Father has an awful lot to see to at this time. It happens ever more frequently that he “flies off the handle”, so that even Mother is frightened of him.
Now that the Factory is to be taken into use again there can no longer be a question of having concerts and balls out there.
The Feckless Idiots’ Plot – such is the name that Father also gives to Uncle Hans and his friends. It’s an unpleasant expression, this word “feckless”, dead and clammy and tacky like putty. Keil is especially feckless – “and I’ll make sure I put an end to his carrying on with our dear Nanna.”
“Yes, but what about her, then?”
Father doesn’t answer immediately, but he sits there thinking.
Mother (with a sigh): “It’s a pity for Nanna. She’s so much in love with Keil.”
Father: “Being in love never lasts long. It’s like a soap bubble. It’s nothing to stake your future on. Why not Debes the Lighthouse Keeper? – She’d have been all right with him. Wouldn’t that be a good thing? Debes is a widower and still in the prime of life.”
Mother smiles quietly and shakes her head.
Silence.
Father (in a quiet voice and with his knuckles on the table): “I won’t have that windbag Keil running around here. She must be able to understand that Keil’s a man with no backbone. She’s a sensible girl. And surely she must have learnt something from that ridiculous affair with Harry. I’ll have a serious talk to her.”
Then Father had a serious talk to Aunt Nanna on her own, while Mother sat wringing her hands out in the kitchen.
Father (after the conversation): “Well, as I expected; your sister’s a sensible woman, so it’s possible to talk to her. She took it nicely.”
But the following day Aunt Nanna had again made herself invisible and shut herself up in her room and refused to react to Mother’s calling and knocking.
***
Selimsen the artist is a windbag and feckless idiot, too, and to a portrait he has painted of Uncle Hans sitting deep in thought on a boulder on the beach Father has given the title of “Toper by the Sea”.
Mother (flushed): “But it’s a good picture, Johan. It’s a work of art.”
“It might be a work of art. But Selimsen’s still a filthy beast.”
Father lights his pipe. His hands are trembling.
“Poor Platen, he was the most decent one of the whole crowd after all. At least he didn’t go carrying on with women and getting them into trouble.”
Mother (pleading): “But Hans isn’t like that.”
Father stares darkly in the air. Then he takes Mother’s hand and whispers something in her ear, and she sits for a moment shaking her head, her mouth open and her eyes closed.
***
In spite of everything, Mother wanted to buy Selimsen’s picture of Uncle Hans by the sea, and Father agreed to it. But the day Selimsen came with the painting, something happened in the office where the two men were alone. And when Father came in to dinner his face was very red and his look was very dark, and he was very silent.
The following day Selimsen and Keil left for Copenhagen on the Christina. They had been provided with money and a free passage, and their debts to the Rømer Concern had been written off.
Father (with a harsh little laugh): “Well, that was exile, Else. And so that’s over and done with. But then there’s Hans – our poor banshee.”