lying to her about my personal life had forced me to pull away, to limit the number of lies I’d need to tell. Every interaction carried the risk of disco
very.
I was not close to my mum any more.
It was true.
How had I allowed that to happen? Not by design, or intention, not by a rupture or a row, but by careless small steps. And now, looking over my shoulder, certain my mum was no more than a few paces behind, I saw her far away.
As she played the voicemail I expected a powerful reaction, yet my mum’s face remained blank. Finished with the message, she returned the phone, for once unaware of my feelings, distracted by the news. She took a deep breath, picked up the troll knife and slid it into her pocket, arming herself against my dad’s arrival.
A man prepared to pay for his freedom with the life of his wife – what is that, not a man but a monster. Why give me a warning? Why not sneak over? I’ll tell you why. He wants me to lose control, to rant and rave. That’s why he left you the message. Ignore what he said about the need for secrecy. That’s a lie. He intended for me to listen to it. He wants me to know that he’s coming!
• • •
EVEN THOUGH IT WAS MADE of wood and blunt, I hated the knife being in her pocket.
‘Mum, please give me the knife.’
‘You’re still seeing him as your father. But he’s hurt me. He’ll hurt me again. I have a right to defend myself.’
‘Mum, I won’t listen to another word until you put the knife on the table.’
She slowly removed the knife from her jeans, offering it to me by the handle and saying:
The Farm Page 8
