Ane Riel - Resin

On the death of his father, Mogens assumed the main responsibility for the carpentry business. The orders kept coming in. It was well known that the sons had not only inherited their father’s business but also his talent.

Not that many people were in need of a carpenter these days, though. Buying new things had become so easy, but the islanders tried to help. For that reason they were prepared to overlook the fact that Mogens had started to drive the pickup truck without it being one hundred per cent legal for him to do so. After all, he was a perfectly competent driver. And when one day it was Jens driving the pickup truck down Korsted high street, with a couple of newly fixed windows, it was simply regarded as a natural progression.

The years flowed into one another.

Else had always been able to see her husband in her younger son, but as Jens grew older the similarities became more obvious. His mouth took on the exact same shape as his father’s: a wistful line, rising to a hint of a smile at the corners, like the expression on a much-loved teddy bear that was delighted with all the hugs it gets but miserable that it can’t give any back. Jens had also inherited his father’s gaze. His warm, almost pitch-black eyes had the same dreamy light.

Jens, however, had grown more introverted than Silas had ever been. His remoteness and chronic silence bordered on avoidance of human contact, and this worried Else. She desperately wanted him to let her into his world, make her his confidante, as his father had once been. To show her the same trust. And at the same time she was oddly frightened of what she might find in there. In the darkness. It was as if something had broken inside him, and she wasn’t sure that it could be fixed.

Mogens didn’t appear to have been affected by the death of his father in the same way. He seemed to put grief and the loss behind him relatively quickly and move on. He was different to Jens; that much was already clear. His approach was more rational. He had dreams, of course. But he would see those dreams through. And he possessed a sense of order, which Jens lacked. Mogens’s corner of the workshop was as neat and tidy as his younger brother’s was messy and disordered.

Else Horder never stopped wondering how two brothers could turn out so differently. Ever since Mogens had been a little boy, she had sensed in him an urge to achieve, grow, expand and break the mould in everything he did. He ran and jumped, preferably in the light; he was in constant motion towards new adventures.

Jens didn’t jump. Nor did he break any moulds. He preferred to just be where he was, and preferably on his own. When he worked he became one with the thing he was working on; he could become so absorbed by it that he would carry on working even though it had long since grown so dark you’d have thought it would be practically impossible to do so.

Late one night Else found him sleeping soundly under the lathe on a bed of wood shavings. There was a profound innocence about Jens as he lay there in the darkness, breathing quietly. At that moment she thought that her younger son must be the gentlest person in the world.

In the time that followed Silas’s death, the knowledge of Mogens’s skill and sense of duty had allowed Else to hope that, together, the three of them would be able to navigate the future. However, she began to worry when, after a few years, Mogens started leaving the Head more and more often. In the end he was going off to the main island every day under some pretext or other; she could never quite fathom why. The pickup truck would usually be empty, whether he was coming or going. She began chiding him, but that only made him defiant and resulted in him staying away even more.

One day she called out to him as he was walking towards the pickup truck, before he had time to drive off. Jens heard them from the workshop, where he was hunched over a chest of drawers that needed new feet.

There was a bang as his mother slammed open the kitchen window.

‘Mogens, are you off again? Without any deliveries? Why don’t you lend your brother a hand in the workshop? Where are you off to this time? Is this about a girl? Why don’t you stay here and make yourself useful? Jens tells me you have spruces to fell today. You’re not going to let him do it all on his own? Again?’

Jens had heard it all before, more times than he could count, but today the sounds were different. Mogens’s footsteps in the gravel stopped before they reached the pickup truck. Then it seemed like he had turned around.

Jens raised his head and listened out.

‘Mogens?’ Else called out. ‘Stay right there. Who do you think you are? What do you think you’re doing? What are you doing with that bicycle…?’

‘I’m suffocating here.’

Jens heard a few small hops and then the sound of a bicycle being pedalled through the gravel. The crunching turned into a distant rattling and was soon eclipsed by the singing of a lark. When Jens looked out of the window, he could see nothing but the empty pickup truck parked in the blindingly bright noon sun.

Some months later they received a letter containing some money. There was an ‘M’ on the back of the envelope. The next month another letter arrived, and this continued month after month. Else Horder paid her bills on time; Jens didn’t say anything. Nobody asked any questions. Including the postman, who wondered privately about the widow and the younger son and the letters from ‘M’.

Else Horder’s health began to suffer. She suffered pain. In her ‘rectum’, as the doctor put it. At times she would bleed and she had to wear a device under her clothing, which embarrassed her. She struggled to manage the housework, something she had otherwise enjoyed and had made a point of doing diligently all her life. It upset her, and the bitterness, in turn, caused her even more pain.

There were days when she couldn’t even get out of bed.

It became clear that they could no longer manage on their own, so Else decided to bring in hired help. As long as Jens continued making some money from repairs, they could afford it. The girl could live in the room that Mogens had furnished for himself in the workshop building; it even had its own entrance from the yard. It was known as ‘the white room’ because Mogens had insisted that it should be light.

Else never once doubted that the monthly brown envelopes from M would continue, and they did indeed arrive with a regularity which she appreciated. However, she didn’t have the energy to consider whether she should feel grateful to her older son.

A pretty young woman from the mainland applied for the position. She was the only applicant, incidentally, because the local young women preferred to travel to the mainland to look for work. Many of them had also started dressing in a way that made Else uncomfortable. She especially disapproved of the many of them who chose not to wear a bra under their blouse. Else didn’t regard herself as old-fashioned, and a pair of wide bell bottoms on the Head wouldn’t upset her, but she drew the line at the lack of a bra. There had to be limits to frivolity.

Maria Svendsen was a gift from heaven: she wore a modest bra and sensible trousers.

Maria normally wore her hair up so it wouldn’t get in the way, but when she didn’t her long blonde hair settled in small, soft waves around her face and neck. Jens happened to see it one day when he glanced through the window of the white room. He quickly looked away but was unable to forget the image of Maria with her hair down, smiling at him through the window.

Every now and then she would visit him in the workshop and they would chat about the weather and the furniture. She skilfully avoided speaking out of turn about his mother, but even so Jens soon surmised that Else was hard to please.