The Runaways Read online

  “Do you remember what I said?”

  “Yes, but say it again.”

  “I said that each lion was different because the person who made them wanted them to be. He put time into them. Part of his life was in them. Even though he’d been dead for a long time, he was still here. It’s the same with the lingonberry jam. Your grandma picked the berries, cleaned them, boiled them, put in just enough sugar to make them not too sweet and not too sour, stirred them and poured them into that jar. She gave it her time. And her thoughts. So part of her is still in it. D’you understand?”

  “Maybe.”

  I didn’t understand. But sort of. Enough to know that he thought Grandma was somehow in the jam.

  I couldn’t help smiling.

  “What are you grinning at?”

  “You didn’t swear a single time when you talked about the jam.

  “That was…” said Grandpa. And he swore.

  After dinner he sat in Grandma’s chair. The one by the window where she usually sat looking out to sea. Or whatever it was she was looking at. You could see the back of the section from there. The strawberry patch that didn’t look like a strawberry patch any more. The white outhouse. And the cherry tree that had given me stomach ache every summer.

  Now Grandpa sat there trying to see what she’d seen.

  At least that’s what he said.

  “What do you see, then?” I asked.

  “An old man in a felt hat,” he sighed. “Hardly a lovable sight.”

  He sat there till the sun went down, red as lingonberry jam.

  “Now we’ll go to bed, runaway,” he said once it had slid down the far side of the island.

  “I’ll get the crutches,” I said.

  9.

  GRANDPA WAS GONE!

  Last night I’d helped him, first to the outhouse and then to bed. He kept his clothes on because it was too hard to get them off him. When he’d gone to sleep, I sat up for a while and looked at the pictures in Grandma’s Bible till I got sleepy.

  I woke early because I needed to pee.

  On the way out I looked into his room, the blue one, which once upon a time had been a ship’s cabin. The blanket I’d put over him was on the floor. The crutches were gone. And the bed was empty.

  As long as he hasn’t tried to get to the outhouse, I thought.

  That was how he broke his leg the first time. It was a night in February and minus twenty degrees. He hadn’t bothered to dress warmly enough. Just put on his coat and stuck his feet in his slippers. On the way back he’d slipped on ice and had to crawl next door through snow and bang on the door to ask for help. Because he couldn’t stand up to reach the door handle of his own house.

  Why on earth had I run away with him? I was too young. What would I do if he fell again? He was too heavy for me.

  I raced out as fast as I could. Hit my toe on the high sill. Swore. Opened the door. And there he was!

  Somehow he’d managed to take a chair outside. He was sitting in it, staring out over the fjord, as if he was waiting for a big ship with throbbing engines to come and get him.

  “Grandpa!” I called.

  He woke up.

  “Good morning, Gottfried Junior.”

  “You’re an idiot,” I said. “What if you’d fallen?”

  “But I didn’t,” he said contentedly. “And if you think about if all the time you’ll never get anything done.”

  “But what are you doing out here so early?”

  “Breathing,” he said. “And thinking.”

  “Thinking of what?”

  “That it’s time to clear the gutters,” he said. “Yes, but not today.”

  “No. We won’t have time. We have a boat to catch. But could you bring me the clothes I was wearing when we came, some fuel from the shed, matches and the spade you used to dig the potatoes.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Don’t ask so many questions, just do as I say.”

  I did: I dug a hole in the lawn with the spade. I threw the clothes into the hole. I gave the matches to Grandpa. And I poured a splash of fuel over the clothes.

  “More!” said Grandpa.

  He was back to being the chief engineer of all the world’s ships.

  “Go off to one side,” he said.

  He waited a bit till the clothes were soaked in fuel. Then he lit a match and threw it into the hole.

  Flames whooshed up. His best suit burned fiercely. Black smoke rose into the sky, like a smoke signal from Rocky Mountain.

  “Why?” I began.

  But Grandpa put his finger to his lips. His eyes followed the trail of smoke towards a cloud that the morning sun had turned red. Not till the clothes were completely black did he turn to me.

  He looked satisfied.

  “Now we’ll have breakfast,” he said.

  I fetched the garden table and put out a chair for me. I’d made us each a sandwich with cold sliced potatoes and meatballs. I took them out on a tray with a glass of water, a glass of beer, Grandpa’s pills, a teaspoon and the jar of lingonberry jam.

  Grandpa took a spoonful. Then he put on the lid.

  “Can’t I have any?” I asked.

  “No, unfortunately,” he said. “You’ll have to do without. I need it more. You know it was the thought of that jar that got me up the hill yesterday.”

  Smoke was still coming from the hole.

  “Why did you burn the suit?” I asked.

  “Because I never want to wear it again,” he said. “Those were the clothes I wore to the funeral. Do you remember?”

  “Yes.”

  Grandma’s funeral. An organ played at the back. The minister had finished speaking. We were supposed to go to the coffin to say our last goodbyes. Grandpa went first. He stood with his hand on the coffin lid. “You…” he said. Then there wasn’t any more. He went red in the face. He clenched his hand into a fist.

  And he swore, loud and long.

  Everyone squirmed in their seats. Even though I hadn’t been to a funeral before I understood that this wasn’t how you were meant to behave.

  Dad had to go up and take him back to his place. He sat there with his hands over his face till it was time to leave.

  Now Grandpa looked down at the hole.

  “I wanted to say something beautiful,” he said. “Some words about how much I liked her.”

  “She knew that anyway,” I said.

  “I’m not so sure. The nurse was right. I shouldn’t swear so much.”

  “Just one more time,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Swear!”

  He did. And I gave him one of the white pills as punishment. Because now it was time to go down to the boat jetty. Down the long path to the sea.

  “I hope it’s quicker going down than up,” I said.

  “I’m not walking,” said Grandpa. “You can go down to the village and get that bike you were talking about yesterday.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said.

  But first I took out my football gear and muddied it like last time. As I said, you have to think of everything. Then I filled in the hole. Put the fuel can and the spade back in the shed. Closed the vent to the woodstove, and the oven, and turned off the power.

  Grandpa sat on a chair and called out what I should do next.

  “Good,” he said when I was done. “Now you can look after yourself if you ever need to run away again.”

  The journey to the jetty was fun. Grandpa sat on the tray at the front of the bike in a chair we’d taken from the best room. Matt had tied it on with a rope so it wouldn’t slide around.

  Grandpa clung to the jar of lingonberry jam. He’d put the photo of Grandma in his coat pocket.

  He looked at everything he’d seen so many times that he’d forgotten what it looked like.

  When we arrived at the jetty his eyes were full of tears.

  “The wind,” said Grandpa, even though Matt had driven very slowly.

  The boat wasn’t d
ue for a while. Matt put the armchair down on the jetty so Grandpa could sit comfortably.

  “I’ll get it later and take it up to the house,” he said.

  “You can keep it,” said Grandpa. “I’ve finished sitting in it after today.”

  Then he sat himself up, turned his nose to the sea and said goodbye to the islands, the sky, the cliffs, the lighthouse and the eternally washing waves.

  “D’you see the eagle?” He pointed with his crutch at a crow.

  “Yes,” I said.

  10.

  WHEN WE PASSED the house on the mountain I looked up at the balcony. But Grandma wasn’t there waving.

  She never liked it when we went away.

  I leaned my head on Grandpa’s shoulder and thought: It’s not over yet!

  I wondered for example what we’d say when we got to the hospital so that the nurses wouldn’t ask how it’d been to have Grandpa at home, the next time Dad came visiting. Or say something like: So nice that Gottfried could spend the weekend with his son.

  That would give away everything.

  The whole thing was a great big bluff.

  Grandpa would be in trouble because he should know better.

  And I would almost certainly have to sit in the interrogation chair. That was the brown leather armchair in one corner of the living room. Dad usually sat in it when he was shaving. But if I’d done something unthinkable (that’s what Dad called it) then I was placed in it.

  I was perfectly sure that running away with Grandpa was unthinkable. I could already smell the leather of the chair.

  “How could you do something so incredibly unthinkable?” my father would say.

  Dad is a world master in unusual words. And that was a good thing because I learned a lot of new ones.

  The bad ones from Grandpa. The big ones from Dad.

  But had I really done something so incredibly unthinkable? I’d thought of others. I’d made Grandpa happy.

  I’d helped him get to the old house he’d built one last time. He’d been able to breathe in the smell of the sea. And I’d been down to the cellar and collected the jar of lingonberry jam that he said somehow still had Grandma in it.

  It was true that I’d lied. But if I hadn’t, he would never have gone out. Not to sea. Not to his house. And he wouldn’t have been able to burn his old suit. Because Dad wouldn’t let him do any of that. He would have had to stay in his bed with the pillow behind his back being bored and pushing the alarm button just for something to do.

  Now he sat and looked out through the window at the islands gliding past. And his cheeks weren’t as grey as they’d been in the hospital room.

  “Grandpa, is it a good thing to lie sometimes?”

  “What did you say?”

  He was still thinking about his things.

  “Can it ever be good to lie?”

  “Yes,” he said after a while. “Sometimes lying is the only way to be completely truthful.”

  Then his face lit up and he let out a really terrible word. He looked pleased. “That wasn’t badly said. Is there any beer left?”

  “Yes, one,” I said. “By the way, weren’t you going to stop swearing? You could try doing like I do. Whenever I’m about to swear I stay quiet instead.”

  Grandpa drank his beer in small gulps because he knew it would be a while before he could have another. And he ate some more cardamom buns because the meatballs were finished.

  He’d taken the photo of Grandma from his coat pocket and put it in front of him. It was so faded that she almost looked like a ghost.

  “It’s so hard to believe I won’t ever see her again,” he said.

  “You can,” I said. “In heaven.”

  “I don’t know. I find it hard to believe in a life in heaven. How can you believe in something you’ve never seen?”

  “I believe in crocodiles,” I said.

  Grandpa liked it when you were smart. He smiled so his teeth went crooked. He had to poke them back into place with his finger.

  “Anyway, I hope not to have false teeth in the next life, if there is one,” he said. “Or legs that break off at the slightest little thing.”

  “In heaven everyone is probably in top form,” I said. “You and Grandma can fly around like a pair of butterflies.”

  Then Grandpa wrinkled his forehead.

  “We’re talking about how life is after death,” he said. “Not something to joke about. You know, sometimes I dream about her at night. That she’s sitting up on the cliff drinking coffee. Or hanging out the washing. Or anything. Then I wake up and I’m in that devil of a hospital.” He swore a bit. “And I cry, even though I’m not a crying man. Because I still want to be in the dream.”

  I didn’t take any notice of his swearing. Because it was appropriate.

  “That’s probably how it is there,” I said. “Like in ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’.”

  “Where?”

  “In heaven,” I said. “It’s a song about a land where everything’s just the way you want it to be.”

  “The only thing I want is for her to be there,” sighed Grandpa. “Then I don’t give a stuff about anything else. There’s so much I want to do with her that I never did. And say that I never said. If heaven exists…and if I can get there, which is not completely certain.”

  “I think it is,” I said. “But first you’ll have to sit in the interrogation chair.”

  “What do you mean? What interrogation chair?”

  “Oh, nothing,” I said.

  For the rest of the journey he sat in silence. Maybe he was thinking about everything he’d do and say if he only got a chance in Paradise.

  Just before we got to the jetty he brightened. “I’ll learn to speak nicely,” he said. “I’ll learn all those nice words. To be on the safe side. I’ll do that for…”

  A swear word was on its way. But he swallowed it with a grimace. Like when he drank a schnapps at Christmas time.

  11.

  RONNY-ADAM WAS WAITING for us at the jetty. He had his chauffeur cap on.

  “Hi, old man,” said Adam, clicking his heels.

  “Hip-hip, young man,” said Grandpa.

  You could tell that they liked each other.

  We helped fold Grandpa into the front seat. I stretched out in the back with the crutches for company and the bag under my head. It took a lot of energy to run away. I listened to the hum of traffic through the open window. And the brm-brmm of the engine.

  Grandpa was humming too. “It’s not rattling any more,” he said.

  “No, you were right about the screw,” said Adam. “I sorted that. You should come and help in the workshop.”

  “I’d much rather...” You could feel the swear words on the tip of Grandpa’s tongue. “Much more than going to the…hospital.”

  “Grandpa’s given up swearing,” I said.

  “Is it hard to stop?” Adam wondered.

  “It’s possible…possibly,” muttered Grandpa. “The…words just sneak out from habit. Best I shut up for a bit.”

  I poked him in the neck with a crutch.

  “What?” he said. “Is shut up a swear word now too?”

  “Borderline,” said Adam.

  Grandpa sighed.

  I think he was actually pleased to sit quietly and think about what we’d done. And what he’d felt and seen. He wanted to keep it to himself. It was as if he’d put up a sign with PRIVATE on it, like on the gate to the house.

  While Grandpa was being quiet I told Adam about our adventure. Sometimes he chuckled. Sometimes he clucked out a laugh.

  “I’m proud to have your grandfather as my grandfather,” he said. “Even if it was just for a few hours. And think how well it’s all gone!”

  “So far,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “At the hospital they think Grandpa’s been with Dad. When Dad visits next time they’ll definitely want to talk about it. And he’ll find out we tricked them.”

  “Doesn’t matter,”
said Grandpa, waking up.

  “Yes, it does,” I said. “Dad will be angry.”

  “Don’t be such a coward, Gottfried Junior,” said Grandpa. “I’ve had my best time in ages. And you’ve been able to enjoy my wonderful company for almost two whole days. Isn’t that worth getting in a bit of trouble?”

  “Maybe.”

  “There then.”

  But Grandpa didn’t know what it was like when Dad got angry. He didn’t shout like Grandpa. He didn’t stamp his foot. Or make a fist in front of your nose. He tried to sound calm. But he wasn’t. A vein would stick out on his forehead, and that was all you could see. And then he’d look at you in a way that said: “You’re the one who’s made me this sad.” His rage could last for several days.

  It gave me a stomach ache.

  I wanted to avoid that.

  “But what if Dad won’t let us see each other any more,” I said. “He might think we’re not suitable for each other.” Once he’d forbidden me to see a boy he thought unsuitable.

  Grandpa looked uncertain.

  “He wouldn’t do that…” Grandpa paused, then he said, “Would he?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “We’ll have to think of something.” Adam swung the van into the parking area and stopped in front of the hospital.

  He went to fetch a wheelchair. Grandpa leaned back in his seat. He’d pushed his hat to the back of his head and turned his face to the sun. He closed his eyes and breathed in autumn.

  He wanted to make the most of his last moments of freedom.

  “Might be best to take something strengthening before we go in,” he said. “You know what.”

  I took out the jar of lingonberry jam. And he produced a teaspoon he’d brought from the house in his pocket. He opened his mouth and I put in a small taste.

  He kept his eyes closed while he swallowed.

  “Medicine?” Adam came out with the wheelchair.

  “Mmm, something along those lines,” said Grandpa. “To keep me alive a bit longer.”