The Quarry

turned up that evening, so I expect they’ll be busy talking about me right now.

There are cock pheasants all over the place in the evenings; I expect they’re attracted by the hen pheasants down on the farms. The owners of the hens have no intention of letting them get together!

The little changeling from the pasture crept up to the cottage again today, and I gave him some oatcakes and lemonade. He’s full of life, he never stands still, but he doesn’t say much, and he won’t tell me who he is or where he comes from.

He needs a wash. And his hair is really long and matted – I’ve never seen anything like it.

Suddenly Gerlof heard the sound of a car engine, and almost jumped out of his seat. A car was coming along the village road; it slowed down and turned in.

He quickly closed the diary and hid it under the blanket; he was sitting quietly and calmly in his chair when the gate was opened and the Volvo rolled slowly down the path, bringing his two daughters and their families. The car doors were flung open.

‘Hello Granddad! Here we are!’

‘Welcome!’ Gerlof shouted, waving cheerfully. ‘Happy Easter!’

They all climbed out: Lena and her youngest daughter, then Julia and her two youngest stepsons, along with their suitcases and rucksacks.

The family had arrived, and that was the end of his peace and quiet.

The grandchildren gave Gerlof a quick hug, then raced into the cottage and switched on the TV or the radio – whatever it was, the volume was turned up high and loud music came pouring out of the windows.

Gerlof stayed in his chair on the lawn, thinking about what Good Friday had been like when he was a child.

‘How are you, Dad? Is everything nice and quiet here?’

It was Julia. She gave him a kiss on the cheek.

‘It’s nice and quiet here at the cottage,’ said Gerlof. ‘I think the whole village is pretty quiet … but the people by the quarry have moved in.’

‘What are they like?’

‘Quite pleasant.’ He thought about the magazine Jerry Morner had suddenly thrown down on the table the other night. ‘And slightly odd, in some cases.’

‘Shall we go over and see them?’

‘No, I was at a party over there on Wednesday. That’s quite enough.’

‘So it’ll be just us for Easter?’

Gerlof nodded. He had a young relative up in Marnas, his brother’s granddaughter Tilda, but she had found a new man back in the autumn and was fully occupied with her new life.

‘So what else have you been up to, then?’

‘I spend a lot of time just sitting here thinking.’

‘What about?’

‘Nothing.’

Julia held out her hands. ‘Do you want to get up?’

Gerlof smiled and quickly shook his head. He didn’t want to get up right now. ‘I’m fine here.’

Sooner or later he was going to have to talk to his daughters about Ella’s diaries, and find out what they knew about her visitor.

29

Up to the point when Nilla collapsed and started coughing up blood at the table, the Morner family’s Easter lunch had been going very well.

Per had managed to fool himself, and hadn’t realized how ill she was. But he should have sensed something, because she had seemed tired on Saturday morning. She had helped him prepare the vegetables after breakfast, but progress had been slow, and sometimes she just stood there staring at the chopping board.

‘Are you tired?’ he asked.

‘A bit … I didn’t sleep very well last night.’

‘Would you like to go back to bed?’

‘No, it’s OK.’

‘Well, you could go out for a bit later on,’ he said. ‘You could go for a walk along the coast – try to get Jesper to go with you.’

‘Mm-hmm,’ said Nilla quietly as she carried on chopping tomatoes with slow strokes.

Per kept an eye on her and tried to relax.

He had repaired the lower section of the stone steps on Tuesday, and had got into the habit of going to the edge of the quarry every morning and evening to check if it was still standing. He did the same on the morning of Easter Saturday, and the stones were untouched. He would carry on building soon, until the steps reached all the way to the top of the quarry.

The pools of water were starting to dry up down below. In the summer, when the gravel was completely dry, he and Jesper would be able to have some fun down there, playing football perhaps.

Nilla too, of course.

He turned away from the quarry and walked around the house, stopping outside Ernst’s workshop. It was a square wooden box, two metres high, with traces of Falun red paint still visible on the weathered planks. There were small dusty windows on the shorter sides, and a black, creosoted door.

A heavy chain ran from the door to a ring on the wall, but the only thing holding it in place was a large, rusty nail. Per pulled it out and opened the door.

The air inside was dry because of all the limestone dust covering the floor. He had been in here three years ago, when Ernst’s family had come to collect the things they wanted to keep from the workshop. The finished sculptures standing by the door had disappeared that day: sundials, bird baths and lampstands. All that remained were the unfinished sculptures, or pieces that were such an odd shape nobody could quite work out what they were meant to be.

They were clustered together at the back of the workshop. Blocks of stone formed into swollen, headless bodies or heads with deep eye sockets and gaping mouths. Some of them didn’t even remotely resemble people.

Per didn’t go inside to take a closer look; he simply closed the door and went to fetch the paper.

‘So your father is the famous Jerry Morner?’ said Max. ‘I didn’t know him, but I do remember the name.’

Per hadn’t spoken to Max Larsson since the party, but they had bumped into one another by the mailboxes.

‘Really?’

He took a couple of steps away from the mailboxes with the newspaper in his hand, but Max didn’t take the hint. He just smiled, one neighbour to another. ‘Oh yes. Jerry Morner, he was a bit of a celebrity in the seventies. He sometimes gave interviews and appeared on those noisy debates about porn on TV … and of course when I was doing my military service we all read those magazines of his.’ He winked at Per. ‘Well, I say read, but of course they were mostly pictures.’

‘Yes,’ said Per.

‘One of them was called Babylon,’ said Max. ‘Now, what was the other one called? Sodom?’

‘Gomorrah.’

‘That’s it, Babylon and Gomorrah. They were pretty upmarket … But you had to ask for them in the newsagent’s, they never had them out on display.’ He coughed and added, ‘Of course, I don’t read them these days. Are they still going?’

‘No, they’re not around any more.’

‘I suppose videos took over, and now there’s the internet too,’ said Max. ‘Things move on.’