The Unexpected Find Read online

  Only her father could have known what those words would mean to her.

  “Where is my father? Where is he? Why is he not with you?”

  Rashid had tried to prepare himself for this moment. There had hardly been an hour of the day, or a sleepless night, when he hadn’t thought about this meeting; how to get it right. But there is no way to get such a thing right; he knew that now. He looked at the girl facing him. She had his best friend’s eyes, the same high cheekbones and determined look.

  “He came to help me, Judy…”

  His eyes overflowed and he buried his face in his hands.

  “I am so sorry. He is dead.”

  21

  Farmor knew a thing or two about despair, mourning and sorrow. They are like a disease. Not a romantic disease, if there is such a thing: flowers at the bedside, kind nurses, quiet voices. More like lung cancer or leprosy – an ugly disease. Even the kindest people sometimes find it hard to be with the open wounds, the anger. Some people, struck down by sorrow, are like needy puppies, seeking attention, wanting to draw others in and make them a part of it, unable to be alone, talking, talking, talking. Others are cats. You have to search all over the place for an injured cat. It hides away, as only a cat can hide, out of reach, under floorboards, at the back of cupboards, among tree-roots at the bottom of the garden, trying to absorb its pain into itself, waiting in silence and the dark for the wounds to scar over, or for death to come and fetch it.

  Judy was a cat; Farmor was quite clear about that.

  Stefan found her the next day, sitting in the corner of an old round-timbered hay-store a couple of kilometres from the farm; it lay dilapidated and half-sunk on the edge of marshland that was now frozen and silent.

  A fresh fall of powder snow had covered her tracks, but Silla led Stefan to the little hut. As he approached in the slanting morning light he saw Judy’s skis and sticks leaning against the wall by the low entrance. He pushed opened a rickety door of rough planks and ducked inside. A couple of months ago she would have been in a very bad way after a night outdoors, but already the world had turned towards the promise of Spring, and so the night had been tolerable. Silla bounded in, and threw herself at the small figure huddling in the corner, half-covered in old dust-grey hay. Silla tried to lick her face, but got pushed away, so she lay down and whined softly, her tail waving gently.

  Stefan was carrying a rucksack. He shrugged it off and started wordlessly to unpack it. Farmor had been thorough. There was a sleeping bag, a thermos flask, a bottle of water, a packet of sandwiches and a torch. Judy watched him, dreading the words that he would have to say and that she would have to listen to: Your father, how terrible, poor you…

  But she was wrong.

  “We will have good weather now for a while. If you need help, send Silla. Say ‘Go home.’ But in Swedish, of course.” he said, before turning to Silla to say, “Stay.”

  And then he left her.

  Farmor was well aware that all they could do for Judy was get food into her somehow and wait; that for cat people the weakness and helplessness of mourning means a loss of dignity and integrity that is almost impossible to bear. They need to keep their souls to themselves. But Rashid was another matter. He definitely did not want to have his soul to himself. After weeks and months alone, grimly determined to bring the terrible news to his friend’s daughter, he now seemed unable to stop talking. He desperately wanted to tell Judy everything, now that he could. About how her father had made him promise that if anything happened to him he would seek her out, care for her as though she was his own daughter. How he had sworn to do it, or die in the attempt. How he had comforted himself by making plans for their future together, for he had no children of his own. But she wasn’t there to talk to, and Farmor had absolutely forbidden him to go to her. So he sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and talking to Farmor instead.

  Farmor did what she could, nodding sympathetically and reassuring him when for the hundredth time he said,

  “What could I have done? There was nothing I could do. And he said to me, again and again, ‘Only one thing matters, Rashid. Find my beloved girl, and care for her.’”

  But even Farmor, whom life had taught so much – too much – began to tire. She felt old and the strength she did have was for the sad girl hiding out at the bottom of the old hay field. Farmor knew she could heal Rashid’s physical wounds, and was more than willing to do so. But she was fairly sure that Judy would stay out of sight as long as Rashid was in the house. If he wanted to heal his soul, Rashid would have to go elsewhere.

  It was Stefan who realized what he needed to do, and one morning led Rashid – still weak and with a very stiff shoulder – to the car.

  When they arrived at the museum, the hesitant look in Soheila’s face, the surprise in Rashid’s, the sudden burst of excited talk in a language of which Stefan understood nothing – all of this told him that he had done the right thing.

  Judy needed time, and now that Rashid had someone to lean on he would hopefully allow her that.

  But while Rashid’s life had taken a positive turn, Stefan’s life had gone pear-shaped, as Judy would say. His friend was lost, wandering through grief’s dark maze, and he couldn’t follow her. Sorrow and loneliness are partners in crime – never separated, always together. There was nothing he could say, certainly nothing in his useless English. Even at the best of times he wasn’t good at talking. He was better at doing. He tried to think of something he could make for her, or show her, but nothing could have made the slightest dent in her armour, he knew that much.

  William also had his cross to bear. Now that he knew that his find was a key he was desperate to know more about it, and talk to someone who knew. He couldn’t talk to Mr Balderson, because he had disappeared. Mr Greaves was in England, and if he had known that Stefan was going into town with Rashid he could have gone with them and tried to find someone at the museum, but he hadn’t known, or at least not until they had left.

  But one thing was good. The sun had some warmth now, and during the day the snowdrifts shrank, and the snow became heavy and wet. At midday meltwater dripped from the roofs, and long icicles formed – dangerously long, like spears, so that he and Stefan had to break them off from the eaves of the barn with long poles so that they wouldn’t break off by themselves and impale Farmor when she was on her way to the root cellar. But the thing that really made life easier for William was that in the morning the cold of the night had frozen the surface of the snow to a hard crust that you could walk about on, at least for a few hours. He had never been able to master the skiing thing. It just wouldn’t work – the points crossed over themselves, the sticks ended up between his legs, and every twenty yards of so he fell over. But now, until about noon when the crust melted and he was plunged into soaking snow up to his knees, he could wander about as though he were on a city street or a football pitch. It’s hard to explain what a nice feeling that is after months of being confined to ploughed roads or skis that you can’t even use.

  So when Farmor asked him to go down to Judy with some fresh sandwiches, he was happy to do it. He hadn’t talked to her at all since she got her news. He ran part of the way, it was so nice to just stretch his legs and lope over the sunlit white fields as though he weighed nothing at all. When he came into the hut he found Judy lying on her back in her sleeping bag with her hands behind her head. Silla lay curled up beside her. They were both stripy, because some of the timbers of the hut were warped, and shafts of sunlight got through and made bright lines across them. Judy looked a bit dangerous when she sat up and turned her eyes towards him – if she had had a tail, she could have been a tiger.

  “Farmor said to give you these. Can I have one? I’m quite hungry.”

  “Of course you can, William,” said Judy. At least he’d made her smile, although he hadn’t meant to.

  “I know you are sad about your father,” said William, with his mouth full of sandwich. “Are we going to go home soon? I mean, we found
Rashid, though he’s gone now. Now we know everything, don’t we?”

  “William, why should I go anywhere? My dad’s dead.”

  It wasn’t hard to say the words. She had said them aloud to herself all through the first long night. To get used to them. To train herself.

  “Do you remember when you said you wanted to be more like me?” said William, “In the campsite? Well, now you are, aren’t you? My dad’s dead too. Except he didn’t get killed in the desert being a hero, like yours. He killed himself with drugs and things. That’s what mum told me. I’m not sad at all, though, so I suppose we aren’t really the same.”

  Judy looked at William, as he looked back at her. She had nice smooth skin and dark hair, but William thought that her eyes looked about a hundred years old, maybe even a thousand. And then Judy’s face seemed to sort of fall apart and go all ugly and soft, and a funny noise came out of her throat, and tears started pouring down her face, and she sniffed and gulped as though she had a terrible cold.

  William ran away.

  He burst into the kitchen and, hopping from one leg to the other, he gabbled at Farmor.

  “I’ve been bad, I’m a bad person, I made Judy unhappy. She was all right before, I didn’t mean to, I said something wrong….”

  “William, William. What is the matter with Judy?”

  “She’s crying and crying and crying – a horrible big cry and she won’t stop.”

  “William, come here.”

  William came towards her with such sadness on his face that Farmor reached out her arms and hugged him. He didn’t mind too much, and she smelled quite nice – mostly of cinnamon.

  “William, it was you of course who could do this. I love you.”

  William was quite surprised. No one had ever said that to him before, as far as he could remember. He liked it.

  “Do you? But Judy…”

  “You will see, William, you will see. Now she can begin.” Farmor turned back to her cooking.

  “I think I shall make a call to Jonas,” she said to herself.

  Judy showed up in the kitchen that evening with Silla at her heels, announcing that there was no reason to run backwards and forwards with stuff, but she was very grateful for having been given a bit of time to herself.

  Over the evening meal, William asked Judy if she had finished crying now.

  “Not quite, William,” Judy replied quite calmly. “There’s probably more where that came from.”

  “Soon we will have to think about what happens next,” said Farmor. “But not yet. Meanwhile I have a little problem. Jonas has got work in Stockholm on the new bypass. I have foolishly promised to look after Matilda, but I am going to need help.”

  Stefan was surprised. His uncle Jonas was famous for saying that he would rather go out into the woodshed and shoot himself than go south to work. But he said nothing. Sometimes it was better that way with Farmor.

  Matilda was a goat, and Stefan went over with a trailer the next morning to pick her up. They got her installed in one of the old loose boxes, though she was far from easy to persuade. She wasn’t obstinate so much as curious, and seemed to be starving hungry all the time. William said hello to her, but she started eating the sleeve of his jumper, and then butted him playfully so that he sat down in the muddy slush of the yard. After that he preferred to have nothing to do with her. They finally found out that the easiest way to control her was with ginger biscuits, which she could not resist. Judy held one out, and Matilda followed her meekly into the barn.

  Farmor told Judy that she was very sorry to have to ask this of her, when she had such a weight on her soul, but Stefan had school, Farmor herself was simply too busy, and William… Matilda would have to be Judy’s sole responsibility. And she was pregnant. Judy said that she didn’t mind, as long as Farmor realized that she knew absolutely nothing about goats.

  “The thing about animals is just to care,” said Farmor. “The rest will follow.”

  So Judy, having nothing else to do and being quite incapable of reading, and totally unable to solve even the simplest of Stefan’s homework problems because everything to do with maths reminded her of her father and brought the tears flooding back, cared for Matilda. She had to be fed, and watered, and mucked out, and she had many different ideas about how to get out of where she was and go somewhere else, so she needed to go for walks and get some fresh air sometimes; Judy had quite a lot to do. Matilda’s coat was light golden brown, shading into white on her legs, which were slim and ended in delicate hooves. Her horns curved back from her brow, with an elegant little twist to them that made her look somehow special, like something from a rocky Abyssinian mountainside, rather than a simple domesticated animal. She liked to be scratched behind the ears almost as much as she liked ginger biscuits. But the thing you noticed about her was her eyes. They were golden-green, with a dark oblong pupil. You can’t look into a goat’s eyes; a goat looks out of its eyes at the world, but it keeps itself to itself. Spaniels, for example, not to mention pigs, have eyes that invite you in, almost begging you to understand what is going on in there, but a goat doesn’t ask for anything like that – no sympathy, no understanding, no help. Maybe that’s why Judy found that she could talk to Matilda. She talked when they were on their walks, with Matilda on a lead and a pocketful of biscuits to keep her going in a reasonably straight line; and she talked sometimes in the evening, when she had changed the bedding-straw and could sit in the loose-box with her back against warm goat. Matilda never answered, or showed much interest in Judy’s remarks. She was more interested in whether there was anything left in her pockets, or seeing if her hair was edible.

  Sometimes Judy said things like, “He preferred death with his friend to life with me, didn’t he, Matilda? That’s simple fact. You think you matter most of all, but you don’t – his friendship mattered more, being a hero mattered more, being the kind of person he thought he should be, a storybook person. In his whole life he never broke a promise to anyone, except once – the promise he made to me. He promised to come back, and instead he died. All that stuff about the ties of love, being bound to others, not being free. All that stuff about freedom not being all it’s cracked up to be. Well the ties weren’t enough to bind him. He broke free and left me.”

  Sometimes she looked into the future, and saw nothing good about it.

  “So, Matilda, what happens now? Nowhere to go except back to England, a foster-home, a nothing life. I’m not sure I can be bothered. It’s a pity Stefan heard that home-made bomb go off. It wasn’t so hard just to go to sleep, much easier than I thought it would be. But I’ll wait until you’ve had your kid, anyway. Then I’ll decide.”

  Sometimes she was furiously angry, sometimes she was cool and sensible, trying to think things through, sometimes she laid her cheek against Matilda’s flank and wept and cried for her father like a small child in the night. But he didn’t answer.

  22

  It was almost three weeks since Judy found out she was an orphan. On her way back from the barn she stood for a moment in the yard gazing at the sky. It was a starry night, with only a few degrees of frost, and above the northern horizon was an other-worldly greenish glow, that became stronger, shooting up vertical shafts of light. Then the spears and pillars of light seemed to be breathed on by a gentle cosmic breeze. They started moving in waves, billowing like a lacy curtain before an open window, and changing colour, red, then green again, and then purple, until a great curving curtain of dancing light stretched right across the sky, reaching up towards the zenith, high above the forested hills. They had seen the Northern Lights a couple of times since they arrived, but never like this. It was like a visit from outer space – or from outside the universe – that had nothing to do with this earth at all, this tiny little planet that happened to have some people on it, many of them not particularly happy.

  “What am I supposed to do, Dad? What shall I do?” asked Judy for the thousandth time. But this time she got an answer. It wasn’t like a d
ream, or a ghost, just a quiet voice speaking inside her head in her father’s normal precise voice, reminding her that as she very well knew there was a lot that was wrong with the world, and that some people just had to spend their lives trying to put it right. It felt like they never quite succeeded, and there was never any end to it. It wasn’t like making a chair and then sitting on it, or making a cupcake and then eating it, and it certainly wasn’t like solving an equation. It was more like gardening. You went on and on, pulling up weeds and watering and pruning, but if you stopped, then the garden would become overgrown.

  So if you have nothing else to do, Judy, no love to tie you down, you can be a gardener and weed the world. It is definitely preferable, in my view, to being a goat.

  Freedom. She was free, and it was just as awful and lonely as her father had told her it was, ages ago.

  The next morning when Judy stepped outside on her way to see to Matilda she found Stefan in the yard carefully waxing two pairs of skis, and humming to himself. He looked up as she approached.

  “Ah, you are awake at last.”

  “It’s half past six.”

  “Yes. But now you are here. Today I think we must go out. I must look at some trees, and you must come with me.” He pushed his lower jaw forward and tried to look as if he was in charge. But it didn’t last very long. “Please,” he added, spoiling the effect.

  Judy gazed at him thoughtfully.

  “Sure, I’ll just get Matilda fed.”

  There was a special place not far from the farm. A few kilometres away a little hill rose out of flat marshland, a sort of spur that stuck out from the ridge beyond. It was thickly wooded on the lower slopes, but the forest thinned out among great tumbled boulders further up, and if you scrambled right to the top you could get a proper view over the valley and all the way to the village. There were plenty of stories about the trolls and wood-spirits of the place, and there was a spring which never froze – at least that’s what people said, though whether anybody had been up there in the depths of winter to check it out was another matter. Stefan and Judy set out early while the snow still bore. Stefan was fairly sure that a she-bear had spent the winter on top of the hill somewhere, and it was getting to the time when she would be waking up and poking her nose out of her den. She might have cubs, so on Farmor’s insistence he took a gun. If the worst came to the worst, and she was awake and hungry, and they got between her and her cubs, he might have to use it. But he wasn’t like Karl, a hunter at heart. To shoot a bear … it would have to maul Judy or something before he could bring himself to do it.