Benny & Shrimp (14 page)

On Christmas Eve morning, I crept out to the cowshed without waking her. I sang the Christmassy bits of Handel’s
Messiah
for the cows, the tenor part. It’s the only part I know, but it didn’t sound bad.

Then I thought I’d surprise her with Christmas rice pudding in bed, but well I never! She’d woken up and naturally sneaked a look in the carrier bag of stuff I’d slipped off and bought while she was going on about potash and washed butter. I’d got a plastic sausage of heat-and-serve rice pudding, a tin of ginger snaps and a pack of frozen, ready-cooked ling (she’d been looking for the raw ingredients, dried ling and slaked lime to soak it in). She’d heated some rice pudding in the microwave and set the table with the
spindly hyacinths and red candles.

“I’m well aware you don’t trust my cookery skills!” she said. “But I’ll take photos of your doughnut twists and use them against you if I hear a single word of
complaint
. You should be damn grateful you’re not getting chickpea stew tonight!”

We wrapped ourselves up against the cold and trudged off to cut a tree. We couldn’t agree, of course. I wanted to take one of the bent little specimens that would never make good timber, and she wanted a Disney Christmas tree. In the end we found one so ugly she felt sorry for it and wanted to take it home, so we were both happy.

But I couldn’t for the life of me find the tree
decorations
. Mum told me so many important things, but she never revealed where those were kept. So we had to make them ourselves: garlands of kitchen foil; baubles that were my old table tennis balls decorated with coloured strips cut from the supermarket Christmas offers leaflet and pictures from the agricultural supplies catalogue. Then we fixed stumps of candles onto the branches with rubber bands and topped it all off with a Toronto maple leaf flag.

“See! Education comes in handy in all sorts of
situations
,” she said, sneaking a cautious glance in my
direction
. We hadn’t mentioned the Big Outburst. “Sunday school!” she said, indicating her garlands. “But what would you have hung them on, if I hadn’t had a forest of my own?” I snorted. And neither of us needed to say any more on the subject.

Then we had our Christmas lunch. The Herring à la Russe looked like fresh garden compost, but it tasted great, and so did the mock goose. We put the doughnut twists out for Father Christmas, but on second thoughts took them in again and threw them straight in the bin. If our house elf had tasted them, he’d probably have set fire to the cowshed. Then we threw away the boiled ling as well; neither of us had ever really liked it, traditional or not.

It turned out she knew the alto part of highlights from the
Messiah
, and we wondered where we could get hold of a soprano. “S’pose we’ll have to get together and make one,” I said, and then rushed out to the cowshed before I had time to see her face. That was overstepping the mark, I knew. We were supposed to be taking each day as it came; that was our unspoken agreement. I’d have to watch myself.

After evening milking we put our parcels under the tree and tried to wheedle each other into opening one first. We started with harmless, silly presents: I gave her some plastic dog poo to brighten up her antiseptic flat; she gave me a gangster hat and a tiepin with a dollar sign on it, to wear when I was with my big financier friends. Then she opened a huge pair of hairy wool gloves from me, and I unwrapped a game called The Haunted Castle. Naturally, neither of us had chosen any presents that so much as hinted at life together; that was all part of our unspoken agreement – but I was bold enough to give her a special present. I’d managed to prise Auntie Astrid out of her silver frame and put in a school photo
of me in Year 9. “It’s not really me, but he’s the one you like, after all,” I said. She blushed a bit.

“And here’s something that isn’t really you, either, but I hope you might like it,” she said. It was a huge tome, a collection of poems by Gunnar Ekelöf. “The natural world replete with love and death around me…” she read, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. I resisted making a silly joke about it being just the right size to wedge under the wonky leg of the dining table. She knows very well I kick out like a cross cow
whenever
she tries to lead me up the cultural path, but I sensed that with this she was trying to give me
something
that was her, and I thought I’d take a look at it in bed, those evenings I was alone. It couldn’t do any harm. Well, I suppose it could, if you dozed off and it fell on your head… Oh shut up, Benny!

I kissed her and then we had a game of Haunted Castle. Because the idea was for us to enjoy ourselves, we two lost children in the forest. On Christmas Eve!

The aim of the game was for the players to find their way through a series of rooms, getting past all the obstacles, then steal the treasure and be out before the clock struck midnight. I fell foul of swords, monsters, bottomless pits and poisonous spiders, but also
managed
to find secret passages and magic potions. She kept drawing the “Empty Room” card and proceeded primly, square by square. And I was the only one who got out alive, though without any treasure.

Then she started snivelling. Uncertainly, I said, “What a bad loser! Okay, I’ll go back in again and fall
into the bottomless pit with you.”

“It’s not that,” she said sadly. “But this is the story of my life. Empty rooms.”

Somehow, we both seemed to agree not to let the world around us get in that Christmas. We didn’t leave the farm or answer the phone. Once, we put out the light in the kitchen when we saw car headlights coming along the road, then sat silently holding each other as someone knocked a couple of times on the door. It was as if we sensed that if we opened so much as a tiny crack onto the outside world, all manner of ghouls and ghosts would be blown in and skeletons would come
toppling out of the cupboards.

And I suppose that was what did happen, in the end.

The first ghouls to arrive were Benny’s friend
Bengt-Göran
and his girl Violet. They were so bloody devious that they came just when they knew Benny would be in the milking parlour and couldn’t hide. He brought them in with him and left them to me while he had his shower.

And it went badly from the word go.

Violet had brought a whole bagful of leftovers from their Christmas buffet, which had clearly beaten the one at the best hotel in town by several platter lengths. “Well, Benny told me you didn’t really go in for
cooking
!” she giggled, with a knowing look at the plastic sausage of rice pudding we’d just been scraping out.

I was furious with Benny, of course. I felt betrayed and slandered. And the worst of it was, we’d absolutely nothing left to offer them except a couple of bits of toffee on a plate – and I could hardly start boasting about the mock goose we’d eaten up. Violet started
lay
ing
out a feast, helping herself from the china cupboard as if she were in her own home. The whole time she was going on about how many different kinds of pickled herring she’d done this year. “Just think, they might give you a whole-page spread in
The Farmer
next year!” I said, and she can’t have missed the spiteful tone.

Bengt-Göran seemed to have had quite a few; he said nothing, but stood staring at me with a sickly smile, licking his bottom lip. And the more he licked, the blacker the looks he got from Violet.

So when Benny came upstairs from the cellar, pink from his shower and wearing an innocent smile, the fumes of loathing were already thick in the kitchen air. He did a double take in the doorway, and plainly thought he should make an effort to clear the
atmosphere
.

“Oh, Violet, what a treasure you are, bringing us some of your wonderful grub! I’ve told Desirée all about your smashing meatballs, haven’t I, Desirée?”

If only he hadn’t mentioned the meatballs! Wound up as I was, I took it as a dig at the ready-made ones I once bought and gave him as an offering.

“Everyone gets the meatballs they deserve!” I said in a dark and mournful tone, and they all stared at me in surprise.

Bengt-Göran gave a sudden snigger, and clearly thought I’d been at the bottle, too. He got out a hip flask and waved it invitingly in my direction. Violet made a great show of turning her solid back on me, and retrieved a gratin dish from the microwave, where she’d put something to heat through. Benny didn’t know what was going on and shifted his weight miserably from one foot to another. Traitor!

We sat around the table. Benny ate as if he’d been starved since last Christmas, and joked about my threat to give him chickpea stew. Violet shook her head in sympathy and Bengt-Göran kept trying to refill my snaps glass. When I put my hand over the glass, he poured the snaps regardless, and offered to lick my hand dry for me. I sharply withdrew the hand, without
a word. Benny embarked on a rambling account of his abortive attempt to get the doughnut twists the right shape, and Violet’s eyes opened wide: “You mean you were doing the baking…?” she began.

Just then, the telephone rang. I rushed out to the hall.

It was the regional hospital.

“Desirée Wallin? We have a patient here who gave me this number. She’d like you to come and see her if at all possible. You needn’t wait for visiting time. Ward 34, room F, it’s a single room. But we’d be grateful if you had a word with the duty doctor on your way in. I’m afraid we’re not allowed to give details of her condition over the phone. Her name? Oh, didn’t I say? It’s Märta Oscarsson. She was admitted the day before yesterday. Can I tell her you’re coming?”

“Yes, I’m on my way!” I whispered, and went back to the kitchen.

“Can I borrow your car, Benny? Märta’s been taken ill!”

I don’t know if they believed me, and I couldn’t have cared less. I took Benny’s truck and went.

“Well, I shan’t say a word!” Violet said when Desirée left, and of course, I could hear every word she wasn’t saying: What sort of behaviour is that, upping and
leaving
when you’ve got guests? – who’ve even taken the trouble to bring something nice to eat, into the bargain.

Because they’d realised she was one of those people who can’t even make meatballs! Or won’t…

Bengt-Göran had had quite a skinful and was
mumbling
something along the lines of: You’ll have to show that one who’s boss, all right. Make sure she knows the score. Be tough, they like that. Maybe she’s lying there at home right now, waiting for you to come and give her one?

He licked his lips and nudged Violet in the ribs,
almost knocking her off her chair. Then they went home with their arms wrapped around each other, and I guess Violet was the only one who got any pleasure out of the whole thing. It’s pretty hard to get Bengt-Göran going; she usually starts taunting him about it after his third snaps.

Once they’d gone, I just sat there with my hands
dangling
between my knees, feeling totally at a loss. Why had she gone off like that? Had somebody really been taken ill? Now I know a little of Bengt-Göran and Violet goes a long way, but to be fair, Desirée had introduced me to a few people she knew in town who’d really given me the creeps. It was at the pub, after we’d been to the pictures.

Not that they weren’t pleasant, oh no! They were so bloody pleasant to the poor country peasant, kept things nice and simple for him, and instantly translated every four-syllable word that happened to escape their lips into a two-syllable one. Some bloke who worked at the higher education college and drove a BMW slapped me on the back and said he’d always wanted to do a physical job, and then, of course, there were all those subsidies and tax breaks, and had I got any decent meat I could sell him? And a prissy little librarian person asked me what farmers did in winter. “You mean while the dairy herd’s hibernating?” I retorted, and after that there was a a rather strained atmosphere around the table.

I get so fed up listening to people like that. They’ve read a few indignant articles in the papers about
landowners in the south of Sweden getting subsidies, and then they know everything about those crafty
farmers
who’re the big winners in this recession we’re
having
. “So how do you explain the fact that there are loads of farmers going bankrupt every day?” you croak. “In twenty years’ time there’ll be scarcely a single Swedish farmer left!” But by then, they’ve started talking about something else.

They ought to declare us a protected species. We’re on the verge of extinction, like peregrine falcons and blue anemones. And I know why. I wish I had a chance to tell them that Dad could take the little tractor and chug down to the kiosk and buy a chocolate bar for his profit on a litre of milk. But I’d have to get on the same old tractor, held together with insulation tape and
plastic
padding, and fork out the whole of my profit on five litres. I don’t get much more for my milk than he did twenty years ago, but the price of chocolate hasn’t stood still. Or diesel.

And it’s a long time since I’ve been able to afford any reliefs. Wonder if that BMW bloke who liked physical labour would like it quite so much if he had a ninetyhour week, and no extra pay even for working over Christmas?

The worst of it is, you can never say a word to explain it all to those people, even if you knew where on earth to start. Because they’d only exchange
knowing
looks and oh yeah, those farmers are always
moaning.
Either there’s too much rain for their potatoes, or not enough, ha ha!

Desirée and I have never discussed it, not since the Big Outburst when she got hold of my school grades. She daren’t ask me why I don’t give it up, though I’m sure she’d like to. And I can’t face trying to explain. If I gave up, I’d have to move away from the farm with nothing but old debts to take with me – yes, I won’t easily be rid of them; I was so stupid once, I took a
million
kronor loan for modernisation, more money than I’d get if I sold the whole damn junkheap today. And who’s to say I’d ever get a job so I could pay the interest on my debts, even? Oh, but you could live in a
hostel
and get tips on clearing your debts from the Citizens’ Advice Bureau… not bloody likely!

And if I sell up, if I’m not Benny of Rowan Farm any longer, who am I then?

I’m supposed to have diesel grease under my fingernails and a decent machinery store with gas welding gear and pressure cleaning equipment; I’m supposed to subscribe to
Animal Husbandry
and
Farmers’ Journal
Exchange and Mart
; I’m supposed to have two tractors, a John Deere and a Valmet; a round baler, a
muckspreader
and a forestry hoist! Until the Senior Enforcement Officer forces me into an insolvency auction.

If you take my John Deere away and put me in a suit, I shall feel like a transvestite.

But we’ve just skirted around the margins of the topic, Desirée and I. She once asked me if there was anything else except cows a farmer could make a profit out of; I suppose she was thinking of carp farming or everlasting flowers or something. I answered curtly that
the only profitable trades in the world these days seemed to involve arms, drugs and sex.

So then we started sketching out a plan to convert the farm to an original sort of sex club. Desirée wanted to call it Kinky Country Club: Roll Up and See How Animals Do It! Does rubber gear turn you on? Then come and see the inseminator in boots and rubber apron fertilise a cow! Book a space in the hayloft for a nostalgic Silver Wedding night! Pep up your sex life with a bit of S&M: hire a cow bridle and tether each other! Or try a Rowan Farm Special, a sex kick you’ll never forget! Get it together against our electric fence…

It’s getting pretty well worn now, that path we always divert onto when any question that might possibly be important seems to be coming to a head. We come up with a joke and skirt round anything that could prove
awkward
.

Where the hell has she got to?