The last two were a cyclist and a female fencer. A woman wielding a sword? How could it ever occur to anybody to stuff a woman into a pack of pastilles?
Joel was furious.
He looked at the old woman, fast asleep in the far corner. Her mouth was wide open and her tongue was hanging out.
He tiptoed over to her and put the picture of the female fencer on the old lady’s tongue.
Then he ran off and slammed the waiting room door as hard as he could.
On the way to his bike, he glared at the newsstand. If only he could, he’d have ordered the earth to open up and allow the beast of prey down there to swallow up the whole of the stand in one gulp.
It was nearly eleven o’clock. He was hungry. He popped the contents of a full pack of pastilles into his mouth, then set off for home. On the hill down from the co-op warehouse and the vet’s, he let go of the handlebars and closed his eyes. He plucked up enough courage to close his eyes and count up to ten. He had decided that before he was twelve, he would have enough courage to keep his eyes closed and not hold on to the handlebars until he’d counted up to twenty-five.
When he finally stumbled into the kitchen he poured himself a big glass of milk, and emptied all the pastilles he still had left onto the table.
123 of them.
If they had been pearls, he’d have been rich.
He scooped the pastilles back into their boxes and put them in the shoe box under his bed. He’d drawn a black skull on that box, so that nobody dared open it. A length of cotton hanging down from the lid could easily be a fuse...
When he returned to the kitchen, he noticed that he had a stomachache.
Nothing serious yet. Just something nagging away in the background.
He sat stock still on the kitchen bench, to see if that would bring on something more painful. But no: it was still just a nagging ache.
He breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t like the gripes.
Being in pain was painful. If you had a really nasty stomachache, so bad that it brought tears to your eyes, it made the whole of your body hurt. Even the thoughts you had inside your head were painful.
He sat absolutely still, to make sure that the stomachache didn’t get worse. He counted slowly to 123. Then he could breathe out again. He wasn’t going to get the gripes today.
Nothing could match knowing that you weren’t going to be in pain.
He felt inspired to do something useful. Now was the time to work out his strategy.
How could he set up a meeting between Gertrud and the Caviar Man?
He thought again about what he’d read in books about how grown-ups met in order to decide if they ought to get married. But nothing of what he remembered seemed suitable in this case.
Then he thought about Samuel and Mummy Jenny.
They had written letters to each other, Samuel had told him.
Many years ago, his ship had been in dock in Gothenburg for repairs. Samuel and some of his shipmates had gone ashore one evening. He’d been walking along the street, stumbled on a paving stone and fallen headlong into the arms of Mummy Jenny.
So that was one way of meeting, and having a son called Joel who experienced a Miracle.
You stumble in the street and fall into somebody.
And then you write letters.
Samuel had told Joel that after Jenny had prevented him from hurting himself on the pavement in Gothenburg, he’d persuaded her to give him her address. Then he had written to her from all the foreign ports he’d visited. And in one of the letters they had arranged to meet in Gothenburg. In a park, behind a statue.
Joel thought carefully about all this.
He suspected it might be too difficult to arrange for the Caviar Man to stumble on a paving stone and fall headlong into the arms of Gertrud.
So he would have to miss that part out and go straight to the letter stage.
They could send secret letters to each other and arrange a secret meeting. Then no doubt everything would proceed of its own accord.
Secret letters that Joel Gustafson would write.
But how did you write a letter like that? He had no idea.
The library, he thought. There must be a book there about secret letters. A book as important as that had to exist!
He checked the kitchen clock. There were a lot of hours to go yet before Miss Arvidson opened the library. He would have to be patient.
By four o’clock he had only 72 pastilles left. He thundered down the stairs and cycled to the library.
Miss Arvidson, the lady in charge of the library, was very strict. She thought that nobody ever borrowed the right books. Moreover, she refused to allow children to borrow the books they wanted. On several occasions Joel had put exciting books about murders and other crimes on her desk, but she had pursed her lips and informed him that those books were for adults only.
Joel couldn’t imagine how a book about writing secret letters could be for adults only. Why should anybody have to wait until they were fifteen before learning how to do that?
Nevertheless, he had made up his mind to be cautious. He opened the door quietly, bowed a greeting to Miss Arvidson and took off his dirty boots. Then he went over to the shelves and selected a few religious books. He carried them over to the issue desk.
Miss Arvidson examined the titles and nodded in approval. And started stamping them.
Here we go.
‘I’d like to borrow a book about how to write secret letters,’ Joel said.
Miss Arvidson looked at him in astonishment.
‘Secret letters?’
‘Love letters,’ said Joel. ‘Secret love letters.’
Miss Arvidson burst out laughing. It occurred to Joel that he must be the first person in the whole world who had heard Miss Arvidson laughing. Lots of disbelieving faces peered out from among the bookshelves.
Miss Arvidson was howling with laughter.
She laughed so much that Joel started laughing as well.
That made her furious.
‘That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard,’ she said. ‘A book about how to write secret letters! Of course there’s no such book.’
‘Love letters,’ said Joel. ‘It’s not me who wants it, it’s my dad.’
Involving Samuel was no problem, Joel had decided. He never went near the library anyway.
‘If your dad wants to write love letters, he’ll have to manage it on his own,’ said Miss Arvidson. ‘We have love poems. But not love letters.’
‘Maybe that would do,’ said Joel.
Miss Arvidson eyed him up and down, then went to a shelf and returned with two slim volumes.
‘These are pretty love poems,’ she said, and started stamping the books. ‘But next time he’ll have to come and borrow them himself.’
Joel cycled back home and put the potatoes on to boil. Then he started reading the thin poetry collections.
They were mostly about roses and thorns. Tears and desperate longing. The word ‘desperation’ came over and over again.
That would have to do.
When he and Samuel had finished their dinner, he would write the letters.
One letter from Gertrud to the Caviar Man. One letter from the Caviar Man to Gertrud.
He had taken some sheets of letter-paper and some envelopes from Samuel’s room.
His big plan was ready.
But when he sat in bed after dinner, resting his letter-paper on an atlas, it didn’t seem so straightforward.
Where should their secret meeting take place?
There wasn’t a single statue anywhere in the little town. There wasn’t really anywhere that could be called a park. Besides, it had to be a place where Joel could hide nearby and listen to what they said to each other.
He wandered through the whole town in his thoughts. He kept stopping, but failed to find a suitable place.
The churchyard was too spooky after dark.
There were no lights on the football pitch. They wouldn’t even be able to find each other.