Benny & Shrimp (2 page)

Something utterly unexpected happened today.

It was a clear, cold autumn day and I took my usual walk to the grave in my lunch break. The Forest Owner was sitting there on the bench; he glowered at me, as if I were trespassing in his own private cemetery. His paws were all soily; he’d probably just got the day’s
gardening
stint out of the way. Wonder why he’s only got three fingers.

I sat down on the seat and started brooding about how many children Örjan and I would have had. Örjan would have taken his full share of paternity leave and been an expert on terry nappies and practical child
carriers
. Taken the baby to swimming classes.

We were married for five years and in all that time
we hardly argued. There was the occasional abrupt comment, the odd sarcastic remark or irritated snort. Always from my side, but it never escalated.

No thanks to me. Örjan never argued with anybody. He patiently explained his point of view over and over again until you were forced to give in from sheer exhaustion.

There were a few times when his mild-mannered nature just made me lose control. I’d start having a childish tantrum – kicking the furniture, stomping out of the room, slamming the door. He always behaved as if he hadn’t noticed, and I didn’t keep it up because it just felt as if I was conceding him points for style.

Once I scrunched up
Dagens nyheter
page by page and bombarded him with balls of newspaper. We’d spent half of Saturday on the paper – debating the
controversial
articles; noting cultural events even if they were happening hundreds of miles away; laughing at the comic strips and planning a tasty Saturday supper with sundried tomatoes. I had a sudden feeling real life was passing me by, rushing past outside the window while we sat there reading, and I grabbed the paper and went on the attack. Then his brown eyes filled with such
concern
that I was left with no choice but to hit him or burst into tears.

So I cried of course, furiously. Because the provoking thing was, he was the one most likely to pull on his green wellies and go out into the real world,
bird-watching
binoculars in hand, before I’d even got to the review section of the paper. “You’ve always got to have
a lens between you and reality,” I snuffled, feeling more misunderstood than ever, since I didn’t even understand myself.

A few days later, studiedly casual, he handed me an article about pre-menstrual tension and gave me such a kindly pat on the hand, which immediately made me want to scrunch that into a ball and throw it at him. But before I could move, he’d unlocked his mountain bike out in the courtyard and disappeared.

In the beginning I was in love with him. I wrote love letters in hexameters, which made him smile. I climbed out on creaking branches to photograph birds’ nests for him and stood in ice-cold water letting leeches attach themselves to my legs because he needed them for research.

Maybe it was because he was so good-looking. Warm, brown colouring; tall, well-built body; lovely, muscular hands always busy with something. It felt good to see other women sneaking a look at him and then gulping in amazement when they saw my washed-out figure at his side. (Oh yes, girls! I landed this catch all by myself and I could teach you a thing or two!)

An empty boast. I’ve no idea how I “got” him.
Good-looking
men don’t normally show any more interest in me than they would in a wallpaper design selected by the council housing department.

But once Örjan had me in his sights – I worked at the information desk in the library and helped him with zoology periodicals in English – he seemed to decide that I was definitely His Woman, the only one he would
do any favours for from now on. Rather as he always favoured buying Fjällräven’s outdoor gear.

At the beginning I felt as if he was checking me out, like some kind of all-embracing consumer test. In the woods. In bed. At the cinema, then chatting in the café afterwards. And there were no sharp corners anywhere. We stitched all our opinions neatly into each other like two knitting needles in the same bit of knitting, and happily watched the pattern starting to build up.

Then we got married and recovered our breath. Examination successfully passed, time for the next phase.

We’d just started exchanging smiles in front of the window of the pram shop when he went and died. He was run over by a lorry early one morning, on his bike on his way to watch the mating display of the
capercaillie
. He was listening to a tape of birdcalls on his
personal
stereo – either he didn’t hear the lorry and veered out in front of it, or the driver fell asleep at the wheel.

This sober little stone in front of me is all I’ve got left. And I’m furious with him for leaving me like that, without even discussing it first… Now I’ll never find out who he was.

I got my notebook out of my bag. It’s a little blue book with stiff covers and a bright blue sailing boat on the front. And I wrote:

I honestly don’t imagine that what I’m doing in my notebook is creating Poetry. I’m just trying to capture existence in images. I do that most days, rather as other people write to-do lists to impose some order on their daily lives. No one need ever read them – I don’t tell other people my dreams, either. Everyone has their own method for getting a grip on life.

The Forest Owner was watching me furtively from the side. You stare if you like, I thought, and it’s fine by me if you think I’m an Organised Housewife doing her weekly budget.

Just as I was unscrewing the top of my fountain pen (I’ve managed to get hold of one – when you’re putting your thoughts into words, it has to be in proper ink), a mother came along with a little girl of about three or four trotting beside her to the grave on the other side of the Forest Owner’s. The girl had a shiny little watering can, which was bright pink and looked brand new, and she was carrying it as if it were the crown jewels. The mother began to busy herself with tapering vases and bouquets in rustling paper, while the girl skipped around the gravestone pouring dribbles of water from her can. Suddenly she clapped her hand over her mouth; she looked petrified, her eyes as round as marbles: “Oh, Mummy! I watered the writing! Now Grandpa will be really cross, won’t he?”

I felt the corners of my mouth twitch and threw a glance at the Forest Owner. And at the same instant, he looked at me.

He smiled too. And…

There’s no way of describing that smile without resorting to the wonderful world of cheesy song lyrics.

It had sun and wild strawberries and birds singing and expanses of glittering water in it. And it was
directed
at me, trusting and proud as if he were a child
presenting
me with a misshapen birthday gift. The corners of my mouth were still stretched wide. And an arc of light flashed between us, I’d still swear it even today – a blue one like my physics teacher could produce with that special generator thing of his. Three hours passed, or maybe three seconds.

Then we turned our heads to face the front,
simultaneously
, as if we were both being operated by the same string. The sun went behind the clouds and I just sat there, replaying his smile in slow motion inside my
eyelids
.

If Märta, my best or possibly only friend Märta, had told me about a smile like the one the Forest Owner and I had just exchanged, I’d have thought she was showing her usual capacity for rewriting reality into something bigger and more beautiful.

I envy her for it. My own tendency is to think that a baby’s smile is just wind; a falling star is very likely a TV satellite crashing out of orbit; birdsong is full of
territorial
threats; and Jesus probably never existed, at least not then and not there.

“Love” is how a species answers the need for genetic variation, otherwise you could easily just take cuttings from the females.

Of course I know there are strong forces operating
between men and women. Your egg is sloshing around in there wanting nothing better than to be fertilised by some suitable sperm. The whole machinery jolts into action whenever any of it comes within reach.

But what I wasn’t prepared for was the sperm
container
smiling like that! The egg did a leap inside me, jumping and splashing and turning somersaults and sending out frantic signals, “This way! This way!”

I wanted to shout to it, “Sit!”

I turned my head so I was looking away from the Forest Owner and instead peered furtively at his hand on the bench. He was twisting a Volvo keyring between his two fingers and thumb. Where his ring finger and his little finger should have been, there were just smooth knuckles. His hands were ingrained with earth and
perhaps
oil, and the veins stood out on the back of them. I wanted to smell his hands and caress the empty
knuckles
with my lips.

Good God, I’ve got to get away from here! Is this what happens to a grown-up woman who lives without a man for a while?

So I stood up, grabbed up my bag in my cold hands and ran, taking the most direct route to the gates, across graves and low hedges.

I’m way behind with the accounts. It feels as if
everything’s
going to the dogs; wonder if that’s why I’ve put off getting down to the bills and paperwork. The piles of paper spilling out from Dad’s old bureau feel
explosive
, as if there’s some bloody letter from the bank
sitting
ticking in there, a letter telling me I’m scraping the bottom of my overdraft agreement. I scarcely dare answer the phone in office hours any more; it might be them.

I’ve never been any good with money, or paperwork.That was Mum’s forte. She used to sit at the bureau muttering under her breath; now and then she’d turn round and look at me over her glasses and ask some question that only needed a straightforward answer: “Are we all right for seed? Have you paid the vet?”

She took care of everything else. And all I had to do was tell her how much cash I needed; she never asked questions, not even when I took it into my head to buy a wide gold bracelet for Annette, who I was with for a while. Annette was always going on about how much she liked Bismarck chains – that’s almost the only thing I remember about her.

Mum said once, near the end, that I ought to call in the Farm Management Service to take care of all that now. She lay there thinking about things like that, although she had a drip in her arm. The drip meant she kept needing bedpans, and she found it really
embarrassing
. I always said I was going out for a smoke when the nurse brought the bedpan in. And I hadn’t the heart to tell her I wouldn’t be able to afford the Farm Management Service; the milk cheque seemed to be shrinking every month.

In any case, it’s not called the Farm Management Service any more, and they employ all those slick young stockbroker types there nowadays. Just being in their office makes me feel uncomfortable.

Mum’s overriding feeling seemed to be one of
frustration
with her cancer for stopping her getting up and doing anything useful. The chemotherapy really knocked her out, but whenever I came in, the
impression
she gave was along the lines of: “What a wretched nuisance. It’s too bad! I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me.”

Oh hell, she’s back, the beige woman! Hasn’t she anything better to do? She looks like someone who still
lives at home with her parents, with some nice little job while she waits to marry the bank manager. She blasted well looks as if she might work at my bank.

She sits down and gives me a sideways look, as if I were a bouncing cheque – an embarrassment, but not her problem. Then she sighs deeply and gets some kind of writing book out of a big flowery bag. She makes a great performance of taking the top off a pen – a fountain pen? I didn’t think anyone used those since biros were invented – and starts writing, slowly and in spidery little handwriting.

And of course, I’m itching with curiosity. Who is this woman making notes by a grave? Does she keep a record of all the husbands she’s finished off? Suddenly she frowns and I hear a distinct, abrupt snort: she’d noticed I was sitting looking at her. To pay her back for her snooty attitude I try to picture her with fishnet stockings and a curly mauve nylon wig. Flour-white breasts, firmly clamped into a deep cleavage and bulging out of a tight-laced patent-leather corset. I let her keep the white eyelashes and the stupid hairy wool hat with the toadstools on.

The image I’ve conjured up is so ridiculous that I suddenly find I’m sitting staring at her, grinning from ear to ear. She gives me another look and – before I can rearrange my features, she’s smiling back!

Can this really be her? The beige woman, who sits worshipping a chunk of old granite and pursing her pale lips, can she smile like this?

Like a child in the summer holidays, or a kid that’s
just got its first bike? The same happy, all-over grin as that little girl with the pink watering can over there by the other grave.

We’re stuck like that. We’ve both got our headlights on full beam and neither of us is giving way.

What the hell’s going on here?

Should I do something? Say, “Do you come here often? Busy in the cemetery today, isn’t it? What do you think of the chapel?” Or start pressing my knee against hers.

Then someone pulls the plug and we’re both staring straight ahead.

We sit there for a bit, stock-still as if the bench were mined. Then I start fiddling with my keys to stop myself exploding into little bits.

I can see out of the corner of my eye that she’s transfixed by my hand and trying not to show it. I’ve been practising for years not hiding it in my pocket as soon as people start staring. And I don’t now, either. Three-Finger Benny, that’s me, babe. Take it or leave it!

Ha, it turned out to be “leave it”. She gets up and stumbles off as if I’d been planning to grab her with my pathetic threesome. Why’s she looking so angry?

Yet another conquest for Smarmy Benny, I guess.

That was how things always turned out in the days when I was forever on the lookout for girls. I went the way my prick told me, and it always led me to girls, like a divining rod; all I had to do was hang on and
follow
it. To open air dances in the summer; to some place where there was a dance in the winter, even if it was
sometimes a long journey. Big, dreary halls with
fluorescent
strip lighting, used by the local school for gym in the daytime and by the temperance society for
meetings
in the evening, and then on Fridays and Saturdays they’d put some crepe paper round the lights and hire in a dance band. I hardly ever drove into town to go to a disco, partly because I knew I’d lost touch with modern trends – I realised that when people started wearing their caps back to front – but also because to me there seemed no point standing apart and jiggling about. I wanted someone to hold. I thought it was great putting my arm around the waist of a new girl and steering her out onto the dance floor; it was like buying a raffle
ticket
and winning every time. They smelt so nice and I thought they were all so pretty. I was in love with every single one and didn’t want to let go of them when the dance was over. And I definitely didn’t want to try to speak over the band and have a conversation with them or anything. I just wanted to hold them and smell them and glide around with my eyes closed.

It never occurred to me that I couldn’t just take what I wanted – the last year at school I’d been one of those boys loads of girls fancied; my name was written on girls’ desks all over the place. But I hadn’t seen many girls since I took over the farm, and you don’t notice the years passing. I hadn’t realised how out of practice I was.

It all went well to start with. I traipsed around as the fancy took me, and most girls are good at keeping their feet out of the way. Sometimes they were better than
that; they had such an irresistible way of moving in time to the music that we seemed to be dancing
automatically
, and that was great. When the dance finished, they started giving me sideways looks, and I’d stand there staring at them, smiling, never saying “Do you come here often…? What do you think of the band…? Busy here tonight…”, like you’re supposed to. I’ve nothing against small talk, it keeps the friendly mood going, but it just isn’t my sort of thing. Some of the girls broke off after a couple of dances and went back to their place – the girls always stood in a gaggle by one particular wall. But most of them carried on dancing.

Once I opened my mouth and said to a girl, “What makes you happy?”

I’d been sort of wondering about it as we danced.

“Makes me what?” she shouted over all the noise.

“Happy! What makes you… Oh heck, forget it!” I swiftly deposited her back with the gaggle of girls, my ears red.

But that wasn’t the worst thing. Once I blithely danced five dances in a row with a girl; she smelt so nice. After the fifth dance, I leant forward and nuzzled her in the neck without even thinking.

She instantly took three steps back. Did she think I was a vampire? In my mind’s eye I saw my wimpish, fluoride-enhanced fangs growing long and pointed and couldn’t help smiling broadly. At that she hissed like an angry swan, turned on her heel and left me there.

Later I happened to be standing behind her in the entrance hall. “What did that smarmy guy think he was
doing?” her mate asked. “He must have been drunk,” she said. “Didn’t say a word, just grinned like an idiot.”

Smarmy guy. A name that conjures up the impression of silk shirts and too much aftershave. Somebody trying too hard.

Smarmy Benny. Frightens people into bolting with his killer smile. Expect that was why she ran too, the beige woman.

But, well… she was smiling, wasn’t she?