Parrot in the Pepper Tree Read Free

jolly grin. It was a furniture lorry. I felt relieved and then a little worried that its huge weight might have cracked the solid ice.
    ‘How do those people know the day the ice is no longer safe to drive a furniture lorry across?’ I wondered. But luck was with me and soon I arrived at the yellow reeds around the island. I stopped the car and stepped gingerly out onto the ice. Looking back I saw the lorry vanishing in the brightness.
    When I switched off the engine, I was again struck by the extraordinary stillness of the Swedish winter. There is no wind, and even if there were, the trees would be too heavy with their thick load of frozen snow to move. There are no birds to sing and the sea is silenced by its sarcophagus of ice. The only sound in the landscape is you.
    These thoughts were cut short by the sudden clatter of a snow scooter. A farmer, clad in an orange boilersuit and woolly hat, appeared through a gap in the trees, dismounted and trudged towards my car. ‘Hej!’ he offered sadly. ‘Welcome to Norbo? He took some time in getting his right mitten off while he gazed blankly at the snow. Then he held out a pale pink and white hand. ‘Björn,’ he muttered, withdrawing the proffered hand quickly from my grip.
    ‘Chris,’ said I.
    ‘Welcome to Norbo,’ he said again.
    ‘Tak — thanks,’ I replied, trying to keep the conversation rolling, though it seemed to have a finality about it.
    Björn was aged about thirty, a pink, rounded man with a melancholy look about him. He seemed more comfortable with silence than small talk although he did allow a wan smile to flicker across his muted features when our eyes met. I gave him a big grin but this seemed a little too much for him and he looked away, affecting a quiet cough into his mittens.
     
     
     
    In amicable silence we loaded my clobber onto the trailer that dragged behind the scooter, mounted up, and scudded over the ice to the shore. Half hidden by the pines was a big yellow house, part stone and part timber. It had recently had a coat of paint but needed a bit of fundamental attention to its carpentry to bring it in line with the usual immaculate turnout of Swedish houses. But as the Swedes themselves so nicely put it: Bättre lite skit i hörnet än ett rent helvete — ‘Better a little shit in the corner than a clean hell?
    We passed the farmhouse and weaved our way through a birch wood to the sheep’s quarters. This was a cathedral of timber, a colossal hulk of faded red planks and rotting beams. From inside came the baaing of hundreds of sheep, like the buzzing of a swarm of huge bees.
    Björn took a shovel and with a few deft strokes in the snow revealed a little wooden door. With his knife he cut the string that secured it, and kicked it hard. It graunched inwards, enough for us to squeeze through. As we entered, the baaing became deafening, and my nose was assailed by the thick miasma of damp wool, mouldy hay and sheepshit.
    Gradually my eyes adapted to the gloom — what little light there was entered through cracks in the planking and dusty windows — and to a truly disheartening sight. There were sheep everywhere, grubby black creatures with steam rising from their backs. The steam hung in a great smelly cloud and within the cloud, seemingly drifting in the air, were even more sheep. They were wandering along plankways that led into the cavernous vault of the barn. Everywhere were huge malodorous bales of hay and silage, with sheep on them and in them, like weevils in a biscuit.
    ‘Bit of a balls-up, eh Björn?’ I muttered in a feeble understatement. I was looking at one of the grimmest jobs I’d had to do in ten years of work in Sweden.
    Björn looked crestfallen. His eyelashes brushed his cheeks as he looked down and wrung his hands a little.
    ‘You see, it’s been a terrible year,’ he said quietly.
    ‘It certainly has, Björn — these sheep look like shit! Still, don’t you worry about it, we’ll get at them this afternoon