The Quarry

31

The grandchildren had spent the whole of Easter Saturday painting hard-boiled eggs. There were yellow eggs with blue stripes and red eggs with green spots — but most of them had so many layers of colour they had ended up black.

Gerlof ate a couple with plenty of salt and fish roe, but he preferred spiced herring with potatoes and crispbread. He had a couple of glasses of schnapps too, flavoured with wormwood picked down by the shore, and noticed that no one else at the table was drinking spirits. Good. (From time to time over the years he had been worried about his younger daughter Julia, but this evening she had only milk in her glass.)

After the eggs and the schnapps Gerlof felt so good that he started talking about how miserable life on the island had been back in the old days.

‘Saturday slops, do you know what that was?’

The grandchildren shook their heads.

‘It was a very special dish,’ said Gerlof. ‘The recipe was simple... you just collected a whole week’s worth of leftovers in a wooden bowl, then you put plenty of salt in, boiled the whole thing up in a pan and ate it. The whole family!’

Julia shook her head. ‘You’ve never eaten Saturday slops, Dad. You weren’t that poor!’

He frowned at her. ‘I’m talking about my grandfather, he used to have it when he was little. Things were bad enough when I was little, mind you... We had no running water, we had to pump the water into a bucket out in the yard.’

‘I remember that pump,’ said Lena. ‘It was still there in the sixties... and I thought the water from the well tasted better than tap water, anyway.’

‘Well, yes,’ said Gerlof, ‘but sometimes it was all brown, and you had to pump until it ran clear again. And of course we didn’t have a proper toilet, just the outhouse with a big bucket that had to be emptied into a hole when it was full. It all splashed up your legs if you weren’t careful, and if you slipped you got—’

Lena put down her fork. ‘We are still eating, Dad.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Gerlof, winking at the grandchildren. ‘But in the spring it was the opposite way round, we had far too much water. Sometimes there would be great big lakes out on the alvar... I can remember swimming in them now and again. And once my brother Ragnar and I found an old tin bath; we made a sail from a sheet and launched it in the spring floods.’ He laughed. ‘It got up such a good speed that it capsized — it was my first shipwreck!’

‘Were there cars then?’ asked one of the children.

‘Yes,’ said Gerlof, ‘there have been cars as long as I remember. They came to the island quite early on, long before electricity. There were cars up here before the First World War, but some farms didn’t get electricity until the forties. And some people didn’t want it — it cost too much. They carried on using paraffin lamps as long as they could.’

‘At least you didn’t have any power cuts if you were using paraffin lamps,’ said Julia.

‘Yes, and with the electricity everybody was terrified whenever we had a thunderstorm. People would go into each other’s houses, or go and sit in the car until it was over... We just weren’t used to electricity.’

When almost all the eggs had been eaten, the grandchildren left the table. It was much quieter, and Gerlof stayed there with his daughters.

He had something to tell them. Something that felt like a confession. ‘I’ve started reading your mother’s diaries.’

‘They’re in the attic, aren’t they?’ said Julia.

‘No, they were at the back of a cupboard. Do you want to read them too?’

‘I’d rather not,’ said Julia.

Lena shook her head. ‘I’ve seen them lying there, but I’ve never touched them... It felt too private. Wasn’t she going to burn them? I’ve got a feeling she—’

‘Burn them? Not that I know of,’ Gerlof broke in. He didn’t want to feel any worse than he already did, and carried on in his firmest captain’s voice. ‘Well, I’m reading them anyway. It’s not illegal to read another person’s diaries.’

Silence fell around the table. He picked up the last black-painted egg and started to peel it, then added in a quieter voice, ‘She saw strange people around the house, did you know that? She wrote about it in the diaries.’

His daughters looked at him.

‘You mean she saw little goblins?’ said Julia. ‘I know Granny did.’

‘No, not goblins. Ella writes about a “changeling” who came to the cottage sometimes, when she was on her own up here. At first I thought she had some suitor from the village coming to call when I was away at sea...’

‘No chance,’ said Julia.

‘I don’t think so either.’ Gerlof looked thoughtfully out of the window, over towards the grass and bushes beyond their garden. ‘But I do wonder what it was she actually saw. She never mentioned it to me. Did she say anything to you?’

Julia shook her head. She scooped out her last boiled egg and said, ‘Mum was a bit secretive... she was good at keeping quiet.’

‘Perhaps it was a troll from the quarry,’ said Lena with a smile. ‘Ernst used to talk about them.’

Gerlof didn’t smile back. ‘There are no trolls there.’

He started to get up from the table. Both his daughters quickly moved to help him, but he waved them away. ‘I can manage, thank you. I think I’ll go to bed soon. You won’t forget the Easter service tomorrow morning?’

‘We’ll get you to the church, don’t worry,’ said Lena.

‘Good.’

Gerlof still had his own bedroom at the cottage. He closed the door behind him and changed into his pyjamas, even though it was only nine o’clock. He knew he would sleep well, even if all the others were still up and watching TV. He could hear their laughter and loud voices, and closed his eyes.

The grandchildren’s constant rushing about from morning till night wore him out. What would it be like when the summer holidays started? He’d better enjoy the peace during the spring, while it lasted.