The Quarry

25

Vendela woke up at about eight o’clock on Maundy Thursday with a dry mouth and a blocked nose. It was probably her imagination, but when she opened the blinds she thought the air outside was yellow with whirling pollen.

Aloysius was sleeping at the foot of the bed, and Max was completely wrapped up in his duvet on the other side of the double bed. His face was turned away, but he was snoring loudly, with his mouth open. It was the wine, of course. He had knocked back glass after glass of red wine last night, despite all the talk of thinking about his heart and cutting back on the alcohol.

He would be like a bear with a sore head when he woke up, so she let him sleep for a while longer.

Today would be the photographer’s final visit to the island, which meant she would have to cook and bake bread before the morning’s photo shoot.

She threw the covers aside, blew her nose as quietly as possible and got up.

When Max lumbered out of the bedroom in a sad-looking dressing gown an hour later, Vendela had taken an antihistamine tablet and was waiting for it to take effect. She had set the dough for two different kinds of artisan bread to rise, and was mixing melted butter and rye flour for another kind. Ally had eaten some chicken-flavoured kibble and was lying under the kitchen table.

‘Good morning!’ she said to Max.

‘Mm-hmm.’

He poured himself a cup of coffee and surveyed her efforts. ‘You’ve started on the bread too early,’ he said. ‘It’s supposed to look freshly baked, so that steam comes out when I cut it.’

‘I know, but the problem is that the loaves cool really quickly,’ said Vendela, wiping her forehead. ‘But I’m just going to use these as decoration in the background... I’ll make some more when the photographer arrives.’

‘OK. Have you had breakfast?’

She nodded eagerly. ‘A banana, three slices of bread and cheese, and a yoghurt.’

That was a little white lie; breakfast had consisted of nothing but a cup of lemon tea.

‘Well done,’ said Max. He headed for the bathroom and locked himself in.

Vendela looked over at the front door, longing to be out on the alvar and to see if the coin had gone. She picked up the butter that was left over from her baking and began to form it into curls.

The golden-yellow butter looked good in photographs, but she had nothing but bad memories of real butter, however delicious it might be. She had had to churn it by hand when she was a little girl; Henry had made whisks from birch twigs and taught his daughter how to make butter from cream. It took eight litres of cream to make a tub of butter, and it had been bloody hard work, to say the least. It had given Vendela blisters on her hands.

An hour later, the young photographer from Kalmar turned up. He was met on the steps by a smiling Max, dressed in appropriately rural clothing in shades of grey, brown and blue, picked out for him by Vendela. The two men disappeared into the kitchen to discuss the composition of the pictures and various camera angles, and Vendela went out into the sunshine and walked up the road to fetch the newspaper. The mailboxes belonging to the summer cottages were arranged in a long row, to make life easier for the postman.

As she approached them she saw a tall man in a green padded jacket coming towards her, a newspaper under his arm. It was Per Mörner.

Vendela straightened her back and smiled instinctively. There had been a brief astonished silence at the party when Jerry Morner got out his magazine, but it had quickly passed.

That was when she had recognized him from various interviews and television documentaries. In the seventies Jerry Morner had been a high-profile figure, frequently seen in night clubs and exclusive bars. He had been one of the porn film directors who had taken the image of Swedish sinfulness out into the world, making the Americans and Europeans regard Sweden as a dreamland where every woman wanted sex all the time.

Before that, when Vendela was young, pornography was banned and couldn’t be sold. Then it became legal, but it was still something dirty. These days there were no moral rules; one day the newspapers were writing about the horrors of the sex industry, the next they were listing the best erotic films.

She nodded at Per Mörner, intending to walk past him, but he stopped, which meant she had to do the same.

‘Thank you for last night,’ he said.

‘You’re welcome,’ Vendela said quickly. She added, ‘So now we all know each other a little bit better.’

‘Yes... quite.’

There was a silence, then Per went on: ‘That business my father was talking about...’

Vendela laughed nervously. ‘Well, at least he was honest.’

‘Yes, and the work he did was all above-board,’ Per said. ‘But he’s given all that up now.’

‘I see.’

Vendela was about to ask how Per could be so certain, when her kitchen window was flung open and Max yelled, ‘Vendela, we’re ready now! We’re about to photograph the bread, are you coming?’

‘Just a minute!’ she called back.

Max gave her and Per Mörner a quick glance and nodded briefly without saying anything, then he closed the kitchen window.

Vendela felt as if her husband had passed judgement on her and given her a black mark for conduct, but she was only chatting to a neighbour.

In a sudden burst of defiance she turned to Per. ‘So you’re a jogger too?’

He nodded. ‘Sometimes. I’d like to do more.’

‘Perhaps we could go out for a run together one evening?’

Per looked at her, slightly wary. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘If you like.’

‘Good.’

Vendela said goodbye and went back to the house. That was good, she had been sociable, perfectly normal. And she had got herself a running buddy.

Of course, she wouldn’t run to the elf stone with Per Mörner. That was her place, and hers alone.