Resin

by Ane Riel

  Something had to give, and Else had set the process in motion by ordering and paying for a skip, which would arrive just after New Year. Jens hadn’t suspected that anything was amiss. He had just dropped her off at the post office one day and picked her up a little later, as they had arranged. With some help from the post-office lady, Else had found a skip company, called it from the post-office telephone and sent them a cheque immediately. It was pricey, but necessary, Else thought. She knew that the cheque wouldn’t bounce because her ever-helpful cousin had insisted on making a contribution towards unforeseen expenses. Else was sure that Karen would understand about the skip, if only she could get in touch with her. Else was starting to worry. Karen wasn’t answering her phone. She hoped nothing bad had happened to her.

  As for ordering the skip behind Jens’s back, Else didn’t feel entirely comfortable about that; she was aware this would be seen as serious meddling. But once the skip arrived surely it would represent an opportunity, she thought, to start clearing up and to bring a breath of fresh air into the house. Perhaps it was the only way she could help her son out of his chaos.

  Else would have loved nothing more than to stay on and help out for as long as it took, but she didn’t have much faith that she would be allowed to. She had resigned herself to thinking that perhaps it would be better if she wasn’t there to interfere.

  But she couldn’t be so passive when it came to Liv. Else had decided to contact the authorities, but not until the New Year. For now, they would just have to try to make the most of Christmas.

  When she finally managed to rid herself of her troubling thoughts and fall asleep, she did so to the sounds of constant sawing and hammering in the workshop next door.

  The night before Christmas Eve they ate in silence. Else had insisted on shopping and cooking, and she had an inkling that she had only been permitted to do so because Jens’s jaw was so clenched that he was incapable of replying with anything other than a nod.

  She had tried and failed to catch her son’s eye all day. Once he had helped himself to a cup of coffee that morning, he kept well out of her way. As had Maria. She had clammed up like an oyster and didn’t say even good morning when she came downstairs, but her red and swollen eyes were evidence that she had had a troubled night. During the day Else could hear her potter about the house, and she saw her move laboriously around the barn, but she never showed herself in the kitchen. That was probably just as well; given how little space there was, the two of them were unlikely to fit in at the same time. Liv came and went, but even she seemed as if she didn’t know what to do with herself. At one point, Else watched her disappear into the forest with her bow across her back. She didn’t come back for several hours.

  This reminded Else of a time when she had stood in the same kitchen, watching her sons disappear in between the same trees. In those days Mogens was always the one who returned first, and he would usually be heading purposefully towards the workshop with some new idea in his head. Jens would stay away for so long that she would get worried. When he finally came back and she asked him what he had been doing, all he would say was that he had been with the trees. Silas had never worried about him.

  They were having meatloaf for dinner. Jens had loved his mother’s meatloaf ever since he was a boy, and Else harboured a slender hope that he might sense her goodwill through the food.

  If he did, he hid it well. He ate, but apparently more out of hunger or habit than pleasure. Else wasn’t even sure that he noticed what he was eating because he stared at the table most of the time and moved his fork without looking at it. He seemed to have aged greatly overnight.

  No one was interested in the bottle of wine on the table.

  Maria also ate her dinner, but as usual without saying a word, and she completely ignored the fact that Liv was poking at the meatloaf suspiciously and sorting pieces of carrot, leek and onion into small piles on her plate so that quite a lot of the meatloaf dropped on to the tablecloth.

  Else was about to rebuke the girl when she realized that, if she did, those might be the only words spoken at dinner and so she changed tack. ‘Are you looking forward to Christmas, Liv?’ she asked her granddaughter instead.

  Liv looked up from the chaos that was unfurling on her plate. She nodded and smiled for a moment like a child who looks forward to Christmas. Oh, thank God, a glimpse of normality, Else thought, and returned her smile.

  There were no protests when Else volunteered to clear the table and wash up. It seemed everyone had expected her to. In a matter of seconds Jens and Maria had retired to the workshop and bedroom respectively, and Liv was playing in the living room. Else could hear the child chattering to herself.

  Before she retired to her own room, she drank a glass of wine at the kitchen table. She had done the dishes, but it was a kitchen which was impossible to clean. The darkness penetrated everywhere.

  She started to cry.

  Outside, an owl hooted.

  ★

  When Jens told his daughter that darkness swallowed up all pain, he hadn’t been completely untruthful. He felt more comfortable in the darkness, when it enveloped him in its warm embrace. Somewhere in his memories he felt his father’s arms in the coffin, his warm breath against his neck, the scent of freshly planed wood. Understanding, trust, safety.

  Jens knew exactly where everything was in their bedroom when it was dark. He didn’t want to wake Maria, so he slipped carefully out of bed without turning on the light or stepping on the books or bumping into the sewing machine or the empty aquarium or a single one of the boxes which pretty much blocked the path from the bed to the door. And he moved quietly along the passage, down the stairs, through the hallway, and out through the front door.

  The workshop lay diagonally in front of him like a rectangular shadow in the early dawn. The white room, where his mother was asleep, was at the far end. He had never thought how misleading the name ‘white room’ had grown over time. Of all the things to come into his mind at this moment.

  A cold wind blew from the forest, carrying with it a few snowflakes, like a fleeting premonition of a white Christmas. He gasped, a little startled, when he stepped on a small spruce decoration which had blown from the nail on the door to the white room. He wasn’t used to there being anything on the ground in that spot. The pillow with which he intended to suffocate his mother was tucked under his arm.

  The door wasn’t locked. Else and Silas had never bothered locking the doors on the Head, and Jens wondered whether she ever locked her door in town. All those people. Someone might turn up and do something, take something.

  He always locked the door.

  He could hear loud snoring from the bed. It was a familiar sound to Jens, and he found it both comforting and repellent. Right now, it was helping him by acting as a sort of beacon and an assurance that his mother was fast sleep. He stepped cautiously inside and closed the door behind him with a faint click. He stood very still for several minutes, listening to her snoring while his eyes adjusted to the darkness inside. Contours slowly started to emerge, including the outline of his daughter getting up noiselessly from the other side of the bed.

  ‘Liv?’ he whispered. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Liv walked across to her father with silent footsteps, and he knelt down in front of her so they were at eye level.

  ‘I’m practising for when I next go out at night,’ she whispered enthusiastically. ‘I’m getting really good, Dad. Look at all the stuff in her bags. There’s so much.’

  Then she put her hand on his knee. ‘But what are you doing in here?’ she asked, with a puzzled look at the pillow. ‘Are you going to sleep here?’

  ‘No, but I …’ Jens hesitated. Sending her away felt wrong. In some inexplicable sense it even seemed right that she was there. She was used to being involved in everything.

  ‘Liv, do you remember how killing the old stag was the right thing to do?’

  She nodded eagerly.

  ‘At this moment in
time, killing your granny is the right thing to do.’

  Jens studied his daughter’s face. Her eager nodding was instantly replaced by complete immobility. He could see her shining eyes.

  ‘OK,’ she said at last. Her whisper had taken on a pensive quality it hadn’t had before. Something not entirely childlike, something approaching an adult understanding. ‘But why?’

  ‘She has lived a long and good life, and she’s ready to move on.’

  ‘Yes, but … I mean, she’s your mum? She told me so the other day, and you said that it was true.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is it all right to kill your mum?’

  ‘Liv, if I don’t do it, she’ll take you away from us. Then you wouldn’t live here any more. Your mum and I wouldn’t be able to cope with that … Would you?’

  Liv shook her head firmly. Over in the bed the deep snoring continued with soothing regularity.

  Then Liv placed her hands on her father’s shoulders, leaned towards him and whispered into his ear.

  ‘Then I guess you’d better do it.’

  Jens put his arm around his daughter and planted a soft kiss on her cheek. ‘Right, darling,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll do it so quickly that she won’t feel a thing.’

  ‘And besides, it’s dark.’

  Jens nodded, released his hold of her and slowly got up.

  ‘But, Dad,’ Liv whispered, grabbing his arm, ‘how are you going to do it?’

  There was silence for a moment. Total silence, because Else Horder’s snoring had suddenly stopped. Now they could hear the faint sound of snowflakes striking the wall like soft crystals.

  They heard her stir, pull the duvet over her and exhale a sigh, which could be anything between sleeping and being awake.

  They waited.

  Finally her breathing grew heavier, until it culminated in the usual deep inhale.

  And Jens finally answered his daughter.

  ‘I’ll do it with this.’ He grabbed the pillow firmly. Then he looked at Liv again. He could see her clearly in the darkness now, but he was aware that she could see him even more clearly. Her night vision was impressive. ‘Perhaps you had better leave?’

  ‘No, I want to be here.’ she replied without hesitation. Liv could be very strong-minded.

  Jens felt a strange joy in his stomach. He wanted her to be there, this little spirit who always made him feel less alone in the world. He was glad that they would have this together, just like all the other things they shared.

  ‘Then go and stand over there,’ he whispered, and nodded towards the far end of the bed. ‘Don’t get too close. She’ll probably flop about a bit.’

  ‘Like the flounders?’

  ‘Yes, just like the flounders.’

  Else Horder lay on her back with her hands folded on top of her duvet as if in prayer. It was almost as if she had heard their conversation and wanted to make the job easier for her son.

  It took only a moment.

  Meanwhile, her granddaughter clutched an invisible hand in the darkness.

  I didn’t know you were there until you told me so afterwards. You were never meant to be. I think I would have stopped him, had I known that you would be there.

  But then, it had to be done. It was our only way out.

  I want you to know, Liv. You are not an accomplice in this, even though you witnessed it. But I am. My only wish was to be left in peace. I knew what he had planned and I did nothing to stop him. More than anything it was my wishing which drove him to do it. He’s not a killer, Liv.

  The Newcomer

  The pub in Korsted was situated in the bend of the road right after the butcher’s and the undertaker’s when leaving the town heading north. It wasn’t a big pub, but it had been the only one on the island since the pub in the south was turned into a village store. During the winter months most of the rooms were empty, but loyal regulars made sure to keep the business alive. The islanders didn’t want to lose their local. Not only was the food in a class of its own, the pub also served a variety of other purposes: it was the social hub for this part of the island. It was where you would cycle to use the telephone, if you were one of those people who had yet to have one of their own installed, but more importantly people would stop by to catch up on the latest discreetly uttered gossip or to watch the colour television in the back room. Especially on Saturdays, when the pools football matches were on. Whenever the landlord rang the bell to signal that a goal had been scored in an English League game, it was time for another round in the public bar.

  The pub held the locals together and the half-timber held the red bricks together, even those that were starting to crumble. The thatched roof was surely good for another twenty years or so, people thought. It was good straw. But the landlord really ought to clear the moss on the north side before the moisture got through.

  Roald had taken over the pub when his uncle died suddenly of a heart attack. The opportunity had come as a godsend. When his aunt’s letter lay open on the kitchen table in his flat on the mainland, he realized that the feeling that had been nagging him these last few years could now be addressed. She was pleading with him, but without expecting a yes. I don’t want to sell the pub before I’ve asked you, Roald.

  It was purely a question of daring: take the leap, man up, quit his job, pack his stuff, drive the car to the port and take the small ferry to a new life. He was divorced; they had no children and so there was no issue of custody. Sadly. If only his sperm had been more cooperative, he might have had both children and his wife today.

  Now she was the mother of two small cherubs and irritatingly happy with a long-haired national treasure who sang sentimental songs about love and world peace. Roald hated himself for hating him.

  As a desperate countermove Roald had decided to marry his job. He taught at a sixth-form college. It wasn’t a terribly happy arrangement, but it had the obvious advantage that it helped pass the time. In truth, his time was swallowed up by lesson planning, homework marking, staff meetings and inane gossip about the head teacher’s new house and his colleagues’ affairs with one another.

  In time a small scab began to form on his wound.

  If only it could get a little more air, this scab would harden and fall off. He was sure of it. And that was the thought which had been nagging him. He needed air. Any kind of air except the one inside the staff room or indeed anywhere in the whole town. That air was filled with smoke, and school routines ground him into the tarmac so that he had to drag himself, wheezing, up to his third-floor flat with his shopping bags and guilty conscience about the cigarettes and the whisky and all the lovely girls he didn’t have the energy to invite home and undress. He was starting to regret the time he never took, the delicious food he never cooked, the good books he never read, the dreams he could no longer remember. It was as if it had all come to nothing.

  There was only one answer.

  ★

  The ferry man with the grey beard scrutinized Roald discreetly when he declined the offer of a return ticket. His gaze also took in the car which was packed to the rafters with bags, a house plant, books, a ladder bookcase that had split and yellowed in the places where the books hadn’t kept the wood virgin pale. On the passenger seat was a box with a radio and a stack of cassette tapes. Was the driver of this car being categorized as the lost townie he was or deemed a potential asset for the island?

  The ferry man gave nothing away. He merely took the money Roald passed through the car window and stuffed it into the black money belt he wore around his waist, then pointed backwards to the open deck with one hand and waved the next car forward with the other. The rust-red metal ramp rattled under the Simca when the new publican drove on board.

  On a lonely road with crops as far as the eye could see, Roald stopped the car and got out. The warm island air hit him as if the sky had slipped into his lungs in that moment and inflated them. Soon the scent found its way to that place in his nose which harbours the strongest memories and tickled hi
m with feather-light reminiscences of bicycle rides and cows and grown-ups skimming stones along the water’s edge and eating freshly caught fish as the sun went down.

  He lay down on his back in a sea of barley and glowing poppies and took everything in. A lark singing energetically suddenly filled the world. He spotted it eventually, a tiny flickering dot suspended high up in the blue, carrying the whole sky.

  They got used to him after a few years. The regulars.

  They had turned up at the reopening, and his aunt’s heartfelt introduction of her nephew had evidently worked wonders. It was clear that she was well liked. And it was just as clear that the locals were sad that she was moving to the mainland to be near her family. But all those grandchildren exerted a strong pull, and her rheumatism was wearing her down. And she missed Oluf. People understood.

  However, they didn’t understand why Roald arrived on his own. Divorce wasn’t done on the island. You stuck it out and slept in separate bedrooms if it made things easier and the house was big enough. You would never discuss personal problems openly, and certainly not with people you didn’t know well. Any talk of private matters would happen only between trusted friends, and confessions would limit themselves to a few muffled words that didn’t reveal too much.

  For that same reason, it might not have been Roald’s smartest move to introduce himself as a divorced sixth-form teacher and talk frankly about how his open marriage hadn’t worked out. Perhaps he shouldn’t have revealed that he was thinking of writing a novel one day either, or that he was partial to skinny-dipping. But at the time he had thought it wise to lay his cards on the table from day one so that they knew what they were dealing with. Today he would have left most of it out.

  Even so, the locals had given him a chance – mainly because they had nowhere else to meet. And in time they began to accept him. He even suspected a couple of them harboured considerable sympathy for him. It was mutual.