This Should Be Written in the Present Tense

2

I’d rented the house the year before. It was a bungalow right by the railway line. Dorte paced out the distance in her white clogs while I stood in the front garden and bit into an apple. The landlady had said to help ourselves and pulled down a branch as the three o’clock came in. She was in a trouser suit and looked uncomfortable. It struck me that we were about the same age, twenty or so. She took an apple too, and kept polishing it on her trousers.

‘Do you work here?’ she said.

‘No. I’ve started studying in Copenhagen,’ I said, and cringed at my accent. That trouser suit did nothing for her, the sleeves didn’t have enough room for her arms.

‘You’re well situated here, then.’

‘That was what I thought.’

‘What are you studying?’ she said, and looked towards the road from where Dorte came clacking with the wind in her highlights. ‘I think your mum’s got her answer now.’

‘Twenty-seven metres, give or take,’ Dorte said in a loud voice and lifted one foot in the air.

‘She’s my auntie,’ I said.

‘Oh, I see,’ said the landlady.

She said we could stay as long as we liked, all we had to do was shut the door behind us. We sat on the cracked paintwork on the windowsills in the front room and discussed the rent. I would just about be able to manage without having to borrow. There was a funny smell coming from the bathroom, it reminded me of stagnant pond. Dorte lit a cigarette, she always kept the lighter in the packet.

‘It’s a lovely house,’ she said.

‘But I haven’t got any furniture.’

‘You can have my chest of drawers. And the bumhole lamp, if you like?’

‘What I really need is a table.’

‘Didn’t you see that one in the shed?’

‘Here, you mean?’

‘Yes, just behind the door,’ she said, jumping down.

It was a little kitchen table with hinged leaves. Dorte nodded, her cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth.

‘I can just see that by the window in the front room, can’t you?’

‘I’ll need some curtains.’

‘Never mind curtains, you can always get blinds. Look at that,’ she said, and pointed at a coffee tin on the shelf, but then a goods train went by and distracted us. We stood in the doorway watching the long line of rust-red wagons.

Before we left, we had a walk round the garden. Besides the apple tree there were pears and mirabelle plums, and a wilderness at the far end that Dorte said was probably full of raspberries. We looked in through all the windows. The place was nice and bright inside, the afternoon sun slanted in across the floors. Dorte pressed her forehead against the kitchen window.

‘Those units just need shining up. Original Vordingborg, that is.’

Then she turned round and picked the grass and squashed yellow plum off one clog, then the other. She wiped her hands with some leaves and looked at her watch.

‘Take care, love. I’m expecting a pig.’