The Farm
Table of Contents
THE FARM
Also by Tom Rob Smith
Child 44
The Secret Speech
Agent 6
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2014
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © 2014 by Tom Rob Smith
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.
The right of Tom Rob Smith to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN HB 978-1-84737-569-8
ISBN TPB 978-1-84737-570-4
ISBN E-book 978-1-47111-067-2
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Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
THE FARM
U
NTIL THAT PHONE CALL
it had been an ordinary day. Laden with groceries, I was walking home through Bermondsey, a neighbourhood of London, just south of the river. It was a stifling August evening and when the phone rang I considered ignoring it, keen to hurry home and shower. Curiosity got the better of me so I slowed, sliding the phone out of my pocket, pressing it against my ear – sweat pooling on the screen. It was my dad. He’d recently moved to Sweden and the call was unusual; he rarely used his mobile and it would’ve been expensive to call London. My dad was crying. I came to an abrupt stop, dropping the grocery bag. I’d never heard him cry before. My parents had always been careful not to argue or lose their temper in front of me. In our household there were no furious rows or tearful fights. I said:
‘Dad?’
‘Your mother . . . She’s not well.’
‘Mum’s sick?’
‘It’s so sad.’
‘Sad because she’s sick? Sick how? How’s Mum sick?’
Dad was still crying. All I could do was dumbly wait until he said:
‘She’s been imagining things – terrible, terrible things.’
A reference to her imagination, rather than some physical ailment, was so strange and surprising that I crouched down, steadying myself with one hand on the warm cracked concrete pavement, observing a patch of red sauce leaking through the bottom of the dropped grocery bag. Eventually I asked:
‘For how long?’
‘The whole summer.’
Months and I hadn’t known – I’d been here, in London, oblivious, my dad maintaining a tradition of concealment. Guessing my thoughts he added:
‘I was sure I could help her. Maybe I waited too long, but the symptoms started gradually – anxiety and odd comments, we can all suffer from that. Then came the allegations. She claims she has proof, she talks about evidence and suspects, but it’s nonsense and lies.’
Dad became louder, defiant, emphatic, no longer crying. He’d recovered his fluency. There was more to his voice than sadness.
‘I was hoping it would pass, or that she just needed time to adjust to life in Sweden, on a farm. Except it got worse and worse. And now . . .’
My parents were from a generation that wouldn’t go to the doctor unless it was an injury you could see with your eyes or feel with your fingers. To burden a stranger with the intimate details of their lives was unfathomable.
‘Dad, tell me she’s seen a doctor.’
‘He says she’s suffering from a psychotic episode. Daniel . . .’
Mum and Dad were the only people in the world who didn’t shorten my name to Dan.
‘Your mum’s in hospital. She’s been committed.’
I heard this final piece of news and opened my mouth to speak with no idea of what to say, perhaps just to exclaim, but in the end said nothing.
‘Daniel?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you hear?’
‘I heard.’
A bashed-up car passed by, slowing to look at me but not stopping. I checked my watch. It was eight in the evening, and there was little chance of making a flight tonight – I’d fly early tomorrow. Instead of becoming emotional, I took it upon myself to be efficient. We spoke for a little while longer. After the upheaval of the first few minutes both of us were returning to type – controlled and measured. I said:
‘I’ll book a flight for the morning. Once that’s done I’ll call you back. Are you at the farm? Or the hospital?’
He was at the farm.
With the call finished I rummaged through the grocery bag, taking out every item, lining them up on the pavement until I found the cracked jar of tomato sauce, carefully removing it, the shards of glass held in place only by the label. I discarded it in a nearby bin, returning to my disassembled shopping, using tissues to mop up the excess sauce, and perhaps this seems unnecessary – fuck the bag, my mum’s sick – but the cracked jar might have broken apart completely, tomato sauce spread over everything, and anyway, there was comfort in the humdrum simplicity of the task. I picked up the bag and at a faster pace completed my journey home, to the top floor of a former factory, now a set of apartments. I stood under a cold shower and considered crying – shouldn’t I cry? I asked myself, as if it were the same as deciding whether to smoke a cigarette. Wasn’t it my duty as a son? Crying should be instinctual. But before showing emotion I pause. In the eyes of strangers I’m guarded. In this case, it wasn’t caution – it was disbelief. I couldn’t attach an emotional response to a situation I didn’t understand. I wouldn’t cry. There were too many unanswered questions to cry.
After the shower I sat at my computer studying the emails sent by my mum over the past five months, wondering if there were hints that I’d missed. I hadn’t seen my parents since they moved to Sweden in April. At their farewell to England party we’d toasted their peaceful retirement. All of the guests had stood outside their old home and waved fond goodbyes. I have no brothers or sisters, there are no uncles or aunts, when I speak about family I mean the three of us, Mum, Dad, me – a triangle, like a fragment of a constellation, three bright stars close together with a lot of empty space around us. The absence of relatives has never been discussed in detail. There have been hints – my parents went through difficult upbringings, estranged from their own parents, and I was sure that their vow never to argue in front of me originated from a powerful desire to provide a different kind of childhood to their own. The motivation wasn’t British reserve. They never skimped on love, or happiness, those were expressed at every opportunity. If times were good they’d celebrate, if times weren’t so good they’d be optimistic. That’s why some people consider me sheltered – I’ve only seen the good times. The bad times were hidden. I was complicit in the arrangement. I didn’t probe. That farewell party had been a good time, the crowd cheering as my mum and dad set off, embarking on a great adventure, my mum returning to the country she’d left when she was just sixteen years old.
Shortly after their arrival at the remote farm, located in the very south of Sweden, my mum had written regularly. The emails described how wonderful their life on the farm was, the beauty of the countryside, the warmth of the local people. If there was a hint of something wrong it was subtle, and one I’d misconstrued. Her emails dwindled in length as the weeks went on, the lines expressing wonder grew briefer. In my mind, I’d interpreted this as positive. My mum must have settled in and didn’t have a moment to spare. Her last email to me flashed up:
Daniel!
Nothing else, just my name, an exclamation mark – my response had been to shoot back a quick-fire reply telling her that there’d been a glitch, her email hadn’t come through and could she please resend, dismissing her one-word email as a mistake, never considering the possibility that this email might have been fired off in distress.
I worked through the entire chain of correspondence, unsettled by the notion that I’d been blind and troubled by the question of what else I might have overlooked. However, there were no telltale signs, no baffling flights of fancy; her writing style remained regular, using mostly English since, shamefully, I’d let slip much of the Swedish she’d taught me as a child. One email contained two large attachments – photographs. I must have looked at them before, but now my mind was blank. The first appeared onscreen – a bleak barn with a rusted steel roof, a grey sky, a tractor parked outside. Zooming in on the glass of the cabin I saw a partial reflection of the photographer – my mum – her face obscured by the flash so that it appeared as if her head had exploded into bright spikes of white light. The second showed my dad standing outside their farmhouse in conversation with a tall stranger. The photograph seemed to have been taken without my father’s knowledge. From a distance, it was more like a surveillance photograph than a family snap. Neither tallied with descriptions of great beauty, although, of course, I hadn’t queried this anomaly, replying that I was excited to visit the farm myself. That was a lie. I wasn’t looking forward to my visit and had already postponed it several times, moving it back from early summer to late summer to early autumn, offering vague half-truths in explanation.
The real reason for the delay was that I was scared. I hadn’t told my parents that I lived with my partner and that we’d known each other for three years. The deceit dated back so far that I’d become convinced I couldn’t unravel it without damaging my family. I dated girls at university, my parents cooked dinner for those girlfriends and expressed delight at my choices – the girls were beautiful, funny, and smart. But there was no quickening of my heart when they undressed, and during sex I exhibited a professional concentration on the task at hand, a belief that providing pleasure meant I wasn’t gay. Not until I was living away from home did I accept the truth, telling my friends but excluding my mum and dad, not out of shame but well-intentioned cowardice. I was terrified of damaging the memory of my childhood. My parents had gone to extraordinary lengths to create a happy home, they’d made sacrifices, they’d taken a solemn vow of tranquillity, sworn to provide a sanctuary free from trauma, and they’d never slipped up, not once, and I loved them for it. Hearing the truth they’d be sure to conclude that they’d failed. They’d think upon all the lies that I must have told. They’d imagine me as lonely and tortured, bullied and ridiculed, when none of that was true. Adolescence had been easy for me. I’d transitioned from childhood to adulthood with a skip in my step – my bright blond hair dulling only slightly, my bright blue eyes not dulling at all – and with good looks came unearned popularity. I floated through those years. Even my secret I’d worn lightly. It didn’t make me sad. I just didn’t think about it too deeply. In the end it came down to this: I couldn’t stand the thought of my parents wondering if I’d ever doubted their love. It felt unfair to them. I could hear myself saying in a desperate voice, not believing my own words:
‘It changes nothing!’
I was sure they’d embrace my partner, celebrate our relationship as they’d celebrated everything, but a trace of sadness would remain. The memory of a perfect childhood would die, and we’d mourn it as surely as we would the passing of a person we loved. So the real reason I’d postponed my visit to Sweden was because I’d promised my partner it would be the opportunity when I’d tell my parents the truth, when, finally, after all these years, I’d share with them my partner’s name.
Mark came home that night to find me at the computer browsing flights to Sweden, and before I could say a word he smiled, presuming the lies were at an end. I was too slow to pre-empt his mistake and instead was forced to correct him, adopting my dad’s euphemism:
‘My mum’s sick.’
It was painful watching Mark adjust, burying his disappointment. He was eleven years older than me, he’d just turned forty and it was his apartment, the spoils of being a successful corporate lawyer. I tried my best to play an equal role in the relationship, making a point of paying as much rent as I could afford. But in truth, I couldn’t afford much. I worked freelance as a designer for a company that converted roof space into gardens and was only paid when there was a commission. Struggling through the recession, we had no jobs lined up. What did Mark see in me? I suspected he craved the kind of calm home life in which I was expert. I didn’t argue. I didn’t row. Following in my parents’ footsteps, I worked hard to make our home a refuge from the world. Mark had been married to a woman for ten years, ending in an acrimonious divorce. His ex-wife declared that he’d stolen the best years of her life and that she’d squandered her love on him, and now, in her mid-thirties, she’d be unable to find a real partner. Mark accepted the notion and the guilt sat heavily on him. I wasn’t convinced it would ever go away. I’d seen photos of him in his twenties, full of bullish confidence, looking slick in expensive suits – he used to work out a lot in the gym, and his shoulders were broad, his arms thick. He’d go to strip clubs and plan lurid stag parties for his colleagues. He’d laugh loudly at jokes and slap people on the back. He didn’t laugh like that any more. During the divorce his parents sided with his ex-wife. His father, in particular, was disgusted with Mark. They were no longer speaking. His mum sent us musical Christmas cards as if she wanted to say more but didn’t quite know how. His dad never signed them. Part of me wondered whether Mark saw my parents as a second chance. Needless to say, he had every right to ask that they be part of his life. The only reason he accepted the delay was because after he’d taken so long to come out he felt unable to demand anything on the subject. On some level I must have exploited this fact. It took the pressure off me. It allowed me to nudge the truth back time and again.