Benny & Shrimp (18 page)

Red alert, as the military would say. Keep your rifle cocked; the enemy’s on the prowl out there.

There’s been a red alert in my relationship with Benny for several weeks now. The problem is sighting the enemy. Something had happened that felt like the beginning of the end – but when exactly?

Of course, you could claim it happened the first time we met.

But in fact, I suppose it happened that evening Benny lined up all his sketches for alterations to the house and his financial calculations: how I’d sell the flat that belonged to Örjan and me and give up my job.
Or at least work half-time.

I felt as if I was suffocating, like some mental asthma attack. Because here he was, rubbing my nose in
reality
, the very reality I’d carefully been taking wide detours round. Of course I’d worried about us – but about our “feelings” and how different we were. Whether our “feelings” could take all the strain as we worked on them. Because if they couldn’t, the question of where to live was irrelevant.

I suppose I’d vaguely convinced myself he would come round to the view that milk production was all too much effort in the long run, and I was sure he’d be able to get a job with some tractor company – he was so good with engines. And then we’d get a place nearer town. If he was determined to hang onto the family farm, he could always find a tenant for it in the interim. Somewhere at the back of my mind, I knew I was being over-optimistic; after his furious outburst back in the autumn, when I found his school leaving grades, I had my suspicions it wouldn’t be that simple. But as I say, I’d successfully managed to keep the question at bay. And here he was, coming up to me, depositing it in my lap and wagging his tail.

When he proposed Violet as a childminder, I couldn’t contain myself any longer.

So I told him how I saw things, and I didn’t pull any punches. I knew it was operation overkill, but he had to get the message Loud and Clear, once and for all. Even so, I didn’t want to burn all my boats. I said
encouraging
things about biding our time and letting our relationship
deepen, defining our needs and deciding which ones to prioritise so we could adapt to each other. I must have sounded like a marriage guidance counsellor bringing her work home with her. I wanted to get him thinking along new lines. Wouldn’t he like to travel and see the world with me, for example? Or get really close to his child, take paternity leave, give me a chance to make the most of my career?

He seemed to be taking it all in. He sat nodding thoughtfully, all the way through.

So then you might have expected we’d get started on all that adapting and deepening. But quite the opposite. We buried ourselves back in our lives and neither of us gave an inch of ground.

It got almost competitive. Benny did everything short of spitting snuff on the floor and getting into knife fights to show me he was a simple farming lad, and I assumed the role of Clever and Cultured Career woman. Three Cs, and you could have made it four by adding Completely misguided.

We weren’t trying to bridge any gaping chasms; we were trying to hurl each other into them. Maybe we were both hoping for a miracle. I was hoping he’d admit he had a soul, and I expect he was hoping I’d sprout an apron overnight. We made a spirited fight of it, because the power of attraction between us was still so strong we felt we might fall into a black hole at any moment. The other side of the coin was that we argued with each other more bitterly than we’d ever done.

Then we stopped sleeping together. It was too much
of a strain. Too painful on the heartstrings.

And there wasn’t much left after that.

Because we’d reached a point where we couldn’t just be together and have a nice time; we each had to be working on our barricades all the time. It actually ended where it all started: in the cemetery. We went there together one day and tended our graves, side by side.

Suddenly Benny said: “Do you think you and I will ever end up under the same headstone?” He gave me a thoughtful look.

I glanced at his stone and a shiver ran through me. “But which stone? Surely that’s the question.” I said.

“Because I don’t think we ever will!” Benny went on.

It took a moment to sink in. He didn’t believe in us any more.

Not now and not ever.

Something inside me started hurting like mad.

I reached for our standard painkiller and made a joke of it.

“Whatever happens, I’ll always think of you as the Boy at the Grave Next Door,” I said. “You know, like in magazine stories. The boy who lives next door. That really nice chap the heroine grew up with. She doesn’t realise how nice he is until she’s been given the push by some Romeo in the city. Then she goes back home and settles down with the boy next door who’s been
waiting
faithfully.

“Whatever happens to us, I want to come back to the Boy at the Grave Next Door when the time comes. To
you, Benny. And then we can play pick-up-sticks with our bones until no one knows which bits are you and which are me. Will you wait faithfully?”

Benny sat quiet for a little while.

“Not if I can help it,” he said. “And what are we going to do about the husbands and wives we pick up as we go through our lives?”

“We won’t bother about them. Because it’s you and me, Benny, even if it doesn’t happen in this life.”

“If some woman should ever decide to make an
honest
man of me, I won’t let her down,” he said. “I’ll want her in there with us.”

We sat in silence for quite a while.

“Maybe it would be best if we didn’t see each other any more,” Benny said.

Just then, I was relieved he was taking some kind of decision for the pair of us. It didn’t really sink in that this was the end. So I agreed.

He got up and took me by the hand. We moved so we were between our two gravestones. We put our arms around each other and stood quietly for a long time, maybe half an hour.

“Let’s meet right here,” I said finally. “In fifty years or so.”

“See you!” he said sadly. And then he went.

I stayed there for a few moments, then I went home.

Don’t suppose I’ll ever know if Desirée realised I meant it seriously, that last time in the cemetery. Or how she took it, if so. What I think now is that she would quite happily have carried on the way we were – throwing herself into her job all week, then allowing herself a few hours of rural relaxation. Seeing it was always me
coming
to her, cap in hand, asking for more, it was odd that I was the one to bring matters to a head and break it off with her – at least, I think it was me. I couldn’t go on like that; the price was too high. But breaking up with her almost did for me.

As soon as I got back from the cemetery, I kicked off my boots, went into the sitting room and scrabbled around for a pen and pad in the bureau. Then I did a circuit of the farm. Went around like a building site
inspector writing down everything that needed doing. I had my ancient Walkman on the whole time, blasting out Energy Radio at top volume, perfect for
lobotomising
yourself for a while without doing any lasting
damage
. I set myself three jobs a day, on top of all the
routine
ones. And they were things like concreting a new manure base and building a new shed for the pump…

And I did it. Doggedly, I numbed myself with work, so much work I didn’t even get time to read the local paper. I scarcely knew what day of the week it was. I’d go out at half past five every morning and be on the go until about ten at night. Then I’d come in and collapse; often I didn’t even make it upstairs. There were days when I couldn’t even remember if I’d had anything to eat.

I stuck at it until spring came and I had to get out into the fields. If the cows gave me even the slightest bother, they got a good dose of my boot, steel toe cap and all. One cow got so nervous I eventually had to fit a restraint to stop her kicking me. I thought they should be bloody grateful.

I didn’t ever slip back into that apathy I was feeling before I met Shrimp. There was some kind of logical train of thought there: I’d given up the most
tremendous
thing in my life, for this. So I had to make a go of it. Give it all I’d got.

Then I went through a phase of thinking I ought to go out on a Saturday night. It was a job I set myself, like all the rest – get out there and size up what the market had to offer, same as at an agricultural machinery show.
I went to the barber’s and they did what they could with hair frayed like old rope; I put on a clean shirt and jeans and an old leather jacket. I hung around in pubs and chatted up girls, and since I didn’t give a toss what they thought of me, it worked much better than my Smarmy Benny approach. I even brought one or two home with me, just as one-night stands. It was no consolation whatsoever; they never even had faces as far as I was concerned. But I can’t honestly say it made me more depressed, either. There were women to be had, at any rate.

Then I stopped because I had all the spring
ploughing
and sowing to get through. At that stage I was
working
eighteen hours a day, and one morning when I
fainted
in the boiler room, I realised something would have to give. I’d lost seven kilos in weight and I was having serious gastric problems. Thinking I’d at least get that sorted out, I rang Anita, and she came round one evening. When she saw me, she clapped her hands over her mouth. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. “Just give me the medicine.”

A week later, she took her annual leave from work. “They’re always pleased at the hospital if people can take it at different times, not in the summer,” she said. She moved into Mum’s room. She cooked boiled fish and soothing soups that were kind to my stomach, and massaged my back when I’d been out ploughing on the tractor until eleven at night. She stocked up the fridge and freezer and cleaned and tidied the house; she put up some kitchen curtains and came out to the cowshed
with me when I had to do the test milking. In the evenings she’d sit knitting while I read
The Farmer
and we didn’t say much to start with.

It was like taking two aspirin when your head’s about to burst. The pain slowly fades to a dull ache you can live with.

By the third week, I started telling her about it. She didn’t say much, just nodded and kept an eye on her stitches. That was a blessing; if she’d started telling me what she thought of Shrimp, I’d have broken down.

By the fourth week, she moved into my bed with me. It wasn’t so much a full string orchestra, more like a sauna when you’re really stiff and clogged with dirt. Pleasant and natural but nothing to make you giddy with desire.

I didn’t ring Desirée even once, and I avoided the cemetery. My parents would have understood.

A couple of times, not long after we split up, the telephone rang in the night. I knew who it was but I didn’t pick up the receiver. I’d have been right back in it if I had.

Everyone creates their own hell out of what they hate most. For the people around the Mediterranean, hell was perpetual heat; for those in the north, it was a realm of icy cold and silence.

I constructed my personal hell by letting all the
mistakes
I’ve made and all the opportunities I’ve missed pass before my eyes, like watching a film.

A week after Benny and I said goodbye in the
cemetery
, I knew he really meant it. It took me that long. I rang him one night to keep at least a tiny thread of contact going. He didn’t answer and I knew he was making himself unavailable.

That was when the film started. First, it went
through everything we said, that day he showed me his plans for the house. The more I replayed it, the more I thought I sounded like Donald Duck – a ghastly,
selfsatisfied
Donald Duck quacking on and knowing it all. Saying “we” needed to prioritise and adapt, but meaning he needed to adapt to me. Thinking every possible
solution
must involve him sacrificing something – if I thought at all. And all the time convinced I was the great object of desire, the one who could make the choice. Only a couple of weeks ago, I’d been so worried because I didn’t know what I wanted, or what I’d be prepared to give up – most likely nothing at all.

Of course Inez had warned me: “You were different. I’ve never seen you like that before.” That had been a unique feeling, and she’d seen it but I hadn’t. And that feeling now hit me with such a vengeance I was obliged to take two weeks’ sick leave.

The first time I’ve been off sick since leaving school. I went to the shops for yogurt, bread and eggs, and
tottered
home. Didn’t go out, unplugged the phone and plugged it back in again, several times a day. Replayed my film.

I remember those weeks mainly for the wild mood swings. One minute I was furious with Benny – he’d bloody well had no intention of giving up a single thing in his life, either. I was to move in with him, more or less give up my job, be adaptable to the point of letting Violet look after my child. I couldn’t think of a single thing he’d sacrificed – his only concession had been redecorating his bedroom, and he hadn’t even asked my
advice before he did it. Wilful. Stubborn. Demanding.

That night I rang to tell him what I thought of him. He still wasn’t answering. Damn him.

The next moment I crept over to the mirror and saw my tear-stained face. Crying does nothing to improve the looks of people like me – red and swollen, with white lashes. I was horribly ugly – nobody else would ever see in me what Benny had seen. And shown me. He’d made me beautiful, and now the spell was broken.

That night I rang to cry down the phone and beg for mercy. I didn’t even wait to hear if he answered before slamming down the receiver – good grief, I was turning into Sten, slurring and snivelling!

That was the last time I rang his number. But the wild mood swings went on. Sometimes I’d conjure up a sequence of images of him in my mind: in his forest owner’s cap, slurping soup and spouting reactionary clichés. And then a sequence with him against the light, sitting laughing on the steps of Rowan Farm, his troll’s hair all dishevelled, stroking a cat on his lap. His sinewy arms pitchforking hay into huge stacks. And then I’d cry some more and write incessantly in my blue book. Depending which phase I was in, I either plugged in or unplugged the phone, waiting for the rings that I knew would never come.

I remember, too, how there seemed to be a vast number of minutes in every hour, and every minute passed very slowly. I was constantly looking at the clock. And I could hardly even get my yogurt down. One day I held my nose and swallowed three raw eggs
in a row, because I got it into my head I was
undernourished
. The rest of the time I lived on clear soup.

It was much, much worse than anything I’d ever known before, worse than when Örjan died. I couldn’t even summon the energy to feel ashamed of that. Örjan was as if expunged from my memory.

Märta could have helped me through those first days, but she was at a convalescent home in Småland. And after all, what had happened to her was so much more appalling, if you can have degrees of hell.

So then I cried for Märta, too.

At the end of two weeks, I dragged myself back to work. The others thought I’d had a bad dose of ’flu. Only Olof had seen my doctor’s certificate. He said I was welcome to go and talk to him if I wanted, and I realised I’d be able to, now. But I didn’t.

I buried myself in my job. It went well. It was really only when I was fully occupied that I felt more or less normal. As soon as I got home, or found myself sitting on my own for lunch, I felt as if my face was coming loose. As if it was made of Lego and could be taken to bits at any moment. And naturally, I couldn’t sleep at nights. That’s when I lay there going over all those missed opportunities. New ones every night. More and more of them.