Helle Helle: This Should Be Written in the Present Tense

Lars came over a few times a week after his shifts at the nursery. He wore a green anorak and combat trousers, his gardening outfit he called it. His job was transplanting seedlings and potting, thinning out the greenhouses and serving customers. He liked serving customers the best, it made the time go faster. But he enjoyed being outside in the fresh air as well, surrounded by fields with a little seedling between his fingers, and getting paid for it.

We sat on the front step with bottles of beer in our hands. Per had lit a cigarette, he didn’t smoke that much any more. Lars coughed and wafted the smoke away. He put his hand on my arm fleetingly when he stopped. I had a woolly jumper on, Ruth had given it me. She’d knitted it for herself years ago, only now it was too tight over her bum. It was blue and white, an Icelandic pattern, and really comfy. Lars got up and stood in front of us with his beer in one hand.

‘Who wants to chuck a ball about?’

‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’ said Per.

‘You’ll have to carry me off if I’m not,’ said Lars and laughed. He reached his hand out to Per, Per dropped his cigarette on the ground and crushed it under his trainer, then he took hold and Lars pulled him up. His bottle wobbled on the step, I only just managed to catch it.

The game was up against the wall in what we called the barn. I went with them, over to the sunlounger with the rest of the garden furniture at the far end. It was covered in straw. I brushed it away and sat down. They began whipping the little ball back and forth between the wall and the floor with their bare hands, whacking it hard with their open palms, leaping and lunging. I felt a bit out of place on the lounger, half lying down with my arm over my forehead to protect against any stray balls. They were soon warmed up and sweating. They stopped for a break and pulled off their jumpers, and dumped them at my feet. Per bent down and gave me a quick kiss. He tasted of cigarette.

I began to feel cold. After they’d got started again and played for a while I got up and crossed the yard. My wellies were worn thin, I could feel the cobbles under my feet. The lawn in front of the house was spongy and full of moss. Someone had draped a tennis sock over the boxwood by the patio, I went over and picked it up. I could see Hans-Jakob on the sofa, lying down reading the paper, he was home early that day. He saw me and smiled. I carried on round the back and through the bushes. At the edge of the garden a pheasant flew up with a cry, it scraped the top of a bare elderberry bush pathetically. I went for a little walk on the bumpy field. When I came back to the garden Lars was standing by the bushes smiling at me with his anorak over his arm.

‘Been for a hike?’

‘Yes, I was a bit cold. I’m warmer now, though.’

‘So now you’re taking your clothes off?’ he said, and nodded at the tennis sock. I held it up and we looked at it.

‘That’s right,’ I said, and then we laughed.

‘That jumper suits you,’ he said. ‘Did Ruth knit it?’

‘Yes, it was hers.’

‘Lovely people.’

‘I know. I like it here a lot.’

‘I don’t blame you.’

He put his arm under mine all of a sudden and then we crossed through the garden and out onto the cobbles, Per came towards us in his T-shirt.

‘Look, I found a sock,’ I said, and waved it about a bit too jauntily.

‘Here’s your sweetheart,’ said Lars to Per, letting go of my arm and giving me a nudge towards him.

‘So I see,’ said Per.

One day I went for a bike ride while Per was having a nap. I cycled aimlessly in the direction of the nursery, it was late afternoon. The forsythias were in bloom in a few small front gardens. I was soon too hot in my jumper. I stopped to take it off, then carried on in my T-shirt. A smell of seaweed and salt water hung over the fields, they must have been out fertilising. There was a song in my head for a confirmation party. I tried to think of a rhyme for pony, but all I could come up with was stony, phony, bony. The road passed through a little wood, I felt a chill on my arms as I passed through the shade, but then I came out the other side and into the warm air again. I stopped by a solitary tree at the side of the road and folded my jumper tighter on the pannier rack. The sun was very bright. I closed my eyes and turned my face upwards, and stood there for a while. I could hear myself breathing, everything turned red behind my eyelids. The bird we called the bicycle pump chirped somewhere close by, further away I heard the noise of a tractor. I thought: Here I am with only myself. Apart from the sun and the tractor and the bicycle pump. There was a warm breeze against my skin, and my trainers fitted my feet just right, I’d never noticed before. A car approached and I let it go by, my eyes still closed. I wiggled my toes. I stretched my fingers out from the handlebars. By the time I opened my eyes all my thoughts had left me. I got on the bike again and carried slowly on, empty and content. At the nursery I turned down the gravel track, I walked the last bit and leaned the bike against some stacked-up sacks of peat. Lars was in the evergreens behind the goats, I could see his anorak. I looked at the hardy perennials, the grasses and the cactuses, and read all the names. Then I went down to join him, he turned round with a smile, pulled off his glove and gave me his warm, dry hand. He showed me a mahonia shrub, it was a different thing altogether from the tree variety. It was in bloom, with fragrant yellow flowers. We talked for a while. He walked me back to my bike and all the way up the gravel track, where we talked some more.

The library didn’t have anything on sleeping problems and I couldn’t bring myself to ask if they would order something from another branch. I wandered round the shelves. The librarian was on the phone at her desk, she was having a long and convoluted discussion about storage. She scribbled on a piece of paper with a biro while she spoke. Every now and then she held the pen up in front of her eyes and rolled it between her fingers. Her legs stuck out from under the desk. I recognised the socks, they were the same ones they had in the bookshop window. I found a handbook on literature, only it turned out to be reference only. Instead, I took out a stack of women’s magazines and a book of poetry by a girl from Reersø. Then I went out again.

There was a commotion in the street. A lorry from the council had stopped in the middle of the road with its exhaust fuming, it looked like the driver had gone to the chemist’s. Behind it was a rubbish truck that couldn’t get past, two irate binmen stood in their overalls agreeing with a pedestrian that it wasn’t on. The pedestrian’s dog had seen something, it was barking madly and straining on the lead. A man in a car blew his horn rhythmically. At the bakery, the assistant stood watching on the step outside. I stopped at the window and looked at the eclairs and the puff pastries with cream.

‘Be right with you,’ she said, and opened the door for me. I hadn’t actually thought of buying anything.

‘What a kerfuffle,’ she said.

She was about the same age as me. It looked like she might have worked there for quite a while, the way she rearranged the teacakes and brushed away the crumbs. I decided on a pastry snail. As I put the change in my purse the door opened and a stout woman in cropped trousers came in with some difficulty. She leaned over the counter.

‘How much are your Linzer tortes?’

‘Five fifty.’

‘How much are your raspberry slices?’

‘Five fifty as well.’

‘In that case, I think I’ll have a raspberry slice.’