This Should Be Written in the Present Tense

32

The summer holiday came to an end. Lars was back at college, only he couldn’t get up in the mornings, he kept putting the alarm forward. Other times he turned the clock on its face and pulled the duvet up over his head. I squirmed out of the foot end and opened the balcony door. I put an old T-shirt dress on and went to the kitchen, I made an omelette from a couple of eggs and a sliced tomato. I carried it back into the room together with the coffee and put it on the table, then sat and waited for him to wake up. Every now and then I picked up the alarm clock and made it go off in his face. That really annoyed him. He pushed my arm away and sat up on the edge of the bed.

One Sunday morning over breakfast I told him I was going to write a letter to Per and explain everything. He kept shaking his head.

‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ he said.

‘Why not? It’s not that bad, surely?’ I said. I touched his neck beneath his ear, his skin was so delicate there. I thought about the word jawline. He always smelled so nice after he’d slept.

‘It’s worse, it makes me feel ill just thinking about it,’ he said, and slapped his hand down on the table. His voice was strangled, emotion welled in his throat. But it was me who started to cry, his hand gave me a fright, it came down right next to mine.

‘I’m sorry, darling,’ he said. We leaned our heads together. We talked about what we could do. There had to be something. I said we needed to get out together, if only for a little walk down the street.

‘You’re right,’ he said, and a bit later we got dressed. It took us ages, the weather was changeable and he couldn’t decide whether to wear shorts or long trousers. I made myself up in front of the balcony door, pink lipstick and a bit of mascara.

‘Should I take some money with us?’ he said.

‘What for?’ I said at first, but then the next minute:

‘You could do, I suppose. We might want something.’

‘I don’t think I will,’ he said.

‘Don’t then,’ I said.

We went downstairs and out through the yard. The little girls were playing with a watering can. I smiled at them.

‘What great watering,’ I said, and they looked up at us and smiled back, one of them lifted the watering can up in front of her.

Out on the street we stood for a bit, unable to decide, then went left towards the square. There weren’t many people out. A young guy came out of the baker’s with two big bags and disappeared round a corner. We didn’t speak, all we did was walk. After the station I took his hand, I even began to swing our arms, only he resisted. The wind was chilly, but the sun had come out. I dragged him over to a bench and we sat down. The sun shone in our faces, I closed my eyes. I could hear his breathing. We got up again and went round behind the square through the little lane. A fat woman stood outside a crooked house in her slippers, it was the woman who’d come to my rescue, only without her moped this time. She smiled at us.

‘Hello there.’

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Keeping warm all right?’

‘Just about. The wind’s a bit chilly,’ I said, and she nodded.

‘The autumn’s here now,’ she said as we walked by. I raised my hand in a wave behind my back and gave Lars a squeeze with the other. He hadn’t said anything, he didn’t until we got home, with rosy cheeks and fresh air in our hair. We took our jumpers off.

‘Who was that woman?’ he said.

‘She’s got a moped,’ I said.

‘I see,’ he said, and smiled.

‘It was nice to get out together. It didn’t hurt a bit,’ I said, and smiled back.

But that evening he lost his appetite. He picked at his potato salad, all he ate was half a sausage. He had a lot of reading to do for the following week, he’d hardly even started. He said he found it hard to concentrate in the bedsit when I was there with him. I could see that. I went and sat with my crossword at the wobbly table in the kitchen. The place smelled of something gone off, old meat or cold cuts, but I couldn’t get to the bottom of it. There was half a bag of flour with mites in it on a shelf, but that didn’t smell at all. I binned it and wiped the shelf. I opened the skylight and had a cup of coffee, then went back into the room, Lars was lying on the daybed with his eyes closed. I sat down. The duvet was warm. I began to touch him. At first he didn’t react, then he opened his eyes.

‘I can’t make you live like this,’ he said.

‘How do you mean?’ I said.

‘This. It’s no life. Stuck in here or the kitchen.’

‘I go into town. And we went for a walk today.’

‘I know, but still.’

‘I nearly got to Faxe the day before yesterday.’

‘Come off it.’

‘No, it’s true. Anyway, I decide for myself if I’ve got a life.’

‘But it’s my life too.’

‘Yes, but then it’s not a matter of whether you can make me live with it. Then it’s you. It’s you who doesn’t want it.’

‘It’s not exactly ideal, is it?’ he said, not wanting an answer. I turned away slightly and looked out at the night sky as if there was something important there.

‘Come here,’ he said, and pulled me down on top of him, he chafed the skin on my face with his stubble. I sucked his lower lip in and let go.

‘And then there’s the cabin trip next weekend, you’ll be all on your own,’ he said.

‘What trip’s that?’

‘To someone’s cabin. I don’t even know where it is.’

‘The whole class, you mean?’

‘That’s right.’

It was a strange week. The days ran together. I stood in the shower and thought about gains and losses. Someone kept using my shampoo all the time, the expensive one from the hairdresser’s, I had to start hiding it away at the back of the pinewood cupboard. I bought a new jacket for autumn, nylon with a padded lining. Lars said it looked good on me. I walked round the town in it. They’d started selling flapjacks at the petrol station for some reason. I bought one every day and had it for lunch. I went by the teacher training college. I didn’t go in, just stood at the end of the drive and stared. The lawns and benches were deserted. I tried to imagine what went on behind the thick, white walls. A caretaker stood painting a wooden board on two trestles over by an annexe, he waved to me with his brush.

They were going straight after college on the Friday. Lars took his sleeping bag with him that morning, he strapped it onto his pannier rack with an elastic cord. I stood in the kitchen with my head stuck out of the skylight and waved. In the afternoon I went for a walk. I went up to the college and saw him standing in a group in the car park. There weren’t that many of them. There was a girl with brown hair in an untucked blouse. She had something in her hand that she lifted up in the air, they all laughed and one of the others tried to snatch it. She jumped in the driver’s seat of a white car, so it might have been the car key. The engine started, and the others laughed. There was a chinking of bottles. Lars got in beside her. I turned and went along the edge of someone’s back garden onto a path that led away between two houses. A woman was out walking her dog. It stopped in front of me and I patted it.

When I came home I got my suitcase out of the storage room and packed my things together. I took a piece of paper from a folder but didn’t know what to write. I sat and looked around. I’d forgotten the pewter mug, it was on the table with some sprays in it. I took them out into the kitchen, threw them away and wiped the mug. Then I went back and put it in the suitcase, and began to cry. I cried for so long I was exhausted by the time I was finished. I lay down on the daybed and fell asleep. When I woke up it was evening. I went and splashed some cold water on my face, the guy from Egøje was playing Dire Straits. Not long after, I unpacked again and put everything back in its place. I cut two new sprays in the dim light of the yard.

A week later it was Lars’s turn to write. I found his letter in my crossword magazine when I came back from a tanning session late Friday afternoon. He said he was very sorry and that he’d moved back home to his parents’ until I found somewhere else. He wasn’t well, and now he had a doctor’s word for it. He didn’t know what more to say, he said to look after myself.

I opened the cupboard and sure enough most of his clothes were gone. It felt like a relief, only I didn’t know why. It hurt a lot too. I kept standing there staring at the half-empty shelves.