Benny & Shrimp (16 page)

It wasn’t that I’d forgotten Benny, those days I spent
sitting
with Märta at the hospital. I’d just put him on hold, because I could only cope with one thing at a time.

Several times I was on the verge of pouring out the whole story to Märta – for years I’ve been the sort who tries to talk through anything I can’t get to grips with by myself. But I couldn’t do that on this occasion. And whenever I thought of goddamned Robertino, I just wanted to hang all men up by their thumbs. Reality somehow stopped during those days. All I did was sit, work, and sleep. And brooded. Depression’s
contagious
; don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.

In the end I rang him. And I was roused from my gloomy torpor as I heard him say it was his birthday and remembered what he’d done for me on mine. I went
out to the shops and bought champagne and roses and a whole roll of salt beef, which he loves. Then, after much thought, I went to the workwear shop and bought myself a set of overalls; he was supposed to realise it was actually intended as a present to him. Yes, I’d toddle out and help him sometimes, to show my Solidarity as best I could. And I bought two tickets for
Rigoletto
: there was a touring production in town. It’s my very favourite opera – no one can resist it. Or so I thought. And I suppose I thought of it as some kind of tit-for-tat, the overalls for the opera.

I smuggled the overalls into his wardrobe and made a quick chocolate cake from a mix. All I can say is, it didn’t turn out at all like the picture on the packet. I was planning to appear at his bedside in the overalls, with coffee and cake, singing and waving the tickets. I put the roses out on the porch to keep them fresh. Then we curled up on the sofa, wrapped foetus-like around each other, the champagne between us. That night was glorious: I felt like his Siamese twin. I didn’t know you could get that close to somebody without actually
sharing
the same blood circulation system.

And then I overslept.

That was bad enough. I felt so ashamed of myself, as soon as I realised where I was. Benny was clomping around the bedroom, keeping his back turned, and on that back, spelt out in big letters, was the message: It’s my Birthday, but I’ve got to Work and Toil while Others Enjoy a Lie-in! And in smaller letters: I didn’t even get my coffee!

“I wasn’t expecting anything from you, anyhow,” he said, and I suddenly saw red. I couldn’t cope with being a Siamese twin one minute and all this shame and guilt the next. I snapped at him that he certainly wouldn’t be getting anything from me, and I meant the overalls, my acknowledgement of his work and my help, such as it was. Later, in the kitchen, I’d calmed down enough to want to give him the cake. But he was suddenly
standing
over me clutching a leather jacket and ordering me out to work, snorting something about cows not
drinking
beer, just to make me feel even more useless.

Once he’d gone, I threw the overalls in the car, chucked away the roses, which had naturally frozen overnight, and sat down at the kitchen table, breathing heavily. In the end I wrote him a note. It had all gone so pathetically wrong; I had to do something.

He didn’t turn up until quarter past seven that evening, with wet hair and a cautious smile. I had thought I’d explain a few things over a bite to eat before the performance, to put us in a positive mood for
drinking
in
Rigoletto
, but we never got time. We rushed to the theatre and I just had time to say “Happy Birthday” before the overture began. He nodded, and peered at the programme in the gloom.

I don’t love all opera; the plot of
Die Fledermaus
, for example, seems so silly to me that I can hardly see the point of sitting through it. I’d rather listen to it on CD. But
Rigoletto
: now there’s an opera with blood and guts, all about guilt and innocence and love against all better judgement, and with music to lift you through the roof.
For me that evening, Gilda and her doomed passion stood for Märta, sitting there mutely in her hospital ward. In the closing scene, when Gilda gives her life for the Duke as he’s laughing with a new woman, I couldn’t control my tears. I was much occupied with my handkerchief as the lights went up, and hoped Benny would understand.

But I needn’t have worried. He was fast asleep. He’d turned a little to one side and was snoring in an
unlovely
fashion, with his chin resting on the edge of his seat and his mouth open. It took me ten minutes to wake him properly, and everybody was staring at us.

That was the rest of the evening spoilt. We didn’t say a word to each other as we walked back to his car, I didn’t even ask him to spend the night. He had to get up at six as usual.

Back at the car, he touched my cheek with his maimed hand and gave a wan smile.

“Are we quits?” he asked. And I couldn’t help kissing his knuckles.

It’s obvious it won’t work. Not a cat in hell’s chance.

It’s not only the farm. I can just picture myself
coming
in at night completely shattered – after haymaking, say – and there she is waiting with the opera tickets, drumming her fingers. Opera, good grief! All through the first act, I felt as if my stomach was rumbling
louder
than that fatso with the sword, who was howling fit to call the cows home. Shrimp should be grateful I fell asleep; I’d have shown her up even worse if I’d been conscious. I might even have said what I really thought – out loud.

But she wasn’t very happy. I could see that, all right.

We scarcely see eye to eye on anything. We take care to avoid politics these days. I remember the first
confrontation
. It started with me showing her a letter to
the paper that I thought was great; it ended with her calling me a fascist and going to sleep with her back to me. And there’ve been other times. These days we avert our eyes uncomfortably when anything crops up on telly that we know we’ll disagree about.

I suppose we were born under incompatible star signs. That’s what Auntie Astrid would have said; she was very keen on all that business. Mum and I used to tease her when she got all serious about what we ought to do while the ascendant was in Jupiter. I came across a newspaper article that claimed all our modern
horoscopes
are a month out, because the Roman calendar they used when the system was first set up has shifted over the centuries. Auntie Astrid was so confused we felt sorry for her. She’d identified so totally with the role of a handsome, good-hearted ox, and now it turned out she was a fish.

Shrimp reads horoscopes as well, but mostly just to wind me up. “If you’d been born two days earlier, you’d have been a dreamy, artistic type who enjoys life and takes each day as it comes,” she said pointedly once, reading the horoscope sign before mine. Hanging in the air was the implication that things would have been much easier that way. “Dreamy dairy farmers who take each day as it comes go broke or get run over by their tractor,” I muttered.

But our horoscopes may be the only thing that can explain why we feel attracted to each other in spite of the fact we’re both kicking out against it – because I think we are, now. They ought to get some old
fortune-teller 
to look into it. Maybe it’s some bloody
transcendent
in Venus that’s in the twelfth house of Mars? Isn’t there any chance of bending those lines and circles and getting free at least, so I can stop dreaming about pale little shrimps and stride off into the sunset with a
muscular
, domesticated young woman from the farmers’ relief service? And Shrimp could settle down with some weirdy beardy with long summer holidays and eighteen metres of bookshelves.

We’ve carried on seeing each other since the
disastrous
birthday, but it’s as if we’re always on our guard with each other, exaggerating the impossibility of it all. “I can’t take any time off in the summer, but if I could take a couple of days in September, I fancy the Lofoten Islands. For the fishing!” I say brightly. “That wouldn’t be your sort of thing at all, would it?” “Oh no! I’d prefer the avant-garde theatre festival in Avignon. In July!” she retorts, adding, “They perform in French, you know”.

We’re trying to convince each other and ourselves that we should leave the party while we’re still having fun. Before it ends in tears. Hurting Shrimp is the last thing I want to do; I’d rather chop off the fingers I’ve got left.

I don’t think she realises that. I hate it, for example, when she starts listing all the atrocious things Robert’s done to her friend Märta. She often does that, these days. Every time she starts, I feel she’s somehow
accusing
me; I don’t think she realises she’s got that “men are all the same” tone of voice. Sometimes I say things like,
“Well, what the hell, maybe she provoked him!” and that makes her blow her top. “But I’m not like that,” I’ll say. “You think we’re all selfish and prey on women – but just because I’m a bloke, it doesn’t mean I should take the blame for what other men do! Do you take responsibility for all the whites’ dirty tricks on other races, eh? Because you certainly are white!”

Then she says she’s never claimed I’m Robert and why should I feel the need to defend him? At least he didn’t subject Märta to physical abuse, she adds – and there I am, left with the shame again, the shame of all those men who batter their women. We never get
anywhere
.

And after those run-ins, the place is like a minefield strewn with everything we’ve said and not yet said, and it’s difficult to play our games. Playing used to be our forte, when we first started.

But if I’m brutally honest with myself, that’s not my main problem. No, it’s something else that’s been brought home to me very clearly since Mum died.

What I want and need is a woman who can put together some kind of a home. It doesn’t matter if she buys in the meatballs and uses cake mixes; she can even put up curtains made of sticks and buy clothes that look as if the council handed them out – as long as she cares and gets some sort of system going, so a man feels at home.

You can buy your own meatballs, Shrimp would say; and I’ve got clothes enough to cover my body – but it’s always as if I’m only managing the very basics: taking
nourishment to survive; clothing myself to avoid arrest by the police.

Soon I won’t need to worry about losing the farm and ending up in a hostel for homeless men. It’s bloody well starting to look like a hostel here already. And I haven’t a clue how to turn it into a home. I think I could manage without sex; after all, I’ve had to, over long periods. But being homeless on your own farm is no fun at all.

And I don’t think Shrimp wants to. Or knows how to.

Life was increasingly falling into two halves. Inez Lundmark had taken early retirement, which meant I was in sole charge of the Children’s section. I buried myself totally in my work: planned a children’s theatre week; got local artists in to do story illustrations with the children; started trying to put pressure on local politicians to invest more in cultural projects – usually with the result that some political party claimed me as its own. I reckon I was gaining a nice little reputation as a person with a lot of ideas who got things done. I attended book fairs and courses, and almost persuaded a big boss at the council to finance a children’s film festival. But it turned out not to be the festival itself that interested him. He suggested we make a joint visit to a children’s film festival in Poland one weekend. His
secretary rang me to ask if it was correct that we
wanted
a double room, and all the affectionate hugs and “darlings” suddenly fell into place. When I confronted him, his first excuse was that he’d wanted to save the council money… and we were modern people, weren’t we? Then he said his secretary had misunderstood and was an incompetent who might soon find herself
superfluous
to requirements. And then there was no
children’s
film festival.

I couldn’t see any way of taking it further; it would just have created problems for the secretary. They
generally
make sure they hedge their bets and protect their backs, men like that. But I’m not sure his aims were limited to a little adventure within the snug confines of the council hierarchy – sometimes he’d ring at nights and sniffle and slur down the phone. I told Benny, and he offered to put on a false moustache and go
undercover
at the council offices. That was one of the few times I succeeded in interesting him in what I did – I think he was a bit jealous.

The worst thing wasn’t the unwanted attentions of this council bigwig, or the fact that the film festival came to nothing. Experience has taught me to go easy when I’m trying to be nice to men; some of them seem to have an incomprehensible weakness for women like me. They initially assume I’m all feeble and fragile, and when it dawns on them that I might not be, they feel a need to make it their personal mission to solve the
puzzle
. It’s happened before.

No, the worst thing was that this bigwig’s wife is a
library colleague of mine. She didn’t know anything about it, of course – after all, there wasn’t much to know – but I’d hear her in the staffroom, as I had done for years: “Now the children have flown the nest, Sten and I have finally got more time for each other! If only Sten could take some time off, we’d go to Madeira for our anniversary, a second honeymoon! Sten and I and Sten and I…”

And at nights I had Sten snivelling down the phone.

We seemed to have a lot of husbands in the staffroom for a while. Lilian mostly complained about hers: “…and when I get home from work after being on my feet for ten hours, he’s just sitting there at the kitchen table with the evening paper spread out over the empty cornflake bowls from breakfast, asking what’s for
dinner
. And he always needs consoling about something or other: because he didn’t win the lottery, or because somebody at work’s been annoying him, or because he’s going bald. The most restful times are actually when he’s ill, because then he just lies in his room groaning, and the kids and I can do what we like for a change…”

“…Just think! Sten would never do anything like that! He’s so considerate he often has breakfast at work…”

They went on in that vein and seriously got on my nerves. Because I was pretty sure they once felt for their husbands something of what was currently attracting me to Benny. I mean, I’m too old to believe the “We’ll never get like that” line, especially as things are already less than rosy.

So life fell into two halves: the enjoyable, hard work that kept me busy by day – and the time outside that, which I increasingly devoted to turning things over in my mind.

Sten. Lilian’s husband. Robertino. And Örjan.

And Benny?

How high a price was I prepared to pay, and what did I really want?

There was really only one person I could ask. So I went round to her place.