The Farm Read online

  • • •

  I MUST HAVE REACTED TO THE IMAGE of my mum shouting at my dad.

  Daniel, don’t look so surprised. Your father and I argue, not often, not regularly, but like every other couple in the world we lose our tempers. We just made sure you never heard. You were so sensitive as a child. If we raised our voices you’d be upset for hours. You wouldn’t sleep. You wouldn’t eat. Once, at breakfast, I banged my hand against the table. You copied me! You started banging your little fists against your head. We had to hold your arms to stop you. Quickly we learned to control our tempers. Arguments were held back, stacked up, and we’d work through them when you were out.

  • • •

  IN NO MORE THAN A BRIEF ASIDE, my mum had swept away my entire conception of our family life. I’d no memory of behaving in this way – hitting my own head, refusing to eat, unable to sleep, disturbed by anger. I’d thought my parents had voluntarily taken a vow of tranquillity. The truth was that they’d been forced to shelter me not because they believed it for the best but because I demanded calm as though it were a requirement of my existence, the same as food or warmth. The sanctuary of our home was defined by my weakness as much as it was by their strength. My mum took my hand:

  ‘Maybe I made a mistake coming to you.’

  Even now she was worried I couldn’t cope. And she was right to doubt me. Only a few minutes ago I’d felt an impulse to ask her not to speak, to cling on to silence.

  ‘Mum, I want to listen – I’m ready.’

  In an effort to conceal my anxiety, I tried to encourage her:

  ‘You shouted at Dad. You walked out. You slammed the door. What happened next?’

  It was shrewd to bring her focus back to events. Her desire to discuss the allegations was so powerful I could see her doubts about me disappearing as she was tugged back into the flow of her storytelling. Our knees touching, she lowered her voice as if imparting a conspiracy.

  I set off towards the river. The waterfront was one of the most important parts of our property. We still needed a little cash to survive. We weren’t producing our own electricity and there were annual land taxes. Our answer was salmon. We could eat the salmon in the summer, smoke and preserve it for the winter. We could sell some to fishmongers, but I saw the potential for more. We’d fix up the farm’s outbuildings – they used to house livestock but they could easily be converted into rustic guest accommodations. We’d carry out the work with minimal paid help since Chris and I were both handy with tools. Once that was complete, we’d open the farm as a holiday destination, guests lured to our obscure location with the promise of freshly grown food, a picturesque landscape, and the prospect of catching some of the world’s most beautiful salmon at a bargain price compared to fishing in Scotland or Canada. Despite its importance, in those early days Chris wouldn’t spend any time down by the river. He said it was too bleak. He didn’t see how our plans were possible. No one would ever pay to come to our farm. That’s what he claimed. I admit that it wasn’t picture-postcard-pretty when we arrived. The riverbank was overgrown, the grass was knee high, and I’ve never seen slugs so big, as fat as my thumb. But the potential was there. It just needed love.

  At the river there was a small wooden jetty. In April it was entangled in reeds. Standing on it that evening, with a smudge of light in the sky, I felt tired and alone. After a few minutes I pulled myself together and decided it was time to swim and declare this river officially open for business! I stripped naked, dropping my clothes in a heap, and jumped into the water. The temperature was a shock. When I surfaced I gasped and started swimming frantically, trying to warm up until suddenly I stopped because on the opposite bank the low branches of a tree were moving. It can’t have been the wind because the tops of the trees were motionless. It was something else – a person watching me, clasped around the branch. Alone and naked in the water, I was vulnerable. From this distance Chris couldn’t hear me even if I screamed. Then the branches on the riverbank began to move again, breaking from the tree, sliding towards me. I should have swum away, as fast as I could, but my body wouldn’t obey and I remained where I was, treading water as the branches drew closer. Except they weren’t branches! They were the antlers of a giant elk.

  Never in my childhood years in Sweden had an elk been this close to me. I was careful not to splash or make a noise as the elk passed so close I could’ve reached out and hooked my arms around its thick neck, lifted myself up and mounted its back, just like in those stories I’d read to you where a forest princess rides naked on the back of an elk, her long silver hair catching the moonlight. I must have exclaimed in wonder, because the elk swung around, turning its face towards me – black eyes staring into mine, its warm breath on my face. Around my thighs I could feel the water disturbed by its powerful legs. Then it snorted and swam to our side of the river, walking out onto our farmland beside the jetty and revealing its mighty proportions, truly a king of this land. It shook the water off its coat, steam rising from its skin, before slowly heading back towards the forests.

  I remained in the middle of the river for several minutes, treading water, no longer cold, blessed with absolute certainty that we’d made the right decision in moving here. There was a reason we were at this farm. We belonged here. I closed my eyes, imagining thousands of brightly coloured salmon swimming around me.

  • • •

  MY MUM REACHED INTO THE SATCHEL and pulled out a knife. Instinctively I recoiled, a reaction that concerned my mum:

  ‘I startled you?’

  It was an accusation. The manner in which she’d abruptly brandished the knife, without warning, made me wonder whether she was deliberately testing me in the same way as before, when she’d left me alone, and I made a mental note to be on my guard against any future attempts to provoke me. She flipped the knife around, offering me the handle:

  ‘Hold it.’

  The entire knife was carved from wood, including the blade, painted silver to resemble metal. It was quite blunt and harmless. On the handle there were intricate engravings. On one side there was a naked woman bathing by the rocks of a lake, with large breasts and long flowing hair, her vagina marked by a single notch. On the other side there was a troll’s face, his tongue hanging out like a panting dog and his nose mischievously shaped like a grotesque phallus.

  It’s a type of humour you probably recognise, popular in rural Sweden, where farmers craft crude figures such as a man relieving himself, a thin curve of wood chiselled to represent the arc of piss.

  Rotate the knife on your palm, backwards and forwards—

  Spinning it like this—

  Faster! So you can see both figures at the same time, the troll lusting after the woman, the woman unaware she’s being watched – the two blurred together. The implication is clear. The fact of the woman being blind to her danger heightens the sexual pleasure of the troll.

  The knife was a gift, a strange gift, I’m sure you’d agree, given to me by my neighbour the first time we met. Despite him being only a ten-minute walk from our farm, that meeting didn’t take place until we’d lived in Sweden for two weeks – two weeks, and in all that time, not a single introduction from any of the nearby farmers. We were being ignored. Instructions had been given not to approach us. In London there are countless neighbours who never speak to each other. But anonymity doesn’t exist in rural Sweden. It isn’t possible to live that way. We required the consent of the community to settle in that region, we couldn’t sulk in our corner of the countryside. There were practical considerations. The previous owner – brave Cecilia – had informed me that our spare land could be leased to local farmers. Typically they’d pay a nominal sum, however, I was of the opinion that we could persuade them to provide the foodstuffs we couldn’t produce.

  Deciding that two weeks was long enough, I woke up one morning and told Chris we’d knock on their door if they wouldn’t knock on ours. That day I took great care over my appearance, selecting a pair of cotton trousers since a d
ress would’ve implied I was incapable of manual labour. I didn’t want to play poverty. We couldn’t admit the extent of our financial problems. The truth might make us seem pitiful, and they’d interpret the information as an insult, deducing that we’d only moved into the region because we couldn’t afford to be anywhere else. Equally we couldn’t give off the impression that we believed we could buy our way into the community. On the spur of the moment I took down the small Swedish flag hanging from the side of our house and turned the flag into a bandana, using it to tie back my hair.

  Chris refused to accompany me. He couldn’t speak Swedish and was too proud to stand beside me waiting for a translation. To tell the truth, I was pleased. First impressions were vital and I was sceptical they’d react warmly to an Englishman who barely spoke a word of their language. I wanted to prove to these farmers that we weren’t hapless foreign city folk who placed no value on tradition. I couldn’t wait to see their faces light up when I spoke to them in fluent Swedish, proudly declaring that I’d been brought up on a remote farm, just like the one we now owned.

  The farm nearest to us belonged to the largest landowner in the region and it was with this particular farmer that Cecilia had struck an arrangement to lease the fields. It was obvious that I should begin with him. Walking up the road I arrived at an enormous pig barn, no windows, a bleak steel roof with narrow black chimneys jutting out the top and a smell of pig shit and pig-fattening chemicals. Qualms about intensive farming were not going to win over the locals. What’s more, Chris had stated clearly that he couldn’t survive as a vegetarian. There was very little protein in our diet and almost no money in the bank, so if this was our only source of meat, aside from the salmon, then I couldn’t afford to turn it down on the basis of food ethics. A moral position would make me seem superior, fussy and, worst of all, foreign.

  Their house was situated at the end of a long gravel drive. Every window on the front looked out onto the pig barn, odd when you consider that there were fields and trees in the other directions. Unlike our farmhouse, which was built two hundred years ago, they’d torn down the original property and put in its place a modern house. By modern I don’t mean a cube of glass, concrete and steel; it was traditionally shaped, on two floors, with pale blue timber cladding, a veranda, a slate roof. They wanted the appearance of tradition but all the advantages of modernity. Our farmhouse, despite its many failings, was more appealing, a genuine representative of Swedish architectural heritage rather than an imitation.

  When I knocked on the door there was no reply, but their gleaming silver Saab – and Saab’s not even a Swedish company any more – was in the drive. They were at home, most probably out on the land. In search of them I set off, walking through their fields, absorbing the sheer enormity of their property, an agricultural kingdom – perhaps fifty times the size of our little farm. Nearing the river, I came across a gentle slope covered in weeds, a bump in the landscape. Except it was man-made. Under the mound was the roof of a shelter not dissimilar to the bomb shelters constructed in London during the war or tornado shelters built in America. There was a steel door made from the same material as the roof of the pig barn. The padlock was hanging open. Taking a chance, I knocked and heard a commotion inside. Seconds later the door was pulled open. That was the first time I came face to face with Håkan Greggson.

  • • •

  FROM HER JOURNAL MY MUM produced a newspaper clipping. She held it up for inspection, her cracked nail slicing across the head of Håkan Greggson. I’d seen him before, in the photograph my mum had emailed – the tall stranger in conversation with my dad.

  The clipping is from the front page of Hallands Nyheter. The majority of people in the region subscribe. When we refused, because we couldn’t afford the cost, there was malicious chitchat about why we’d snubbed a local institution. There was no option but to subscribe. Chris was furious. I explained to him that you can’t put a price on fitting in. Anyway, I’m showing this to you because you need to understand the power of the man I’m up against.

  Håkan’s in the centre.

  To his right is the tipped-to-be leader of the Christian Democrats, Marie Eklund. A stern woman, one day she’s going to be a great politician, by ‘great’ I mean successful rather than decent. She failed me. I went to her in person, with my allegations, at the height of the crisis. Her office refused to grant me an audience. She wouldn’t even hear me speak.

  On Håkan’s left is the mayor of Falkenberg, the seaside town nearest our farm. Kristofer Dalgaard. His friendliness is so excessive you can’t help but question it. He laughs too loudly at your jokes. He’s too interested in your opinions. Unlike Marie Eklund, he doesn’t have any ambition except to stay exactly where he is, but maintaining the status quo can be as powerful a motivation as wanting to climb upwards.

  And finally there’s Håkan. He’s handsome. I don’t deny it. He’s even more impressive when you meet him in person. Tall with broad shoulders, physically he’s immensely powerful. His skin is tough and tanned. There’s nothing soft about his body – nothing weak. He’s rich enough to employ an army of people while he could act like a decadent emperor, issuing orders from his veranda. That’s not his way. He wakes at dawn and doesn’t finish work until the evening. When you’re in his presence it’s hard to imagine him ever being vulnerable. When he grabs you his grip is unbreakable. Though fifty years old, he has the vigour of a young man, with the cunning of an older man – a dangerous combination. I found him intimidating, even on that first day.

  As he emerged from the gloom of his underground lair, I hastily launched into my introduction. I said something like – ‘Hello, my name is Tilde, it’s wonderful to meet you, I’ve moved into the farm down the road’ – and yes, I was nervous. I spoke too much, and too quickly. In the middle of my good-natured babble I remembered the flag tied in my hair. I thought: how ridiculous! I blushed like a schoolgirl and tripped over my words. And do you know what he did? Think of the cruellest response.

  • • •

  MY MUM HAD SO FAR ASKED several rhetorical questions. On this occasion she was waiting for a reply. It was another test. Could I imagine cruelty? Several possibilities occurred to me, but they were so random and groundless that I decided to say:

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Håkan answered in English. I was humiliated. Per haps my Swedish was a little old-fashioned. But we were both Swedes. Why were we talking to each other in a foreign tongue? I attempted to continue the conversation in Swedish but he refused to switch. I was confused, not wishing to seem rude. Remember, at this stage I wanted to be this man’s friend. In the end, I replied in English. As soon as I did he smiled as if he’d won a victory. He started speaking in Swedish and never spoke to me in English again in all the time that I was in Sweden.

  As though this insult hadn’t taken place, he showed me inside the shelter. It was a workshop. There were wood shavings on the floor, sharp tools on the walls. On almost every surface there were trolls carved out of wood, hundreds of them. Some were painted. Others were half-finished – a long nose poking out of a log, waiting for a face to be carved. Håkan claimed that he didn’t sell any of them. They were given away as presents. He bragged that every house within twenty miles had at least one of his trolls, with some of his closest friends owning an entire troll family. You can see what he’s doing? He uses those wooden trolls as medals, awarding them to his trusted allies. When you cycle past anyone’s farm, there are trolls in the window, lined up, one, two, three, four – father, mother, daughter, son, a complete set, a complete troll family, the highest honour Håkan could bestow, displayed as a statement of allegiance.

  I wasn’t given a troll. Instead, he handed me the knife and welcomed me to Sweden. I didn’t pay much attention to the gift because I thought it inappropriate that I was being welcomed to my own country. I wasn’t a guest. Irritated by his tone, I didn’t notice the engravings on the handle, nor did I consider why he’d given me a knife rather than a troll fig
ure. Now it’s obvious – he didn’t want me to have a troll displayed in our window in case people mistook it for a sign that we were friends.

  As he showed me out, I caught sight of a second door, at the back of the shelter. A heavy-duty padlock hung from the lock. It might seem an irrelevant observation, but that second room will become important later. Hold it in your mind and ask yourself why it needed a second lock when there was already a lock on the front door.

  Håkan proceeded to walk me back to the drive. He didn’t invite me inside his house. He didn’t offer coffee. He was escorting me off the premises. I was forced to raise the issue of renting our fields while we were walking, mentioning my idea about how we’d accept meat in exchange for the land. He had a different idea.

  ‘How about I buy your whole farm, Tilde?’

  I didn’t laugh because he didn’t seem to be making a joke. He was serious. Except it didn’t make any sense. Why hadn’t he simply bought the farm from Cecilia? I put this to him directly. He explained that he’d tried, claiming he’d offered twice as much as we’d paid and he would’ve offered three times as much, but Cecilia flatly turned him down. I asked why. He said none of their disagreements would interest me. However, he was happy to make me the same offer, the entire farm for three times the price we paid for it. We’d have trebled our money in the space of a few months. Before I could reply he added that life can be hard on a farm, instructing me to discuss it with my husband as though I were merely an envoy.