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  Maria had wanted a girl and her wish had come true. It was another entry in the notebook which worried Else:

  I’m so happy and grateful to have given birth to two healthy children. They’re a gift. And yet I’m eaten up by frustration. The responsibility for TWO lives feels completely overwhelming, though we’re two to share it. Jens is wonderful, and I love him more than life itself. But he’s also, well, Jens … At times he disappears into himself. And God knows his mother is no help.

  Will we manage? Will I? The boy is a bad sleeper. He cries a lot. It keeps me awake and drives me crazy. In my darkest moments I wish we had only had the girl.

  Else couldn’t make herself articulate her suspicion to herself or to her cousin. And yet it tormented her increasingly as time went on.

  It would be more than six years before she returned to the Head. During all that time she didn’t hear a word from them. They never replied to her letters and, as they had yet to have a telephone installed, she was forced to ring the pub in Korsted, where it seemed they no longer went. One day when Else called, the landlord told her that Jens Horder was rarely in town these days. Else was genuinely worried, and the sight she encountered on the Head when she got out of the taxi did nothing to assuage her fears.

  It was as if they had given up completely. The mess around the buildings was worse than ever. And it wasn’t the only thing that was taking up space.

  When Maria came outside to see who the unexpected visitor was Else barely recognized her daughter-in-law.

  Maria’s once so attractive figure had grown shapeless and she seemed horribly burdened by it. She had to support herself against the wall to walk down the two steps leading to the yard from the front door, and her light gait had been replaced by an ugly waddling.

  Else tried to hide her shock.

  ‘Hello, Maria,’ she said in a friendly voice. ‘It’s been a long time.’

  Maria nodded and proffered a strained smile. Else couldn’t decide whether it was in response to the sight of her mother-in-law or her own physical challenges.

  ‘Good afternoon, Else. What a … surprise. I didn’t know … Let me get Jens.’ The taxi which had brought Else from the ferry to the Head turned around slowly and disappeared down the gravel road towards the Neck and the main island. Maria looked after it briefly. ‘We don’t get many visitors these days,’ she said.

  ‘But surely the postman calls?’ Else said, not knowing which response she would prefer.

  ‘Yes, every now and then,’ Maria said, without looking at her. ‘We still get the … well, you know. I’ll just go and get Jens.’

  Else thought about Mogens. She had heard nothing from her older son for years, but she was delighted to hear that he still sent money to the Head. It had only ever said ‘Horder, the Head’ on the envelope, and that could be any Horder at the Head, mother as well as brother.

  She herself had written ‘Jens Horder’ on all of hers.

  The door to the workshop closed behind Maria and the steady hammering which had sounded from inside stopped abruptly.

  Else’s gaze followed a solitary snowflake that floated through the air until it hit the ground and disappeared. It was clear that no fresh gravel had been strewn across the farmyard for years, and most of the shingle was hidden by soil now. Grass and broken straw stuck up in many places, evidence that the yard must be rather overgrown in the summer. She looked around at the piles of junk which were steadily filling the space between the buildings and she shuddered in the cool air. A black cat emerged between some spare engine parts. When it spotted Else it slunk away immediately.

  Shortly afterwards Jens appeared.

  Else hadn’t seen her son since he drove her to the ferry on the terrible day when she was exiled from her own home. Back then she had wondered whether he would in fact drop her off at the ferry or, at the last minute, at the junkyard, which wasn’t far from the port. In which case it would have been the first time in years that he had dropped something off at the junkyard instead of bringing something back.

  He hadn’t gained weight like his wife, quite the opposite, but his beard had grown considerably. The small moustache had turned into a dense, dark full beard and his hair reached below his ears. He wore his cap, as always. Else felt strangely conflicted at the sight of Jens, who now looked more like his father rather than the child she remembered.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mum,’ he said, and gave her an awkward kiss on her cheek. She wanted to embrace him, but he quickly stepped back. ‘We weren’t expecting you,’ he said, looking at the two big cases she had set down.

  Else didn’t have the energy to wonder whether he was lying or if he genuinely hadn’t read the last two letters she had sent.

  ‘I’ll go back again,’ she said. ‘But I hope that I may be allowed to stay here for a little while …’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘I wanted to see how you were doing.’

  ‘We’re fine,’ Jens said without hesitation. ‘And how are things with …?’

  ‘Cousin Karen. I really enjoy living with her, thank you. To my surprise, I like the city.’

  ‘It can be very nice … the city … especially in December,’ Maria said, which Else interpreted as an invitation to return to the delights of the city at her earliest convenience.

  ‘How long were you intending to stay?’ Jens’s gaze slipped momentarily to the far end of the workshop, where the door to the white room was. Parts of a slurry spreader were lying outside it.

  His mother shrugged. ‘Well, I was thinking that it depends …’

  At that moment what it depended on came running from behind the barn. She had been out in the field.

  ‘Dad, is the ram allowed …?’ On seeing Else, the girl stopped in her tracks. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked, and pointed at her granny with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity. Mostly suspicion.

  Else was about to reply but was intercepted by her son. ‘That’s a lady who’ll be staying with us for a while. What about the ram?’

  The girl’s eyes widened. She was clearly not used to guests staying over.

  ‘What about the ram, Liv?’

  ‘He’s knocked over one of the … But where’s she going to stay, Dad?’ Liv couldn’t take her eyes off the lady who would be staying with them for a while. Else studied her granddaughter with a lump in her throat.

  The child would appear to be healthy, thank God. She took after her father more than her mother. There wasn’t a single gram of excess fat on her body, her hair was cut short, her eyes were dark and intense. Most people would probably take her for a boy because there was nothing girlish about her movements or clothing. She looked like she lived in a pair of worn jeans that didn’t appear to have been washed for a long time. Her plimsolls had probably been white once but had clearly never been whitened, and her blouse was pretty much in tatters. She carried a knife in a leather sheath which dangled from her belt as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and judging by the condition of the wooden handle, it saw frequent use.

  ‘The lady will stay in the white room. I’ll just carry her cases over there, then I’ll be back and come and check on the ram. You can move the horse round the back, if you want to.’

  Liv turned around and disappeared with a happy gallop while Jens picked up his mother’s luggage and marched purposefully towards the furthest end of the wooden building.

  Else stared after him.

  ‘I’ll make us some coffee,’ she heard behind her. And Maria walked with heavy footsteps back inside the house.

  Else’s fear that chaos would also reign indoors proved correct.

  She struggled to find space for her cases in the white room, where there was very little white to be seen, now that things were piled up along the walls. Silas’s beautiful bedroom furniture was hidden behind half-finished projects from the workshop and what looked like rubbish from the junkyard. Here was everything, from tins and chandeliers to skis and pillows and old picture frames. Everything was in a wretched condition. She coul
dn’t imagine what use they might ever make of any of it.

  Else had considered asking for her old room on the first floor, but when she saw it she dropped the idea immediately. She preferred the white room’s forest of objects to the startled-looking elk head staring at her from the foot of the bed in which she had once slept.

  Light and Air

  I let the horse into the pen. Usually, I’d have spent many happy hours brushing it and fussing over it with Carl, but on that day all I could do was sit down and stare at it while it wandered about, pawing the ground a short distance from me. All I could think about was the lady. No one had ever just turned up and moved in before. People from the main island came by to get things fixed, but that happened less and less, and they always drove off straightaway. And anyway, Dad said he preferred to pick up and return their stuff himself. He didn’t trust them.

  I didn’t trust them either. I trusted my dad.

  He had also started driving the Christmas trees to a yard outside Korsted to sell them there rather than have people come to us.

  The lady who had turned up out of nowhere was a proper old lady with a small handbag over her arm and a coat with shiny buttons, and white hair. We had only ever seen ladies like that down on the main island. Carl was always a bit scared of them if their hair was too white, but he only ever said so to me. I’d tell him it was nothing to worry about and repeat what Dad had said: ‘White hair is completely natural. We’ll all have it one day. Unless we die before we get old.’

  Carl and I kept a close eye on each other’s hair, not to mention Dad’s and Mum’s. When the lady who turned out to be Granny arrived, we had yet to find a single white hair on the Head – except for the animals, of course, and the man who arrived on a three-wheel scooter to ask Dad to make an urn for his wife and a pipe for himself.

  I think white hair might be a bit like grass. That once it takes root, it spreads. We certainly noticed that Dad got white hairs once Granny had moved in. Not over a few days, but overnight. When he came into the kitchen the morning after I heard them talk about me, he had plenty of white hairs in between the dark ones. Even in his beard. Carl was startled by it.

  This was just before Christmas.

  Before Granny arrived, I’d had the best autumn ever. Dad took me fishing for flounder. It was the first time I was allowed to come with him, and I was bursting with excitement at going fishing, but perhaps even more excited about being all alone with Dad in the dinghy. We talked about everything out there. He told me that fish didn’t drown in the water but that they choked when they came up into the air.

  That sounded topsy-turvy to me.

  He also told me that we helped the fish by killing them before the air choked them. And when we caught a fine, flat flounder with two eyes in completely the wrong place he showed me how. He hit it over the head with a club he’d brought along specially. At first I thought it was one of the most awful things I had ever seen.

  ‘There, Liv. It’s dead now,’ he said when he had whacked it. Only it couldn’t be, because it was still flopping about. I was horrified. I pointed at the fish and opened my mouth, but I couldn’t get a word out.

  ‘It’s only its nerves that causes it to flop,’ Dad said. ‘It’s completely normal. It really is dead, and I promise you that it feels nothing. We’ve done the best we could for that fish, so we can eat it with a clear conscience tonight.’

  ‘But, Dad …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Will the flounder come back?’

  ‘Come back?’

  ‘Yes, like the leaves … and the grass and the butterflies and the fox and the baker. You always taught me that everything comes back.’

  Dad gazed across the water. He had his pipe in his mouth, and there was a wonderful aroma of smoke and sea in the dinghy. ‘Yes,’ he said solemnly. ‘The flounder also comes back.’

  I crawled closer to him and crouched down in the bottom of the dinghy to sit between his feet and smell the tar and hear the wood creak around me. Over the gunwale I could see a blue sky with fluffy clouds that didn’t stir. I couldn’t see the sea, but I could sense it just on the other side of the squeaking boards.

  ‘As another flounder?’ I wanted to know.

  ‘Perhaps. Or something else, maybe.’

  ‘Something else? A plaice?’

  ‘Yes, why not.’

  ‘Or a rabbit? Or … what about a human being?’ I looked over my shoulder and tried to catch Dad’s eye somewhere over his beard, but all I could see was a lot of beard and the bowl of his pipe. Maybe he shrugged, I’m not sure, but he certainly said something very strange.

  ‘Liv, one day someone might tell you about God.’

  ‘God? Is that the one that looks like a weever?’

  ‘No, it’s not a fish. It’s … how can I put it? Lots of people believe in this man who is said to live in the sky and decide everything.’

  ‘In the sky?’ My eyes shifted instantly from his beard to the clouds. ‘What does he look like?’ I asked, and squinted.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. They say he has a long white beard.’

  Now that would really worry Carl.

  ‘A long white beard … and he lives in the sky?’ I said, puzzled.

  ‘Yes, it’s quite tricky to explain. But what I’m trying to tell you is that I’m not sure that they’re right. I don’t believe in God.’

  ‘Because he lies?’ Even then I knew with absolute certainty that lying was wrong, unless it was necessary.

  ‘No, I mean that I don’t believe he’s even there.’

  ‘Well, I’ve never seen anyone up there, so I don’t believe it either,’ I declared firmly. ‘But I believe in that seagull.’

  The beard tilted upwards for a moment, only to tip down so that I could see Dad’s eyes. ‘That’s right. We believe in the seagull.’

  I smiled. Then I slipped my dagger out of its leather sheath and held it up so the sunlight bounced off it. There was a groove in it, which I liked looking at. We had found it in the bicycle seller’s outhouse, along with some other things we needed. Like tyres. And a torch and a broken parasol and a bag of liquorice.

  We sat for a while, waiting.

  ‘Mum doesn’t believe in that man either, does she?’

  I didn’t have time to get an answer because there was another bite on the line, and we got busy landing our second flounder. This time I was allowed to help it die, and I was very good at it, Dad said. When we had caught a few more, he put away the fishing rod – and I was really disappointed.

  ‘You should never take more from nature than you need,’ he explained. ‘If we catch all the fish, there won’t be any left for next time.’

  I understood, and looked at what we had taken. ‘One, two, three … four flounders.’

  One for each of us.

  Dad smiled. Then he showed me the hook at the end of the fishing line. A long weight and some coloured beads were attached to it. ‘Look at this, Liv. Tomorrow I’ll show you how to make one of these weights in the workshop. I’m sure you’ll be able to do it.’

  And I could. And not long afterwards, I also knew how to make my very own club to whack the flounders on their heads so they died right away.

  That day in the dinghy is the brightest day I can recall. Later, when I had to sit in the dark corner of the container and be very quiet, I looked back on it sometimes. It was nice to think about bright things in the dark.

  It wasn’t long afterwards that Dad let me come with him to set rabbit snares. It was easy to find the rabbit paths on the outskirts of the forest. Dad showed me how to place a small spruce tree across one of them and cut the branches off the tree right where the rabbits pass, making a gateway. Then we made a noose from metal wire and let it dangle from the trunk. When we checked the snare the next morning we found a dead rabbit which had jumped right into the noose. The wire was so tight around its neck you couldn’t even see it for all the fur.

  That night Mum made rabbit ragout with cream from the cow a
nd thyme from the common and greens from our vegetable garden. Why spend money in the shops when we have everything we need right here? Dad would always say. He preferred to spend money only on essentials such as feed for the animals. We drove down to Vesterby for that, and most times we managed to bring home a little more than we had paid for. Dad said it was all right. They had so much down in Vesterby, and we were so nice to our animals. It was the same with the grocer’s stock room. There was so much in it and so it didn’t matter that I sneaked inside and helped myself to a few tins while Dad kept the grocer talking about the weather.

  Later, I learned to skin and cut up the meat. Rabbits turned out to be really skinny once you remove their fur. However, the most incredible thing was looking at everything hidden inside: the pink lungs and the purple kidneys and the other bits. And the long, crinkly intestines. It crossed my mind that Mum must have a lot of that sort of thing inside her.

  That autumn I also started going stag hunting on the main island. Dad knew a place near a big farm where you could often find a stag in the dark, either in the forest or out on the fields. Dad didn’t like putting gunpowder into animals, and I had no idea what gunpowder was, but I decided I wouldn’t like to put it inside them either. He said it was too destructive, it made an unnecessary amount of noise and that it was way too expensive. I knew those were good arguments. We didn’t like hurting animals, making noise or spending money.

  So instead we used a bow and arrow. His was enormous and heavy. Mine was an exact copy, but adjusted to my size. He had made it for me in his workshop, and he showed me how to make my own arrows of pinewood and goose feathers. The wood needed to be the right thickness and flexibility to make a good arrow, he explained, and I was allowed to bend it and turn it until I started to understand what he meant. We made the arrowheads of brass from a cracked jug which I found in the pile we had named the baker’s pile. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ he said whenever I found something in a pile. ‘There’s a use for everything.’