The Farm (32 page)

Mark had a friend who worked in a contemporary gallery in east London, and in collusion with him, using his email address, I messaged every university and college art facility in Sweden, attaching a series of photos I’d taken of the mural in the abandoned lighthouse, explaining that the gallery would like to arrange a meeting with the artist responsible. The results trickled back over several days – negative, until an email arrived from a teacher at Konstfack, the University College for Arts, Crafts and Design, the largest art school in Sweden, located just south of the capital. He was sure the mural was by one of his former students. The artist was a recent graduate. Had the academic been of a suspicious mind he might have wondered how a private gallery in London knew about an abandoned lighthouse in the south of Sweden, but I’d calculated that the flattery and excitement generated by the email would over come most doubts. A meeting was set for Stockholm. The artist’s name was Anders.

I drove up the night before, checking into the cheapest room in a grand hotel near the waterfront, spending much of the night rehearsing my part, reading profiles of obscure new artists. The next morning I waited in the lobby, facing the main doors. Anders arrived early, tall, handsome, dressed in skinny black jeans and a black shirt. He wore a stud in his ear and carried a port folio under his arm. We chatted for a while about his art. My appreciation for his talent was genuine. However, I told many lies about myself, marvelling at how good at lying I’d grown over the years. But something had changed. I hated every lie I told. Only the prospect of failure stopped me from telling the truth. Mia might not want to be found. If I risked the truth, Anders might walk out.

Playing my part, I made steady progress towards my request to see the art for real – the actual paintings, too large to bring to my hotel. I presumed he wouldn’t be able to afford a studio. He’d paint at home, and if Mia had run away with him then she’d be there too, or at least some evidence of her. The trap worked. He sheepishly explained I’d need to come to his apartment, apologising that it was a long distance from the centre since he couldn’t afford the high costs of Stockholm. I said:

‘The hotel can arrange a car.’

I paid for our coffees with a hundred-krona note, noticing on the money not some famous face, an inventor or politician, but a honeybee. Anders was already moving away from the table when I said in Swedish:

‘Wait.’

I remembered the clean smooth snow outside the farm and my hope that this could be a new beginning. I wouldn’t build this discovery on the back of lies.

I began my story with the request that Anders not leave until I was finished. He agreed, confused by my change in tone. I watched his anger develop as I revealed how I’d tricked him. I could see he was tempted to leave but, a man of his word, he remained seated. His anger softened into sadness as I summarised my mum’s relationship with Mia and the events after Mia left. By the end of my account his anger had mostly dissipated. An element of disappointment remained that he had not yet been discovered as an artist. I assured him, as a layman, that my appreciation was genuine, as was that of the gallery owner whose email address I’d hijacked. Finally I asked if I could speak to Mia. He told me to wait in the foyer. He was going to make a call. Strangely, it didn’t even cross my mind that he might not return. I closed my eyes and waited, feeling lighter despite the risk I’d just taken.

We arrived at a residential block far from the centre of town. Anders muttered:

‘Artists should live in poverty.’

He was a romantic, the kind of temperament to inspire a girl to run away from home. We walked up the icy concrete stairs in single file since only the middle of the stairway had been gritted and the lift was out of order. Reaching the upper floor, he took out his keys. With a joke about owning the penthouse he showed me inside. Anders said, now speaking in Swedish:

‘Mia will be back soon.’

I waited in their living room, surrounded by his paintings. They owned very few items of furniture, no television, only a small radio plugged into the wall. To pass the time he began to paint. Thirty minutes later there was the sound of a key in the door. I walked into the corridor and saw Mia for the first time. She looked older than sixteen, heavily wrapped up against the cold. I could feel her eyes searching for my mum in my features. She shut the door, taking off her scarf. As she removed her winter coat, I saw that she was pregnant. I almost asked who the father was but caught myself in time.

The three of us took a seat in the small kitchen, the patterned linoleum floor squeaking under our chairs. We drank black tea sweetened with white sugar since honey, I guessed, was an un affordable §luxury. About to hear the truth of this summer, I was scared that maybe my mum had simply been wrong. Mia said:

‘I didn’t run away. Håkan asked me to leave. After I told him I was pregnant he arranged an appointment for an abortion. If I wanted to stay on his farm, as his daughter, I’d have to behave in a way that he found acceptable. He claimed he was concerned for my future. He was. But mostly he was concerned with his reputation. I was a disgrace, no longer the kind of daughter he wanted. I didn’t know what to do. Anders and I don’t have much money. We’re not fools. Could we be parents? I almost gave in, I almost said yes to the abortion. One night, I saw your mum walking through our fields. I didn’t know what she was doing there. But I remembered our long talks. She was so different from everyone else. She’d told me the story about how she left her farm, when she was just sixteen, she had nothing, and she’d made her way to England, and started a business, and a family. I thought – this is a woman I admire. She’s so strong. Everyone bows down to Håkan, but not her. He hated her for it. I told Håkan that if I couldn’t keep the baby then I’d leave. Part of me was sure he’d change his mind once he saw how serious I was. But he accepted. He didn’t even talk to Elise. She was my mum and she didn’t have a say in my future. She was upset. She writes to me every week. She visits regularly too, and whenever she does she fills the fridge with food. She misses me very much. And I miss her.’

Mia’s voice broke with emotion. There was real love for Elise.

‘She’s a good person. She was always kind. But she’ll never stand up to him. She’s his servant. And I didn’t want to grow up like her.’

I asked if Mia had cut up Håkan’s wooden trolls in anger. She shook her head. By deduction, it could only be one other person:

‘Then it was Elise.’

Mia smiled at the thought of her mum taking an axe to Håkan’s trolls and said:

‘Maybe, one day, she will leave him.’

I queried Mia’s drunkenness at the second midsommar party. She shook her head. If she’d seemed drunk it was because on that day she’d discovered that she was pregnant. She was in a daze. The next ten days were spent as a prisoner on the farm – the worst ten days of her life. Once she’d made her decision, Håkan came up with a plan. He wanted her to disappear. He didn’t want to explain anything to the local community. He couldn’t stomach the shame.

Mia said:

‘His idea was to stage a runaway story so that he could be a victim.’

My mum was right on both counts. To escape from a remote farm you needed a plan, but the plan hadn’t been Mia’s, it had been Håkan’s. And there had been a conspiracy. Stellan the detective had been told that Mia wasn’t a missing person. No one was looking for her. The posters had gone up only in places where they were useless. Håkan transferred money into Mia’s account at the end of every month. He paid for the apartment. He could visit any time he liked. To date, he hadn’t.

At the end of her account I asked whether there’d ever been any element of danger. My mum had been convinced Mia was in peril. On this crucial point Mia shook her head:

‘Håkan never touched me, never hit me, never laid a finger on me, he wasn’t like that. He never even raised his voice. If I wanted a new set of clothes he’d buy them the same day. He’d give me anything I wanted. He called me spoiled. He was right. I was spoiled. But he didn’t love me. I don’t think he understands love. To him, love is control. He’d go through my belongings. He found my diary inside the mirror that Anders had carved for me. He put the diary back in order that I’d keep writing in it and he could keep reading it. When I realised what he was doing, I ripped the whole thing up and put it back for him. That made him angry, as if it belonged to him.’

I asked about the suicide of Anne-Marie and the hermit in the field. Mia shrugged:

‘I didn’t know her well. She was close to Cecilia, the woman who sold your mum the farm, and Cecilia blamed Håkan for her suicide, but I don’t know why. Possibly Anne-Marie was sleeping with Håkan. It’s no secret that Håkan has affairs. To him, everyone’s wife was fair game. Elise knew it. Anne-Marie was devout, when sober. You saw all those biblical quotes, right? But no one flirted more than her if she drank, she’d do it in front of her husband, she’d torture him with it, she always thought he was a big stupid oaf of a man. She was horrible to him when drunk and guilt-ridden when sober. Underneath it all, she was just really sad.’

‘Why does Håkan want our farm so much?’

‘No reason, other than he owns the land around it. He’d look at the map and your farm was a blotch on his kingdom, a pocket of land that he didn’t control. It was a blemish. It infuriated him.’

‘He’s going to own it soon.’

Mia thought about this:

‘Like him or not, it’s hard not to respect a man who always gets what he wants.’

I imagined Håkan gloating over his map, but that was not a battle for me to fight.

Mia had been speaking for an hour. She and Anders were both wondering what more I could want. I asked them to wait while I made a call. I left the apartment and, standing in the cold concrete walkway, phoned my dad. He pointed out bluntly that Mum wouldn’t believe anything he told her, or anything I said:

‘Mia needs to come to London. Tilde needs to hear it from her.’

After our conversation, I called Mark, asking if I could use the remaining money to buy Mia and Anders a flight to London. During our conversation Mark’s tone was different. I’d experienced many warm sentiments from him but never admiration. He agreed to the buying of the tickets. I told him that I loved him and that I’d see him soon.

Inside the apartment, I presented my plan:

‘I’d like you to come to London. Your flights, a hotel, they’d be paid for. Even so, I’m asking a lot of you. Mia, I need you to speak to my mum. I need my mum to see you. It’s not enough for me to repeat this information, she won’t believe a word I say, or a word my dad says, she hasn’t spoken to me since the summer, she won’t speak to me, she won’t listen to me, she needs to hear it from you.’

They discussed the matter. Though I didn’t hear the conversation, I imagined Anders was reluctant, worried about stress, since Mia was six months’ pregnant. They returned, and Mia said:

‘Tilde would have done it for me.’

On the flight to London Mia saw my mum’s Bible and her collection of Swedish troll stories in my bag. As she reached for them, I was convinced the Bible had caught her eye. Instead, she took hold of the troll storybook, examining the illustration:

‘This is Tilde’s, isn’t it?’

‘How did you know?’

‘She wanted to loan it to me. She said there was one story in particular she was keen for me to read. Your mum was wonderful to me but I never figured out why she thought I’d be interested in reading more troll stories. I’ve heard enough of those for a lifetime. I promised to pick the book up but never did.’

I was surprised by my mum’s emphasis on one particular story, curious as to which one she might have been referring to. She’d never singled one out before. I flicked through, assessing each one. In the middle of the volume I came across a story called ‘The Princess Troll’. Reading the opening lines, I realised they were new to me. I couldn’t hear my mum’s voice, despite being convinced she’d read the entire book aloud many times. Checking the rest of the collection, I established that this was the only story she’d skipped. According to the appendix, a part of the book I’d never explored or known existed, this troll legend was one of the oldest. There were numerous versions to be found in Germany, Italy and France, in volumes of fairy tales by Italo Calvino, Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. The Swedish variant was of an unknown origin. I set about reading it for the first time.

• • •

THE PRINCESS TROLL

Once there was a great king who ruled his kingdom justly. By his side was a queen more beautiful than any other woman and a young daughter lovelier than any child in the kingdom. The king lived happily until his queen was struck gravely ill. On her deathbed she made him promise that he would only remarry a woman as beautiful as her. When the queen died the king went into mourning, convinced he would never remarry. His courtiers insisted that their kingdom required a queen and that he must search for a new wife. Mindful of his promise, the king could find no woman as beautiful as his wife.

One day the king was staring out of his castle window. He saw his daughter playing in the royal orchard. She’d come of age. She’d grown to be as beautiful as her mother. The king jumped to his feet and declared that she would be his next wife. The courtiers were aghast and implored him to reconsider. A wise fortuneteller predicted such a marriage would bring ruin to the kingdom. The daughter pleaded with her father to think again, but he would not. The wedding date was set. The daughter was locked in the tower so that she might not run away.