Dad didn’t want to talk about her. He didn’t even seem to want to talk to her, and I found it all very strange. And though her pancakes were yummy and I liked hearing her stories about the mainland, I was a bit sad at how she made Dad feel. Mum didn’t like her very much either.
And it wasn’t just because she snored. And I’m telling you, she could really snore. When she had her lunchtime nap, you could hear it all the way over in the main house.
We’d been just fine until then. It wasn’t until my granny arrived that things went really wrong. I think something snapped in Dad. Especially when she said that she was going to take me with her to the mainland and send me to school over there. They didn’t know I was standing right outside the door and heard everything.
Dear Liv
Your granny took up a lot of room. Not in the same way I do; in a different way. She left when you were very little. It was a huge relief, and I hadn’t expected her ever to come back after all this time. I think you were coming up for your seventh birthday.
I had almost managed to forget about her.
When I saw her again it felt like someone was gripping my throat; as if all the air had been sucked out of my lungs. Deep down, I guess, I’d hoped she had died. Now suddenly she was standing there, smiling, looking healthier and stronger than ever.
I didn’t know what she wanted. I didn’t know if she even realized what she had done to Carl, to this family. Maybe it was her medication. She had sent some letters to your dad, but every time he burned them without reading them.
We hadn’t spoken about her since she left. Never spoken about what had happened. We had protected ourselves.
And her timing could not have been worse. I was pregnant again.
The Return
Else Horder had understood everything immediately and felt deeply hurt when her son asked her to leave the Head.
Ordered her.
In her rage, she had initially felt that she should throw them out of the house – that it was her son who should leave. But on reflection she couldn’t make herself do it. Besides, she couldn’t bear the thought of living there all alone, without Silas, without Mogens, without Jens… with all those memories and all that pain, in almost total isolation. Her cousin on the mainland had recently been widowed and offered Else a room. Suddenly the thought of getting away from the island seemed attractive. Her way out would prove to be her salvation.
Else found it bizarre that she could have lived in the middle of God’s green earth – surrounded by forest and meadows and oceans of clean air – and yet feel as trapped as she had done recently, that she could only feel as free as a bird amidst the city’s intrusive facades, sharp corners and clouds of exhaust fumes. But it turned out to be so. In the city, she could breathe again. Even her illness changed character. The pain started to recede, the bleeding stopped, and in time she began to regard herself as being in good health.
Her cousin was a wise woman with a nursing background, and Else felt in safe hands in every possible respect. It was a relief for her to talk to an ‘outsider’. And then there was the accommodation. Else was thrilled to be moving into a neat and tidy home. As time went by, she found it increasingly baffling how both her late husband and her younger son could live in the mess they had created around them.
Else had, she now admitted, suffered terribly since her husband’s accident. Ever since he had left her without warning she had clung to the sons he had given her, but they too, it seemed, were intent on leaving her. Once Jens and Maria became parents, she had been so tormented by pain and melancholy and inexplicable rage that she couldn’t stand her own company. She had deluged her daughter-in-law with unreasonable demands rather than help the new mother, and she had obstructed and scowled and snarled until she could no longer bear it.
Eventually, she had sought refuge from everything. In bed she didn’t have to deal with all the horrible feelings that took control of her when she saw how happy the young couple were. She had never felt so lonely and so surplus to requirements as when the twins arrived. And she had never hated her maternal jealousy so much. It was like a straitjacket she had put on herself and didn’t have the ability to wriggle out of. Her desire for forgiveness and love was mixed with an obsessive need to suffer the disgust she knew perfectly well that she deserved.
When they exiled her to the small bedroom where the walls came at her from all sides and, especially, the baby boy’s daily crying corroded the mortar like acid, she had drugged herself with medication and sleep in an attempt to keep her nightmares at bay. She yearned to meet her beloved Silas in the Hereafter and find peace again.
On the day of the accident she had even prayed to die quietly in her sleep. This, too, she had confided in her cousin, who had wryly remarked that sleeping quietly had never really been Else’s style.
However, there was one thing that Else never told anyone. She harboured a dreadful suspicion about the accident which she couldn’t shake off:
Maria had desperately wanted a girl. Else had read so in a notebook she found at the bottom of a drawer in her bedside table. ‘Thoughts’, it said on the cover. Now Else knew, of course, that she shouldn’t read something that was so private, but the urge to penetrate the closed world of the young couple ultimately overcame her moral scruples.
Maria had wanted a girl and her wish had come true. It was another entry in the notebook which worried Else:
I’m so happy and grateful to have given birth to two healthy children. They’re a gift. And yet I’m eaten up by frustration. The responsibility for TWO lives feels completely overwhelming, though we’re two to share it. Jens is wonderful, and I love him more than life itself. But he’s also, well, Jens… At times he disappears into himself. And God knows his mother is no help.
Will we manage? Will I? The boy is a bad sleeper. He cries a lot. It keeps me awake and drives me crazy. In my darkest moments I wish we had only had the girl.
Else couldn’t make herself articulate her suspicion to herself or to her cousin. And yet it tormented her increasingly as time went on.
It would be more than six years before she returned to the Head. During all that time she didn’t hear a word from them. They never replied to her letters and, as they had yet to have a telephone installed, she was forced to ring the pub in Korsted, where it seemed they no longer went. One day when Else called, the landlord told her that Jens Horder was rarely in town these days. Else was genuinely worried, and the sight she encountered on the Head when she got out of the taxi did nothing to assuage her fears.
It was as if they had given up completely. The mess around the buildings was worse than ever. And it wasn’t the only thing that was taking up space.
When Maria came outside to see who the unexpected visitor was Else barely recognized her daughter-in-law.
Maria’s once so attractive figure had grown shapeless and she seemed horribly burdened by it. She had to support herself against the wall to walk down the two steps leading to the yard from the front door, and her light gait had been replaced by an ugly waddling.
Else tried to hide her shock.
‘Hello, Maria,’ she said in a friendly voice. ‘It’s been a long time.’