Helle Helle: This Should Be Written in the Present Tense

‘Hello there.’

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Keeping warm all right?’

‘Just about. The wind’s a bit chilly,’ I said, and she nodded.

‘The autumn’s here now,’ she said as we walked by. I raised my hand in a wave behind my back and gave Lars a squeeze with the other. He hadn’t said anything, he didn’t until we got home, with rosy cheeks and fresh air in our hair. We took our jumpers off.

‘Who was that woman?’ he said.

‘She’s got a moped,’ I said.

‘I see,’ he said, and smiled.

‘It was nice to get out together. It didn’t hurt a bit,’ I said, and smiled back.

But that evening he lost his appetite. He picked at his potato salad, all he ate was half a sausage. He had a lot of reading to do for the following week, he’d hardly even started. He said he found it hard to concentrate in the bedsit when I was there with him. I could see that. I went and sat with my crossword at the wobbly table in the kitchen. The place smelled of something gone off, old meat or cold cuts, but I couldn’t get to the bottom of it. There was half a bag of flour with mites in it on a shelf, but that didn’t smell at all. I binned it and wiped the shelf. I opened the skylight and had a cup of coffee, then went back into the room, Lars was lying on the daybed with his eyes closed. I sat down. The duvet was warm. I began to touch him. At first he didn’t react, then he opened his eyes.

‘I can’t make you live like this,’ he said.

‘How do you mean?’ I said.

‘This. It’s no life. Stuck in here or the kitchen.’

‘I go into town. And we went for a walk today.’

‘I know, but still.’

‘I nearly got to Faxe the day before yesterday.’

‘Come off it.’

‘No, it’s true. Anyway, I decide for myself if I’ve got a life.’

‘But it’s my life too.’

‘Yes, but then it’s not a matter of whether you can make me live with it. Then it’s you. It’s you who doesn’t want it.’

‘It’s not exactly ideal, is it?’ he said, not wanting an answer. I turned away slightly and looked out at the night sky as if there was something important there.

‘Come here,’ he said, and pulled me down on top of him, he chafed the skin on my face with his stubble. I sucked his lower lip in and let go.

‘And then there’s the cabin trip next weekend, you’ll be all on your own,’ he said.

‘What trip’s that?’

‘To someone’s cabin. I don’t even know where it is.’

‘The whole class, you mean?’

‘That’s right.’

It was a strange week. The days ran together. I stood in the shower and thought about gains and losses. Someone kept using my shampoo all the time, the expensive one from the hairdresser’s, I had to start hiding it away at the back of the pinewood cupboard. I bought a new jacket for autumn, nylon with a padded lining. Lars said it looked good on me. I walked round the town in it. They’d started selling flapjacks at the petrol station for some reason. I bought one every day and had it for lunch. I went by the teacher training college. I didn’t go in, just stood at the end of the drive and stared. The lawns and benches were deserted. I tried to imagine what went on behind the thick, white walls. A caretaker stood painting a wooden board on two trestles over by an annexe, he waved to me with his brush.

They were going straight after college on the Friday. Lars took his sleeping bag with him that morning, he strapped it onto his pannier rack with an elastic cord. I stood in the kitchen with my head stuck out of the skylight and waved. In the afternoon I went for a walk. I went up to the college and saw him standing in a group in the car park. There weren’t that many of them. There was a girl with brown hair in an untucked blouse. She had something in her hand that she lifted up in the air, they all laughed and one of the others tried to snatch it. She jumped in the driver’s seat of a white car, so it might have been the car key. The engine started, and the others laughed. There was a chinking of bottles. Lars got in beside her. I turned and went along the edge of someone’s back garden onto a path that led away between two houses. A woman was out walking her dog. It stopped in front of me and I patted it.

When I came home I got my suitcase out of the storage room and packed my things together. I took a piece of paper from a folder but didn’t know what to write. I sat and looked around. I’d forgotten the pewter mug, it was on the table with some sprays in it. I took them out into the kitchen, threw them away and wiped the mug. Then I went back and put it in the suitcase, and began to cry. I cried for so long I was exhausted by the time I was finished. I lay down on the daybed and fell asleep. When I woke up it was evening. I went and splashed some cold water on my face, the guy from Egøje was playing Dire Straits. Not long after, I unpacked again and put everything back in its place. I cut two new sprays in the dim light of the yard.

A week later it was Lars’s turn to write. I found his letter in my crossword magazine when I came back from a tanning session late Friday afternoon. He said he was very sorry and that he’d moved back home to his parents’ until I found somewhere else. He wasn’t well, and now he had a doctor’s word for it. He didn’t know what more to say, he said to look after myself.

I opened the cupboard and sure enough most of his clothes were gone. It felt like a relief, only I didn’t know why. It hurt a lot too. I kept standing there staring at the half-empty shelves.

I found some lemon juice in a bottle in the communal kitchen. I mixed it with sugar and Bacardi, it tasted all right. I made a list of all my options on the back of the letter from Lars with a thick black pen. The world opened up as I wrote. But then I started crying anyway, I let my whole face go and stuck my lower lip out like a child. I punched the daybed, but it didn’t help, it was a foam mattress. I put some music on and sang along, I sang louder and louder and started to dance about from the corner unit to the door and back. It was like the dancing made me drunk on its own. Then there was a knock on the door, it was the driving instructor, he wanted to know if there was anything the matter. I said we were going out on the town and we’d be quiet now. That was all right then, he said.

I did my make-up and put the yellow dress on, it was a bit too summery, so I put a cardigan on top, with black tights and the strappy high heels, a little beaded clutch bag and my nylon jacket. I felt daft standing in the bar with a whisky. Mostly because of the clutch, but I couldn’t stand whisky either. I drank it in one go and ordered another. A guy in a lumberjacket nodded appreciatively across the counter. I looked away. I tried to look like someone who had plans. Two guys beside me laughed, I asked what they were laughing at, they said I looked like a bumblebee. One of them asked for a dance, but I said I didn’t feel like it. After the fourth whisky I collected myself and went out into the street. I fell over a cobblestone and grazed my hand and knee. I got to my feet and walked on. A young man called out to me from a parked car, he got out and came over with half a hot dog in his hand. He was in a suit.

‘Did you hurt yourself?’

‘No, I’m all right.’

‘Is anything wrong?’

‘No,’ I said, and began to cry, then nodded and waved my hand dismissively at the same time.

‘It’s been a rubbish day, that’s all. I’m sorry. Thanks.’

‘Can I give you a lift somewhere?’

‘No, really, I’m fine.’

‘Maybe you should sit down for a minute. Over there,’ he said, and pointed to a bench under a street lamp. He put his free arm around my shoulder and helped me across. It felt very protective. The suit looked good on him, it made him look older than he probably was.