“How old is the van?” he’d asked Judy at supper that evening.
“Oh, about forty years, I think.”
“When did they last grease the bearings?”
“I haven’t the foggiest.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t—”
“I don’t know, Stefan.”
Stefan had decided to get the entire chassis into what he called “a good state”. In the workshop he gave William a welder’s mask and told him not to remove it on pain of instant banishment, and he got to work, grinding, welding and treating with anti-corrosion paint, sealant and all the rest of it.
When Judy stepped into the workshop, which was warmed by a huge, iron wood-burning contraption that Stefan had designed and constructed himself, she was met by what appeared to be two aliens from a sci-fi film and the crackling white light of an acetylene welding torch. As soon as Stefan caught sight of her he turned off the torch. Pushing back the mask from his face, he frowned.
“Why are you here?”
Judy bristled. “Is it private? I’m sorry.”
“No. But it is dangerous if you look at the gas flame. You will injure your eyes.”
Judy decided to be nice and polite. She looked around at the pieces of the camper that were spread about the floor, and all the small bits lined up neatly on the workbench.
“This is fantastic, Stefan. It will be like new again.”
To William, who was standing close-by with his welding mask still covering his face, she said,
“You can take it off, William, he’s stopped welding.”
“Can I take it off, Stefan?”
For some reason William asking Stefan instead of doing what he was told annoyed Judy very much, and her decision to be nice started fraying at the edges. Why was Stefan suddenly the one who mattered?
“Yes, you can take it off,” said Stefan.
Judy took a deep breath and tried again.
“It really is kind of you, Stefan, but it is so much work. Why don’t you just put it back together again now? I mean, we’ve already been here a long time, putting Farmor to all that trouble…”
Stefan sighed.
“If I put it together now it is not finished.”
“But it will go, won’t it?”
“Yes, it will go.”
“So why not put it back together?”
“Because every time I look at it I will not see a camper van. I will see a rusty brake cylinder behind the rear left wheel, or a cracked bushing sleeve, or a worn fuel lead, or something. If I know it is there I will see it in here.” He pointed at his head. “I do not want these things in here.”
“But you won’t have to look at the van. We’ll be gone.”
Stefan turned away and pulled his mask down.
“Don’t look at the flame, please.” and said gruffly. “Mask, William.”
He picked up the welding torch, adjusted the mixture, reached into his pocket for the lighter, and went back to work.
Judy stood there for a moment. Well, what was that all about? Why was he suddenly playing taciturn Swedish peasant? She stomped back to the house, and went back to her reading.
The truth of the matter was that Stefan was easily put out by this girl who had shown up in the middle of the night in the weirdest of circumstances and now sat reading Farmor’s books or skiing around the countryside. She was not like anyone he had met before. She made him uncertain, and he wasn’t used to being uncertain.
He and Farmor knew most of the story now. Even if Judy had wanted to keep it a secret, there was William – who could no more keep a secret than he could stand on a pair of skis, and he definitely couldn’t do that. So Stefan knew about Judy’s father, and that they had sort of escaped from England so that Judy wouldn’t end up being taken away. It wasn’t very odd, then, that she had a lot to think about and was sometimes a bit prickly. No, the thing that made Stefan unsure of himself was that she was so different from the people he knew. She not only looked different, but was different. He had lots of friends and knew everybody – really everybody – who lived in the area, and she wasn’t like any of them. He knew most of the time what people were thinking; what they said didn’t surprise him much. But he never knew what Judy was going to say – whether she was going to laugh at something, or make those eyebrows of hers into a v-shape and say something sharp. And he had to admit to himself that he looked forward to the evening meal a lot. William and Judy had all sorts of weird conversations, and Stefan needed a lot of help from Farmor to keep up with them, but he really liked listening to them. And something had happened to Farmor, too. She talked a lot more. She said her English was coming back, but it wasn’t just that. She was chatty and lively – she even made silly jokes sometimes, and then looked a bit embarrassed; and funnily enough, she even seemed younger. Anyway, when Judy reminded him that they would be gone soon, and the sooner the better as far as she was concerned, Stefan remembered that he would get back to his ordinary life: the quiet evening meals when nothing much was said, the work of the farm, school. He found that he wasn’t especially pleased about that.
At suppertime the following evening, there was some strange news. Farmor had got a phone call to say that Mr Balderson had disappeared. Apparently he had opened his eye, sat up in his hospital bed, removed a lot of apparatus from his arms and his nose and just walked out into the night. They were worried about him, of course, but Judy wasn’t.
“I expect he’ll show up sooner or later,” she said. “He’s probably immortal.”
“I think I must stay and work on the van tomorrow,” said Stefan. “Because then you can leave soon, if your friend comes.”
He looked at Judy and she looked back at him but said nothing.
Farmor said something, though. It was in Swedish, and there was quite a lot of it. Whatever it was, it made Stefan look down at his plate. They cleared the table and Judy tried to help with the washing-up but was shooed away by Farmor, so she went into the sitting-room and sat down on the rug in front of the tiled stove. The small brass doors were open and birch wood flamed and crackled on a bed of glowing coals, radiating heat into her face. Judy felt bad. She had made trouble between Stefan and his Farmor, because she was desperate to get away, to be doing something, anything. She hadn’t understood what Farmor had said but it was plain enough. He had been going to bunk off school to get the work done as soon as possible, and Farmor wasn’t having any of that. She should never have gone into the workshop and showed how impatient she was to leave. She had put her foot in it with Stefan. He couldn’t do a half-decent job even if he wanted to, so now he was going to work even harder. It was all a mess, and there was no logic to any of it.
In Stefan’s room William was on the floor, lying on his mattress and leafing through an old leather-bound volume that he had found in the living room, where there were ten of them in a row. It was some kind of encyclopaedia, and among the closely written texts were old, black-and-white photographs. Some were of interesting things. He had found a picture of stern-looking men with moustaches and waistcoats standing on the bank of a wide river. Several of them were holding long poles, topped by hooks exactly like the one he had found.
Stefan was sitting at his little table with a pencil in his hand and a school textbook open in front of him. William heard a sigh and a muttered Swedish word that Stefan had told him never to use in front of Farmor, although Stefan had used it at least twice in the workshop. It was a bit odd to see those wide shoulders and that broad back all hunched up. One elbow was on the table and the left hand, with its work-flattened finger-tops, grimy nails and a big scar across the base of the thumb, was pressed up to his head.
Stefan felt William’s gaze on him and looked up.
“Work for school.”
“Homework. It’s called homework. Maths.”
“Yes, how do you know?”
William didn’t answer that. It was so obvious. When someone who was strong and kind and could do almost everything – even rush down hi
lls on skis – had a look on his face like that, it had to be maths.
“I’ll get Judy.”
William left the room, and came back a few moments later with Judy in tow. She came in and looked around. They had been there almost two weeks now, but she had never been into Stefan’s room before. It wasn’t the typical boy’s room she had been expecting, with stuff lying about all over the place. It was neat and simple, with a chest of drawers, bed and small table, and a shelf full of books that seemed, at a quick glance, to consist entirely of manuals of various kinds. On the wall there was a small hanging cupboard. Nothing else.
Stefan looked up at her.
“William said you needed help,” she sounded tired, and serious.
“No, not at all. And you cannot help. I am in final year. It is very difficult. Tomorrow is a big test.”
Stefan wasn’t good at being helped at the best of times. Some people are like that. He preferred to stand and fall on his own efforts. And Judy was probably at least a year younger than him, maybe even more, and she was a girl. A lot of the girls in his class sat and giggled and talked to each other in little groups and said that they didn’t “get it” before the teacher had even finished explaining. And the boys weren’t much better, sitting at the back and acting up, treating the girls like idiots. Most women worked much harder than most men, he knew that. And the farm would fall apart in a month if it wasn’t for Farmor, no matter what Stefan did. He knew that too. But this was final year maths, and he had to get it sorted or all his plans would come to nothing. There would be no place at a decent high school, no engineering college, no helicopter pilot’s license. He would be sitting in the cab of some huge harvester for the rest of his life, clear-felling the forest.
“Thank you but now I must work,” he said.
Judy bit her tongue. She could see what he was thinking. He probably even had some ancient notions about girls and maths, because however kind and hospitable these people were, you couldn’t exactly call them hyper-modern. It wouldn’t have surprised her to hear something like “a woman’s place is in the home” or “you can’t expect a man to understand housework” coming out of their mouths. She thought about just leaving him to it, but to see this self-confident boy who could jump into a tractor and coax a three-ton camper out of the ditch sitting all scrunched up over some homework… It sort of got to her.
So Judy smiled, lifted her eyebrows and said in a carefully shy voice,
“Oh, is it so difficult? You must be very clever. Can I see please?” She wasn’t very good at sounding cute, but she did her best, and Stefan moved his chair aside so she could see. She leant over to look at his maths book. It was algebra – mostly straightforward linear equations and simple functions.
Oh my god, thought Judy. He’s in trouble if this is too hard for him.
How was she going to help him? How much did he understand? She knew he wasn’t stupid; he must have just had rotten teachers.
“Can you show me how you do these? Please? Even if I don’t understand everything.”
William wandered off into the kitchen were Farmor was sitting comfortably at the table with a knitted jersey laid out in front of her.
“William, there you are,” she said when she saw him. “Could you go in to the other room and see that the fire is out? Remember to poke it properly. No glowing coals. Then you can shut the doors and close the damper.”
William did as he was told. An hour passed. From Stefan’s room came a murmur of voices, and then a burst of laughter. Farmor frowned and stood up. Stefan was obviously not working. She was pleased that Stefan had someone to talk to, and could practise his English, but Judy mustn’t disturb his work. If he was laughing, then he could not possibly be doing his homework, not Stefan.
She peeked round the door to see two heads, one dark, one light, bent over the maths book.
“It’s only an identity sign; a symbol of exact balance,” Judy was saying. “You can add, multiply, subtract, whatever, but if you don’t do the same thing on both sides, it all goes pear-shaped.”
“Pear-shaped? Not an apple or a banana? Like a pear?”
“Um, yes a pear, definitely a pear,” said Judy, trying unsuccessfully to suppress a giggle.
“Now you are laughing at me. But I can speak more Swedish than you can.”
“Very true, Stefan, very true. But look, all I mean is, what happens if you put more weight on one side of a flywheel than the other?”
Now it was Stefan’s turn to laugh.
“I don’t want to think about that. It’s not very nice to think about. Pieces everywhere. Very dangerous. It happened to me once; I had to dig a bit out of the wall of the workshop. Could have chopped my head off.”
“Well, there you are then. That’s pear-shaped for you. Don’t let it happen. Ever.”
“I promise.”
Farmor backed out of the room with a small smile on her face.
13
A few days later Farmor and William were at the kitchen window, looking out at the fading afternoon light. They were watching Stefan coming up the track from the road where the school bus had left him. Farmor narrowed her eyes.
“It went well, I think. But if you could go and let Silla out we will soon be sure.”
William went out into the hall and opened the door for the elkhound Silla, who had been curled up asleep on the doormat. She shot off like a rocket down the track, barking.
Back in the kitchen, they watched her skid to a halt in front of Stefan.
“Now,” said Farmor, “let’s see.”
Silla sank to a low crouch in front of Stefan, with her belly almost on the snow and her tail waving. Stefan crouched down and said something. With a yelp the dog threw herself at him and he rolled on to his back, with the dog on top of him. A wrestling match had started.
Farmor turned from the window. “Oh yes,” she said. “It went well.”
When Stefan came in, he was red-faced from his fight with Silla, but trying to look serious. It didn’t work. He couldn’t control the wide smile that lit up his face.
“Hello. I’m back.”
Judy was sitting by the stove, with a Swedish grammar book open on her knee; she had decided to pass the time usefully and was learning the language, with Farmor’s help. She looked up coolly, giving a very good impression of not being particularly interested.
“Hi, Stefan.”
Stefan walked over to her.
“Ask me, please. Ask me how the test went.”
“Oh yes, the test. You were getting the results today, weren’t you? Was it OK?”
“It went well. It went very well. I did not go pear-shaped.”
“Good. No mistakes then? You got all of them right?”
“All? All? Are you a mad person? Nobody gets them all right.”
Judy couldn’t help herself. “I do.”
Stefan gave Judy what was meant to be a playful slap on the shoulder, but it caught her off balance and almost knocked her off her chair.
“Stefan!” said Farmor sharply, and started telling him off properly. She was pretty hard on him, Judy’s few words of Swedish picked up that much, including “idiot”, which is almost the same in Swedish as in English, and finally “woodshed”. But Farmor’s hard words had no effect at all on Stefan. In fact he gave her a big hug before disappearing into the hall humming to himself.
“He must go to the woodshed and use up some energy,” said Farmor. And soon after that the muffled thunk of the axe on the block told them that he was doing just that.
Judy went to the sitting-room to be around the books. For once she was not thinking about her father, but about William. It didn’t seem to bother him much, but they would have to get some sort of message to his mother so she knew he was all right. She didn’t seem to be a very motherly type, admittedly, leaving him on his own at Christmas and all that, but surely she’d be more than worried by now? Farmor could write a letter and say that he was staying with her, that was the best way. They didn
’t have to bring up Mr Balderson and the camper. Judy sighed. Poor William. What on earth was going to happen to him? He was hopelessly dependent on the people around him, and yet so completely himself. He would never just put on a personality to suit other people – he couldn’t even if he wanted to. It was everybody else who did. That was how you survived, how you fitted in. The biggest part of everybody was hidden inside them. The bit you saw was the bit they thought you would like, or the bit they dared to show you, or maybe even a completely made-up bit that had nothing to do with them at all. But William, well, “what you see is what you get” fitted him perfectly. He reminded her of the stories her father loved to tell about Mullah Nasruddin – the idiot savant he called him, the clown of God.
Stefan put his head round the door, came over to the sofa. He took a deep breath, and came straight to the point, looking at a spot just above her head.
“Hello, Judy. I am sorry that I hit you.”
Judy looked up at him.
“You mean Farmor is sorry that you hit me.”
Stefan grinned.
“Yes, mostly. I did not hit you very much. But I am a little bit sorry if I made you sad.”
“You didn’t.”
“Good. Then I’m not much sorry at all.”
Judy laughed.
“Right, I’m glad that’s sorted out.”
Stefan had something in his hand. Now he opened his palm and held it out to her.
It was a small, beautifully painted fish, an exact replica of something – a little trout, perhaps, judging by the delicate spots and the roseate colour along its sides. At first Judy thought it was an ornament, or a pendant or earring of some sort. Then she saw the barbed hooks dangling from its tail and under its belly.
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