Ane Riel - Resin

She must also have been very clumsy because she kept bumping into things. One day she cried out when she bashed her big toe against the record player just inside the kitchen door. She didn’t think it belonged there, even though it had been there for as long as I could remember. But that was nothing compared to the scream she let out when she bumped into the bookcase in the bathroom and a whole crate of tuna in brine came crashing down on her head. Dad came running from the workshop to see what all the fuss was about. I remember him standing in the doorway, staring at her without saying anything, and her leaning against the sink staring back at him and shaking her head. Then he left. After all, he had seen for himself that her head was still attached to her neck, it was all in working order.

After a few days she stopped looking for a cardboard box of Christmas decorations which she felt sure had to be somewhere. Instead we made decorations from things I had found. We plaited hearts of brown paper from a roll in the scullery. They turned out amazing. I couldn’t work out why she would have preferred that we made them out of differently coloured paper. What was wrong with brown? And anyway, real hearts are quite brown.

She had brought Christmas presents from the mainland, she said, and I wondered whether it might be the small radio and the board game I had found in one of her cases. The things had been carefully wrapped in very shiny paper, and after I’d examined them I wrapped them up again in the exact same way, except that I wasn’t very good with the sticky tape.

When Dad brought in the tree and hoisted it up in the living room, I thought it was the finest Christmas tree I had ever seen. Carl agreed. The star that I had made from bicycle spokes glowed grey and fine right under the ceiling beam, and from the base of the trunk there was at least a metre to the floor, which left plenty of room for presents.

Christmas was a few days away, and I still didn’t know that the lady was my granny. In a way, I’m a bit sad that she never got to see our go-kart. Or her own.

Sometimes I’d join her in the kitchen early in the morning, trying to find a place to sit. I wasn’t scared of her, but Carl was a bit. I liked talking to her and her stroking my hair. And she smelled so nice.

She had some really exciting things in her luggage, which I spent a long time investigating when she wasn’t around. Besides the presents, I found things you applied to your face, and shoes and clothes the like of which I had never seen before. Lilac nylon tights and pale brown leather shoes. I had no idea such beautiful shoes existed.

The lady was always keen to hear what I’d been up to, and so I told her what I could remember. Maybe I’d made more arrows for my bow or explored the piles of things or helped with the animals. And one morning when she asked me why I was so sleepy I mentioned that I’d been out stag hunting. I didn’t mean to tell her; I’d promised Dad not to tell anyone what we did at night. We had even been extra careful with the pickup truck and left it further down the gravel road so she wouldn’t hear it start.

‘Do you often go out at night… rather than sleep?’ the lady then asked me. She gave me such a strange look that Carl nudged me to make me go outside with him. But I stayed where I was.

I thought long and hard about whether now was one of those times when you had to lie.

‘Carl does,’ I said eventually.

I liked hearing her talk about the mainland. It sounded like the city she lived in was enormous. I imagined that there must be a huge amount of stuff in it – probably more than we could ever find room for on the Head. She also talked a lot about there being children who played together over there. And that they all went to school, where they learned to read and write and do sums.

‘Tell me, Liv. Do your parents ever talk to you about you going to school? In Korsted?’

I already knew there was a school in Korsted. Sometimes when we drove past it I saw children in the playground behind the wall. Someone was always screaming and an adult was always telling someone off. And no one carried a dagger. There was nothing in the playground except tarmac and white stripes.

Dad said that he didn’t like it.

It was news to me that I was meant to go there.

‘Mum has already taught me to read and write,’ I said. ‘And Dad is teaching me to make things from other things and turn a club on the lathe and cast sinkers and arrowheads and build a meat press and set snares and flay rabbits. And it doesn’t hurt them as long as they die in the dark. And I also know the game where you go and get things without waking people up. Besides, I have a dagger, and I also play with that.’

She gave me another look and I started wondering if I had said too much. I was pretty sure I had. I wasn’t used to having to watch my tongue. It was exhausting.

‘I think it would be very good for you to go to school,’ she said eventually. ‘And leave your dagger at home.’

Now it was my turn to gawp. Carl ran to get Dad. I didn’t know what to say. But she didn’t seem able to stop.

‘Liv, I don’t think it’s good for you to live here on the Head with all this rubbish and dust and dirt. You might have an accident or fall ill… I think it would be better for you to get away for a bit. I’ll need to speak to your father about it.’

‘How do you really know my dad?’ I asked. I was starting to get very suspicious. Perhaps Carl had been right all along that there was something not quite right about her.

She hesitated for a second.

‘Your father is my son. I’m your granny.’

That made no sense at all. And Carl wasn’t there for me to check the facts with.

‘It was your grandfather, my husband, Silas, who taught your father to make all those beautiful things out of wood. And the cap that your father always wears… it once belonged to my father.’

The pancake started to burn.

‘…And we’ll have to talk about Carl,’ she went on, quickly taking the pan off the cooker.

‘But he’s not here,’ I said, hoping that Dad and Carl would turn up soon.

‘No, I know,’ she said. ‘But do you know where he is?’

That was the night I heard them talk in the living room while I listened behind the door. All three of them spoke, even Mum, and at some point Dad started shouting. I’ve never heard him shout like that before. The next morning his hair had started to turn white.

Christmas was only two days away, and very strange days they were.

No one really said anything. I think they were thinking. And so was I. About her wanting to take me with her to the mainland, about me going to school over there and meeting other children, and something about the authorities and a doctor who ought to visit and a container that she had ordered.

I clearly remember her saying that the place needed a thorough mucking-out . And I could understand why Dad got really upset about that, because he was always very careful to get all the muck away from the animals and out into the field where it could do some good.

Even so I found her a present. It was a small box that had a wonderful smell of tobacco. It was for keeping small things in, I thought. In the end I kept it for myself. I had found a book about butterflies for Mum, and for Dad I had collected a whole tin of resin. I also found a really beautiful red-and-yellow lump of resin, which was going to be his special present because it had a beetle inside it. If he kept it long enough, it might turn to amber, just like the lump with the ant he would usually keep in his pocket or put in a small hollow in the carpenter’s bench where he kept the hourglass. I hadn’t learned to count to a million years yet, but I did understand that it was a very long time.