The Quarry

4

Vendela Larsson had been sitting meditating next to Max when the accident happened. She had disappeared inside herself, eyes half-closed, perceiving the fields and meadows and all the stone walls like a film rolling past outside the car window. A familiar landscape, yet alien at the same time. Max had been here on a couple of occasions during the autumn and winter when the house was being built, but for Vendela it was the first time for many years.

Was it thirty years, or thirty-five? She couldn’t remember.

As she started to calculate in her head, something hit the front of the car with a thud.

‘Fuck!’ yelled Max, and Vendela was suddenly wide awake.

There was a brief slurping sound, then the windscreen was covered in red.

The car was no longer whizzing along smoothly. It was swerving and skidding as if it were on a slalom course, veering back and forth across the carriageway with screeching tyres — first to the left, heading straight for a truck bearing down on them from the opposite direction, then suddenly to the right, lurching towards a wide entrance of some kind. It was a petrol station with a shop and an empty car park.

Not completely empty. There was a car, and she could see people. A man running across the tarmac, and a boy sitting on a big box.

‘Fuck!’ Max yelled again.

Vendela heard her dog Ally yapping. She opened her mouth, but no sound emerged. She was a body moving with the car, and there was nothing she could do.

Max wrenched the wheel to one side. There was a bang and a screech, and the car came to an abrupt halt. Vendela was thrown forward, but the seatbelt held her.

The engine sputtered and died.

‘Shit...’ said Max. He sat there, his eyes staring straight ahead, his white fingers clamped around the wheel.

They weren’t moving. The front of the Audi had driven into the box of sand, smashing it to pieces.

And there was no sign of the boy who had been sitting on the box. Where was he?

Vendela undid her seatbelt and leaned forward, pressing her forehead against the windscreen. She saw a little hand sticking out to the right of the car.

The boy seemed to be lying next to the box, with his legs underneath the car. The tall man had reached him; he placed a hand on the bonnet of the Audi and bent down.

Max fumbled with the door and flung it open. He staggered out, his face bright red. ‘Don’t touch my car!’

It was the shock, Vendela could see that; Max was totally wound up, and had no idea what he was doing. He took two steps forward, raising his hands towards the other man.

Two seconds later he was on the ground, with his nose pressed firmly against the tarmac a couple of metres from the car. The man had flattened him.

‘Calm down.’ He bent over Max with gritted teeth, his fist raised. He seemed to be focusing on the back of Max’s neck.

His heart. Vendela grabbed the door handle and somehow managed to get the door open; she stepped out into the wind and yelled the first thing that came into her head: ‘No! He’s got a bad heart!’

The man looked up at her, still angry. But the fury in his eyes suddenly died. He breathed out, lowered his shoulders and looked down at Max. ‘Have you calmed down?’ he asked quietly.

Max didn’t reply. He gritted his teeth and struggled to free himself, but eventually he appeared to relax. ‘OK,’ he said.

Vendela stood motionless next to the car. The man let go of Max and straightened his back. He gently took hold of the boy’s upper body and pulled him out cautiously, away from the car.

‘Are you OK, Jesper?’

The boy gave some kind of answer, too quietly for Vendela to hear, but thank God, he didn’t seem to be hurt.

‘Can you move your toes?’ said the man.

‘Yeah.’

The boy started to get up. The man helped him, and led him over to their own car. They didn’t look back, and Vendela had a feeling that she was somehow being excluded.

Max grabbed hold of the Audi’s radiator grille and pulled himself to his feet. He blinked and noticed Vendela.

‘Get back in the car,’ he said. ‘I’ll take care of this.’

‘OK.’

Vendela took a deep breath and turned back to the car. She sat down, saw the blood running down the windscreen and almost thought it was beautiful. No, in fact she could admit to herself that it was beautiful. The blood had been smeared across the glass by the windscreen wipers, forming sweeping lines. It looked like two little rainbows in pale pink and dark red, glowing like a neon sign in the sun.

A faint breeze from the sea made the feathers that had stuck to the car dance around and adhere to the windscreen. They were brown and dirty white.

Perhaps they had hit a pheasant, or a wood pigeon.

Whatever kind of bird it was, it had suddenly appeared in front of the car, its big wings flapping, and it had exploded like a balloon on impact. The body had hit the radiator grille hard, bounced up towards the windscreen in a blood-red explosion, then disappeared over the roof. It had left broad lines behind.

The sound of whimpering was coming from the floor next to her seat.

‘Quiet, Ally!’ shouted Max.

Vendela swallowed. It was bad enough when Max shouted at her, but it was even worse when he started on their dog.

‘It’s all right, Aloysius,’ she said quietly.

She opened the door. ‘Are you OK, Max?’

He nodded. ‘I’m just going to wipe the car,’ was all he said.

He was breathless and red in the face, but that was probably just because he was so angry.

The previous summer, Max had experienced a sudden pain in his chest while he was on stage in Gothenburg, giving a talk about his latest book, Self-Confidence to the Max. He had to stop and leave the stage, and his voice was full of panic when he called Vendela. He had taken a taxi to A & E, where he had been examined and given oxygen.

It had been a mild heart attack, according to the doctor, with the emphasis on mild. There was no need for an operation — just rest. And Max had rested more or less right through the autumn, when he wasn’t overseeing the building of the house on Öland and planning his new book. This was to be a different kind of book, less about psychology and more about living the right way and eating well. A cookery book by Max Larsson. Vendela had promised to help him.

There were tissues and a bottle of mineral water in the glove compartment, and she took a couple of gulps before winding down the window.

‘Have some of this, Max.’

He took the bottle without speaking, but didn’t have a drink; instead he poured the water over the windscreen, rinsing the blood away so that it ran down over the bodywork in red stripes. He leaned over the bonnet, his jaw tightly clamped, scrubbing away at the glass.

Vendela wanted to forget the dead bird. She looked over to the right, through the clean side window and out across the alvar. A flat world of grass and bushes and rocks. She longed to be there. If Max wasn’t in too bad a mood after the collision, she might be able to go for a run this evening.

Vendela’s family came from the island; she had grown up on a farm outside Stenvik, which was partly why she had persuaded Max to buy a plot of land here.

Her husband really would have preferred a summer retreat closer to Stockholm, he had said so several times. But when Vendela showed him the location of Stenvik, right on the coast, and allowed him to choose exactly what kind of house they would build by the quarry, he had given in. Their house was an architectural dream by the sea, a fairytale palace of stone and glass.

Aloysius was still hobbling around on his stiff legs, shifting position down on the floor; his anxiety transmitted itself to Vendela, making her feel slightly unwell.

‘Lie down, Ally... we’ll be off soon.’

The greyish white poodle stopped howling, but he continued to whimper, pressing himself against her legs. His big eyes gazed up at her, pale and unfocused. Aloysius was thirteen years old — more than eighty in dog years. He could no longer bend his right front leg, and his sight had deteriorated over the past year. Their vet in Stockholm had explained back in the autumn that Ally would soon be able to distinguish only between light and darkness, and in less than a year he would probably be completely blind.

Vendela had stared at him.

‘But isn’t there anything you can do?’

‘Well yes... there’s always something we can do when it comes to an old dog. And it doesn’t hurt at all.’

But when the vet had started to talk about how a dog is put to sleep, Vendela had swept Ally up in her arms and fled.

It took about twenty tissues to get the car anything like clean. Max poured water and wiped, then threw them in the ditch next to the car park, one after another.

Vendela watched the dripping red tissues tumbling down into the ditch. No doubt they would lie there like dry leaves all through the spring and summer, and the islanders would mutter darkly about tourists leaving their litter. And the inhabitants of the alvar would see the mess too.

Max threw away the last tissue and leaned forward — he seemed to be checking that he hadn’t got any blood on his suede jacket or his jeans. Then he got back in the car, without looking Vendela in the eye.

‘All right?’ he said when he was settled.

She nodded, thinking, Absolutely. It’s just that some days are a little crazier than normal.

She looked over towards the other car, where the man and the boy were sitting. ‘Are you going to have a word with them?’

‘What for?’ said Max, starting the engine. ‘Nobody got hurt.’

Except the bird, thought Vendela.

There was a screeching sound as Max reversed away from the sand box. It had split down one side; Vendela could see a thin stream of sand pouring out on to the tarmac. No doubt the front of the Audi was also cracked.

Aloysius stopped whimpering and lay down again.

‘Right,’ said Max, shaking his head as if he wanted to shake off what had happened. ‘Off we go, then.’

He put the car into first gear and squirted water over the windscreen. Then he accelerated out of the car park.

Vendela turned to see if she could spot the bird’s broken body by the side of the road. But it wasn’t there; perhaps it was lying in the ditch.

‘I wonder what kind of bird it was,’ she said. ‘Did you see it, Max? I didn’t have time to notice if it was a pheasant or a grouse or—’

He shook his head. ‘Just forget it.’

‘It wasn’t a crane, was it, Max?’

‘Forget about the bird, Vendela. Think about the new house.’

The road was completely empty now, and he put his foot down. Vendela knew he wanted to get to the house to carry on with his cookery book. After the weekend a photographer was coming to take pictures of him in the new kitchen. Of course, the actual food would be prepared by Vendela.

The Audi picked up speed. Soon they were zooming along just as quickly as before, as if the collision and the quarrel had never taken place, but Aloysius was still trembling when he pressed himself against Vendela’s leg. He almost always trembled when Max was around.

If he had been younger and fitter, Ally could have gone with her on relaxing outings on the alvar, but as it was he would have to stay at home. Max didn’t enjoy going walking or running either. Vendela would have to venture out on to the alvar alone.

But perhaps not completely alone. After all, the elves were out there.