‘I want you to keep quiet, Jerry. You are not to tell your grandchildren what you and Bremer used to do here.’
15
Vendela was wearing a white cap and a windproof red tracksuit as she bent down to the dog basket in the hallway and kissed Aloysius on the top of his head. Then she went to the front door. ‘I’m going for a run!’ she called out. ‘See you in an hour or so!’
There was no reply from Max, just a whimper from Aloysius. He was uneasy; perhaps he sensed there was going to be a party. Since he had lost his sight, Ally always found strange voices around him quite stressful.
It looked as though there were going to be about ten people at Wednesday’s get-together: she and Max, the Kurdins and their baby, Per Morner and his two teenage children, plus Gerlof Davidsson, the elderly man from across the road, and his friend John. She wouldn’t need to prepare too much food, although of course it was important to work out how much they would need. She would go down to Borgholm tomorrow and fill the car with supplies, including dog food.
Then all she had to do was get everything ready for Wednesday, and she wouldn’t get any help from Max. But she wasn’t going to think about that now, she was going to go for a run.
Vendela had taken up jogging ten years ago. She had actually started when she married Max, who didn’t run and couldn’t understand why she wanted to do it. Last winter she had stayed fit by jogging on a running machine, but she had missed nature and the chance to be out in the open air.
She spent a couple of minutes stretching on the steps outside before heading off northwards, in a wide semicircle around the edge of the quarry.
Vendela noticed a strange kind of gateway to the north of the quarry – two substantial hazel bushes growing a couple of metres apart. She ran between them. Hazel was always special; it was used for both magic wands and divining rods.
It felt as if she was in a new world now. Her goal was to return to her childhood home after almost forty years – if she could find her way. A great deal had changed since then. Houses had been built, tarmac roads had appeared, meadows and fields had become overgrown.
She increased her speed and ran out on to the coast road above the shore. It was late afternoon and the sun was low in the sky, just as in October, but its light was sharper in the spring. The narrow strips of snow still remaining on the grass and in the ditches were melting fast.
The rocky landscape was silent and still. The only thing that was moving was Vendela herself, her arms and legs swinging back and forth. Slowly she began to find her rhythm, and was able to relax. When she came to a fork in the coast road she turned right, inland. The air she inhaled was fresh and cool. There was no sign of her allergy.
It took about twenty minutes to run to the place where her childhood had begun and ended. She ran virtually straight there, without getting lost. First of all along the wide tarmac road, then on to a narrower gravel track which she thought she recognized, past a grove of ash trees that had grown tall and dense over the years since she had left the island. In the middle of the grove was a short, narrow track, and Vendela turned on to it. She was hot and sweaty by now, and tense with anticipation.
When she had run another fifty metres she reached the end of the track, and there was the farm. She breathed out and tried to compose herself.
It was slightly set apart at the edge of the alvar, a couple of kilometres north of Stenvik. There were two new white-painted iron gates in front of the stone path leading into the garden. Vendela couldn’t see anyone moving about, so she opened the gates.
The sun had slipped lower in the sky to the west, and the garden lay in shadow. But the sun’s rays were still shining on the house, and the windows gleamed at her. Vendela had been afraid that the place would be deserted and falling apart, with broken windows and the doors hanging off their hinges, but the house was well maintained and had recently been painted yellow. Someone with time and money had bought the place.
There was a lawn below the house, and to the left a slight rise in the ground was visible, a long rectangle. Forty years ago a little barn had stood there, but it was gone now. Grass and moss had crept up and covered the foundations.
For appearances’ sake Vendela walked up the path to the house and knocked on the kitchen door, but no one answered. The farm had become a summer residence, like so many others, the lawn uncut and the blinds lowered. Presumably the place was empty and deserted from autumn through to spring.
She thought about the family who would soon arrive and quickly clear away all traces of winter. On the very first evening they would be busy raking up the leaves and cutting the grass. Young, carefree people; perhaps they had children. But could they feel echoes of the unhappiness that had existed in this house?
Vendela walked through the garden. At the far end, there were still fragile patches of snow and the ground was sodden, like a marsh. She looked over at a thicket of bushes and spotted an old shed. It was standing in the shadows, and didn’t fit in with the rest of the well-cared-for holiday idyll at all. It was scruffy and unpainted and was leaning slightly to one side, as if it were in the process of sinking down into the ground. The shed looked hidden and forgotten, and Vendela suddenly remembered that her father had used it as his tool shed. He had left some tools down in the quarry at the end of the day, but the rest he had brought home and locked up here.
She went over and tugged at the rickety door, and it opened reluctantly on stiff hinges. There was no unpleasant smell. Just a faint aroma of earth. It was dark inside, dark and cramped. Old tools and bags were piled up on top of one another. In the corner nearest the door stood a slender stick made of chestnut, with the bark scraped off. Vendela recognized it at once. She hesitated, then picked it up.
The cow stick.
It was hers. Her father had given it to her when she was responsible for tending the cows. The stick was shiny and well used.
Oland 1957
The flies are buzzing lazily and sleepily above the path, woken by the spring sunshine. The wind is soughing in the trees, and Vendela raises her stick and hits the three cows, over and over again.
‘Go on! Get a move on!’
She is walking barefoot along the path, wearing a white dress, and she hits the cows as hard as she can. Three blows each. She measures the distance and swings the stick sideways at their flanks, just above the back legs. When she hits them there, it goes
The blows can be heard in long, rhythmic sequences along the path between the meadow and the farm, where she and Henry and the Invalid live.
‘Go, go, go!’
The bell on a strap around the leading cow’s neck clonks rhythmically. It is hot, and hitting the cows is tiring. Vendela is only nine years old and the stick is heavy. She is sweating. Her dress is stuck to the skin under her arms, her hair hangs in her eyes and bluebottles circle around her and the cows. She blows her nose on some grass and raises the stick once again. ‘Get a move on!’
When she turned eight, Vendela was given the responsibility of moving the cows between the farm and the meadow. It was a proper job, but there was never any mention of Henry paying her – he doesn’t even have enough money for electricity, even though the cables were brought as far as the farm several years ago. Her only reward was to be allowed to name the cows, and she called them Rosa, Rosa and Rosa.
That made her father laugh. ‘We might as well just give them each a number,’ he said.
The cows’ names mean nothing to him; he has marked them with a clear snick in the ear so that anyone who comes across them on the alvar can see that they belong to him. But he must have found the idea amusing, because the names stick.
Rosa, Rosa and Rosa.
