The Woman at 1,000 Degrees

20 From Lass to Lady 1937

Instead of being allowed to grow accustomed to high heels and reading menus in the crystal tea salons of tramway cities, Mum had spent seven formative years filleting fish and slaughtering seals. Nevertheless, she was quick to adopt the posture of a lady when it came to strolling on the steamers’ decks, despite her initial difficulties with high heels.

‘I’ll be damned if I didn’t look like a cow on stilettos when your father led me across the glistening floor of Ocean House.’

Ocean House was the name of the family residence in Skagen, on the tip of the Jutland Peninsula. And it must have been the summer of ’37. I can still hear the clatter of massive Massa’s high heels and see how they looked her up and down, Grandma Georgía and her elegant friends, like some bitchy fashion reporters. But I never had to feel ashamed of my mother. She soon mastered those heels; she wasn’t a total country bumpkin and she had, after all, been the muse of a poet.

But it was a brutal change for her.

‘The worst thing for me was going to bed without having milked the cows and having no chores to wake up to in the morning. I had pains in my hands from the lack of labour for many weeks afterwards. And I always found it difficult to enjoy the summer days without using them. The sun might shine there for days on end without my being able to get my hands on a rake. I was so relieved when your granny allowed me to paint the outhouse.’

The old woman took to her kindly but could never bring herself to call her Massa, preferring instead to shout ‘Massebill!’ down the corridors. I was never anything more than Den Lille Hveps – the Little Wasp.

And if my mother inherited anything from her mother-in-law Georgía, it was her generosity of spirit and the way she treated everyone with the same respect, whether it was an Icelandic pauper or a German aristocrat.

It didn’t escape me as a child that my parents were more in love than ever before. The flames of love that hadn’t extinguished themselves in seven years were bound to last seven times seven years. And I allowed myself to envy them for that, because my heart has always been a fugitive.