Helle Helle: This Should Be Written in the Present Tense

‘And the second best-looking,’ he said with a smile. His blue eyes gleamed across the table.

‘Who’s number one?’ said Ruth.

‘Leon, Ruth, as well you know,’ said Lars. He pronounced her name the English way and Per laughed.

‘Yes, Leon’s always had the girls after him.’

‘Has he, now?’ said Hans-Jakob, turning his teaspoon in the air. He had a wry smile on his face. Ruth had a little dig at him.

‘Just like you, in your younger days,’ she said and shook her head. Her hair danced on either side of her parting, it was thick and had a good sheen to it. She drank a glass of buttermilk every day and claimed that was why. Lars shook his head too, and smiled.

‘Leon’s not meant to be on his own.’

‘Dorte says that as well,’ I said. Lars gave me a puzzled look, Per came to my aid.

‘She’s the one with the smørrebrød shop. Her aunt.’

‘About herself, I mean,’ I said, and felt my cheeks going red. Lars reached out for a biscuit from the dish.

‘What a lot of Dortes,’ he said.

‘Don’t you want some butter on that?’ said Ruth. ‘It’s good for the brain.’

‘Give him a big dollop,’ said Hans-Jakob.

He left again after coffee, we all stood on the cobbles and waved goodbye as he got on his racer with the drop handlebars and took off down the drive. When he got to the road he turned and waved again, Per put both his arms in the air.

‘Come back soon,’ he shouted, and made his voice crack. He pulled me close, Ruth and Hans-Jakob were already on their way back inside. The parlour bench was in two pieces in the yard, it stayed there for months. I buried my face in the opening of Per’s jumper, it smelled a bit musty, an old one from the pile. I could feel him swallowing, ligaments and cartilage bobbing up and down. We stood there like that, and then we went back to ours.

I was named after Dorte because she couldn’t have children of her own. They’d given her the diagnosis when she was twenty and already married. It might have been the reason they split up. At any rate, her ex had four kids in no time by a seamstress in Tornemark. They bought a detached that turned out to be built on contaminated land. It cost them a fortune and they were stuck with the place. Dorte’s voice grew hollow when she talked about it, she was upset for them regardless. They didn’t have a penny to their name, they spent their summer holidays in camping chairs on the patio. Her ex had even done his back in, he fell off a carport. He was nearly fifty now and the only prospect he had left was the knacker’s yard, as Dorte put it.

She didn’t like talking about that diagnosis. Mostly because it had been so awful the day they told her. She’d cycled all the way to Køge to be examined. The doctor peered between her legs and shook his head.

‘Barren,’ he said.

She hadn’t grasped what he meant. Afterwards she stood for a long time in the waiting room with her coat in her hands, a bomber jacket in blue satin. Eventually she went up and asked the secretary, and the secretary fetched the doctor. He was in the middle of seeing his next patient and came and stood in the doorway with his gynaecologist’s headlamp on and his arms at his sides.

‘I said you can’t have children,’ he said, spelling it out, and Dorte stared back at him, she even smiled and thanked him for his time.

That was almost the worst bit. Then when she came out her bike had been stolen, she had to walk nineteen kilometres from Køge to Borup. It was a gorgeous evening in August. There were some young people on tandem bikes in the dwindling light, and couples lying in the wheat fields watching for shooting stars. It was the first time in her life she didn’t want to go on living. The bomber jacket was nearly see-through from tears by the time she got home. She stayed in bed for three days, my mum and dad came with cabbage soup. She was small and pale and hugged my mother like a child, burying her face in her apron. But on the fourth day she got up, she had a large brandy and went to the shop for a women’s magazine and turned down the corner of every page with nice clothes on it. Not long after that, she got divorced, moved to Roskilde and took her diploma, then lived in Jersie and even Copenhagen, three months in a butcher’s shop in Østerbro, before buying the business in Ringsted. It was her anchor all the time she kept moving.

The times I lived with her she always had a laugh sticking a note up next to her name on the door so it said Dorte Hansen x 2 . Once, the postman rang the bell and asked what it was supposed to mean.

‘Exactly what it says,’ she told him.

To help me fall asleep I’d started visualising two guards on the bungalow’s front step. There had to be two so they could come to each other’s aid in an emergency. Sometimes one of them stood by the garden gate, it changed a bit. For weeks I’d been tossing and turning. Whenever I managed to sleep I had nightmares about murders and ferries that sank. Ice drifts, and people who couldn’t be trusted. I woke up all sweaty in my pyjamas, fumbling with the buttons under the duvet until eventually I had to sit up to take them off. I put the light on and found a T-shirt in the cupboard, went to the kitchen and drank some water out of a big glass, sat down in the armchair in the front room. I thought about getting a pet of some sort, or at least some curtains. But in the morning, when it got light and the day got started, it never seemed important any more. I sat there knowing I wouldn’t buy curtain material the next day either. I’d actually seen some that would have been all right, on the fourth floor of Daells Varehus, some unbleached linen. The girl came up and asked if I needed help. She seemed familiar, a young girl with unusually wide nostrils. She moved some rolls of fabric aside so I could have a better look, then looked at me with a smile.

‘Didn’t you used to go to school in Næstved?’ she said.

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Me too. You won’t remember me, though. I was a year below.’

‘Oh, but I thought I recognised you.’

‘My hair’s different now,’ she said, and tossed her head. A strand got stuck in the corner of her mouth, she blew it away. ‘Pff. Have you moved here as well?’

‘No. I live in Glumsø.’

‘Oh, right, just out for the day, then?’

‘You could say.’

‘I’m reading psychology, as you can see,’ she said with a laugh, and I laughed too. I put my hand on the roll and felt the fabric, even though I knew I wasn’t going to buy any.

‘Is it for curtains?’ she said.

‘That’s what I was thinking. But I think I’ll wait a bit.’

‘You should get some blinds instead, they’re much easier.’

‘Maybe I should,’ I said, and nodded. I put my hands in my pockets and she moved the top rolls back into place.

‘Have a nice day out,’ she said.

I waved to her from the stairs, then went up to the cafeteria and had a piece of Othello cake and a cup of coffee, it was nearly twelve so it was lunch of a sort. I was having these cravings for sweets, I think it had to do with being tired. I ate too much rye bread with brown sugar on if I had nothing else in, even at night. It was doing me no good, the energy left me again as quickly as it came.

I sat in the armchair with my legs up underneath me. I’d stopped sweating by then. I decided to stay at home the next day and get a grip on things. Make an omelette for breakfast and squeeze some oranges. Draw up a plan for all the jobs I needed to do. Hoover and go to the library, find some self-help books. They had to have something on sleeping problems. I had a feeling I needed help in other areas as well, but I didn’t know which. When I covered my ears with my hands there was a rushing noise inside me that sounded like a whole shoreline. It wasn’t worrying in itself. But I had this little flutter under my breastbone, it felt like homesickness. Perhaps it was just acid reflux.