This Should Be Written in the Present Tense

31

My bungalow needed decorating for Christmas. I bought two bundles of fir branches and tried to join them together in a long garland to go over the front door. I’d seen one in a magazine, with baubles and snow. After about halfway I gave up. My hands and forearms were all scratched from the wire and my nails were broken, it was a stupid idea. I crumpled the unfinished garland and put it out of the way in the shed. As I turned to go back I almost tripped over the abandoned picnic basket. It occurred to me that I could fill it up with the fir branches and put it on the front doorstep, it would do nicely as a Christmas decoration.

The ticket-office guy had been over to see me twice. His name was Knud. The second time he came his girlfriend was at her sister’s over on Fyn. I’d bought a tin of olives and a bottle of red wine and put it out on the table with two upturned glasses. As soon as I saw him leave the station I turned the glasses the right way up. I opened the door before he even knocked and led him into the front room. He’d brought four chocolate turtles with him. We had a laugh about that, then we sat down. He took an olive.

‘Have you got any music?’ he said.

‘Only the radio.’

‘Don’t you listen to music, then?’

‘Yes, on the radio.’

‘Okay.’

‘Do you want some wine?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Go on, then. Thanks. Nice olives.’

‘They’re from Irma. In Copenhagen,’ I said.

‘Irma, right,’ he said, and then he got up and came and put his hand on my neck. We kissed each other. We got down on the floor and knocked over a chair, we pulled and tore, my leg stuck up in the air like a white post. It wouldn’t do in the front room without curtains. We hobbled into the bedroom. The Hamburg express came through, a slight distraction in the corner of his eye, then he shook the rest of his trousers off and did his little skip. He’d done it the last time too. I’d thought then it might be first-time nerves. His body was firm and triangular, we thumped against the slats. Apart from that we didn’t connect. We flopped apart and sighed separately, it felt better then. We talked about houses as opposed to flats. His girlfriend wanted to move to Vordingborg, she wanted to have a baby as well, that was what frustrated him. When did you know the time was right? If you didn’t know, did it mean it wasn’t? We fetched the wine and the tin of olives and sat with pillows in our backs and a candle in the windowsill. He was so excited by the new perspective on the trains, it was quite touching. I put my hand on his upper arm.

That was ten days earlier. Now I thought about him more than was good for me, reality was something else. His girlfriend still shook her tea towels out of the kitchen window.

I invited Dorte over for mulled wine. I bought ginger snaps and gingerbread creams from the baker’s to go with it, they had three for ten kroner. I ate one on the way back to make sure they were all right. She came over after work, it fitted in with Hardy’s badminton. She’d got herself some new clothes, Christmassy trousers with a slight flare and a cardigan. She brought me some walnuts, a whole bag, it was practically a sack. Plus a piece of brie, some honey and two jars of pickled herring.

‘In case there’s a Christmas party and you need to bring something,’ she said. ‘Are they having one on your course?’

‘Nah,’ I said. ‘Just drinks, I think.’

‘Just as well, it only makes your bum fat, all that food,’ she said, and we laughed, she’d just sent a buffet off to Ortved. She’d lost weight herself. It was due to her busy season, she always felt sick in December. That, and the dark. It took it out of her, just getting up in the mornings not being able to see a hand in front of her face. She sat at the table in the kitchen staring out into the darkness with her coffee every morning before six, while Hardy snored like a tractor. She lost her spirit in December, just when it mattered most. People were queuing down the street for her specials, she’d had to take on help.

‘A fat little thing, but good as gold,’ she said, then took a drag on her cigarette. I could tell she was feeling down. Her look was glazed. She’d been to view a flat on the outskirts of Næstved, a new development by the roundabout.

‘I’ve always liked Næstved, you know that,’ she said, and her expressionless eyes grew moist. I went up and put my arm around her, she sniffed and indicated the paper bag from the baker’s on the table.

‘Let’s see what you’ve got, eh?’ she said, and then the tears came, and she laughed, and opened the bag with one hand and peered inside. ‘Gingerbread creams! You’ve not spent all your money, have you?’ she said, dabbing her cheeks with her forearm and smudging her new cardigan with mascara in the process. She rubbed it, and made it worse.

‘Oh, look at me,’ she said and sniffed hard again. ‘I’ve been wanting to look nice. What a lovely job you’ve made of the table. It’s been such a long day, and I’ve been so looking forward.’

‘Do you want me to do your feet?’ I said.

‘Ah, would you? No, you mustn’t, not now. You must be dead tired.’

‘I’ll get the bowl. You sit down over there,’ I said, and she stood up, her mascara had run under her eyes as well.

‘Talking about dying, do you remember Riborg?’ she said with her feet in the hot water, it was a story that always cheered us up no end. We ran into Riborg on our bikes one summer at Ganges Bro, it was a Sunday lunchtime and we’d been out picking strawberries. It had nearly been the death of us, the temperature was almost thirty degrees. We’d cycled eighteen kilometres and the only thing we could think about was getting home and having something to drink, we were getting ratty with each other. Riborg was standing there with her bike just before the viaduct, there was a pillow in her wicker basket.

‘There’s Riborg. Hello, Riborg,’ Dorte called out as we rode past, but Riborg waylaid us.

‘Wait a minute, Dorte, where are you going?’

We got off our bikes and wheeled them back. She asked about the strawberries. We asked about the pillow, she was just taking it over to someone she knew.

‘I lost Jørgen, you know,’ she said, and Dorte did, which might have been why we’d just carried on at first. Not that Dorte couldn’t talk about death, but there was a long illness to get through before that: failed courses of treatment, an acute kidney infection, frothy urine, a change of medicine that gave renewed hope, then the relapse, fluid retention and failing strength, and then finally the end, as unexpected as death always is, even when you know it’s coming, on the kitchen floor at five o’clock on the Tuesday afternoon. Just before dinner. I looked at Dorte and saw the beads of sweat on her upper lip, she was white as a sheet and leaned against her bike for support. Then we got the story all over again, only from a different point of view, starting with Jørgen’s physical form before the first and second periods in hospital. Dorte dabbed her lip with the back of her hand, she stood there swaying. I reached out for a big strawberry in her basket and gave it to Riborg. Riborg ate it. It was a good one. I gave her another and her narrative tailed away. We were able to get going again after that. Dorte always thanked me for that move with the strawberry. Riborg, love, she’d been about to say. Death’s a terrible thing, but it’s time you got a grip.

She sat with her feet in two plastic bags under the table, I’d put the lotion on thick. She groaned when I rubbed it in, her legs were all stiff from her long days in the shop. After the mulled wine I did her nails, she picked a baby-pink polish that matched her slippers.

‘Not that there’s much point. Hardy won’t be seeing my toes much longer anyway,’ she said.

‘What’s he going to do?’

‘He doesn’t know he needs to do anything yet, I’m afraid.’

‘Are you?’

‘Am I what?’

‘Afraid for him.’

‘No. I’m not actually. It’s not that at all. It’s more me, I’m forty-five now, aren’t I?’

‘I never think of you as being that old.’

‘I don’t either, mostly. No, Hardy’ll be all right. He’s got Samson.’

‘Do you want a ginger snap?’

‘Thanks,’ she said. She bit off a tiny corner, she could hardly swallow it.

Her feet slid around in her shoes from all the lotion. We had a laugh about it and she had another cigarette for the road out on the step. The sky was pitch black, the temperature was down to freezing. In the gap between the flats we could just see the Christmas garland on the main street picked out by the street lights. It swayed faintly.

‘There’s a guy who works over at the station. In the ticket office,’ I said.

‘Over there?’

‘Yeah. But he lives with someone.’

‘That never stopped anyone growing fond.’

‘I know. But I don’t think I’m that fond, that’s the trouble.’

‘Well, that’s no good. What a pity. Are you sure?’

‘I think so.’

‘If in doubt, then leave well alone. You have to feel it, right down to your fingertips.’

‘Not all the time, surely?’

‘Oh, yes. All the time.’

‘Who says?’

‘I do. So it has to be true, doesn’t it? Ha. Take care of yourself, won’t you, love?’ she said, and flicked the end of her cigarette onto the lawn. We hugged.

‘Thanks for doing my feet. Lovely that, isn’t it?’ she said with a nod at the picnic basket.

‘Some people from Copenhagen left it behind.’

‘I’m glad you’ve made friends there,’ she said, and smiled. She stepped on her cigarette end on her way over the grass and bent down to pick it up. She turned and waved before getting into the van.