Ane Riel - Resin

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.

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.

I think white hair might be a bit like grass. That once it takes root, it spreads. We certainly noticed that Dad got white hairs once Granny had moved in. Not over a few days, but overnight. When he came into the kitchen the morning after I heard them talk about me, he had plenty of white hairs in between the dark ones. Even in his beard. Carl was startled by it.

This was just before Christmas.

Before Granny arrived, I’d had the best autumn ever. Dad took me fishing for flounder. It was the first time I was allowed to come with him, and I was bursting with excitement at going fishing, but perhaps even more excited about being all alone with Dad in the dinghy. We talked about everything out there. He told me that fish didn’t drown in the water but that they choked when they came up into the air.

That sounded topsy-turvy to me.

He also told me that we helped the fish by killing them before the air choked them. And when we caught a fine, flat flounder with two eyes in completely the wrong place he showed me how. He hit it over the head with a club he’d brought along specially. At first I thought it was one of the most awful things I had ever seen.

‘There, Liv. It’s dead now,’ he said when he had whacked it. Only it couldn’t be, because it was still flopping about. I was horrified. I pointed at the fish and opened my mouth, but I couldn’t get a word out.

‘It’s only its nerves that causes it to flop,’ Dad said. ‘It’s completely normal. It really is dead, and I promise you that it feels nothing. We’ve done the best we could for that fish, so we can eat it with a clear conscience tonight.’

‘But, Dad…’

‘Yes?’

‘Will the flounder come back?’

‘Come back?’

‘Yes, like the leaves… and the grass and the butterflies and the fox and the baker. You always taught me that everything comes back.’