he was a child, but Gerlof still waited eagerly for the first butterfly of the year.
He was alone at the cottage now; everyday life had resumed after the move, and he ambled around the small rooms, his stick in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. The wheelchair waited silently in the bedroom, ready for the day when his rheumatic problems, caused by Sjogren’s syndrome, would take a turn for the worse. At the moment he could still get up and down the stone steps without any problem.
The previous week his furniture had been delivered – the small number of pieces he had wanted to keep from his room at the home – and all the mementoes from his thirty years at sea: the ships in bottles, the maritime charts, the name plates from some of the ships on which he had sailed, and beautiful examples of rope work, dark brown and still smelling of tar.
Gerlof was surrounded by memories.
It was when he had opened the cupboard next to the fridge in the kitchen to put away the log books and charts that he had come across the diaries.
They had been tied up in a bundle on a shelf behind Ella’s little jewellery box and old books by Karl May and L. M. Montgomery. Each one had a number in black ink on the cover, and when he undid the string and opened them, he saw densely written pages in his wife’s ornate handwriting.
Ella’s diaries – eight altogether.
Gerlof hesitated briefly. He thought about the promise he had made Ella. Then he picked up the top book and went out to the wooden seat in the garden, with a feeling that he was doing something dishonourable. He had seen her writing in her diary on the odd occasion, but she had never shown him what she had written, and had only mentioned her diaries on that one occasion, when she was dying.
He sat down, wrapped a blanket around his legs and placed the book on the table beside him. It was twenty-two years since Ella had died of liver cancer in the autumn of 1976, but here in the garden he often had the feeling that she wasn’t gone at all, that she was in the kitchen making coffee.
Ella had always set clear boundaries. For example, she had never allowed her husband in the kitchen, and of course Gerlof had never tried to change her mind. When their daughters Lena and Julia became teenagers at the beginning of the sixties they had made determined attempts to get him to help with the housework, but Gerlof had refused.
‘It’s too late for me,’ he’d said.
For the most part he had been afraid and unsure of himself in the kitchen. He had never learned to cook or do the washing, although he could do the dishes. These days Swedish men seemed to do just about everything; times had changed.
Gerlof turned his head. He saw a small fluttering movement in the long grass beyond the garden. It was the first butterfly of the year. It came flying towards him with the same jerky movements as every other spring butterfly he had seen over the years, flitting here and there with no apparent goal.
It was a Brimstone Yellow. A perfect sign of spring.
Gerlof smiled at the bright butterfly as it reached the lawn in front of him – but stopped smiling when he spotted another butterfly over in the long grass. This one was dark, almost black, with grey and white stripes; he didn’t know the name of it. Camberwell Beauty? Or did they call it the Mourning Cloak? This one was flying in a straighter line, and reached the lawn at almost the same time as the Brimstone Yellow. They fluttered around each other for a few seconds in a spring dance before flitting past Gerlof and disappearing behind the cottage.
A yellow butterfly and a dark-grey one, what did that mean? He had always regarded the first butterfly as a sign of what the rest of the year would be like: bright and hopeful or dark and gloomy, but now he wasn’t so sure. It was as if he had hoisted a flag that had got stuck at half-mast before continuing to the top.
When he opened the diary he heard the sound of a car engine. A big shiny car came along the road and turned off on to the gravel track leading to the quarry.
Gerlof caught a glimpse of a middle-aged man and woman in the front.
Probably some of the new neighbours who had built houses by the quarry. Summer visitors. No doubt they would be here only when it was light and warm; they were hardly likely to spend time here when it was freezing cold, chopping down the last of the trees along the coast as his own relatives had once done.
Gerlof wasn’t interested in the couple in the car. He looked down at the diary and began to read.
7th May 1957
Tonight Gerlof will set off on his first voyage of the year to Nynashamn for oil. He was in Kalmar today getting some measurements done on the ship because he has altered the cover of the hold. Lena and Julia are on board with him.
Today has been sunny. Got to the cottage at six this evening and opened the windows to air the rooms. There was a faint smell of mould, I thought; I tried to get some fresh air in, but in fact it was a pot of juniper berries in syrup that had started fermenting and had exploded into a thousand pieces. Had to start cleaning rancid, sticky purple syrup off the floor, only just managed to cook something (meatballs). The children and Gerlof will be home the day after tomorrow.
Gerlof realized these were holiday diaries. He knew that when he had been away at sea, Ella had often gone up to the summer cottage with their two daughters. Later, when they were older and wanted to go with Gerlof to Stockholm or stay at home in Borgholm, she had come here alone. That was probably why he had rarely seen her writing in them.
He read on:
15th May 1957
Sunny, but a little chilly in the wind from the north-east. The girls went for a long bike ride along the coast road this afternoon.
A strange thing happened while they were away. I was standing out on the veranda watering the pelargoniums – and I saw a troll from the quarry.
What else could it be?
It was a two-legged creature at any rate, but it moved so fast I was quite taken aback. Just a shadow, a snapping twig out in the pasture, a rustling among the bushes, and it was gone. I think it laughed at me.
‘The pasture’ was Ella and Gerlof’s name for the overgrown area beyond the summer cottage where the cattle used to graze before the war.
But what did Ella mean by a troll?
Suddenly Gerlof heard the sound of another car behind the trees. The engine died away, then the gate creaked. He quickly hid the diary under the blanket. He didn’t know why – a guilty conscience, perhaps.
A short, powerfully built man in his seventies was heading up the path. It was his friend John Hagman, dressed in the worn blue dungarees and the pale-grey peaked cap he wore winter and summer. He had been Gerlof’s first mate on the Baltic cargo ships once upon a time; these days he ran the campsite at the southern end of the village.
He came over with a heavy tread and stopped on the grass; Gerlof smiled and nodded at him, but John didn’t smile back – a cheerful, happy expression was not his style.
‘So,’ he said. ‘I heard you were back.’
‘Yes. You too.’
John nodded. He had been up to visit Gerlof at the home a few times during the winter, but otherwise he had been staying in his son’s small apartment down in Borgholm. He had seemed almost shame-faced when he explained that the village had begun to feel too cold and lonely during the winter. He couldn’t cope with it any longer, and Gerlof understood completely.
‘Anyone else here?’
John shook his head. ‘There hasn’t been anybody around in the village since New Year, apart from the odd weekend visitor.’
‘What about Astrid Linder?’
‘She gave up as well in the end, and closed up the cottage. I think she went to the Riviera in January.’
‘I see,’ said Gerlof, remembering that Astrid had been a doctor before she retired. ‘I should think she’s got a fair bit of money tucked away.’
They fell silent. Gerlof couldn’t see any more butterflies. He listened to the faint soughing of the wind over in
