Ida Brandt (10 page)

“Yes, poor thing.”

The forester went on a little; then he said:

“No, she damned well sits on her.”

“But she’s
ill
, Lund…”

“But it’s simply not fair to keep the girl there unattached during her best years. She herself knew damned well what she was up to when she was scrubbing the place clean as a dairymaid.”

“Now stop it, Lund.”

“Oh, it’s right enough. And she knew the way both to the bothy and to the bailiff’s place when she was the housekeeper.”

Lund suddenly started to laugh and lifted his fur cap a little:

“But there wasn’t much of her ham left by the time I’ d finished,” he said.

“Well, you know, she’s very hospitable, Lund.”

Lund continued to laugh.

“Yes, lass; at least she puts food on the table.”

At home, Mrs Brandt had shouted to Sofie:

“Clear the table, of what they have left,” she said.

∞∞∞

Ida ran in through the wrought-iron gate at the brickworks and rang on the door of the private residence.

Olivia opened the sitting room door to the well-lit corridor (she had heard Ida’s voice as she spoke to the maid).

“Oh, it’s the young lady herself,” she shouted. “How have you escaped from the dower house?”

Ida spoke in a rather subdued voice: “Mother thought I could come out here.”

Olivia looked at her for a moment:

“Oh, that’s how it is…But do come in.”

“Tea, Marie,” she shouted through the dining room. Then she put her arm round Ida and started walking up and down, up and down – that was a habit she had learned from her mother – as she started telling a long story.

“Fritz was at a meeting of the town council, and Mrs Kornerup had said she was coming to tea – she was simply determined to form a discussion club. But I refuse to be involved in all these
talk
groups. As Fritz says, it’s awful to have to stand and talk about all kinds of things with all those people you don’t know…If they are things that concern you personally, there are after all only a few people you can discuss them with…”

“Yes,” said Ida.

“But, my girl,” said Olivia, “I suppose you don’t manage to talk to anybody at all…”

Two toddlers ran in and already shouted “hello” from the dining room, for the children always loved it when Ida came.

“Oh, I have something for them,” said Ida, running out into the corridor. She came back with a bag of grapes that she emptied out into a dish on top of the grand piano.

“You’ re like a magpie, the way you steal,” said Olivia.

“Oh, but of course they’ re your own,” she continued coolly as she put a couple of grapes into her mouth.

Ida suddenly flushed. “Surely I can give some to the children,” she said; she had one of the toddlers in each arm. “And then off we go up to the Dumpling, up to the Dumpling,” she said in a singsong voice as she ran upstairs and into the nursery with both the toddlers.

There was quite a rumpus up on the first floor: the toddlers laughing and Baby Dumpling crying.

“Look at Baby Dumpling, look at Baby Dumpling,” shouted Ida, coming down again with the “Dumpling” in her outstretched arms.

“Oh, it’s so nice and warm here,” she said. She had sat down in a rocking chair and was rocking backwards and forwards with the “Dumpling” on her lap.

“Well,” said Olivia, pouring out the tea in the dining room, “I suppose it’s moderately warm in your house. There, have a cup…”

Olivia put the teapot on the corner table. “
Well
”, she said, putting herself down on the sofa, “and now we’ll have the children out. I like best to have them in one of the adjoining rooms, with the door open.”

“What a lot of books,” she went on, moving a pile of assorted volumes together to make room for the cake dish. “I don’t know how it happens, but whatever I don’t bring into the house Fritz turns up with instead!”

“Yes, there are always so many new things to read here,” said Ida.

Olivia sat with her head leaning against the back of the sofa, looking up into the lamp high above her.

“As Fritz says, it’s really a good thing with all these ‘new books’. It’s as though they teach you to cope better.”

“How do you mean?”

“With life…” Olivia continued to stare into the lamp.

They were both silent for a while. Then Ida, leaning forward in the chair and looking at the wall, said:

“But isn’t life fairly straightforward really?”

“Well, perhaps.”

“Well, I mean,” explained Ida, who always seemed to hesitate when expressing an opinion, “I suppose we do what we
have
to do.”

She continued to stare at the wall, and Olivia said:

“And then there are the children as well, of course…one might be able to learn something for their sake. Oh well…” – she suddenly smiled all over her face – “ I don’t think I was ever properly brought up…and she instinctively glanced across at Mrs Franck’s portrait above the piano.

“We were simply always together,” she said, still smiling.

She sat there quietly and had started to hum softly when Ida, whom something or other had reminded of how things had been at home, suddenly said:

“Oh, Christian from the mill is out of work again.”

“Oh, God bless your butter dishes, then.” And Olivia laughed. “So I suppose he’s lodging ‘upstairs’ again?”

“Yes,” said Ida, looking at her a little despondently. “But what am I to do? I suppose he’s nowhere else to go.”

Olivia merely laughed. But Ida said slowly:

“But even so, there’s so much I have to hide from mother.”

Olivia gave a little sigh:

“There is no other house in the world where one learns to lie so brazenly.”

Then she jumped up:

“Let’s play a duet.”

When they were sitting at the piano with the music open before them, she said, without any preparation:

“Oh, we’ re going to have the Dumpling’s christened now…And as Fritz says, it doesn’t matter about the weather so long as they put warm water in the font.”

They had been playing for a while when there was a ring at the door. It was Mrs Kornerup, who opened the outer door.

“Good heavens, how cold it is.”

Mrs Kornerup took off her cloak and threw it over a chair:

“Just fancy people being able to live in such a temperature.”

She had a white scarf like a kind of sash curiously tied across the middle of her black skirt.

“Something turned up at the last minute…” Mrs Kornerup seated herself in a high-backed easy chair. Mrs Kornerup loved chairs with Gothic backs against which she could rest her head. “Valdemar received a letter from Neruda just after five enquiring whether he could give a recital here next week.”

“My word!”

“Yes, dear, next week. Then
I
had to go out to the Muus’. These people just
won’t come
here unless they are guaranteed.”

“No, but…”

“And it
must
be arranged,” Mrs Kornerup went on. “No one in the entire world has a touch like his…My dear, you can live on his playing for a whole month.” She closed and opened her eyes on the words “for a whole month”.

Mrs Kornerup, who was the daughter of a district revenue officer from Skanderborg, where she had lived until she married, was brimming over with an energy for which there had never ever been a need, and who therefore exploded in an endless surge of enthusiasm, the object of which changed every month and disappeared without trace, like ether volatilised from an uncorked bottle.

“So Valdemar went up to the Staals,” she said.

Valdemar was a meticulously dressed, thirty-year-old lawyer of medium height and with very white teeth, who obediently followed his wife and who, when they were about to go out and he was to close the front door, would ask:

“Eleonora, have you remembered your bottle of malt?”

“Good heavens, no, Valdemar. Do please get it for me.”

The agitation to which Mrs Kornerup was constantly and pointlessly subjected put her in a perpetual state of emaciation, as a result of which she lived dependent on an array of medicines.

When artists came to town, Kornerup met them at the station and politely introduced himself to whoever it was, asking whether he could be of any service. The result usually being an evening in the Kornerup home, which consisted of three small rooms equipped with very large furniture, with the most recent literature scattered over the tables – Valdemar was the chairman of the “Readers’ Circle” – and with a great deal of fine Copenhagen porcelain on which the usual offering was a dish of boiled vegetables with creamed butter.

Ida brought Mrs Kornerup a cup of tea to counteract the cold.

“But dear Miss Brandt,” she said, as though she had only that minute discovered Ida. “How are you? Have I told you that I have twice been together with Karl von Eichbaum at my aunt’ s?”

“Yes,” she continued, giving Olivia a defensive look, “but he is very good looking…My dear, I do believe I must ask him for a photograph.”

Asking for a photograph was one of Mrs Kornerup’s specialities. Her two albums were full of a whole series of young men of one specific type with very regular features, straight necks and small moustaches.

“He’s a good-for-nothing,” said Olivia.

“No,” said Mrs Kornerup, “I can imagine there is something there that women find attractive.”

“But what women?” Olivia entwined her fingers so hard they made a cracking sound.

“I have known him since we were children of course,” was all Ida said, quietly.

Ida went in to the children; she always had to be a bow-wow while they laughed and shouted, and she crept around on the floor among the chairs on all fours until she opened the double door out to the veranda and went outside.

She was so fond of the brickworks’ garden when it lay there quite white and covered with snow.

It was so quiet here, and the shadows of all the trees fell so silently.

She followed the path beside the house. The snow crunched a little beneath her steps.

There would soon be snowdrops, when the weather grew a little warmer, and the “Dumpling” was to be baptised.

“Ida, Ida,” shouted Olivia from the veranda.

Ida did not reply. She was kneeling, behind the gable end, in the light from the big window, digging the snow away with her bare hands. Three or four tender white bells had emerged close to the wall…

“Ida, Ida!”

But Ida did not move.

These were the first flowers of spring. Oh, how lovely it had been when they used to find them at home in Ludvigsbakke, those first flowers.

Ida remained kneeling in the snow, lost in thought. They always said that sort of thing about Karl.

“Ida, Ida.”

But Ida made no reply.

“Heaven knows where she’s got to,” said Olivia, closing the veranda door.

“But she really is so beautiful,” said Mrs Kornerup.

“She always has been.” Olivia sat down.

“Yes,” said Mrs Kornerup, “but when you see her she is always sitting there at the window with her hair combed straight.”

And with a sudden leap in her thoughts, she added:

“I suppose she’ll be well off when her mother dies.”

∞∞∞

When Ida ran up the stone steps at home, Christian from the mill dodged in through the inside door.

Mrs Brandt was sitting in the sofa, idle and ample.

“That took rather a long time,” she said. “Where did you all go?”

Rather hesitantly, Ida named various shops and stalls, and Mrs Brandt asked:

“Did Lund go with you?”

“Yes, mother.”

“Who were you talking to out on the pavement?”

“The Misses Staal.”

“Hm, do those two girls go out alone?”

“Shall I read for you, mother?” asked Ida. She took the newspaper and started to read page four in a clear voice. “Situations Vacant” and “Sale and Purchase”. Mrs Brandt listened to this at first with her hands on her lap and eyes that suggested she was glaring through the walls into all the houses where they were seeking appointments or changing servants.

Ida went over to the local news and continued to read in the same tone and without interruption:

“House for sale in Brædstrup.”

“Rape in Hatting”.

“Who’s dead?” asked Mrs Brandt, interrupting her.

Ida read out the three death notices, and Mrs Brandt said:

“Take the serial now.”

Her features relaxed, and her eyes started to glaze over.

When Ida had finished reading, she gave her mother the cards to play patience and went out to make tea. It was not long before Mrs Brandt shouted:

“Sofie. Bring me the newspaper.”

Mrs Brandt took the newspaper and spread it out over the cards; she read about the rape in Hatting.

Mrs Brandt was in bed, and Ida, with the door open, was in the sitting room, where she could hear her mother’s breathing. She thought about “Baby Dumpling’ s” baptism…Yes, she would simply
have
to get some money out of the big bankbook.

“Ida,” came a voice from the bed. “What was in the parcels?”

“What parcels?”

“Niels came with some parcels.”

Ida said:

“They were for Mrs Lund.”

Her mother’s breathing became deeper. It was quite quiet in the house; only up in the loft were there sounds of movement and creaking.

Ida had taken out a book from
her
drawer in the chest of drawers. Evening was the only time when she dared read a little from Olivia’s books.

Sofie came in and sat down on the chair by the stove. For a long time, Ida could hear her sighing and sniffing. Then she looked up from her book and put her knitting needle down on the page as a bookmark.

“But can’t he find a job, Sofie?” she said.

Sofie started to sniff more noisily when she was spoken to.

“Oh yes, oh yes, but he’s no reputation.”

Sofie continued to weep – she sounded like a man when she wept:

“But I’ d so much like to ask you if I could be allowed to go to Communion…this Sunday.”

She sniffed aloud.

“Yes, of course,” said Ida. “Of course, Sofie.”

That was what Sofie always asked for when things were at their worst and Christian was out of work.