The Unexpected Find

by Toby Ibbotson

  As it turned out, the lack of a driver sorted itself out quite quickly. A couple of days later, when Judy was out on her skis again and William was busy arranging his collection in Stefan’s room, there was a knock on the door. Farmor went to open it and realized at once who it was. The tall gaunt figure with a staff in his hand, the strange assortment of clothing, and the single bright eye, which fixed on her – she had heard the descriptions but Judy and William had not prepared her for the full effect of meeting the man in person.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” he said. “My name is Andrew Balderson. I was informed in the village that you are harbouring two friends of mine.” He swept the red bobble hat from his bald head, and made a small bow.

  “Yes, yes, please come in,” said Farmor, as she composed herself.

  Mr Balderson settled on a chair in the kitchen while Farmor bustled about nervously making fresh coffee and arranging cinnamon buns on a plate. In the silence, Mr Balderson talked of the beauties of the winter landscape, and the warmth and friendliness of her kitchen, and asked after the young people.

  “They are very good people. And for my grandson, a blessing, I think,” said Farmor.

  As she poured out the coffee, she saw that two fingers were missing from his left hand and noticed the fresh scar. He saw her glancing at it and said,

  “Ah yes, they couldn’t keep them, nor a toe or two. But it was a small price to pay. Knowledge comes at a price, as I’m sure you are aware.”

  “Yes, but such a night…”

  “Such a night indeed. A test, a trial, but such a unique opportunity! A few fingers and toes, well, they can be spared.”

  There was a little log cabin that stood on its own at some distance from the other buildings. It was one of the oldest buildings on the farm and had been the smithy once, which explained why it lay to one side, for fire is fast and unstoppable if it takes hold of a wooden house whose timbers have been gently distilling their resin for two hundred years. Farmor suggested shyly that it might suit him, and took him out to see it. Inside, the hut was simplicity itself. A table of rough-hewn planks, a wooden chair, a wooden bed, and the inevitable iron stove placed on a bricked base that had once supported the smith’s forge. Two small windows, and walls of unsquared logs with the flax caulking showing between them. Mr Balderson sighed with pleasure, gazed at Farmor until she got quite flustered and declared,

  “Better a house, though a hut it be,

  A man is master at home;” and then he continued,

  “Bú er betra

  þótt lítið sé

  halur er heima hver”

  Farmor wasn’t incredibly surprised. Judy had said that Mr Balderson seemed to know most of the poetry that had ever been written, so why not the Edda? And why not in Old Icelandic?

  The return of Mr Balderson solved problem number one, the driver. Problem number two was the camper, and Stefan’s obsession with it. Judy was beginning to think that Stefan and William were a bit alike in many ways; maybe that was why they got on so well together. They had their interests, and they went in for them wholeheartedly, to put it mildly. Stefan was fully capable of smiling cheerfully and saying it would soon be finished and then removing some important bit and starting all over again. So when was soon? And did Stefan even know what finished meant?

  Judy followed the narrow path that Stefan had cleared to Mr Balderson’s cabin. Snow was heaped up on either side so that it was like walking in a deep ditch. Thankfully, it wasn’t too cold. In fact, Judy was so used to it now that minus eight degrees felt almost balmy and Spring-like. They hadn’t seen much of Mr Balderson since his return. He had eaten with them the first evening and William had been very interested in what had happened to his fingers after the doctors had cut them off; he wondered if they had been buried in a little finger grave, but Mr Balderson thought probably not. After that Mr Balderson had kept himself pretty much to himself. To Judy he seemed to have changed. He was a bit forbidding now, with his hollow cheeks and his single eye that was even more penetrating somehow. So now she knocked a bit nervously at the low wooden door and waited for a greeting before stepping in.

  Mr Balderson had clearly made himself at home. He was sitting on the bed knitting – the result of a conversation with Farmor about local traditional patterns – and had got himself into the mood for his work by tying his grey hair in bunches, putting on a headscarf and borrowing a voluminous skirt that had belonged to Stefan’s great-grandmother. It was made of some heavy dark woollen material and spread out on either side of him in folds. If he had shaved, then he could have been any peasant woman of the north from the last century, or maybe the one before that.

  Judy sat down at the table.

  “Mr Balderson…” she started.

  “Anthea to you, dear, try not to disturb my state of mind,” Mr Balderson interjected. “This is not easy work. This is skill of the highest order. Too loose, too tight, a single mistake, and it all must be unravelled and started again. Just imagine if life was like that.”

  Judy tried again.

  “Farmor and Stefan are being very nice to us, but…”

  “No, they are not. They are not being nice to you, or polite. They are being who they are. ‘Nice’ is neighbours who’ve lived on the same street for years and never been in each other’s kitchens. ‘Nice’ is the shop assistant who will lose their job if they don’t smile at you however tiresome you are. Our hosts are just doing what people have always done: looked out for each other. The so-called law of hospitality is a law of survival. ‘Nice’ is a modern invention, like nuclear fission and computers and big cities.”

  This was not what Judy wanted to talk about.

  “Sorry. But the thing is we have to get going again. We can’t stay here doing nothing. Stefan’s taking for ever to get the camper fixed.”

  “A conscientious fellow, then.”

  “Conscientious? He’s fanatical. I’m not saying he should be a slapdash bodger, but there are limits. Do you know what he’s going to do now?”

  “Well, perhaps he’s being a bit extra thorough. Putting off the day when we leave.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  Mr Balderson put his knitting aside.

  “You never fail to surprise me, Judy. A head full of differential calculus and yet completely brainless.” Judy decided to let that pass. “I suppose it’s because of the maths. I helped him a bit, but he’s all right now. It was only some basic stuff that he hadn’t got straight. He quite enjoys it really.”

  “You think it’s your mathematics he’ll miss, do you?”

  Judy said nothing. She didn’t have time for that kind of stuff. She wanted to find out something about her father, and if it didn’t happen soon she would go off her head.

  “It’s driving me mad, anyway. Why does he have to make everything so perfect? And Farmor’s just the same. She chucked all the mats and carpets in the house out into the yard the other day, brushed them off with snow, hung them up, beat them. She was totally exhausted. They weren’t even dirty. I mean, it’s just so … well, fussy.”

  “Fussy? Did you say fussy? Wrong, Miss Azad. I must say you are not at your best. I prescribe less thinking and more seeing. Bitter experience has taught people here to take their time and get it right. Not so long ago, really, when Farmor was a child, living up here in the winter was about survival. A log cabin, a timbered farmhouse were like ships afloat on a frozen ocean: an ocean of trees. If things weren’t done just right, you died. Froze to death or starved. It’s still real to Farmor, the life where a bit of sloppiness can kill. A lame horse is a catastrophe. A door left open means your root store is destroyed or your calf is taken by a lynx or a wolf. Some years the crops failed – an ‘unyear’ they call it, did you know that? They had to grind birch-bark to make their bread. Even so, by March there were tiny coffins in the morgue at the church, waiting for the ground to thaw so that they could be buried.”

  Mr Balderson paused. “In my view, Judy, you would do well to
calm down a bit and recognize that you have come to a place where doing it properly still matters. And I am certainly not going to tell Stefan to get a move on.”

  Judy was not going to get any help here, that was clear enough. Mr Balderson’s night in the snowdrift seemed to have changed him. He was fiercer. Not frightening exactly, but certainly not easy-going. He made Judy wary. She sat for a while and looked at the stove and at the neat pile of logs beside it. It was all very well for Mr Balderson, who, as far as she could tell, lived a life without ties to anything or anybody, and even for William, who lived in a world of interesting things that he had found, and didn’t look ahead or back, ever. But for her it was different, wasn’t it? Her life was a great big question that she had to find the answer to.

  Mr Balderson had returned to his knitting, frowning and counting stitches, so Judy got up and moved towards the door.

  “In the Valley of the Quest one must change one’s state,” said Mr Balderson as she stepped out into the snow.

  As she made her way back towards the house, Judy realized that Mr Balderson was right as usual. He was really quite annoying in that way. Farmor and Stefan and William were simply not as wound up as she was, and why should they be? She couldn’t make things happen any faster, and there was no point in being in a state about it. She didn’t know what the valley of the quest was, but she could at least try to change her state.

  Which was why some days later Judy found herself standing on a chair helping Farmor remove the curtains from the living-room windows. They needed to be washed and ironed in Farmor’s opinion. They both caught sight of Mr Balderson on his way back from one of his little trips into the forest. He wore his long wide skirt, woollen cardigan and muffler, and was heading back towards his cabin with long gliding strides on a pair of ancient wooden skis that he had found in the rafters of the woodshed.

  “Ah, he has returned,” observed Farmor.

  A raucous croaking, like a heavy smoker’s throaty laugh, drew their eyes upwards. High above them a pair of ravens were at play, looping and rolling, even flipping over and flying upside down for a wingbeat or two. Then they slid down the clear air and settled on the ridge of the cabin roof, clacking their beaks, and muttering and jostling for a position close to the chimney where it was warmest. The ravens watched with beady eyes as Mr Balderson loosened his bindings, propped his skis against the cabin wall and ducked inside.

  “Of course, they have come. I must tell Stefan,” said Farmor. She spoke in Swedish, but Judy understood simple sentences now.

  “Is he interested in birds?” asked Judy, stepping down from her stool and bundling up the last of the curtains.

  “Yes. No. It is not that,” said Farmor. She seemed a bit flustered. “I was talking to myself. I am alone a lot of the time, you know.”

  Mr Balderson joined them for supper that evening. Farmor wasn’t quite at ease, jumping up from the table to fetch the salt or check the stove, but when Mr Balderson started a conversation about spinning yarn, which moved on to flax and the art of turning a plant into a tablecloth, she relaxed.

  Stefan sat in silence, eating huge amounts of Farmor’s famous elk rissoles. Judy started making small calculations in her head about how many calories per day he must use up in order to eat that much without getting fat. But he wasn’t quite his usual self, Judy could see that. He ate at half-speed, though that was still pretty fast for a normal person, and wasn’t following the conversation as he usually did, asking Farmor for translations sometimes, or adding some remark of his own.

  After a while Judy said, “OK, Stefan, spit it out.”

  “Spit it out?” mumbled Stefan, with his mouth half-full. “No, it is very good food.”

  “It’s what you say when … when,” William began, but Judy broke in,

  “He knows what it means, William, he’s having us on. A bit of Swedish fun, I think.”

  Stefan swallowed and said to William,

  “It is true, William, I was making a joke. But I will say that I think tomorrow the work will be done. That is not a joke. You can go on your journey again.”

  Farmor beamed with pride. Judy said how great it was and tried not show how her heart leapt at the thought of getting on the road again. William was less pleased.

  “I like being here better. Can I stay?”

  Farmor caught Judy’s eye, and asked a silent question. Judy shook her head.

  “It wouldn’t work, William. We need you to come with us. You’re our friend.”

  “I have to bring my collection.”

  “Of course you must,” said Farmor. “I have a nice box that you can put it in.”

  They started preparing for departure the next morning. There was a surprising amount to do in the way of gathering their bits and pieces, and explaining to Farmor that they could only take about a quarter of the jars of jam and blackcurrant juice and pickled herring and sauerkraut and hard bread and buns that she tried to thrust on them. And there was William’s collection, which had grown quite large during their stay. On a two hundred-year-old farm with outbuildings and lofts and stables, where things are very rarely thrown away, there are rich pickings for someone like William. Farmor produced a beautiful box of juniper wood with a clever sliding catch and the date 1872 carved on the lid. William was over the moon, and when Judy tried to protest that it was far too fine just to give away, Farmor only smiled and said that good craftsmanship needed to be where it was loved. And William said that Farmor was oldest and Judy probably shouldn’t tell her what to do.

  Stefan was in the workshop, and not even William was allowed to join him. He needed, at the end, to be alone with his work.

  17

  After lunch, under a blue sky with high clouds that spoke of a world at last coming back to life, Stefan drove Aristeas the camper, gleaming and even better than the day he was made, out into the yard. You could almost swear the camper was smiling, as the sun glinted on his newly chromed and polished grill, and flashed on the glass of his headlights. Stefan jumped out of the cab, and handed the keys ceremoniously to Mr Balderson, who gravely shook his hand. Judy said, “Are you sure about this Stefan? I thought the fan belt sounded a bit loose…”

  Stefan bristled.

  “No, it is tightened to exactly—” He stopped. “Aha! Another English joke. Perhaps the funniest joke I have ever heard. You must go on the television and be a famous joke person.”

  They would start early the next morning. After supper, which was a rather muted affair with nobody having much to say, Mr Balderson had disappeared to his hut, and Judy was sitting on her sofa reading when Stefan put his head round the door and announced in his most ponderous Swedish,

  “Tires. You are only as safe as your tires. Tires are number one.”

  Judy put down her book.

  “Yes, I’ve been thinking about that.” The memory of their near-death experience on that freezing night was still all too clear. “There must be somewhere where we can get new ones fitted.”

  Stefan wasn’t finished. He sat down on the sofa. There were apparently lots of different sorts of tires, and the choice of the right winter tires with deep treads and steel studs was not something that Stefan was prepared to leave to anyone other than himself.

  “So I must come with you tomorrow, to the town. I know a place where we can get good tires.”

  “Oh…” Judy suddenly felt very happy about this. She turned her face away towards the window with its newly washed curtains and said the first thing that came into her head.

  “Are you a birdwatcher, by the way?”

  “You mean someone with…” Stefan made rings of his forefingers and thumbs and held them up to his eyes.

  “Binoculars, yes.”

  “No.”

  “Then why did Farmor want to tell you about the ravens on Mr Balderson’s roof?”

  “I don’t know.” Stefan shrugged.

  Stefan was so bad at lying that it was almost funny. Not as bad as William, of course, who never even tried,
but pretty useless. Judy turned back to look at him.

  “Yes you do.”

  “Yes I do, but I don’t want to tell you. You might laugh at Farmor, I don’t want you to laugh at Farmor.”

  “Stefan, I’m not… I mean, I know I make silly jokes, and I know you think that the English laugh at everybody. Am I really a person who laughs at people?” Judy found that she very much wanted to know the answer. Stefan turned his head towards her and saw the question in her eyes.

  “No, I was wrong to say that. I am quite a stupid person you know. You laugh at yourself and at the world but not at people.

  “Farmor calls Mr Balderson the Allfather. So when the ravens came… Well, of course she said to me, I told you so, Stefan, today Hugin and Munin came.”

  Judy looked puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

  Now it was Stefan’s turn to be puzzled.

  “You know, Odin, the father of the Gods…”

  Judy had heard of Odin, of course, and Valhalla, and Thor, but…

  “You mean Farmor thinks…”

  “I don’t know what she thinks, really. But the one eye, you know. Odin only has one eye; he gave the other one to learn wisdom, the runes. And William talks about the great tree that fell, and it was an ash, and Yggdrasil, the tree of all life, is an ash tree. Odin walks the world in many disguises, he is a wanderer, like Mr Balderson, sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, and Odin knows everything: past and future, fate woven by the Norns at Mimer’s well.” Stefan stopped, and shrugged his shoulders again.

  Judy said nothing. She certainly didn’t feel like laughing. Rather it was as though the ground had just shifted a little under her feet. Stefan said,

  “It is all right if I come tomorrow? The tires?”

  “Yes, Stefan. It’s really is very all right.”

  It was a beautiful day, brilliant sparkling white with the temperature creeping up towards zero, and Mr Balderson had dressed himself dramatically for the occasion. He was wearing his ankle-length greatcoat, a pair of leather boots that he had found in one of the sheds and lovingly restored with bear’s grease, and his wide brimmed slouch hat, with a capercaillie feather in the hatband. His single blue eye glittered from beneath the brim. They said their goodbyes to Farmor. There were huge hugs for Judy and William; when Farmor came to Mr Balderson, though, Judy saw her drop to a little curtsey, and make an odd sign with the fingers of her left hand. Mr Balderson smiled.