Gerlof sighed. ‘It’s full of holes.’
‘We can fix it,’ said John. ‘And there’s a new millennium in two years, a new era. You want to be around for that, don’t you?’
‘Maybe … we’ll just have to see what this new era is like.’ Gerlof wanted to change the subject, and nodded in the direction of the fence. ‘So what do you think of the neighbours, then? Across the road.’
John said nothing.
‘Don’t you know them?’
‘Well, I’ve seen them. But they’ve hardly been here up till now, I don’t really know much about them.’
‘Me neither. But I’m curious – aren’t you?’
‘They’re rich,’ said John. ‘Rich folk from the mainland.’
‘Definitely,’ said Gerlof. ‘You need to let them know you’re around.’
‘What for?’
‘So you can do some jobs for them before the campers arrive.’
‘That’s a good idea.’
Gerlof nodded, leaning forward slightly. ‘And make sure they pay you well.’
‘Good thinking,’ said John, looking almost cheerful.
7
‘So you’ll be staying here for a few weeks now?’ asked the young estate agent as he handed over the keys and the last of the paperwork to Vendela Larsson. ‘Enjoying the spring sunshine?’
‘That’s what we’re hoping,’ said Vendela with a laugh.
She often laughed nervously when she was talking to people she didn’t know. But she was hoping the habit would disappear now she was on the island. A lot of things were going to be different now.
‘Good, excellent,’ said the agent. ‘That means you’ll be helping to extend the tourist season, like real pioneers … Showing people on the mainland that it’s possible to enjoy the peace and quiet of Öland for more than just a few weeks in the summer.’
Vendela nodded.
Enjoy the peace and quiet? That depended on whether she would be able to relax, of course, and whether Max would settle and be able to get his cookery book finished.
Right now he was in the heated garage washing the car. Every drop of blood must go. Since they had arrived at the summer house Max hadn’t said a word about what had happened on the way, but fury surrounded him like a sour smell.
Vendela had been left to deal with the agent, and she was trying not to shiver in the cold wind. It was evening; the sun had set over the sound and taken every vestige of warmth with it. She really wanted to go back indoors.
The agent looked around in the twilight, over at the large house next door and the small cottage a few hundred metres to the north.
‘This is an excellent area,’ he said. ‘Absolutely top-notch. The neighbours are just in the right place – not too close, not too far away. And no other properties between you and the shore … All you have to do is walk around the quarry if you fancy a morning dip.’
‘Once the ice has melted, of course,’ said Vendela.
‘It won’t be long now,’ said the agent. ‘It’s quite rare for it to be here this late … but we had a hard winter this year. Minus fifteen some nights.’
A stocky man in blue dungarees was standing next to the agent. He was the local builder, and nodded to Vendela.
‘Any problems, give me a ring,’ he said.
Those were his first and last words to Vendela this evening. Both he and the agent made a move.
‘Don’t fall out with your neighbours,’ was the agent’s final piece of advice to Vendela as they shook hands. ‘That’s the golden rule for house-owners.’
‘We haven’t met the neighbours yet,’ said Vendela, laughing again.
As she walked back into the house, little Aloysius hauled himself laboriously out of his dog basket on his stiff legs and barked. He didn’t seem to be aware that it was his mistress who had come into the room – perhaps his sense of smell was failing too.
‘It’s only me, Ally,’ said Vendela, patting him.
She had felt a little exposed out in the windswept garden, but in here nobody could get to her. She loved the clean surfaces in the new house. Everything was pristine, there was no rubbish hidden in cupboards or attics. There was no cellar waiting to be cleared out and cleaned.
She remembered what the agent had said about the neighbours, and suddenly had an idea: perhaps she and Max ought to organize a party for everyone in the village, some time this week, so that they could get to know people. It would also be a way for her to practise relaxing when she was in company.
A party would definitely be a good idea.
Although it wasn’t actually the neighbours she wanted to meet, it was the elves.
Once upon a time, long, long ago, a hunter went out on to the alvar, her father had told Vendela one evening. The hunter was after hares and pheasants, but instead he met the great love of his life out there. And he was never the same again.
She had been six or seven years old when her father, Henry, started to tell her a story about the elves out on the alvar. Vendela had never forgotten that story. She often pondered on it and everything else she had learned about the elves over the years.
She started to write down Henry’s story, exactly as she remembered it:
The hunter went far out on to the alvar, but there were no birds or small wild animals to be seen that day. The only thing he saw was a tall, slender deer in the distance, a deer that remained where it was, as if it were waiting for him to come closer, before turning and setting off towards the horizon.
The hunter followed across the grass, his gun at the ready. His pursuit of the deer lasted for several hours, but the hunter never got any nearer to his quarry. The sun went down and the evening came, and slowly the hunter drew closer to the deer. He raised his gun.
Then suddenly the sun was shining brightly once again, and the hunter saw that he was standing on the alvar where the grass was fresh and green, with little streams babbling around him. The deer had vanished, but in its place a tall, beautiful woman dressed all in white was coming towards him.
The woman smiled and told him she was the queen of the elves; she had seen him many times out on the alvar, and had fallen in love with him. Now she had lured him into her own domain.
Vendela looked up and studied the wide sound beyond the window. In the darkness the ice looked grey and dirty.
If she leaned close to the glass she could see the house next door, which made her think about the party again. Yes, she would definitely get that organized.
She leaned back and continued to write:
When the hunter saw the queen of the elves standing before him, he lowered his gun and sank to his knees. And the queen took out a silver goblet and bent down to a murmuring brook. She filled the goblet to the brim, and when she stood up and offered it to the hunter, he tasted the sweetness of white wine. He felt free and happy, and did not want to return to the world of men. So he stayed with the queen all evening and all through the night, and fell asleep in her arms.
The hunter woke as the sun was rising, but he was back in his bed in the cottage on the edge of the alvar, and the beautiful woman was gone. And even though he searched and searched out on the alvar, he never found the gateway to the kingdom of the elves again.
Vendela paused. She heard a dull roar, and looked out of the window. A car was coming slowly up the gravel track, and Vendela recognized it immediately.
It was the Saab from the car park.
The car passed their house on its way to the old cottage by the north-eastern end of the quarry. Behind the wheel sat the fair-haired man who had flattened Max. His teenage son was sitting next to him.
When Vendela saw the man in profile, she realized who he reminded her of: Martin. He bore a slight resemblance to her first husband.
Perhaps that was why Max had been so angry with him. Vendela had bumped into Martin by chance one day five years ago and had lunch with him, and she had been stupid enough to tell Max about it. He still brought the matter up from time to time.
> So she had already met a couple of the neighbours, in fact. But did she really want to invite these people to a party? She was going to have to discuss it with Max.
She bent over her book and wrote a final paragraph, the end of the story:
The hunter lived in his cottage for many years after the encounter on the alvar, but he never fell in love again and he never married, for no human woman could match the queen of the elves. He never forgot her.
‘That was a story about the elves,’ her father had said, getting up from the edge of the bed. ‘Time to go to sleep now, Vendela.’
Henry had told her stories about the elves on several occasions after that. He never mentioned his late wife, but the queen seemed to fascinate him. And the story of the elves had remained in Vendela’s thoughts. It made her begin to dream of doing as the hunter had done, setting off for the place where she could meet them.
Öland 1956
It is spring when Henry Fors shows his daughter Vendela traces of the elves and trolls, the year before she goes to primary school.
First of all they go to the elves. Henry takes Vendela with him out into the meadow behind their little smallholding to fetch the cows in for milking.
Henry has three cows, but even Vendela can see that he doesn’t really want to be a farmer. Not in the least. He runs his little farm simply in order to survive.
‘This is where they dance,’ he says as they stand on the grass, the cows lumbering towards them with their udders full to bursting.
Vendela looks out over the meadow, which is enclosed by a high stone wall. Beyond the wall the world of the alvar begins, with its grass and juniper bushes. Nothing is moving out there.
‘Who?’ she asks.
‘The elves and their queen. You remember her, don’t you?’
Vendela nods, she remembers the story.
‘You can even see the traces they’ve left behind,’ says Henry, pointing with his right hand, dry and cracked from working with stone. ‘Look, a fairy ring.’
Vendela looks at the meadow and sees a circle of paler grass, perhaps three feet in diameter, in the midst of all the green. It looks as if someone has trodden on the blades of grass and broken them. Only the centre of the ring is fresh and green.
As Henry gathers the cows ahead of him, he takes a wide sweep around the ring in the grass. ‘You mustn’t walk across the places where the elves dance – it brings bad luck,’ he says. Then he raises his hand and gives the cows a gentle push to hurry them along.
A few days later, Henry takes his daughter down to the coast to look at the quarry. That’s where he’d really like to be.
Vendela is supposed to go and fetch the cows from the meadow, but Henry says they can stay out for a while longer today.
He sings all the way down to the sea in his deep baritone voice; he likes to sing songs about Öland.
There is both sorrow and longing in his voice, and Vendela thinks it is because her mother Kristin no longer exists.
Dead, she has been dead for several years. She became ill, and then the quiet noises in the house grew louder, the walls creaked more, there were rustling, cracking noises. And then she died, and everything fell silent once again.
‘Consumption,’ Henry said to Vendela when he came home from hospital for the last time.
It was the old name for a condition that meant a person had simply faded away, someone who had grown tired of everything and no longer had the strength to live.
Consumption. For several years Vendela wonders if it runs in the family, until her Aunt Margit tells her that Kristin died of a burst appendix.
As they reach the quarry, Henry stops singing. He halts at the edge, a few metres above the wide hollow in the ground. It is dry and cold here.
‘People have cleared away the earth and dug out stone for five hundred years. Stone for palaces and castles and churches. And for graves, of course.’
Vendela stands beside her father, gazing out over a grey landscape that has been smashed to pieces and stripped of all life.
‘What do you see?’
‘Stone and gravel,’ says Vendela.
Henry nods. ‘It’s a bit like the moon, isn’t it? I feel like an astronaut when I walk around here, all I need is a rocket …’
Her father laughs; he has always been interested in space.
But his laughter dies away when they reach the gravelled surface.
‘There were lots of people here just a few years ago,’ he says. ‘But they’ve given up and gone home, one by one …’
Vendela looks over at the other quarrymen. There are only five of them, and they are spread out along the bottom of the quarry, their backs weary, their clothes powdered with limestone dust.
Henry waves and calls out to them. ‘Hello there! Hello!’
None of the men wave back. They are holding drills and hammers, but have lowered them to stare at the visitors to the quarry.
‘Why aren’t they working?’ whispers Vendela.
Henry looks at his colleagues and shakes his head, as if he has given up on them. ‘They’re standing here wishing they were somewhere else,’ he says quietly. ‘They’re asking themselves why they never took the opportunity to travel to America.’
Then he shows her the spot where he works at the southern end of the quarry, where he has piled up reject stone to form a makeshift shelter from the wind.
‘This is the kelpie!’ he says.
He invites Vendela inside, and they sit down on two stone stools. Henry has brought a flask of coffee, and drinks two cups.
‘Look out down below!’ he says, tipping the last of the coffee out on to the stones.
Vendela knows he is warning the trolls in the underworld, giving them time to get away.
The dust from the limestone is tickling her nose. She looks around; there is so much crushed stone here. It’s everywhere, and she gazes at the piles, trying to see if anyone is hiding behind them.
‘What are you looking for?’ says Henry. ‘Trolls?’
Vendela nods, but her father laughs.
‘There’s nothing to worry about, the trolls keep away during the day. They can’t tolerate sunlight. They only come out when the sun has gone down.’
He glances around and goes on, ‘But before the people came, this was the kingdom of the trolls. They lived here by the sea. And the elves, who were their enemies, lived further inland. There was just one occasion when the elves came down to the trolls. They met here at the quarry, and the blood flowed that day. The ground was stained with red.’
He points towards the rock over in the east. ‘The blood is still there … Come and see.’
He leads Vendela down into the quarry and across to the vertical rock face. He bends down and points to a reddish layer running through the pale stone, just above the ground.
She looks more closely and sees that the layer is full of dark-red clumps.
‘The place of blood,’ says Henry, straightening up. ‘That’s all that remains of the battle between the trolls and the elves … petrified blood.’
Vendela realizes that the queen of the elves must have led the battle against the trolls, but she doesn’t want to look at the blood any more.
‘Do they still fight, Daddy?’
‘No, I think they’ve called a truce now,’ says Henry. ‘Perhaps they’ve decided that the trolls will stay underground beneath the place of blood, and the elves will stay on the alvar – that way they don’t have to meet.’
Vendela looks up at the top of the quarry and thinks they ought to build a palace up there, with tall windows and walls made of stone. She would like to live there, between the kingdoms of the trolls and the elves.
Then she looks at her father. ‘Why were they enemies, the trolls and the elves? Why did they fight?’
Henry merely shakes his head. ‘Who knows … I suppose they each thought the others were just too different.’
8
Per and Jesper had to travel several kilometres to find a sho
p where they could buy food on Friday evening. When they finally reached Stenvik, they drove through a village full of dark, closed-up summer cottages.
Per turned on to Ernst’s Road by the quarry, and saw that at least there were lights showing in the windows of the two newly built luxury houses. Each house had a big shiny car parked in front of it. Suddenly he recognized one of them as the Audi that had almost run Jesper over. The damage to the car was still clear to see, but all the blood had been washed away.
So the man and woman he had met in the car park had built a house here in the village. They were his new neighbours.
‘A new car,’ he said. ‘That might not be a bad idea … both for us and for the environment.’
Jesper turned his head. ‘Are you going to get a new car, Dad?’
‘In a while. Not right now.’
His own Saab had worn-out shock absorbers, and it squealed and creaked over the potholes and hollows on the gravel track. But the engine was pretty good, and Per had no intention of being ashamed of his car.
Nor of Ernst’s cottage – even though it resembled nothing so much as an abandoned builders’ hut this evening, with its low roof and small, dark windows. The cottage had stood in the sun and wind by the quarry for almost fifty years and really needed scraping down and painting, but that could wait until next summer.
Per had last visited the island to check on the cottage at the beginning of March, and the alvar had been covered in snow. The snow was almost gone now, but the air still wasn’t much warmer – at least not after the sun had gone down.
‘Do you remember Ernst, our relative?’ he asked Jesper as he pulled up in front of the house. ‘Do you remember coming to visit him here?’
‘Sort of,’ said Jesper.
‘So what do you remember?’
‘He worked with stone … he made sculptures.’
Per nodded and pointed in the darkness towards a little shed to the south of the cottage. ‘They’re still in his workshop … some of them. We can have a look.’
He missed Ernst, perhaps because he had been the complete opposite of Jerry. Ernst had got up early every morning to work with hammers and chisels down in the quarry. He had worked hard – the resounding clang of steel on stone was one of Per’s childhood memories – but when Per and his mother had come to stay, Ernst had always had time for him.
The Quarry töq-3 Page 4
