Ane Riel - Resin

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.

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.’

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.