The Farm (2 page)

Without any work on the horizon there was no problem flying to Sweden at such short notice. There was only the issue of how I could afford the ticket. It was out of the question that Mark should pay when I hadn’t even told my parents his name. I emptied the last of my savings, extending my overdraft, and with my ticket booked, I phoned my dad with the details. The first available flight departed Heathrow at nine-thirty the next morning, arriving at Gothenburg in the south of Sweden at midday. He said no more than a few words, sounding moribund and defeated. Concerned with how he was coping alone on the isolated farm, I asked what he was doing. He replied:

‘I’m tidying up. She went through every drawer, every cupboard.’

‘What was she looking for?’

‘I don’t know. There’s no logic to it. Daniel, she wrote on the walls.’

I asked what she wrote. He said:

‘It doesn’t matter.’

There was no chance I’d sleep that night. Memories of Mum played on a loop in my head, fixating on the time when we’d been together in Sweden, twenty years ago, alone on a small holiday island in the archipelago north of Gothenburg, sitting side by side on a rock, our feet in the sea. In the distance an ocean-bound cargo vessel navigated the deep waters, and we watched the wave created by the bow travel towards us, a crease in the otherwise flat sea, neither of us moving, taking each other’s hands, waiting for the inevitable impact, the wave growing in size as it passed over shallow water until it smashed against the base of the rock, soaking us to the skin. I’d picked the memory because that had been around the time Mum and I had been closest, when I couldn’t imagine making an important decision without consulting her.

Next morning Mark insisted on driving me to Heathrow even though we both knew it would be faster on public transport. When the traffic was congested I didn’t complain, or check my watch, aware of how much Mark wished that he was coming with me and how I’d made it impossible for him to be involved beyond this car journey. At the drop-off point he hugged me. To my surprise he was on the verge of crying – I could feel the stifled vibrations through his chest. I assured him there was no point in him showing me through to the departure gate, and we said goodbye outside.

Ticket and passport ready, I was about to check in when my phone rang:

‘Daniel, she’s not here!’

‘Not where, Dad?’

‘The hospital! They’ve discharged her. Yesterday I brought her in. She wouldn’t have come in on her own. But she didn’t protest, so it was a voluntary admission. Then, once I left – she convinced the doctors to discharge her.’

‘Mum convinced them? You said the doctors diagnosed her as psychotic.’

My dad didn’t reply. I pressed the point:

‘The staff didn’t discuss her release with you?’

His voice dropped in volume:

‘She must have asked them not to speak to me.’

‘Why would she do that?’

‘I’m one of the people she’s making allegations against.’

He hastily added:

‘None of what she claims is real.’

It was my turn to be silent. I wanted to ask about the allegations but couldn’t bring myself to. I sat on my luggage, head in hands, ushering the queue to move around me.

‘Does she have a phone?’

‘She smashed hers a few weeks ago. She doesn’t trust them.’

I hesitated over the image of my frugal mother irrationally smashing a phone. My dad was describing the actions of a person I didn’t recognise.

‘Money?’

‘Probably a little – she carries around a leather satchel. She never lets it out of her sight.’

‘What’s in it?’

‘All kinds of junk she believes to be important. She calls it evidence.’

‘How did she leave the hospital?’

‘The hospital won’t even tell me that. She could be anywhere!’

Feeling panic for the first time, I said:

‘You and Mum have joint accounts. You can phone the bank and ask about recent transactions. Track her through the card.’

I could tell from the silence that Dad had never phoned the bank before: he’d always left money matters to my mum. In their joint business she’d balanced the books, paid the bills, and submitted the yearly tax accounts, gifted with an aptitude for numbers and the focus required to spend hours piecing together receipts and expenses. I could picture her old-fashioned ledger, in the days before spreadsheets. She’d press so hard on it with a pen that the numbers were like Braille.

‘Dad, check with the bank and call me straight back.’

While waiting I stepped out of the line and exited the terminal building, pacing among the congregation of smokers, struggling with the thought of Mum lost in Sweden. My phone rang again. I was surprised that my dad had managed his task so quickly, except it wasn’t Dad:

‘Daniel, listen to me carefully—’

It was my mum.

‘I’m on a payphone and don’t have much credit. I’m sure your father has spoken to you. Everything that man has told you is a lie. I’m not mad. I don’t need a doctor. I need the police. I’m about to board a flight to London. Meet me at Heathrow, Terminal . . .’

She paused for the first time to check her ticket information. Seizing the opportunity, all I could manage was a pitiful ‘. . . Mum!’

‘Daniel, don’t talk, I have very little time. The plane comes in at Terminal One. I’ll be landing in two hours. If your father calls, remember—’

The phone cut off.

I tried calling the payphone back in the hope that my mum would pick up, but there was no answer. As I was about to try again, my dad rang. Without any preamble he began to speak, sounding like he was reading from notes:

‘At seven-twenty this morning she spent four hundred pounds at Gothenburg airport. The vendor was Scandinavian Airlines. She’s in time for the first flight to Heathrow. She’s on her way to you! Daniel?’

‘Yes.’

Why didn’t I tell him that Mum had just called and that I already knew she was on her way? Did I believe her? She’d sounded commanding and authoritative. I’d expected a stream of consciousness, not clear facts and compact sentences. I was confused. It felt aggressive and confrontational to repeat her assertions that my dad was a liar. I stuttered a reply:

‘I’ll meet her here. When are you flying over?’

‘I’m not.’

‘You’re staying in Sweden?’

‘If she thinks I’m in Sweden she’ll relax. She’s got it into her head that I’m pursuing her. Staying here will buy you some time. You need to convince her to get help. I can’t help her. She won’t let me. Take her to the doctor’s. You have a better chance if she’s not worrying about me.’

I couldn’t follow his reasoning.

‘I’ll call you when she arrives. Let’s work out a plan then.’

I ended the conversation with my thoughts pinched between interpretations. If my mum was suffering from a psychotic episode, why had the doctors discharged her? Even if they couldn’t detain her on a legal technicality they should’ve notified my dad, yet they’d refused, treating him as a hostile force, aiding her escape not from hospital but from him. To other people she must seem okay. The airline staff had sold her a ticket, security had allowed her through airport screening – no one had stopped her. I started to wonder what she’d written on the walls, unable to shake the image that Mum had emailed me, showing Dad in conversation with a stranger.

Daniel!

In my head it began to sound like a cry for help.

The screen updated; Mum’s plane had landed. The automatic doors opened and I hurried to the front of the barriers, checking the baggage tags. Soon the Gothenburg passengers began to trickle through. First were the executives searching for the laminated plastic sign with their name, followed by couples, then families with bulky luggage piled high. There was no sign of my mum, even though she was a brisk walker and I couldn’t imagine that she’d checked luggage into the hold. An elderly man slowly passed by me, surely one of the last passengers from Gothenburg. I gave serious consideration to phoning my dad, explaining that something had gone wrong. Then the giant doors hissed open and my mum stepped through.

Her eyes were turned downwards, as though following a trail of breadcrumbs. There was a beat-up leather satchel over her shoulder, packed full and straining at the strap. I’d never seen it before: it wasn’t the kind of thing my mum would normally have bought. Her clothes, like the satchel, showed signs of distress. There were scuffs on her shoes. Her trousers were crumpled around the knees. A button was missing from her shirt. My mum had a tendency to overdress – smart for restaurants, smart for the theatre, smart for work even though there was no need. She and my dad had owned a garden centre in north Lon don, set on a slip of T-shaped land between grand white stucco houses, bought in the early 1970s when land in London was cheap. While my dad wore torn jeans, clumpy boots and baggy jumpers, smoking roll-up cigarettes, my mum selected starched white shirts, wool trousers in the winter, and cotton trousers in the summer. Customers would remark on her immaculate office attire, wondering how she kept so pristine because she’d carry out as much of the physical labour as my dad. She’d laugh when they asked and shrug innocently as if to say, ‘I have no idea!’ But it was calculated. There were always spare changes of clothes in the back room. She’d tell me that, as the face of the business, it was important to keep up appearances.

I allowed my mum to pass by, curious as to whether she’d see me. She was notably thinner than when we’d said goodbye in April, unhealthily so. Her trousers were loose, reminding me of clothes on a wooden puppet, hanging without shape. She seemed to have no natural curves, a hasty line drawing rather than the real person. Her short blonde hair looked wet, brushed back, slick and smooth, not with wax or gel but water. She must have stopped off at a washroom after leaving the plane, making an effort to fix her appearance to be sure a hair wasn’t out of place. Normally youthful in appearance, her face had aged over the past few months. Like her clothes, her skin carried marks of distress. There were dark spots on her cheeks. The lines under her eyes had grown more pronounced. In contrast her watery blue eyes seemed brighter than ever. As I moved around the barrier, instinct stopped me from touching her, a concern that she might scream.

‘Mum.’

She looked up, frightened, but seeing that it was me – her son – she smiled triumphantly:

‘Daniel.’

She uttered my name in the same way as when I’d made her proud – a quiet, intense happiness. As we hugged she rested her face against the side of my chest. Pulling back, she took hold of my hands and I surreptitiously examined her fingers with the edge of my thumb. Her skin was rough. Her nails were jagged and not cared for. She whispered:

‘It’s over. I’m safe.’

I quickly established that her mind was sharp as she immediately noticed my luggage:

‘What’s that for?’

‘Dad called me last night to tell me you were in the hospital—’

She cut me short:

‘Don’t call it a hospital. It was an asylum. He drove me to the madhouse. He said this is where I belong, in rooms next to people howling like animals. Then he phoned you and told you the same thing. Your mum’s mad. Isn’t that right?’

I was slow to respond, finding it difficult to adjust to her confrontational anger:

‘I was about to fly to Sweden when you called.’

‘Then you believed him?’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’

‘He was relying on that.’

‘Tell me what’s going on.’

‘Not here. Not with these people. We have to do it properly, from the beginning. It must be done right. Please, no questions? Not yet.’

There was a formality in the way she spoke, an excessive politeness, overarticulating each syllable and clipping each point of punctuation. I agreed:

‘No questions.’

She squeezed my hand appreciatively, softening her voice:

‘Take me home.’

She didn’t own a house in England any more. She’d sold it and relocated to a farm in Sweden, a farm intended to be her last and happiest home. I could only assume she meant my apartment, Mark’s apartment, a man she’d never even heard about.

I’d already spoken to Mark while waiting for Mum’s plane to land. He was alarmed at the turn of events, particularly with the fact that there would no longer be any doctors supervising. I’d be on my own. I told him that I’d phone to keep him updated. I’d also promised to phone my dad, but there was no opportunity to make that call with my mum by my side. I didn’t dare leave her alone and feared that reporting openly back to my dad could make me appear partisan, something I couldn’t risk; she might begin to mistrust me or, worse, she might run away, an idea that would never have occurred to me if my dad hadn’t mentioned it. The prospect terrified me. I slipped my hand into my pocket, silencing my phone.

Mum remained close by my side as I bought train tickets to the centre of town. I found myself checking on her frequently, smiling in an attempt to veil the fact that she was under careful observation. At intervals she’d hold my hand, something she’d not done since I was a child. My strategy was to behave as neutrally as possible, making no assumptions, ready to hear her story fairly. As it happens I didn’t have any history of siding with my mum or my dad simply because they’d never given me a conflict where I’d needed to pick sides. On balance I was closer to my mum only because she’d been more involved in the everyday details of my life. My dad had always been content to defer to her judgment.