He breathed out and opened the window. Anna-Greta was standing outside with her hands clasped over her breast. She was wearing a white nightdress.
Anna-Greta?'
'May I come in? For a while?'
Simon instinctively reached out to help her over the windowsill, but realised how stupidly he was behaving.
'I'll open the door,' he said.
Anna-Greta went around the side of the house and Simon opened the front door to let her in.
Driftwood
The dream about Elin
For a good two hours Simon and Anna-Greta had taken it in turns to tell their story. Anders' knees creaked as he got to his feet and stretched his arms up towards the ceiling. Outside the window the weather was neither worse nor better. Small raindrops caressed the pane, and the wind whispered among the trees without any great hurry. A walk seemed possible, and he needed some exercise.
Simon took the tray out into the kitchen and Anna-Greta brushed crumbs off the table. Anders looked at her wrinkled hands, imagining them holding the shotgun. 'What a story.'
'Yes,' said Anna-Greta. 'But it's only a story.'
'What do you mean?'
'Exactly what I say.' Anna-Greta straightened up with the crumbs in her hand. 'We can never know anything about what has happened in the past, because it has turned into stories. Even for those who are involved.'
'So…it didn't happen like that?'
Anna-Greta shrugged. 'I don't know. Not any more.'
Anders followed her into the kitchen where Simon was carefully stacking the best china in the dishwasher. Anna-Greta brushed the crumbs off her hands into the bin and got out the dishwasher powder. They moved around each other with a manifest ease. The dance of everyday life, worn smooth over the years. Anders looked at them in a kind of double exposure.
The smuggler king's daughter and the magician. Loading the dishwasher.
Whether their story was true or not, it had stirred things up in his mind. New associations must be made, new sequences of images must be put together. He felt a physical weariness as the synapses prepared the way for all these new connections.
'I'm going for a walk,' he said.
Anna-Greta gestured towards the fridge. 'Aren't you going to take some food with you?'
'Later. Thanks for the coffee. And the story.'
Anders stepped out on to the porch, lit a cigarette and strolled down the garden path. He passed the path to Simon's house and stopped, taking a deep drag.
My dad ran along here with his air gun. And without his air gun.
The gun was still around in a cupboard at the Shack, and he'd tried it once or twice when he was little. But the barrel was loose and the pressure was so poor that the pellet often got stuck in the bore. He'd wondered why his father kept it. Now he knew.
Leaves were rustling or falling all around him, and a light drizzle was dampening his hair as he carried on up towards the shop. The tender was just reversing away from the jetty after dropping off a small group of schoolchildren. A little girl of about seven came running along the track towards him, her school bag cheerfully thudding against her back. It was Maja-
not Maja
– who had come back at long last-
it isn't Maja.
– and he had to restrain himself from dropping to his knees and scooping her up in his arms.
Because it could have been Maja. Every child aged around seven or eight could have been Maja. The thought had ground him down into despair during the first six months after her disappearance. All the children who could have been Maja, but weren't. Thousands of eager, happy or sad faces, small bodies on the move, and not one of them was the right one. His little girl, and only his little girl, had been removed. No longer existed.
He had loved her so much. It should have been someone else who disappeared. Someone who wasn't loved. The girl ran past him and he turned, watched her rucksack with its picture of Bamse the Bear grow smaller as she headed for the southern part of the village.
It should have been you.
He had given up teacher training when Maja disappeared, and it was just as well. He would never be able to work with children, not when his feelings were so divided. His first impulse was to love and embrace them all, his second was to loathe them because they were still alive.
There were already a number of bags hanging on hooks on the wall of the shop, along with the odd new or old mailbox and a couple of buckets with lids, with the box numbers marked in ink. Anders made a mental note to put something there in a day or two, before the photos came back.
The steamboat jetty lay empty and the white geese were running across the sea without taking off, the wind was tearing at the plastic bags on the wall of the shop. There was an irregular squeaking noise. Anders listened hard to try and identify the sound. It was coming from the steps leading up to the shop, or behind them.
He went over and when he saw the source of the noise he couldn't understand why he suddenly felt so afraid. He took a step backwards, gasping for breath, the hair on his arms standing on end. The GB ice cream man was standing there.
The GB-man was a plastic figure mounted on springs on a block of cement, and the wind made him swing backwards and forwards, squeaking. He usually stood outside the shop, but had been put away for the season. Anders looked at his grinning face and his pulse rate shot up, his breathing ragged. He cupped his hands over his mouth and tried to take deep breaths.
It's only the GB-man. He isn't dangerous.
That's what he'd said. To Maja. It was Maja who had been afraid of the GB-man, not him.
It had started as a joke. Maja had been afraid of swans. Not the swans on the sea, which might have been natural. Even Anders had a certain respect for them. No, she was afraid that a swan would come in through the door or the window when she was in bed.
Since Maja was always pleased to see the GB-man-which meant there might be an ice cream in the offing-Anders tried to make a joke of the whole thing by saying, 'Swans aren't dangerous, they're nothing to be afraid of. They're no more dangerous than…the GB-man. And you're not lying here worrying that the GB-man might come in, are you?'
Maja continued to be afraid of swans, but she became even more afraid of the GB-man. It had never occurred to her before: the fact that the GB-man might be lying under her bed, or come creeping in through a chink in the door with that smile plastered on his face. Anders came to regret that he had ever mentioned it. After that night he always had to open her window to check that the GB-man wasn't standing outside. Maja's bed was very low, there wasn't really room for a lion under there. But there was room for the GB-man, since he was completely flat.
The GB-man was everywhere. He was in the sea when she wanted to go for a swim, he was hiding in the shadows. He was fear incarnate.
Now he was standing here squeaking behind the steps to the shop, and Anders was filled with a horror he couldn't pin down. He forced himself to stare the GB-man in the eye, despite the fact that he was so scared he just wanted to run away.
Home. Wine.
But presumably alcohol was to blame for the whole thing. His nerves were shot. Oversensitive. Could suddenly feel scared of just about anything. But he steeled himself. Wasn't going to go home and start drinking. Was going to stare at the GB-man until the bastard looked away or didn't seem dangerous any more.
The GB-man was swinging to and fro as if getting ready to pounce. Anders didn't take his eyes off him. They weighed each other up. A shudder ran down Anders' spine.
Someone is watching me.
He spun around and took a couple of steps so that he wouldn't be standing too close to the swinging plastic figure behind his back. The enemy came from all directions. Anders quickly glanced over the jetty, the boathouses, the gravelled area, the sea. A lone gull was struggling with the air currents, seemingly incapable of forcing its way down to the surface of the water. There was no sign of anyone.