Benny & Shrimp (4 page)

I’m a Saddo, in fact, the Prize Saddo of all Sweden. I shall end up in the Folk Museum in Stockholm, stuffed. I’m aware of it every time I go into town, and pretty often in between as well, like when I’m watching telly. I’ve got no business being in the twentieth century, at least, not this end of it. And that applies to my image as well as to my way of thinking.

I’m from the country and go around dressed in a random selection of gear I ordered from the Halén’s catalogue. Thirty-six, that means I’m on the shelf by our village’s standards. The women seldom spare me an extra glance. Things have gone downhill in a big way since I was the best javelin thrower in the school… twenty years ago! My God, where did those years go? A
quarter of my life’s passed me by while my nose has been buried in the milking records!

But it’s not just my clothes that make me a saddo; there are plenty of people here in the country who dress like me, and are quite happy looking like that. It’s more a case of feeling increasingly often that I must be a bit dim, to put it mildly. No common sense. Suppose I’ve spent too long with just the cows for company.

Take the day before yesterday, for example. It was All Saints’ Day. Every All Saints’ Day since Dad died, when I was seventeen, Mum and I would go to the cemetery to light a little grave light. Mum always bought a wreath with plastic pine cones or lilies, so it would stay looking nice, because we were too busy to get to the cemetery very often. Now she was lying there, and I wanted her to have a wreath like that, too.

At the cemetery gates I ran into the beige woman. I thought she’d be looking at me warily, afraid Smarmy Benny might fire off his lunatic smile at her again, so I knitted my brow and gave a curt nod as I passed her.

And then.

It was as if someone had punched me between the eyes.

I felt disappointed she was going! For several weeks I’d been telling myself it was nice to have the bench to myself and sit there meditating. But now I wanted her there beside me. I wanted to know where she went when she wasn’t in the cemetery.

I turned round and followed her at a distance. People looked startled to see me lumbering along clutching a
wreath and a grave light, especially as I crouched down behind parked vehicles every now and then, afraid she was about to turn round.

But she didn’t. She walked briskly halfway across town and into the library.

Didn’t I just know it! She looked like somebody who reads books all the time, voluntarily. Long ones, with small print and no pictures.

I hovered indecisively at the entrance. Even the Prize Saddo of all Sweden realised you don’t just waltz into the library brandishing a wreath and a grave light. I had a vision of myself putting the wreath on the hat rack and depositing the grave light on the issue desk while I asked at the information counter whether they’d seen a beige girl.

Maybe she’d come out again in a minute with a bulging bag of books, her daily ration. But how long should I wait? People were already starting to give me strange stares. The prize saddo responded with his best Smarmy Benny smile, politely waving his grave light. Don’t mind me, I’m on day release from the asylum!

I suddenly turned on my heels and started running back through the town to the cemetery.

And of course, that made people stare all the more.

Where’s he off to with a wreath in such a hurry? What’s happened, what’s happened? And where’s the corpse?

Wretched woman!

“It’s all right for you,” said Lilian pointedly. She’s one of my colleagues at the library, the one I always try to avoid when she comes steaming past with
self-important
, tip-tapping heels, arms full of nothing in particular, which she carries to and fro with an air of great concentration. She’s always exhausted, rarely gets anything done and takes great care to ensure nobody else is secretly enjoying their job.

“Of course,” she sighed, twisting her Kenzo scarf into a rope. “I mean, you can arrange to be available in the evenings and so on. You can put your job first.”

She said it with a sort of aggressive insinuation that I was somehow cheating. Grown up but with no family, a blackleg in the lives of women.

Bitch! She was the one who was in the habit of
putting her head on one side and asking me, “since you haven’t got a family”, to do her evening and Sunday shifts for her.

I’d just been promoted to being in charge of the
junior
section of the library. Presumably this was because I’ve come up with loads of things for children over the past few years. Storytimes and drama sessions and
children’s
book festivals and displays of children’s drawings. Mrs Lundmark, who had been in charge of the junior section up to now, would soon be retiring and wanted to cut down her hours. She still saw the traditional old school anthology as the norm for good children’s
literature
, and seemed to have lost interest long ago; often we didn’t set eyes on her: she tended to work down in the storeroom. She was more than happy for me to pep up her boring old section and left me to get on with it, although it wasn’t really my job. And I did it because secretly I’m totally fascinated by children.

Yes, secretly! Because you can’t admit it openly, you know, if you’re a childless widow approaching
thirtyfive
! If I’d as much as taken a kid on my knee, every female of my acquaintance – except Märta – would have delighted in pitying me, and I didn’t want to give them the chance. And they’d have told themselves that at least they weren’t childless, even if they were having counselling and/or were divorced and could only work part-time and were as poor as church mice. They
complained
that their kids kept them awake at nights and fought with their siblings and threw up in the car and refused to do their homework; they complained about
the price of milk and football boots and riding lessons. And then they had to go early because Pelle was
running
a temperature or Fia had a dental appointment. Or it was their turn in the town centre parents’ patrol, when they weren’t dashing off to parents’ evenings or taking their kids to violin lessons. “It’s never a problem for you to do a bit of overtime,” they said. “Aren’t you lucky!”

So I fell into the habit of going back to work
sometimes
in the evenings and putting in secret overtime! I got a real kick out of all those lively drawings, and I organised storytimes just so I could stand there
surreptitiously
watching the children listen. Eyes on stalks, mouths half open, their bodies turned to the story like flowers to the sun.

I was a voyeur. Of children.

Embarrassing. Those of us who are childless aren’t supposed to show any interest in children; it seems to provoke the Real Parents. “If only you knew,” they sigh. “Sometimes I feel like hurling them against the wall.”

Presumably they mean well.

I know, I know: the biological clock’s ticking louder and louder! Märta hasn’t any children, either, because her Passion is determined not to end up with any more; he’s working hard on wriggling out of paying maintenance for the three he’s already got, each with a different mother. She said once with a crooked smile that parents jolly well shouldn’t be allowed to have children because they hadn’t the sense to appreciate them.

Whereas we did. But then we never had to clear up their sick in the car.

“Well, there’s no way I could ever take a section head’s job,” Lilian said. “At home we have a catastrophe a week, at least, and no doubt that’s how it’ll be until my youngest’s called up for military service. And you’ll get a bit more on your salary. You might even get up to the same wage level as a new recruit in the parks department. And pay off your student loan before you die! Me, I can’t even afford to join Weightwatchers – but it doesn’t matter because I can’t afford to buy food, either, ha ha! I expect it was Olof who recommended you…”

In one breath she succeeded in making it my fault that her kids were starving and insinuating that I’d
actually
slept my way to the new job. Nice one, Lilian! No Sundays off for you from now on.

Biological clocks. I imagine them as big alarm clocks, with a little hammer oscillating wildly between two round bells to wake you up in a total panic,
wanting
only to go forth and multiply, or at least breed. I wonder if the biological clock also has a snooze
function
, so you can doze back off and be woken again a bit later? I’d be glad if it did.

Because just look at what the biological clock has done to me. Perverse reaction to the Forest Owner? And for all I know, he could have a whole bunch of kids, all with the same Forest Owner caps. I can imagine them all walking along in a row behind him, trowels in hand.

Tomorrow is my thirty-fifth birthday. No breakfast in bed for me, that’s for sure. Because Märta’s in Copenhagen with the Passion and Dad’s never remembered a birthday, all that was Mum’s business. And Mum – well, yes, she
remembers
birthdays past and present and is always jumping up to celebrate somebody’s, even in the middle of the night, according to the staff on her ward. Though they never bear any relation to this year’s calendar.

At work they’ll be expecting me to treat them all to a slice of marzipan gateau, otherwise I won’t get that bloody ceramic pot they’ve no doubt clubbed together to buy me at the posh handicraft shop.

Örjan used to give me birthday presents: tasteful, practical and impersonal ones. A designer toaster and a cycle helmet and once a pair of double-weave Norwegian long johns. But he never brought me
breakfast
in bed; he worked on the assumption we were both too nervous about spoiling our expensive down duvet.

The autumn ploughing’s out of the way and I’m not thinking of doing much in the forest this year, just a bit of lopping. This is the time when I should be getting down to repairing some of the machinery and recasting the concrete base for the manure and giving the tractor shed a coat of paint.

But I’m not.

The days go by; sometimes I come in from the
cowshed
and lie down on the settee and stare at the ceiling. Because if I stare out of the window, I only see all the things I haven’t done. Sometimes I read
The Farmer
, and not just the news section: I read maniacally through all the small ads in the family section and all the death notices in the local paper. There’s no point getting
started
on anything, it’ll be time for milking again soon.

Five years ago there were still two of us farmers left in the village. Bengt-Göran had taken over from his dad, like me, and we’d sit over a beer in the evenings and plan to have joint grazing for the cows or build an
outdoor
milking shed in the pasture. But Bengt-Göran’s brother-in-law, who’s an economist and works for the local council, calculated it would be a totally loss-
making
venture. Then Bengt-Göran met Violet, and Violet liked going abroad on package holidays. Bengt-Göran had jealous visions of flashy cars down on the beach and mats of dark chest hair and gold crucifixes around necks, and before you could blink he’d sold the cows and started going on holiday with Violet. He went over to beef cattle and got someone from town who fancied escaping to the country to look after them whenever he was away. In winter he took on temporary snow
clearance
work. I don’t see much of him any more.

Last autumn, before I knew Mum was ill, I used to take the car every evening and go out visiting people. Those that were still left in our village, I mean. The older ones gave me coffee and told me about their
illnesses
; the younger ones were always busy putting the kids to bed or repainting the kitchen hatch. And every time they had a female cousin or some friend of their wife’s staying, they’d invite me round on a Friday night to make up a foursome, and we’d have elk roast and a few glasses of snaps and sometimes even dance. Sooner or later I’d find myself alone with the girl, and if I was drunk enough, we’d go and and find a place to be together, and that would be the end of it. This autumn I
haven’t been out in the car for an evening visit once, but people do come here occasionally. I’m a Good Neighbour, the neon sign on their foreheads flashes. Or perhaps I’m imagining things.

When I went into town to go to the bank the other day, I saw the beige woman again. She was going into the library, but she hadn’t got any books with her as far as I could see. It occurred to me she might work there. And then… when I’d finished my business at the bank and came out into the street, I suddenly caught sight of my boots on their way through the glass doors of the library, with me in them! It was extraordinary.

In the light that was flooding through the glass roof above the desk, I started feeling nervous and turned my head to one side to sniff anxiously at the collar of my jacket and see if I smelt of the cowshed.

Then I caught sight of her. She was bending down to talk to a small child and pointing to something in a book. They were laughing.

I clumped over in my boots and tapped her on the shoulder. She straightened up with an irritated frown. When she saw it was me, she looked confused and a bit scared. And I was just as confused.

“Er – hello, by the way – have you got any books on beekeeping?” I blurted, trying not to smile my killer smile.

“I’m sure we have, and hello to you, too!” she said brusquely. “You can ask at the information desk. It’s my lunch break at the moment.”

The Prize Saddo composed himself for a decisive
pounce. “Don’t suppose you’d fancy… fancy… coming along to the cemetery with me?”

She gave me a long look.

“Hah, I bet that’s what you ask all the girls!” she said, and then smiled like a child in the summer holidays.

From that moment there are gaps in my memory, but I know nothing felt strange or awkward any longer.

She fetched her coat and off we went. I even thought her hairy wool hat looked nice. With its toadstools and everything.

We went somewhere to eat and I haven’t a clue what we ate or said. Except one thing. When I wanted to pay for us both she said, “Well, yes, thank you. Because it’s my thirty-fifth birthday today. And this can be my
present
.”

That made me realise two things at once.

She wasn’t expecting any other presents.

And I was in love with her.

There wasn’t a sudden click or anything like that. It felt more like that time I accidentally leant against the electric fence.