The Quarry (36 page)

She could hear the sound of a cow bell, and Jan-Erik’s giggling laughter.

Henry Fors has taken the boot with him and is leading the policemen up the stairs. Vendela sneaks silently behind them; she has a bad feeling.

‘Come with me and I’ll show you who owns this boot.’

He goes over to the only closed door and opens it without knocking.

‘Here he is … my son Jan-Erik.’

Vendela watches the policemen follow Henry into the room. All three gather around the figure sitting on his blanket, dressed in the same dirty clothes he was wearing the previous evening. Jan-Erik tilts his head back and looks up at them. Then he giggles and turns his attention to Vendela. She wants to say something, but doesn’t even open her mouth.

‘Is he ill?’ asks one of the policemen.

‘Well, that’s one way of putting it. He’s retarded.’ Henry is pointing at Jan-Erik as if he were exhibiting some kind of curious object. ‘We’ve had him here for a couple of years now … He was in an institution before that, but I brought him home out of the goodness of my heart.’ He pauses, then adds, ‘That was probably a mistake.’

‘So it’s his boot?’ says the first policeman.

‘Indeed it is – I can prove it.’

Henry bends down, grabs hold of one of Jan-Erik’s legs, stretches it out and puts on the boot. It seems to fit, even though Vendela knows perfectly well that it’s her father’s boot.

‘That’s all very well,’ says the policeman, looking over at the wheelchair. ‘But can he walk?’

‘Oh yes,’ says Henry. ‘The doctor at the institution said that he
can
walk. But he only does it when nobody’s looking.’

‘Show us,’ say the policemen.

Henry bends down and gets hold of Jan-Erik under the arms. ‘Up you come.’ Then he lifts him from the blanket in one movement.

Jan-Erik is still giggling. He is standing upright, with a thick sock on one foot and the boot on the other.

Henry gives him a shove. ‘Go on now, boy. Off you go!’

Jan-Erik stands there for a few seconds, looking at the policemen. Then he takes a short step forward, followed by another.

‘But why would he set fire to the place?’

‘Why?’ says Henry. ‘Who knows? It doesn’t make any sense … the lad’s in a world of his own.’

The policemen look at each other, unsure what to do.

‘What do you think – can his sort be taken to court?’

‘No idea. How old is he, Fors?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘In that case it might be possible … We’ll have to check.’

Vendela feels sick. She opens her mouth. ‘No!’

They all stop dead and stare at her, and she has no option but to continue: ‘It was my fault. It was me! I hated the cows … I went out on to the alvar and wished that they would disappear. I asked …’

The elves
, she thinks, but she dare not say it. That would probably make things even worse.

The policemen look surprised at first, then they smile at one another. One of them winks.

‘I see crime runs in the family,’ he says.

The policemen walk past Vendela and leave the room.

The house is very quiet once they have left. Henry doesn’t say anything, and Vendela doesn’t want to talk to him. The word must have got around about the policemen’s suspicions, because the following day nobody comes to visit the Fors family – it even looks as if the neighbours are taking a detour so they don’t have to walk past the farm and look at it.

The week after the fire there are more interviews with the police. Eventually it is decided that both Henry Fors and his son are under suspicion: Jan-Erik is accused of burning down the barn, and Henry of having kept quiet about his son’s actions in order to claim the insurance money.

‘It wasn’t Jan-Erik,’ Vendela says to her father. ‘It was you.’

Henry shrugs his shoulders. ‘It’s better this way … I mean, your brother is retarded, they can’t punish him.’

In spite of everything that has happened, Henry carries on working as a quarryman. He walks down to the coast with his head held high every morning, and comes home in the evening. Vendela dare not ask what he does there all day, because it’s hardly likely that he has any customers by this stage.

Vendela herself carries on walking back and forth to school, but now the long trek and the hours she spends there are one long torment. She is no longer Vendela Fors, she is just one of ‘that family who burnt down their own farm’, and at break and lunchtime Dagmar Gran sits in a circle with the other girls in their class without even looking at Vendela.

After a couple of weeks of silent waiting, both Jan-Erik and Henry are summoned to the court in Borgholm where the case will be heard.

Henry puts on his black Sunday-best suit and combs his hair carefully. He gets out clean clothes for his son and goes upstairs.

He raises his voice. Vendela realizes that Jan-Erik is refusing to go. Eventually Henry comes downstairs carrying his son. Jan-Erik is clinging to his father.

‘Right, we’re off to catch the train,’ says Henry.

Standing in the porch, Vendela notices that her brother is wearing a new shirt, but his face is just as dirty as it was before.

‘Shouldn’t Jan-Erik have a wash?’

‘Yes, but they’ll feel more sorry for him if he looks like this,’ says Henry as he walks out of the door.

Vendela is left at home. She sits down in the kitchen and stares blankly into space.

Late that evening, Henry and Jan-Erik return with a verdict from the court: Henry will serve eight months in prison in Kalmar for insurance fraud. In addition, in view of Henry’s current financial state, the farm and all its contents are to be sold at auction.

‘That’s just the way it goes,’ he says when he has carried Jan-Erik upstairs and come back down to Vendela in the kitchen. ‘Man proposes, God disposes. We just have to get used to it.’

He is smiling grimly at her across the kitchen table, as if the end of his farm is somehow good news.

‘And Jan-Erik?’ Vendela asks. ‘Will he go to prison too?’

‘No.’

‘So he’s free?’

Henry shakes his head. ‘Things didn’t turn out quite the way I’d hoped … he’s going up to Norrland.’

‘Norrland?’

‘To a place called Salberga. It’s a mental hospital for the socially maladjusted.’

‘How long for?’

‘I’ve no idea … Until they let him out, I suppose.’

The silence in the kitchen grows heavier and heavier, until eventually Vendela asks, ‘And what about me?’

She is expecting to hear that she will be left alone in the house, but Henry says, ‘You’re going to Kalmar as well. You’ll be living with your aunt and going to school there.’

‘And what if I don’t want to?’

‘You have no choice,’ says Henry.

Vendela says nothing. Did she stand by the elf stone and wish for this, wish that she could go and live in the town? Did she wish that everything would end like this?

She doesn’t remember; she has wished for far too much.

The time comes when the little family is to be dispersed. Henry is to begin serving his sentence, Vendela will go to stay with her aunt, and Jan-Erik will be picked up in Kalmar by two care workers from Vänersborg. The day before is a Sunday in the middle of May, overcast and gloomy.

In the morning Henry packs a suitcase for himself and a rucksack for Jan-Erik. He makes coffee and drinks it. Then he sits in the kitchen staring silently at the rectangle of ash outside. Vendela sits opposite him, staring equally silently at her thin hands.

Her father is restless. He stands up at about ten o’clock and picks up the coffee pot, then seems to remember that he has already drunk his coffee. He turns to Vendela. ‘I’m going to do some work … day of rest or no day of rest.’

‘You’re going to the quarry now?’

‘Yes. I’ll be back this evening,’ says Henry, ‘when your aunt and uncle arrive. They’re taking the three of us to Kalmar.’

Then he sets off down towards the coast to work, perhaps for the last time. Vendela hears him start to sing an old familiar Öland song as he reaches the gate. The song gradually fades into the distance, and Vendela remains sitting in the kitchen, feeling like the loneliest person in the whole world.

But she has no intention of waiting for Aunt Margit and Uncle Sven. Once Henry has disappeared in the direction of the sea, she goes into his room, opens the cupboard and takes out the jewellery box.

The last large piece of her mother’s jewellery that is left is a gold heart on a fine silver chain. Vendela puts it in her pocket. Then she goes upstairs. The only sound is a monotonous voice reading the weather forecast on the radio in Jan-Erik’s room. Vendela opens the door without knocking.

He is lying on the floor on the bloodstained blanket, listening to the radio; he seems to be waiting for her. He smiles.

Vendela kneels down in front of him and looks into his sea-blue eyes. ‘Father has gone, Jan-Erik,’ she says, slowly and clearly. ‘He’s gone down to the quarry, where he works.’

Jan-Erik blinks.

‘They’re coming to fetch you, and me … but we’re not going to wait for them. Do you understand?’ Vendela points in the direction of the alvar. ‘We’re going to the elves.’

He smiles at her.

‘Come on then.’

But Jan-Erik remains on his blanket, holding his arms up to her. He wants to be carried, she realizes. There is no hesitation in him, but she is aware of the acrid smell in the room, and holds up her finger.

‘First you need a wash.’

She drags out the tin bath in the kitchen, pumps up several bucketfuls of water and warms it on the wood stove. Then she carries her brother downstairs. It’s quite easy; he is not much more than skin and bone.

Jan-Erik giggles nervously as he lowers himself into the water. It is almost black after just a few minutes. Vendela lets him wash his body himself, but helps him with his face. She puts plenty of soap on a tea towel and rubs gently, washing away all the dried pus and congealed blood. Underneath there are scratches and self-inflicted wounds that have healed, but the skin looks healthier than she had expected. Jan-Erik is beginning to look human.

When he is dry, she cuts his nails. He doesn’t seem to have any clean clothes of his own, so she borrows some of Henry’s, turning up the sleeves and trouser legs to make them fit.

‘Right, time to go.’

Vendela carries him out of the house and feels him rest his chin on her shoulder. She puts him down, then goes upstairs to fetch the wheelchair; they set off along the cow path.

She talks quietly to her brother. ‘The elves will help us, Jan-Erik … It will be better when we’re with them.’

Jan-Erik just smiles. He leans back in the chair and draws up his legs as she takes hold of the handles and pushes him along.

Vendela chooses the route through the trees so that no one will see them. She has walked here behind the cows so many times.

It is only when they are crossing the meadow and are several hundred metres from the house that it occurs to Vendela that she should have brought more than just a gift for the elves. She should have brought food and blankets as well, but it’s too late now.

She pushes the wheelchair across the grass. The ground is damp, but the wheels are large and the chair makes slow but steady progress. They pass through the last gate and set out across the alvar.

Vendela is walking with her brother beneath the immense blue sky, heading for the strip of water in the distance. Between the huge lakes on the alvar, with the setting sun at her back. Making straight for the motionless juniper bushes.

‘Nearly there,’ she says.

She can see the elf stone; she leans forward and tenses her leg muscles to get up some speed over the last few hundred metres.

But then they come to a sudden halt. She has got too close to one of the meltwater lakes, where the grass is soaking wet and the soil is loose and muddy. The wheelchair is listing to the right. The big wheels have been sucked down into the mud, and they are stuck.

Jan-Erik remains sitting in the chair at first, but as Vendela heaves and tugs with no success, he lifts himself out of the seat and stands beside her. Vendela hopes he will start walking, but he doesn’t move. He smiles as he watches her struggling with the wheelchair.

She gives up and leaves it where it is. Once more she holds out her arms and picks up her brother, even though there is hardly any strength left in her own legs.

They set off again, heading for the circle of juniper bushes.

She hauls Jan-Erik the last few metres to the elf stone, little by little. While she is tense and sweating, the body she is holding is completely relaxed – he is resting his chin on her shoulder again.

They make their way in among the juniper bushes where the ground is dry and hard, and Vendela makes one last desperate effort to get Jan-Erik to the stone. He places his feet on the grass and walks the last few steps.

At last he is sitting with his back against the rough block.