Maria nodded and proffered a strained smile. Else couldn’t decide whether it was in response to the sight of her mother-in-law or her own physical challenges.
‘Good afternoon, Else. What a… surprise. I didn’t know… Let me get Jens.’ The taxi which had brought Else from the ferry to the Head turned around slowly and disappeared down the gravel road towards the Neck and the main island. Maria looked after it briefly. ‘We don’t get many visitors these days,’ she said.
‘But surely the postman calls?’ Else said, not knowing which response she would prefer.
‘Yes, every now and then,’ Maria said, without looking at her. ‘We still get the… well, you know. I’ll just go and get Jens.’
Else thought about Mogens. She had heard nothing from her older son for years, but she was delighted to hear that he still sent money to the Head. It had only ever said ‘Horder, the Head’ on the envelope, and that could be any Horder at the Head, mother as well as brother.
She herself had written ‘Jens Horder’ on all of hers.
The door to the workshop closed behind Maria and the steady hammering which had sounded from inside stopped abruptly.
Else’s gaze followed a solitary snowflake that floated through the air until it hit the ground and disappeared. It was clear that no fresh gravel had been strewn across the farmyard for years, and most of the shingle was hidden by soil now. Grass and broken straw stuck up in many places, evidence that the yard must be rather overgrown in the summer. She looked around at the piles of junk which were steadily filling the space between the buildings and she shuddered in the cool air. A black cat emerged between some spare engine parts. When it spotted Else it slunk away immediately.
Shortly afterwards Jens appeared.
Else hadn’t seen her son since he drove her to the ferry on the terrible day when she was exiled from her own home. Back then she had wondered whether he would in fact drop her off at the ferry or, at the last minute, at the junkyard, which wasn’t far from the port. In which case it would have been the first time in years that he had dropped something off at the junkyard instead of bringing something back.
He hadn’t gained weight like his wife, quite the opposite, but his beard had grown considerably. The small moustache had turned into a dense, dark full beard and his hair reached below his ears. He wore his cap, as always. Else felt strangely conflicted at the sight of Jens, who now looked more like his father rather than the child she remembered.
‘Good afternoon, Mum,’ he said, and gave her an awkward kiss on her cheek. She wanted to embrace him, but he quickly stepped back. ‘We weren’t expecting you,’ he said, looking at the two big cases she had set down.
Else didn’t have the energy to wonder whether he was lying or if he genuinely hadn’t read the last two letters she had sent.
‘I’ll go back again,’ she said. ‘But I hope that I may be allowed to stay here for a little while…’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘I wanted to see how you were doing.’
‘We’re fine,’ Jens said without hesitation. ‘And how are things with…?’
‘Cousin Karen. I really enjoy living with her, thank you. To my surprise, I like the city.’
‘It can be very nice… the city… especially in December,’ Maria said, which Else interpreted as an invitation to return to the delights of the city at her earliest convenience.
‘How long were you intending to stay?’ Jens’s gaze slipped momentarily to the far end of the workshop, where the door to the white room was. Parts of a slurry spreader were lying outside it.
His mother shrugged. ‘Well, I was thinking that it depends…’
At that moment what it depended on came running from behind the barn. She had been out in the field.
‘Dad, is the ram allowed…?’ On seeing Else, the girl stopped in her tracks. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked, and pointed at her granny with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity. Mostly suspicion.
Else was about to reply but was intercepted by her son. ‘That’s a lady who’ll be staying with us for a while. What about the ram?’
The girl’s eyes widened. She was clearly not used to guests staying over.
‘What about the ram, Liv?’
‘He’s knocked over one of the… But where’s she going to stay, Dad?’ Liv couldn’t take her eyes off the lady who would be staying with them for a while. Else studied her granddaughter with a lump in her throat.
The child would appear to be healthy, thank God. She took after her father more than her mother. There wasn’t a single gram of excess fat on her body, her hair was cut short, her eyes were dark and intense. Most people would probably take her for a boy because there was nothing girlish about her movements or clothing. She looked like she lived in a pair of worn jeans that didn’t appear to have been washed for a long time. Her plimsolls had probably been white once but had clearly never been whitened, and her blouse was pretty much in tatters. She carried a knife in a leather sheath which dangled from her belt as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and judging by the condition of the wooden handle, it saw frequent use.
‘The lady will stay in the white room. I’ll just carry her cases over there, then I’ll be back and come and check on the ram. You can move the horse round the back, if you want to.’
Liv turned around and disappeared with a happy gallop while Jens picked up his mother’s luggage and marched purposefully towards the furthest end of the wooden building.
Else stared after him.
‘I’ll make us some coffee,’ she heard behind her. And Maria walked with heavy footsteps back inside the house.
Else’s fear that chaos would also reign indoors proved correct.
She struggled to find space for her cases in the white room, where there was very little white to be seen, now that things were piled up along the walls. Silas’s beautiful bedroom furniture was hidden behind half-finished projects from the workshop and what looked like rubbish from the junkyard. Here was everything, from tins and chandeliers to skis and pillows and old picture frames. Everything was in a wretched condition. She couldn’t imagine what use they might ever make of any of it.
Else had considered asking for her old room on the first floor, but when she saw it she dropped the idea immediately. She preferred the white room’s forest of objects to the startled-looking elk head staring at her from the foot of the bed in which she had once slept.
Light and Air
I let the horse into the pen. Usually, I’d have spent many happy hours brushing it and fussing over it with Carl, but on that day all I could do was sit down and stare at it while it wandered about, pawing the ground a short distance from me. All I could think about was the lady. No one had ever just turned up and moved in before. People from the main island came by to get things fixed, but that happened less and less, and they always drove off straightaway. And anyway, Dad said he preferred to pick up and return their stuff himself. He didn’t trust them.
I didn’t trust them either. I trusted my dad.
He had also started driving the Christmas trees to a yard outside Korsted to sell them there rather than have people come to us.
The lady who had turned up out of nowhere was a proper old lady with a small handbag over her arm and a coat with shiny buttons, and white hair. We had only ever seen ladies like that down on the main island. Carl was always a bit scared of them if their hair was too white, but he only ever said so to me. I’d tell him it was nothing to worry about and repeat what Dad had said: ‘White hair is completely natural. We’ll all have it one day. Unless we die before we get old.’
Carl and I kept a close eye on each other’s hair, not to mention Dad’s and Mum’s. When the lady who turned out to be Granny arrived, we had yet to find a single white hair on the Head – except for the animals, of course, and the man who arrived on a three-wheel scooter to ask Dad to make an urn for his wife and a pipe for himself.