The Quarry Read Online Free PDF Page B

grey and white stripes; he didn’t know the name of it. Camberwell Beauty? Or did they call it the Mourning Cloak? This one was flying in a straighter line, and reached the lawn at almost the same time as the Brimstone Yellow. They fluttered around each other for a few seconds in a spring dance before flitting past Gerlof and disappearing behind the cottage.
    A yellow butterfly and a dark-grey one, what did that mean? He had always regarded the first butterfly as a sign of what the rest of the year would be like: bright and hopeful or dark and gloomy, but now he wasn’t so sure. It was as if he had hoisted a flag that had got stuck at half-mast before continuing to the top.
    When he opened the diary he heard the sound of a car engine. A big shiny car came along the road and turned off on to the gravel track leading to the quarry.
    Gerlof caught a glimpse of a middle-aged man and woman in the front.
    Probably some of the new neighbours who had built houses by the quarry. Summer visitors. No doubt they would be here only when it was light and warm; they were hardly likely to spend time here when it was freezing cold, chopping down the last of the trees along the coast as his own relatives had once done.
    Gerlof wasn’t interested in the couple in the car. He looked down at the diary and began to read.
     
7 th May 1957
Tonight Gerlof will set off on his first voyage of the year to Nynäshamn for oil. He was in Kalmar today getting some measurements done on the ship because he has altered the cover of the hold. Lena and Julia are on board with him.
Today has been sunny. Got to the cottage at six this evening and opened the windows to air the rooms. There was a faint smell of mould, I thought; I tried to get some fresh air in, but in fact it was a pot of juniper berries in syrup that had started fermenting and had exploded into a thousand pieces. Had to start cleaning rancid, sticky purple syrup off the floor, only just managed to cook something (meatballs). The children and Gerlof will be home the day after tomorrow.
    Gerlof realized these were holiday diaries. He knew that when he had been away at sea, Ella had often gone up to the summer cottage with their two daughters. Later, when they were older and wanted to go with Gerlof to Stockholm or stay at home in Borgholm, she had come here alone. That was probably why he had rarely seen her writing in them.
    He read on:
     
15 th May 1957
Sunny, but a little chilly in the wind from the north-east. The girls went for a long bike ride along the coast road this afternoon.
A strange thing happened while they were away. I was standing out on the veranda watering the pelargoniums – and I saw a troll from the quarry.
What else could it be?
It was a two-legged creature at any rate, but it moved so fast I was quite taken aback. Just a shadow, a snapping twig out in the pasture, a rustling among the bushes, and it was gone. I think it laughed at me.
    ‘The pasture’ was Ella and Gerlof’s name for the overgrown area beyond the summer cottage where the cattle used to graze before the war.
    But what did Ella mean by a troll?
    Suddenly Gerlof heard the sound of another car behind the trees. The engine died away, then the gate creaked. He quickly hid the diary under the blanket. He didn’t know why – a guilty conscience, perhaps.
    A short, powerfully built man in his seventies was heading up the path. It was his friend John Hagman, dressed in the worn blue dungarees and the pale-grey peaked cap he wore winter and summer. He had been Gerlof’s first mate on the Baltic cargo ships once upon a time; these days he ran the campsite at the southern end of the village.
    He came over with a heavy tread and stopped on the grass; Gerlof smiled and nodded at him, but John didn’t smile back – a cheerful, happy expression was not his style.
    ‘So,’ he said. ‘I heard you were back.’
    ‘Yes. You too.’
    John nodded. He had been up to visit Gerlof at the home a few times during the