The Caller

Chapter 4

His mother had been drinking heavily throughout the day and now lay sleeping on the sofa, her mouth wide open. He could see the pale, dry roof. She wore nothing but a silky bathrobe; it was black and had fallen open at the front, so he could see one of her breasts.

The brown nipple reminded him of a hard little turd.

His name was Johnny Beskow, and he cut a slight figure. But he had a distinct talent for mischief, and now he was putting it to use. His eyes were cold and clear as he studied his mother. He let his disgust flow freely because it allowed him to feel something. When he felt something he was completely alive, and his blood pumped more easily throughout his body. He stared at her as she lay on the sofa, and he loathed her; his loathing took his breath away, made his cheeks burn. He loathed everything about her: her personality, her appearance, her behaviour. Her sounds, her smells. She was thin and pale and haggard. She was unkempt and pathetic, a drunk, and all he felt was disgust. The thought that he’d come from her made him feel sick; he could barely stomach it. Once, many years ago, she’d wailed and squeezed him out of her body in a long, desperate scream. Without happiness or joy or expectation.

She had long dark hair and pale skin. Her age showed in a green web of lines at her temples and on her wrists. Her feet were small and narrow, with dry, hard skin and thick grey-white crusts on her heels.

‘Where does my father live?’ he said. ‘Tell me.’

She obviously didn’t hear him, because she was deep inside a thick vodka haze, and there she would remain for hours. She would rise from the sofa only at nightfall, then blink a few times and look at him in surprise. As though she’d forgotten she had a seventeen-year-old son who also lived in the house.

Johnny glanced at the wall, at a black-and-white photo of his mother. It had been taken when she was young. Each time he looked at this picture he would slide his eyes towards his mother on the sofa and think: What happened to her? The smiling woman on the wall, with her radiant eyes?

As a child he’d often asked about his father. ‘Where is he?’ he’d prodded. ‘Where is my father? Is he abroad?’

‘Your father?’ she would say, her voice full of bitterness. ‘Don’t keep on about that. He’s long gone, over the hills and far away.’

Johnny imagined the hills. A man ran through the picture in his mind, across a green hill only to disappear, before materialising on the next hilltop. He continued over the landscape in the same way, from hilltop to hilltop, until he was gone.

He sat motionless in his chair, staring icily at his mother. Or, as he liked to think: I’m watching her with the eyes of a fish. I could wake you, if I wanted. One day, when I’ve reached my limits, I will shock you from your stupor. And you will get up from the sofa screaming, covering your face with your hands. I can boil the kettle, and throw water in your face. Or, he thought, hot fat. Hot fat is definitely more effective. Fat burns into the skin for a long time, it doesn’t evaporate like water. But, it occurred to him, we probably don’t have fat. He stood up and went to the kitchen, opened the fridge. In the door was a bottle of cooking oil, which would certainly do the trick on the day he finally got her up from that sofa and made his mark once and for all. Because I have my limits, and if she pushes me too far, she will pay. God knows she will pay.

He returned to the living room and leaned against the window. Looked out at the driveway and front garden. Nobody is as messy as we are, he thought. They probably talk about us in the other houses: that crazy woman and her scrawny kid live there. In the garden, plastic rubbish bags and old paint buckets were strewn about. A rusted wheelbarrow filled with rainwater, a woodpile under a black tarpaulin; bushes and weeds had eaten their way towards the house with a force only nature can summon. The neglected house was rotting. His red Suzuki Estilete was parked by the steps. He sat down again. He tried to imagine his father, the man she wouldn’t tell him about. If only she would give him a clue. A name, or something that would give him an idea of who he was. Or where he was. And if he was dead, Johnny would like to know where he was buried. To see his name etched in stone. Did her drinking drive you out of the house? he wondered. Did you find another woman? Did you have children with her, children who are better than me and who you wanted to keep? Do you know that I’m sitting here? Are you ignoring me like a dull toothache? He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Thought of the little baby under the tree. You’re OK, he thought, they will watch you all the time now, your mum and dad. They won’t lose sight of you for a second, day or night. He imagined them huddled close, the little trinity. The sacred union, isolated from the rest of the world, packed inside happiness and contentment. From now on anything could happen. Every little step involved a risk; anywhere outside the house was a danger zone. And it was he who’d given them this new perspective. He, Johnny Beskow, had shown them reality.

He remained seated for a while and revelled in these thoughts.

The entire time he observed his mother with the eyes of a fish.

A week before the incident Margrete had been pictured in the local newspaper under the caption ‘Heartbreaker of the Week’. Karsten Sundelin had taken the photograph with his old Hasselblad camera. Margrete had sat on the kitchen table, stark naked except for the white bonnet tied under her chin, her body the colour of marzipan from Anthon Berg. Now Margrete lay sleeping in the middle of the double bed. She’d just been bathed and was wrapped in a soft pink blanket. Lily had added some drops of baby oil to the water, which made her skin glow and smell wonderful. She was too warm, but Lily could not bring herself to take the blanket off. The small bundle in the middle of the bed reminded her of a cocoon, and she wanted her little girl never to unfold herself, grow up and walk out.

Out of the room, out of the house, out into the world.

Karsten had taken the pram to the rubbish dump. The blood had dripped to the bottom and seeped into the mattress; it was impossible to wash away. Slick as oil, and with a disgusting, fishy smell. Besides, it was an old pram they’d inherited from a family in the neighbourhood. Karsten had bought a new one. It was covered in dark red corduroy, and was Emmaljunga’s most expensive pram. Only the very best for Margrete now, they thought, after everything that had happened.

‘She can sleep on the veranda,’ Karsten proposed, ‘where you can see the pram from the window.’

Lily stroked Margrete’s cheeks. The touch made the child’s eyelid quiver. ‘We’ll see,’ was all she said.

They lay on either side of the child. Both had hoisted themselves up on their elbows, forming a protective barrier against the world, and she slept between them like a pea in a pod.

She breathed fast and easily.

There was no one like her.

‘You know what I’ll do when I get a hold of him?’ Karsten said.

He talked between clenched teeth. Lily didn’t want to hear it. She straightened the pink baby blanket, wanting it smooth and tight all the way round. She didn’t answer her husband’s question. Something evil had come out of the woods, and now something evil was growing inside the man she had married.

‘I will tear his arms off,’ Karsten said. ‘And his legs. He’s worth no more than an insect.’

Lily rolled on to her back. She stared at the ceiling and the glass bowl which covered the light bulb; she noticed dead flies in it.

‘Do you think it’s something we’ve forgotten?’ she whispered. ‘Something we’ve done, something we’ve said?’

Now Karsten rolled on to his back. The movement caused Margrete to sigh, and the bed creaked a little under his weight. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? Are you asking whether we did something to deserve this?’

Lily bit her knuckle. The initial shock had abated. They were back at home. Margrete was in one piece, and healthy, and vibrantly alive. But now other thoughts appeared, thoughts she hadn’t been prepared for. Why right here, in our community? Why us, and our garden, and our child? Something so twisted could be no coincidence — that would be incomprehensible.

‘Not something to deserve it,’ she said. ‘But maybe we’ve done something that someone noticed.’

‘We live our life,’ Karsten said. ‘We do the same things everyone else does. We’re decent people.’

Lily tried to breathe evenly and calmly. If she could control her breathing then her heart would find peace, but she couldn’t manage it.

‘Maybe he stood there watching us,’ she whispered. ‘Have you thought about that? Maybe he hid behind a tree as I lay on the ground. I didn’t look that way at all. I didn’t think that far ahead.’ She propped herself up on her elbow again. ‘Did you see anything? Hear anything?’

Karsten replayed the paralysing seconds in his head. He lay listening to his own memories, searching for something which would put him on the right track. ‘Yes,’ he remembered, ‘I heard something. Something starting up in the woods. There’s a trail that runs to Askeland which the loggers use. It could have been a chainsaw.’

‘A chainsaw?’ she said, disappointed. ‘That doesn’t help us at all.’

Karsten reconsidered, and snapped his fingers. ‘Actually, no, it wasn’t a chainsaw. It might have been a moped.’