I

The porter had come for the three patients who had been working in the basement. He went over and shouted to the second of them, the man with the abdominal support, who was wandering up and down, up and down along the wall by the stove. He gave him a loud shout, straight in his face:

“Time to go.”

“Yes.” Patient number two stopped and looked at the porter. “Yes,” he said again, nodding and spinning around like a dog about to lie down. He always did this before embarking on even the smallest thing.

Then he got his dressing gown on like the others, and the three moved off. The porter’s keys could be heard rattling in the corridor as he locked the door – first at the top then lower down.

Nurse Brandt put the washed cups together in a corner of the small kitchen table and went into the ward to “listen”. But the two old folks in there were asleep, breathing deeply.

And all was quiet in Ward A.

Nurse Brandt climbed up on the chair in the anteroom – she had to do that in order to reach the window – and moved the flowers a little so as to make room and then sat down on the sill.

“Brandt’s quite mad,” said Nurse Brun in the women’s ward. “She flies up like a scared chicken.”

Ida Brandt leant her head back against the wall – she was always rather tired towards evening after her first time on day duty – and she looked out through the big window: the “Lakes” looked so calm, a single strip of red glowing in the sinking sun.

Ida Brandt took out a letter, but she sat there holding it in her hand for a long time as the red flush on the lake gradually slipped away and faded before starting to read:

Horsens, the 1st of October

My dear,

You will receive this letter five days late. I know. But on the other hand, you don’t have five terrible children, two of whom last week broke the front leg off the writing desk. They just wanted to pretend it was a boat, my dear, while I was doing the cleaning. But the leg has been glued on again now, and this morning I managed to hang the last winter curtains, and so now you can have my birthday wishes: God bless you, my dear; you know that all of us here in the “Villa” wish you that.

So you are really twenty-eight now. Oh how time flies. When I pass your old window, I often feel it was only yesterday I used to see you sitting there on the mahogany chair and looking out like the good girl that you were. Everything about you was good, Ida, your eyes, your hair beautifully combed with its two pigtails, and everything. You used to look out at us giddy kids from Miss Jørgensen’s school as we came running down the street with our schoolbags, playing ‘tick’ in the gateways until there wasn’t a whole pleat in our skirts.

At last you would come out on to the outdoor steps and stand holding carefully on to the railing as though afraid of falling into the water until your mother called out ‘I-da’, and in you went with stiff pigtails and a rather old-maidish walk and your mother closed the door.

There was always something about your mother that put a damper on things.

I would pause to catch my breath in our doorway. I knew perfectly well that mother was watching: ‘Oh that’s where you are?’ (I had sidled in through the door). ‘Let me have a look at you’ – and I had to turn around.

‘Take your fingers out of your mouth, Olivia.’

‘Now I’ve told you before, this is the last time you’ re going to have fur edging on your coat…’ I pulled a face; there was always a bit hanging loose here or there; I don’t know how it was, but Regine and I simply became untidy.

‘All right, you can go now.’

I ran with my schoolbag straight into the doorframe.

‘I wonder whether that child will ever learn to walk on her own legs’

And I was out in the street.

‘But…’ came the voice from the window again, ‘you’ d better get Karen to put a brush on your hair…It’s a disgrace to you.’

Hair was the worst thing. It always ended with Karen having to stand with the brushes in front of Mamma, brushing and brushing:

‘No,’ Mamma would sigh. ‘It’s impossible to make that hair look tidy. Just you look at Ida Brandt, she can keep hers in order.’

I stood there as stiff as a poker, and Karen brushed away: you were always the paragon of virtue.

And do you remember when Mamma visited your mother together with me – I don’t think they had really known each other very well before that – and they were talking in the living room and we were sitting in your two little chairs in the bedroom between your mother’s bed and the window and I suddenly took hold of both your pigtails and banged your head against the edge of the bed?

You didn’t resist and you didn’t make a fuss, but you simply started to cry – quite gently…Do you know what, my dear: I think I was fond of you from that moment because you had cried so quietly…

Ida Brandt lowered her friend’s letter to her lap. She gazed out at the Lakes without seeing them. It was as though she could see everything at home, the house, the living room where the furniture had never been rearranged, and the bedroom with the two small chairs on which she was to fold her clothes, garment by garment, before going to bed; and her mother, calm and broad with the heavy curls in her hair and the gold chain around her neck.

Then she read on:

I so well remember the Wednesdays, when I used to come across to your house at five o’ clock to fetch you out. Once I was indoors, your mother would call from her window seat into the bedroom, where you were doing your homework:

‘Ida…’

‘I-da.’ You always stuck you fingers in your ears when you were reading, you were so keen: ‘It’s Olivia Frank.’

Continuing to knit with her big needles, your mother would nod and say, ‘Sit down, dear.’

And I would sit down by the door – in your home one always sat in the middle of the chair – until you had all your clothes on – your waistcoat and your little scarf and then your cape and big scarf – and then we curtsied to your mother.

‘Have you a handkerchief, Ida?’ she would ask – I always felt for my own handkerchief – ‘Take care of yourselves…’

And we went past the window, side by side.

In the evening, the cloth was taken off the table – I can see your mother moving the lamp from one table to the other – a job she always did herself and then we played patience while your mother had a game of whist with the maiden ladies. At half past eight, when I was to go home and your Sofie came in with the redcurrant wine, we were given an apple each while my outdoor clothes were brought into the warm room…

Mamma used to say, ‘Olivia is better behaved for a whole day when she has been at Ida Brandt’s.’

But on Sundays you came to our house from first thing in the morning. Do you remember how Sofie used to bring you and say that ‘madam sends her compliments’ as she took your outdoor clothes off one by one as though she was undoing a bundle? No one scared Mamma like your Sofie.

‘I don’t know,’ she used to say, ‘but her eyes are everywhere as though she is looking for the tiniest speck of dust on the furniture.’

Mamma had a tendency to become flustered in the presence of other people’s maids.

In her most polite voice, Mamma would say, ‘Could I offer you a cup of coffee, Sofie?’

And Sofie would drink it, sitting primly on the chair near the black bookcase, without saying a word.

Do you remember the day we were out playing and you tore your blue muslin dress on a nail?

You simply sat there, quite quietly, all the time smoothing the tear over your knee without saying a word, and I stood just watching and then I started to help you, with both my thumbs, as though we could glue the tear until I whispered, ‘We must tell Mamma’.

And we ran up to Mamma, and when we were just inside the doorway I said:

‘Ida’s torn her dress.’

When I said ‘torn’ I started to cry, but you stood there as quiet as ever.

‘Where?’

Mamma took hold of your dress by the seam and held it out from you like a banner:

‘Yes, what did I tell you?’ She let go of the skirt. ‘What must Mrs Brandt think about this crazy family?’

You stood there, trembling but not crying, and Mamma loosened the hair behind her ears with her crochet hook:

‘We must send for Miss Finsen,’ she said, just as dismayed as we were. ‘Take your dress off…’

Karen ran to fetch Miss Finsen and you put on one of Mamma’s nightdresses while you waited, and Mamma went on about ‘this house’ and my dress, which I could tear without there being a problem…

‘There’s Mrs Brandt,’ I shouted from the window.

Mamma let go of the dress:

‘She’s going to church,’ she said, as though relieved. And we both watched your mother’s straight back as she crossed the market place.

‘It’s Mr Hansen preaching the sermon,’ said Mamma.

‘No,’ you said in a weak, thick voice – it was about the first thing you said – ‘It’s Mr Schmidt’.

Mamma put her hands down on her lap.

‘In that case they won’t be going home before half past twelve,’ she said with conviction.

When Miss Finsen came, she declared that she could take half a width out and then alter the pleats in the back.

‘It won’t be seen,’ she said as she measured and examined the blue material. Miss Finsen, poor woman, had a pair of eyes as though she was always wondering how best to cut a length of material of difficult material.

‘No, you won’t be able to see it.’

‘Do you think not? Do you think not?’ said Mamma, who always listened to Finsen as though she was speaking in Latin: ‘Well, provided it won’t be seen…’

It was not to be seen.

‘Turn round, dear,’ Mamma said to you once you had the dress on again. ‘Once more…No, it can’t be seen.’

‘Thank goodness for that, Finsen.’ Mamma put her hands down on her lap.

‘Let’s have a cream cake now.’

Cream cake was Mamma’s regular treat for seamstresses. A tiny bit of pastry was always left behind on Finsen’s lower lip, in the crack she had acquired by biting threads.

I went with you that evening when Sofie came. You grabbed my hand rather tight when we got to the street. When we reached the cellar steps, I said: ‘They are playing cards; I saw the ladies’ shadows on your white curtain.’

‘Yes,’ you whispered in a tiny, frightened voice.

We went inside and you took off your outdoor clothes and we curtseyed to them all, first I and then you, and your mother said over the cards: ‘Has Ida behaved herself?’

‘Yes.’ That was the first lie you ever told, my dear.

‘Good, then you can go to bed. You know that you have to do your practice at seven o’ clock on Mondays. Good night.’

You received a kiss on the forehead and then went off.

‘Goodbye,’ I said almost like an explosion. And I ran home to Mamma so that I was quite out of breath:

‘They didn’t see anything.’

‘Oh, thank goodness for that,’ said Mamma, sitting down heavily on the sofa.

‘Well, it does Ida good to be a bit naughty occasionally,’ she said. I had surreptitiously taken hold of my homework from by the window.

‘I say, Olivia,’ said Mamma, ‘are you starting on your homework now?…Do you think Ida Brandt steals candles to read in bed?’

∞∞∞

Ida Brandt closed the letter and sat for a long time smiling and leaning her head on the window frame. The street lamps were being lit one by one over on the other side of the Lakes. She heard Josefine bring the supper and then go again, and she heard the old people in Ward A starting to turn in their beds.

She sat there for just a moment longer.

But suddenly, the keys rattled in the door in the women’s ward, and she jumped down with such a start that she overturned the chair. It might be the professor: he came at so many different times and the lamps were not lit.

But no, it was Mr von Eichbaum from the office, who said:

“May I go through, Nurse?”

“Yes, do.”

She lit the lamps; she had been so scared that she was quite out of breath.

Mr von Eichbaum stayed while she lit them.

“You know it’s damned curious,” he said in his slightly nasal voice, “how much I’ve been thinking about Ludvigsbakke since I ended up in this confounded office.”

“Yes, but it was so lovely there,” said Ida in a voice almost as though she were looking at it. “There was such a beautiful view over towards Brædstrup.”

“Yes, it was nice,” he said, smacking his lips. “Those were the days.”

He remained there while she fetched the ladder and climbed it to light the gas lamp above the door to Ward A.

“No,” he said as he watched her; there aren’t many to compare with His Lordship.”

They exchanged a few more words as she came down again and went into Ward A. The gentleman in there, who was sitting in the black easy chair, raised his head and watched her through his big, gloomy eyes as she lit the lamps on his table.

“Who is he really?” asked von Eichbaum when she returned.

“I don’t know,” she said. “A doctor.” And half laughing she said: “He is the only one I am frightened of.”

Eichbaum laughed. “But damn it all, he looks pretty quiet.”

“Yes, but I don’t know, he’s almost like a ghost.”

“A ghost?”

“Yes,” said Ida, apparently slightly embarrassed. “The ghost of somebody or other.”

Mr von Eichbaum continued to laugh; he did not take his eyes off her.

“Oh well, good night, nurse.”

Mr von Eichbaum nodded and let himself out, and Ida crept up the ladder to light the lamp above the door to the “Hall”. The sound of a high-pitched plaintive voice could be heard from the women’s ward. It was Miss Benjamin; she was always restless as evening approached.

Ida Brandt could not refrain from smiling as she stood there, humming gently as she divided up the butter for supper: she was thinking of Olivia’s letter.

And of Ludvigsbakke.

The patients working in the basement came up again and started wandering around in the anteroom, going to and fro in some curious way without heeding each other, while their clogs clattered ceaselessly across the floor.

Bertelsen, a tall man who had “come to a standstill”, went over to the washbasin in the kitchen to wash his hands, a pair of reddish, clammy hands – he had to wash them every ten minutes as though to cleanse them of some thousandfold sin.

“Come on, Bertelsen, you’ re clean,” said Nurse Brandt.

“Yes,” he said, suddenly stopping washing as though no longer remembering to do it. He went over to the table, stood there and looked at her for a while – as far as he was able, for his eyes never rested on one single thing:

“But what am I supposed to be here for?” he said suddenly.

“Will you tell me, what I am supposed to be here for?” His voice was raised as he repeated his words.

“You have to get better, Bertelsen,” said the nurse as she continued to prepare the sandwiches.

“Better!” His laugh was more by way of a snarl, and all his compact teeth could be seen. They gleamed, and it was as though they were the only things in his face with any colour to them:

“Better here, where I’m locked in.”

“And you must have something to eat,” she said. “And then that will be another day gone, Bertelsen.”

“Yes, I’m coming,” she shouted into the “Hall”, where the two patients had already seated themselves at the tables at the end of the beds, impatiently banging on the floor with their clogs. “I’m coming.”

She listened first at Nurse Petersen’s door; she was still fast asleep, and her breathing could be heard even out there.

“Nurse Petersen,” she shouted. “Time to get up.”

The loud breathing stopped, and at long last there came a sleepy, “All right.” Nurse Petersen was the night nurse. Ida took the food into the ante-room, where the man with the abdominal support was still shuffling around.

“You must have something to eat, Schrøder,” said Ida, facing him directly as though speaking to someone who was deaf.

“Hm.” He merely looked at her.

“You must have something to eat, Schrøder,” she repeated.

“Hm.”

“I mean now.” She continued to speak clearly, as though the man had difficulty in hearing. “Because the doctors are coming now.”

And, holding him in front of her, she guided him over to the table.

The doctors could already be heard on the stairs, and the keys sounded in the door. It was the registrar and two junior doctors, followed by Nurse Helgesen carrying the case notes. She carried them like an officer in a court of law clutching some legal document.

The patients rose from the table, and the three old bedridden patients watched the doctors through strangely half-glazed eyes.

“Nothing to report?” asked the doctor.

“No, doctor.”

The doctor went into Ward A alone and shut the door.

Quam, one of the junior doctors, sprang on to the table in the ante-room and brought his feet together.

“Heaven preserve us – what a shift – eleven new admissions and one of them pumped.”

“Was it opium?” Nurse Helgesen spoke to the junior doctors in a businesslike manner as though to colleagues.

“Yes, he’s a locksmith’s apprentice. They say it’s a love affair, and now they’ve dragged him up and down the floor for almost five hours – two men. Heaven preserve us.” Quam yawned: “Just fancy, human beings can’t learn to take things calmly. What do you say, Nurse Brandt?”

Quam jumped down, for the registrar was emerging.

“You can let the patient have a little fresh air,” he said; he was already at the door to the women’s ward.

Quam followed him at the end of the procession; he always wore white sports trousers on the days when he was on duty, and on reaching the doorway he shook his legs as though he wanted to shake the dust off his feet.

Ida provided the three old men with food; she had a gentle way of her own when raising them up in bed.

Nurse Petersen came out of her room, energetic and out of breath.

“What time is it, nurse?” she said to Ida – the lower part of Nurse Petersen’s body performed ten elegant oscillations at every step she took.

“My watch has stopped.”

“It’s getting late,” said Ida. It was always getting late when Nurse Petersen emerged in the evenings.

“Oh yes, thank you for waiting.” Nurse Petersen took out her keys – she was for ever making small movements with her fingers – “I’ll be quick with my tea.”

Ida just nodded; she was so used to having to wait for the others for half an hour after her duty. She sat down under the light in the Hall and started to sew.

How well she remembered him, of course, now she thought about it, at home in Ludvigsbakke – him and his mother, who always sat right up at the end of the table – she always sat up beside His Lordship at table.

And she went for walks on the dot, and had the two stone benches in the approach to the steward’s house where she rested.

“Hm,” she always said: “And here we have little Miss Brandt,” as though she discovered her anew each time.

The three patients sat playing cards at the end of the bed with their woollen trousers concertinaed high up on their legs. But Schrøder wanted to go to bed.

He was sitting in his bare shirt on the edge of the bed, his legs hanging down as though his bones were all loose.

“Bedtime, Schrøder,” said Ida.

“Yes,” he replied, though he continued to sit there with his head drooping down.

Ida had to get up before Schrøder managed to lift his legs with some difficulty, as though this was something that required serious thought. “There,” she said, smoothing the blankets with both hands. “It’s a lot better when you lie down, isn’t it?”

She continued to help with the blankets while hushing Bertelsen; he was always so aggressive when playing cards. Then she heard Nurse Petersen’s keys and started putting her sewing away; all she had to do now was open the door to Ward A.

The gentleman in Ward A was sitting by the table and only looked up briefly to start writing on his big papers again. He wrote nothing but numbers and more numbers, slowly as though he were printing.

“I will just open the shutters,” said Ida, as she opened the big window.

But he made no reply and just went on writing. Here, in Ward A, Miss Benjamin was the patient who was heard most clearly, for she was right up against the wall.

Nurse Petersen was standing outside at the peephole when Ida came out.

“He’s one I wouldn’t mind getting rid of,” she said. She came from Flensburg and still spoke with an accent – and they both remained at the peephole. The gentleman in there rose slowly, and he seated himself quietly up on the windowsill.

He sat there without moving, staring out into the night, at the stars.

“Good heavens, he just always sits there working things out,” said Nurse Petersen.

“Dr Quam says he wants to discover the laws,” said Ida.

“Poor man,” said Nurse Petersen, who understood nothing at all, and she gave a maidenly toss of the head before leaving the peephole.

Ida opened the door to the noisy ward and went in. Two porters were supporting a lifeless body between them; its arms were draped over their shoulders as they dragged him along.

Josefine, sitting on the bench beneath the windows and trying to get two men to eat something, nodded in the direction of the porters.

“What a job! They’ve been at it for five hours.”

The porters turned just by the door leading to the “good” ward, as Ida came in, and one of them, looking at the hanging head, said:

“He’s actually quite a respectable chap.”

“Yes,” said Ida, looking at the face with lips open like those in a mask – and the porters turned round and continued to drag the body around.

In the quiet ward, the doors to the individual rooms were open, and the patients were dozing on their beds. In the dining room, with her opera glasses before her and buttoning her gloves, sat Nurse Friis, who was off that evening and going to the theatre.

“Ah,” she said. “There we have our assistant nurse.”

“Give me a hand, will you?” she held out one hand towards Ida, who always had to “give a hand”. “I’m going to be far too late.”

Ida buttoned the glove while Nurse Helgesen, who was sitting, arms crossed, in her favourite position behind the urn, said in her very clear voice:

“What did that blouse cost?”

“Thank you, nurse.”

Nurse Friis looked at herself one last time in the little mirror in the corner; she was still wearing the coat she had received as a twenty-two-year old ten years ago, and her hair had to be waved in her own quite special way around her temples.

“I got it from a cousin in Aalborg,” she said, referring to the blouse.

Nurse Krohn and Nurse Berg, who were drinking their tea at the other end of the table, said: “Oh dear, now we shall have to start thinking about winter clothes.”

And they started to talk about hats.

“I make my own,” said Nurse Helgesen behind the urn.

Then a large female figure appeared in the doorway.

“There’s a fine smell in here,” she said, putting a white hand up to a broad nose while looking at Nurse Friis. This was Sister Koch, the senior nurse in the women’s ward.

“Yes,” said Nurse Friis, who was ready at last and had taken hold of her opera glass. “I don’t like to smell of carbolic outside the hospital.”

“Good night.”

Sister Koch came in and sat down over in the corner with her hands on her knees like a man.

“May I be here for a bit?” she said.

And Nurse Helgesen, who had nodded to her, said from behind the urn, “Nurse Friis is very fond of clothes.”

Nurse Berg and Nurse Krohn continued to talk about hats, and Nurse Koch, scratching the grey hair tied up at the back of her neck in the much same way as one ties a piece of rope said:

“Buy yourselves a couple of fur hats, ladies, they don’t wear out.”

The two laughed and went on discussing hats: they had more or less to suit the way you did your hair; and they started to talk about hair while the two senior nurses asked about the new patients.

“There were eleven today,” said Nurse Helgesen.

“Yes and quite a lot of bother,” said Sister Koch.

Nurse Berg could not imagine herself without a fringe.

“Aye,” she said, “if one had Brandt’s hair. Good Heavens, Brandt, I can’t understand you don’t try to wave it a bit.”

“It’s always been like this,” said Ida.

But Nurse Berg wanted to try to wave it and started to ruffle Ida’s fringe with a pocket comb. “I can hardly recognise you,” she said, going on ruffling: “otherwise you just look as though your hair’s been plastered down with a wet comb.”

Nurse Krohn, sitting watching, with both arms on the table, said: “Oh, did you see the new man in the office? My word, that’s some back parting he’s got.”

They discussed Mr. von Eichbaum, and from over in her chair Nurse Helgesen said: “Mr. von Eichbaum seems to me to be a very nice person…”

Sister Koch pushed her glasses more firmly on her nose as though to see better.

“Well,” she said, “he gives me the impression of being something of a philanderer.”

“I know him,” said Ida, sitting there quite quietly with her ruffled hair. “I knew him at home in Ludvigsbakke.” She always said “Ludvigsbakke” rather more gently than the other words she spoke.

But, drumming her fingers on the table as though dancing a waltz with them, Nurse Krohn said:

“The man wears straps on his trousers.”

Sister Koch spoke about Ludvigsbakke, which was in the part of the country from which she came, and about His Old Lordship and Her Ladyship.

“But surely she was already dead by that time.”

“Yes,” replied Ida. “Her Ladyship was dead.”

“She was a lovely woman,” said Sister Koch. “She still used to hoe her own flowerbeds when she was eighty, with farmhand’s socks pulled up over her shoes.”

Sister Koch laughed at the thought of Her Late Ladyship and her woollen socks.

“But that must be almost thirty years ago. Well…” – Sister Koch shook the front of her skirt. This was a habit she always had when she rose – “we all of us come to that.”

“Are you going upstairs, Brandt?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll go up with you,” said Sister Koch. “Good night.”

They let themselves out on the stairs near the quiet ward and stopped at Sister Koch’s door.

“Yes,” said Sister Koch in a quite different tone, and they stood by the door for a moment. “It was a splendid place.” She was thinking of Ludvigsbakke. “Good night, Brandt.”

“Good night.”

Ida went up and made her way across the loft to her own room. She lit the lamp, which was covered by a butterfly-shaped cloth (there were so many little things scattered about in the room that she and Nurse Roed made while on night duty to decorate their rooms), and she stood for a time in front of the chest of drawers looking at the picture of Ludvigsbakke with the tall white house and the lawn in front of it with the new flagpole, and all the children sitting on the steps all the way up.

There was Mr von Eichbaum as well. Yes, it was he, she thought it was a long time since she had noticed him. But she could well remember that the picture was from the year when he had come home from some school in Switzerland and spent his time stretched out on the lawn.

And His Lordship was standing by the flagpole.

She went across to the writing desk and let the flap down and took out a couple more pictures. That was the one of the lake and she stood there holding it and smiling: hmm, it was from when it was dry and the water was low as well, and all the gentlemen and Agnes Linde waded out with bare legs, splashing around among all the fish. How they enjoyed themselves. But a pike had once bitten Agnes Linde on the calf so that they had to send for Dr. Didrichsen.

There was Mrs von Eichbaum sitting under the white parasol.

She closed the drawers again; they were full of so many of mother’s old things, and while she undressed she took Olivia’s letter out and put it over by the bed. She had a habit of taking letters to bed and keeping them under the pillow as though to have them with her.

She sat up in bed and looked through all the sheets of paper. Olivia always started with quite small writing, which then became bigger and bigger and went all over the place:

Aye, those were the days, and who can understand what became of them…Here I can see us in church, at our confirmation, when we all wore white dresses and were flushed with crying and with our hair all smoothed down. Old Mr Bacher, poor thing, he’s going downhill, and they all go to Mr Robert for their confirmation classes now; he had twenty-seven last time round.

But goodness knows how often you had to test me on hymns.

Mamma always said: ‘I always think that Ida is the smartest of the confirmation candidates…there is something special about that girl with the way she holds her head, looking down a little…rather different from the others.’

And the dress you wore the next day was blue with tiny white dots.

We attended our first ball that Christmas. I had slept with gloves on for three weeks:

‘You simply can’t go to a ball with those hands,’ said Mamma. ‘Ida helps in the house, and yet she has nicer hands than you.’

We went there in Jensen’s carriage, you and I on the back seat, with two skirts up over our heads, sitting on the canvas ones while Mamma squeezed into the front seat and your Sofie sat proudly up on the box with your shoes, all wrapped in paper.

Every mother gave her own orders and tidied us up. And there we stood, in the middle of the floor with red arms and all frightened and smiling, while Mrs Ferder rushed all over the place:

`My word, Mrs Franck, yours are lovely,’ she went on; she had an open packet of pins fixed on her breast to straighten up Inka’s dress. There was a loud knock on the door: ‘Open up, open up’. It was Nina Stjernholm in her fur coat.

‘Good evening, good evening, children, children, I’m far too late,’ she shouted, shaking her head and making her curls fly all over the place, and then she shouted to Mamma:

‘Dear Mrs Franck, where are the fillies?’ And she scrutinized us and pushed fat Mrs Eriksen aside: ‘Charming, charming,’ she said as she bustled about.

‘Have you a partner for the first dance?’ she said turning to us.

‘Ida hasn’ t…’

‘Good, then stay with me, Miss Brandt; I’ve got a couple of new lieutenants from Fredericia…and I will take His Lordship.’

The master of ceremonies knocked on the door and asked whether the ladies were ready, and the music started.

We danced. I heard Captain Bergfeld say to Mamma:

‘That quiet young lady is so charming.’

That ‘quiet young lady’ was you, my girl, and the captain was a connoisseur.

Oh, yes, those wonderful early days: when summer arrived and the ‘sewing club’ moved out into the grove and we sat there in a circle, behind the pavilion, beneath the trees, while one of us read aloud.

But then came the autumn when your mother was taken ill.

You were over at our house, I remember, when Sofie came running across and shouted for you from out in the corridor. You had got up from the table and you left, without a word, without saying goodbye, running along the street after Sofie. You met Miss Fischer and took hold of her and spoke to her and then went on, faster and faster.

I stood at our window and wanted to go after you, but I don’t know…I was afraid, so frightened…that perhaps she was dead already, and I said to Mamma:

‘Are you not going to go with her?’

And we put on our coats and went along and arrived in your living room, where all the furniture had been moved because they had had to lift your mother and carry her; and the doctor came and the room was full of people until the doctor said they should go, and Miss Fischer came running in with a bowl full of ice, and she was crying and kept on saying:

‘But she would never do as anyone advised her to do; she would never follow anyone’s advice.’

I stayed with you that night, and we sat and kept watch in the living room and heard all the clocks ticking and announcing the slow hours with the bell whirring and striking.

And we heard the night nurse whisper to Sofie and change the ice, and we sat there again, listening to the clocks.

But you, poor thing, sat up for many nights after this.

Goodbye for now, my dear. May the new year bring you much joy. You know that we in the Villa all wish you that.

And then a kiss to mark the occasion, although you know how I hate all this kissing between friends. The children are shouting to me to give you their love.

Yours,

Olivia

Ida turned round and was about to put the letter, which she had slowly folded, under her pillow when she heard three sharp knocks on the door.

“Open up,” said a voice from outside.

It was Nurse Kjær and Nurse Øverud from the women’s ward, who darted in and quickly closed the door again.

“We’ve got something to drink,” said Nurse Kjær in little more than a whisper; she was carrying a brown bottle: “to celebrate her sister.”

“Of course,” said Ida. “They were getting married today.”

“Yes,” said Nurse Kjær. “She’s married now,” (they all three continued to speak quickly and in subdued voices as though the crème de cacao was something they had stolen): “Well, Sister Koch had gone to bed…”

Still in a half whisper, she said: “Øverud, where are the glasses?”

Nurse Øverud carefully took three small glasses out of her pocket, and the two sat down on chairs in front of the bed with the light shining down on Ida’s duvet.

“Good health,” said Kjær.

All three of them took a drink, while keeping the bottle on the floor as though to hide it, and Nurse Kjær said slowly as she sat there holding her glass, “There are forty of them there today.”

“Well,” she continued (she had acquired the same habit of moving her hand up towards her nose as Sister Koch), “it was certainly about time they got married…they’ d managed to stick together for five and a half years now while Poulsen was working in the post office…Then last summer while I was at home I was sent up into the woods to find them. Poulsen had the Sunday off (Kjær laughed), as he had every third Sunday, and there he was, asleep with his head on Marie’s shawl, while Marie, poor creature, was tiptoeing quietly around picking raspberries, aye, aye,” she said and chinked glasses with Nurse Øverud, who was laughing.

“It’s not easy to stay awake when you have had to drool over each other for five years.”

“But is it right they are going to move to Samsø now?” asked Ida.

“Yes, with sixteen hundred and a pension.”

They sat for a while, and then Nurse Kjær said in a quite different tone:

“Henriette wrote that the girls were going to decorate the church. It is so beautiful” – she paused for a moment – “that church at home, when it is decorated.”

The last time Nurse Øverud helped to decorate the church, she told them in her Funen lilt, was for Anna Kjærbølling’s wedding.

“Anna Kjærbølling, you know her, of course, Nurse Brandt. She comes from Broholm.”

“Yes,” said Ida. “She has two delightful children.”

“Yes, two lovely children.”

Nurse Kjær still sat looking at the wall.

“And I think, too,” she said slowly, “that children are the best thing of all.”

There was a moment’s silence while they all three stared into the light with changed and, as it were, sharper faces.

“Oh well, let’s wish them all the best,” said Nurse Kjær as she emptied her glass.

“Yes, all the best,” said the others, chinking their glasses with hers.

Nurse Kjær suddenly rose:

“We must go over,” she said, walking across the floor with the bottle; but her thoughts were still with her sister, and in the same voice as before, as though she was watching them go, she said: “And they will be on Samsø tomorrow.”

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

Ida locked her door again, and she heard them hurrying across the loft as she returned to her bed. She was so wide awake now, although her head was heavy. She was thinking of Olivia and her children and of Nina with her four tall boys, whom she had seen last year, and about her father and her home – at home in Ludvigsbakke.

She could see the big white wing of the bailiff’s farm and the rooms in which everything was so clean and tidy and so quiet, and then there were the flowers, four in each window and four in the painted flower pots; and father’s shells, which she was never allowed to touch, were resplendent in the corners.

And she saw the office as she knocked on the very bottom of the door when she was quite small and went in and said that dinner was ready. Her father was sitting at the green table in his long canvas coat and wearing his old straw hat – for he always “covered up” when he was in the office – and she clambered up in the big armchair and waited: all “father’s birds” were perched around them, in their big cases, behind glass.

Until mother opened the door:

“Brandt, dinner is waiting.”

“Yes, dear. Is Ida here?”

And he absent-mindedly caressed Ida with a pair of loving hands:

“Yes dear, yes my dear.”

They went in. Ida toddled along beside her father, who held her so close to his knee that she stumbled over his boots.

“Brandt,” said her mother, “that’s no way to walk with the child.”

After dinner, father sat down in the sofa with a handkerchief over his face; mother sat in her chair by the window. Before long they were both asleep.

Ida tiptoed around quietly – she wore carpet slippers at home – and left the doors ajar. Then she sat down on a stool while her parents slept.

After dinner, Ida went with her mother to have coffee at the Madsens in the school. This was up by the main road to the north, along which carriages would be driving. One of them was that of the pharmacist’s wife from Brædstrup.

She had bought herself a sewing machine in Copenhagen now.

Yes, Mrs Madsen had been over to see it. But she thought that things would last better if they were sewn by hand.

Her mother nodded.

“But you know they have to try everything out at the pharmacy,” she said.

Ida sat on a small chair, learning to knit, and she had her own little cup.

When Ida and her mother went home, they took the road leading past the farm. Only two solitary candles were burning, one in Miss Schrøder’s room and one in the steward’s wing.

There was the sound of a voice: “Good evening.” It was Lars Jensen, the farm foreman; he rose from a bench.

“Good evening,” replied mother.

And they went on their way into the dark avenue leading to the bailiff’s house.

At home, they could hear laughter in the hallway. It was the forester and his wife who had come over for supper. Mother went in to prepare things, and Ida curtsied first to Mrs Lund, quite a small, frail lady who had given birth to eleven boys and whose eyes had grown bigger at every birth, and then to her husband.

“Well, and how is the young lady?” he said, lifting her up in both arms just in the midst of her curtsey and swinging her in the air. Lund was a man of enormous girth, and he laughed until he turned red right up to the back of his head.

“Lund, Lund, you’ re so rough,” said his wife. “You’ re only used to romping about with boys.”

“Oh,” said Lund as he continued to swing her around, “It’s good for her, so it is. It gets her blood circulating.”

They went in to have something to eat. “Oh,” said Mrs Lund (for nowhere were there so many beautiful things on a table as at the bailiff’s). “How wonderful it must be to be able to look after everything as you do, Mrs Brandt.”

Things were rather all over the place at the forester’ s; eleven was a somewhat large number of heirs to see to.

They exchanged news from the neighbourhood and talked about the sewing machine. Lund had been in to see how it worked.

“You must go and have a look at that great work of art,” he said.

“But surely it works by hand?” said Mrs Brandt.

“Yes, but heaven knows how long it will last.”

“You know, Lund,” said his wife with a faraway look in her eyes, “it must surely be lovely to have one of those in a home where there are so many to make clothes for.”

Lund just laughed:

“Aye, née Silferhjelm,” – the pharmacist’s wife had her distinguished maiden name placed below Mogensen on her cards – “could surely manage to sew the few skirts she needs by hand.”

“But there are people,” said Mrs Brandt as she handed a dish around, “who must be the first to have things.”

“And then when you haven’t anything else to think about,” said Mrs Lund, “it is quite reasonable.”

Mrs Lund, who always spoke in a tone as though she were trying to quieten someone down, changed the subject to the price of butter:

“Now Levy has reduced his price by four skillings.”

Mrs Brandt failed to understand that, for she had maintained her price all the time.

“Well,” said Mrs Lund, shaking her head – she had four small curls at the back, tied with a velvet ribbon – “but it is presumably because things do not always turn out like that for us at home… heaven knows how that happens.”

“Let’s have a schnapps, Lund,” said Brandt who was doing little but look, first at one and then at the other. “Has Ida got anything to eat?”

Ida was allowed to spread her butter herself with a blunt-edged knife. “You have to accustom children,” said her mother. “It is good for them.”

“Cheers, Lund,” said the bailiff, and they went on to wonder when His Lordship could be expected. It would scarcely be before the end of June, in a couple of months.

“When the woods are past their best,” said the forester.

Ida was to go to bed after the meal. Her father put her on his knee when she said good night and bounced her up and down.

“My, you do bounce that child around,” said Lund with a laugh, and Ida said good night to the others, one after the other in turn.

The forester and his wife left at ten o’ clock.

“Let me take your arm,” said Lund, for it was dark.

“She’s a prickly one, you know,” he said. “She can’t forget we’ve known her as the housekeeper…and all that went with it.”

“But they’ re very helpful, Lund,” she said.

The forester said nothing to that. His only comment was: “She takes up a lot of space at the end of the table.”

“And how nice everything is,” said his wife. She was always full of profound admiration when she was in other people’s homes.

The Lunds made their way home.

But Mrs Brandt went around putting away the silver.

…Ida was to have a children’s party, and that must be now, before His Lordship came.

The children had chocolate to drink on the Mound adjoining His Lordship’s garden.

The girls sat in a row, all in starched dresses – with the two from the inn at the end of the table in tartan winter dresses and wearing earrings – all drinking and eating.

Mrs Brandt, who was going around, wearing a white shawl and pouring out the cocoa, said:

“I don’t think you have anything, have you Ingeborg?”

Ingeborg was the judge’s only child and she was wearing net mittens decorated with small bows.

Not a sound was to be heard.

Ida, who was the smallest of them all, went around showing her dolls to those who were finished, and the forester’s two youngest, Edvard and Karl Johan, who had chapped hands (“Heaven knows how that happens,” said Mrs Lund: “but all the dirt in existence seems to land on those boys’ hands”) went for the dishes of cakes all of a sudden as though they had to grab at everything they were eating.

“Sofie,” said Mrs Brandt, looking down along the silent table, “I do not think they have anything down there,” as though it was only a matter of filling them up.

“No thank you,” said Ingeborg, when Mrs Brandt offered her more, “it’s so late to be having tea.”

The two from the inn had turned their cups upside down.

Brandt appeared at the bottom of the Mound – his trousers so easily found their way into the backs of his shoes as he walked:

“Aha, this is a party,” he said as he came up. “Have you all got something?” he said. “Aha,” he went around pinching their cheeks, diffidently saying their names for he did not know what else to say, while the little girls shuffled and looked down at their skirts.

“But then you’ d better play some games,” he repeated.

“Then they had better play games,” he repeated to his wife.

“But perhaps some of the children would like some more,” replied Mrs Brandt.

“No,” said the eldest of those from the inn sharply, behind his cup, deciding it for them all.

“Then you must go and play,” continued the father in the same tone; he did not know what they were to play.

“We could have a game of handkerchief into the ring,” said the judge’s daughter Ingeborg, while the little girls sat there, flushed and quiet.

“Well, yes, but little children must be allowed to make a noise,” said Brandt. “Children must make a noise, they must run around.” And suddenly, quite put out, he said:

“I’ll fetch Schrøder, my dear.” And he went.

“The forester’s two mumbled something about not knowing what was meant by handkerchief into the ring, and they went over and sulked by a tree.

“Right, you can start,” said Ida hanging over the edge of a bench beside Ingeborg and handing her a handkerchief that was far too small to be thrown into the ring.

Brandt ran through the garden and in through His Lordship’s gate. Up in the main building, all the doors were wide open and there was a smell of starched curtains and cleanliness.

Miss Schrøder was standing on a stepladder in the middle of the sitting room in her stocking feet; when hard-pressed she was fond of taking off her shoes:

“Lord, Mr Brandt, you’ve come to fetch me,” she shouted, letting her arms fall.

“Yes, Schrøder my dear, you’ll have to go over there…they can’t get things going,” said Brandt, pushing his glasses up and down; “there’s no one who knows what children do to enjoy themselves.” He pulled both trouser legs up:

“I think there are fifty of them,” he said.

“Good heavens, of course I’ll come.” And Schrøder put her hands up to her hair: “But I’ve got all this to do.”

Schrøder looked around; there were curtains on all the chairs: “And they’ll be here tomorrow!” She came down from the steps and flipped her shoes on. “This heat’s terrible on your legs,” she said. Heat was always a problem for Schrøder, and from the first day in June she was forever on her way down through the garden with a sheet; she used to bathe in the pond: there’s nothing in the world like water, she said.

“Oh good Lord,” she looked at the curtains: “then we’ll hang them up tonight.”

Down on the Mound they had started rolling lids.

“Good heavens,” said Schrøder, surveying the group: “this is a bit tame, isn’t it? Let’s have something with a bit more go in it.”

She lined the children up and they started to march. Ida took her hand, and when they had marched a little way, the judge’s daughter Ingeborg came and took her other hand.

“Look,” she said to Ingeborg. “I am wearing bronze shoes.”

The forester’s boys went after the girls from the inn and smacked their bottoms, for they were the last in line.

Before long they started playing postman’s knock down by the pond. Brandt had gone with them and he had great fun getting in the way of the children wherever they tried to run.

“That’s more like it,” he said.

“Yes,” said Schrøder, pushing up her sleeves, “but I’ve got curtains to hang at twelve windows.”

Mrs Brandt and Sofie, both of them straight backed, carried the dishes of sandwiches through the garden and up on the Mound to set the table.

Ida was so happy. She twice ran across to Schrøder and kissed her hand, without saying a word.

∞∞∞

His Lordship’s family were to take a trip into the woods in two carriages; they had turned out of the drive, and His Lordship was in his element in the young ladies’ coach. Mrs Brandt went across to the house with the local newspaper.

Schrøder was in the pantry, where she had been packing the picnic.

“Ugh, I haven’t a stitch on under this,” she said, touching the front of her print dress: “And now we can start to tidy up in the guest room.”

She hurried out through the kitchen, where three smallholders’ wives from the tied cottages were attending to the workers’ supper, and then on across the corridor to the guest rooms.

“Oh,” said Schrøder, “this is a mess if ever there was one.”

All the doors between the rooms were open, and no one had closed their suitcases. Dresses and shirts lay here and hung there. Schrøder talked away as she hung things up and moved things around.

Mrs Brandt said nothing, but went around lifting the skirts as though to judge the materials they were made of.

“Yes indeed, it’s all right for some,” she said.

“Well,” said Schrøder, turning around; she had gone ahead: “These Copenhageners often don’t have much in the way of underclothes…You can tell that from how often they have to have them washed while they’ re here.”

Mrs Brandt did not reply or carry on the conversation – it was never Mrs Brandt’s custom to ask anything – she merely used her grey eyes while Schrøder ran about in front of her and carried on and chatted:

“Aye, heaven knows how it’s going to turn out for Miss With and Falkenstjerne but they’ re suited to each other, you know, tall men with short wives, that always works…”

“And she’s a lovely girl,” said Schrøder.

She closed a trunk and launched herself into the idea:

“Miss Adlerberg,” she said, “has a waist, you know, such as it was nice to have at one time. When you could get Miss Jensen to pop over from Brædstrup in the middle of the day…”

Miss Jensen was the seamstress in Brædstrup, and she sometimes did a fitting for someone in the guest rooms during the summer.

“That’s a ‘Garibaldi’,” explained Schrøder as she entered the innermost room, where two strong trunks were closed and locked and the dresses were hanging on the hooks, wrapped in tulle.

“Miss Schrøder, Miss Schrøder,” shouted Ida outside the window.

“That’s Ida,” said Schrøder, reaching out and lifting the “little thing” in through the window before unrolling a long, broad black moiré train out of a length of tulle that stretched right across the floor.

“That’s her dress, and what a train. It’s lined.”

While Ida stood looking up at all that silk, Schrøder laughed and held the skirt over her like a cloak; but Mrs Brandt examined the lining:

“The lining is old,” she said.

“Yes,” said Schrøder. “But you know it really is wonderful what they can get out of it.”

Schrøder always expressed wonderment at the Copenhageners.

“And now we’ll go on,” she said.

When they reached the last window, she suddenly put Ida out on the gravel path again.

“Cause otherwise you’ll never grow up,” she said with a laugh. “And besides, we must count the washing.”

“Well, I suppose I cannot be of any use,” said Mrs Brandt, who was already in the corridor.

“Oh no,” said Schrøder. “I’ll manage it myself.”

She stood on the stairs for a moment looking at Mrs Brandt’s back as she walked across the open space:

“I think it’s going to thunder,” she said, breathing out heavily. “I wish it would.”

The three smallholders’ wives were going about quietly in the kitchen. They only had black woollen socks on their feet even though it was a stone floor.

Over at Brandts, Mrs Madsen had arrived from the school. They otherwise saw little of each other during the summer.

“We know perfectly well,” she said to Mrs Ludvigsen, “that we in the ‘farm’ are good enough company for them in the winter.”

Brandt was walking restlessly to and fro: his knees always let him know when it was going to thunder. And the clouds were certainly gathering over Brædstrup.

Mrs Madsen had indeed already put out some curds, she said, for Madsen had been on the lookout for thunder as soon as he got up that morning. He could feel it in his wound.

Madsen had been wounded by a sabre during the first Schleswig war and was the chairman of the Veterans’ Association.

∞∞∞

That evening, Schrøder stood right down on the road to keep a look-out for the carriages, for it was already lightning down beyond Brædstrup, and Mrs von Eichbaum was always so frightened of driving, and now there was a storm approaching as well…

The bailiff’s girls ran past her shouting and carrying sheets from the bleaching ground, and in the home farm she could hear the steward shouting to them to close the hatches, when the two carriages appeared down on the road at as great a speed as the reins could stand. His Lordship was in the barouche with Mrs von Eichbaum.

The maids in the main building closed the windows, and as soon as he reached the entrance His Lordship started shouting that the hatches should be closed, while the steward came running out wearing a big cape.

The guests, who were nervous and stiff, alighted by the steps. Mrs von Eichbaum, as pale as a sheet, went into her sitting room and lit the lamp behind the drawn blinds. She was always afraid when “the elements were angry”.

His Lordship, going through the rooms to make sure the windows were all fastened, shouted that they should all gather together; and Schrøder ran through the rain across to the bailiff’s, and he came back with her. Ida toddled along with her head poking out of a long cloak, and Mrs Madsen was there, too, for she had not dared to go home.

“Indoors, indoors,” Schrøder shouted.

But Miss Rosenfeld had put on a bathing cap and was standing out in the middle of the lawn, catching the rain in her hands.

“Go indoors,” shouted His Lordship, and laughing and bending her back she ran in under the glass roof.

“Here,” said Miss Adlerberg, catching hold of her. They were all sitting or standing on the garden steps now, looking out through the rain towards the silent flashes.

“Here,” she said, forcing Miss Rosenfeld down on a travelling rug.

They all spoke in quiet voices, looking out at the heavens that were becoming darker and telling of thunder and lightning.

“Aye,” said Brandt in his slow voice, “when Aggersøgaard burned down, as I’m sure Your Lordship will remember, it was a full hour before we got the cattle out…”

He said nothing for a time; there came a flash of lightning brighter than the others.

“But,” he went on, “both the baron’s carriage horses got away from us…it was dreadful.”

“Yes,” said His Lordship, standing alongside Brandt. “And we were both standing here when the old flagpole was struck.”

“Yes, Your Lordship.”

And in the same voice, His Lordship added: “And that was the year my late wife died.”

Mrs Madsen nodded: she remembered that.

The lightning became brighter and there were more and more flashes and in the light from them they could see the cattle out in the fields and the houses in Brædstrup. Everyone was silent and no one spoke any more except Miss Adlerberg, who whispered to Mr Feddersen from the Ministry:

“We roll the blinds down at home and light the lamps and dance,” she said, having made a fan of her gardening hat.

The rain came on heavier and sounded like the rat-tat-tat of drums on the roof, while the poplars in the drive swayed and bent as though they were about to break.

“Here we go,” said the bailiff quietly as the first rumble was heard above them.

Lieutenant Falkenstjerne had sat down on the steps at Miss With’s feet; she grasped his shoulder.

“Listen.” And in a fragile little voice she said: “Mother and I always go down into the cellar at home.”

There was another flash and Schrøder was speaking half aloud when the crash came.

“It’s over Ringgaard,” said His Lordship, who knew every patch of ground and every distance in the region.

“Yes, Your Lordship.”

They had not finished speaking before there was more lightning. The flashes came from two sides like bright, interrupted beams, and they saw the flat field where the cattle were running in great circles to escape, and the entire heavens, where the black-edged clouds rolled up towards them like chariots.

No one spoke any more; only Miss Rosenfeld, who was sitting there with her head cocked attentively, whispered:

“How beautiful it is, how beautiful…”

Meanwhile Mrs Madsen sat there all the time moving her lips and Ida had bowed her head beneath her mother’s arm and there was another flash of lightning.

They saw a horseman come in through the gate and a man in a cape came running across the courtyard. It was the forester coming from “Her Ladyship’s wood” and not daring to ride any further on account of the horse.

The thunder drowned his voice, and it was so dark that it was scarcely possible to see his face as he said:

“There’s something on fire to the west of Brædstrup, there were some huge flames…”

“Was it at Christen Nielsen’ s?” said His Lordship. And they muttered some half inaudible words as to whether he was insured.

“It is not very nice,” said Miss Adlerberg to the student; she had folded her hands around her gardening hat.

Schrøder let go of young Karl von Eichbaum and suddenly ran across to Mrs von Eichbaum’s door. Through the keyhole she could see her sitting motionless and pale in front of her candles.

Miss With had not let go of Falkenstjerne’s shoulder, and he could feel her hand ice cold beside his cheek. When the lightning came he could see her face, as pale as a sheet, while her eyes looked as though they were green.

“Miss With, Miss With,” he said.

There came a new flash of lightning and a new crash of thunder as though some huge iron body was being flung against the ground at their feet:

“I suppose that was the end of another oak tree,” said the forester, who was thinking about his forests all the time he sat there.

No one spoke and no one would have been able to hear. When the thunder died away for a moment, they could hear the cattle lowing out in the field and the sheep bleating pitifully.

“It’s over at Christen Nielsen’s,” said Brandt. They caught a brief glimpse of the light from the fire, behind the cattle sheds, in the darkness.

“Keep an eye on the home farm,” His Lordship said to Brandt.

There was a flash of lightning like a shining, white gimlet before their eyes, and the bailiff ran and flung out both his arms like one blinded and then ran again as the report came, a clap of thunder like a thousand things being smashed and crushed; Ida, tearing herself away from her mother, rushed frantically across to her father, shrilly screaming:

“Daddy, daddy,” and she hid herself up against his legs.

Falkenstjerne had taken Miss With’s hands: “Miss Emmy,” he said, using her Christian name for the first time.

“Miss Emmy.”

“Yes, yes,” she whispered, not knowing what she was saying, while he maintained his hold on her hands.

All was quite still for a moment, and the only sound was that of the heavy rain falling.

Then, putting her hand to her forehead, in a gentle, almost deferential voice, Miss Rosenfeld said to Feddersen, to whom she otherwise hardly ever spoke:

“It was so lovely.”

They all sat in silence as though still waiting. But the flashes grew paler over the fields and the rumbles grew less. It was as though a refreshing cool air was coming up from the ground, and the rain died down.

Then, in the western sky, they saw the stars again.

Mrs Madsen sat telling Feddersen all about Madsen’s wound and His Lordship and the forester went down the road to have a look at the fire at Christen’s Nielsen’s.

The rain was gentle and kind. They heard it falling on the roof like a fond murmur, and its drops filled the night like a radiant mist.

Then Miss Rosenfeld, who was sitting with her head in her hands, started to sing quietly.

Falkenstjerne still sat with Miss With’s hands in his:

“Won’t you join in?” said Miss Rosenfeld, turning her head towards them. And in low voices, almost humming, the girls sang:

Fly, o bird, fly o’er the lake’s gentle wave

Soon the black night will be here.

Gone is the sun from hind forest and cave

Day has now left this fair sphere.

Fly you now home to the mate of your heart,

And to your golden-beaked brood;

Then when you come at the morning’s bright start,

You must tell all that is good.

“Look,” said Brandt. Ida had fallen asleep in his arms, with her head against his shoulder:

“Look at the child,” he whispered, bending down towards Miss With. He looked so happy as they continued their singing, and the forester joined in, singing at the entrance in his quiet bass voice:

Fly, o bird, fly o’er the lake’s gentle waters…

The song came to an end.

Out in the night the rain had ceased and they all went down the steps – Falkenstjerne and Miss With walking side by side – and stood breathing out in the cool air.

Then Schrøder came along with a huge tray. They really needed something, she said, after that fright.

They walked up and down the paths for a time. Then there came the sound of laughs and screams from down on the road. It was His Lordship who – old rascal that he was – had snatched a kiss from Miss Adlerberg.

Shortly after this, the party broke up.

Brandt was still carrying Ida. He tiptoed on his long legs so as not to wake the child.

After they all retired, Miss Rosenfeld came out of her door and went quietly upstairs. She opened a window in the gable and sat down by the windowsill with her hands around her knees.

There, she saw the dawn of a new day.

∞∞∞

It was the nineteenth of August, and the whole of Ludvigsbakke was on the go. It was His Lordship’s birthday tomorrow, and he would be seventy years old.

Schrøder was making pastries and baking. There was steam all around her. She had locked the kitchen door with a huge, rusty old key.

“We can’t have anyone meddling in here,” she said.

The key was in the pocket of the print dress and was flapping around her legs.

The girls were making festoons in a corner in the grove and running past the bailiff’s Mound with clothes baskets full of greenery. Mrs Brandt sat there holding Ida rather like a sentry standing at ease until Miss Rosenfeld went up the slope to the Mound and lifted Ida over the fence:

“We’ll look after her, Mrs Brandt,” she said.

Down in the grove, they were laughing and chatting so they could be heard far away as they fixed oak leaves and asters to the clothes-lines.

Miss Adlerberg was wearing gloves for the work:

“For this dreadful stuff cuts into your fingers,” she said, taking off her gloves about once every ten minutes to show Feddersen the red marks.

Ida went around bending down and picking up all the asters that had been dropped and putting them in Miss Rosenfeld’s lap.

“Thank you, dear,” said Miss Rosenfeld.

The pharmacist’s wife, overflowing with flounces and sitting beside Miss Adlerberg, said:

“Yes, it is dreadful on the hands. Franz (that was the pharmacist) will simply not allow me to do anything…because of my hands.”

“A little glycerine will put it right,” said Miss Rosenfeld.

“Thank you dear.”

It was Ida who was continuing to collect flowers with stems that were far too short.

Brandt arrived; he was going back and forth with all ten fingers as black as coal from the gunpowder he was using to make rockets and Bengal lights down in the office.

“Yes,” he said. “They were really good last year. They all went off except one…But when His Excellency received his new title, Eriksen, my managing clerk, had made a Catherine-wheel…that was rather nice.”

Brandt stopped in front of Miss Rosenfeld.

“Ah, you have the child,” he said with a smile, stroking Ida’s head with his black fingers.

“You ought to look after that cough, Brandt,” said Miss Rosenfeld.

Brandt had had a nasty cough recently.

“Ugh,” – the maids puffed and shook their skirts.

“How many yards have we got now?”

And one of them swung the festoon like a skipping rope while the other started to sing:

In the woods when gunfire sounds

And when the hunter’s horn is heard

And when there’s barking from the hounds,

Where birds do lie and die unheard

And other beasts with wounds profound

Lie bleeding on the ground.

The forester’s family had arrived up on the Mound, where Mrs Brandt was ensconced.

Mrs Lund had come up here: she wanted to present a bunch of flowers.

“And my roses,” she said. “Heaven knows how it comes about… but they seemed to be doing so well, and they are producing no more than buds…And those in the churchyard, there are so many of them and they look splendid, but I didn’t really think I could use them on an occasion such as this.”

So Mrs Lund was welcome to such as Mrs Brandt had, but that was not very many.

“Oh well,” said Mrs Lund in some relief. “His Lordship will look at the will more than the deed.”

The forester clicked his heels and said:

“Aye, I’m a sober man, mother, but on the twentieth I’m going to get drunk.”

“All right, Lund,” said his wife, “provided you don’t make a speech.”

Mrs Madsen arrived down in the gooseberry walk. She did not know what to turn to: Madsen’s top hat needed to be ironed, and she simply didn’t have an iron to use.”

“That’s a bit of a problem then,” said the forester: “Madsen, the representative of the armed forces.”

The veterans were to arrive at twelve o’ clock.

The girls came from the grove in a single big group, and the pharmacist’s wife, holding a white parasol, waved to those assembled on the Mound. Ida shook hands with everyone before going up.

Mrs Madsen wanted just to walk around down in the meadows adjoining the grove, and the forester and his family accompanied her. They went over the stile and looked at the wreaths and garlands lying on the ground.

“It is really beautiful, it is really beautiful,” said Mrs Lund, who was sitting on a bench – she always wanted to sit down.

But Madsen, who was going round estimating every single piece, said:

“There were about a hundred and thirty yards at Her Late Ladyship’s funeral…”

At eleven o’ clock, His Lordship went around with a candle to close all the doors. This was the family custom. He was wearing a skull cap – during the day he wore a ginger wig very much like that worn by the farm manager – and tested every lock.

The girls, who had hidden in Miss Adlerberg’s sitting room, sat giggling in the semi-darkness as he went past.

Then Falkenstjerne knocked on the window from out in the garden, and they opened it for him.

“We’ve saved the vine,” he whispered.

Laughing quietly, the girls jumped out one by one, holding on to their skirts.

“And the lamps?” one of them whispered.

They all tiptoed silently along the house until they suddenly flew like the wind across the lawn, for the dogs started to bark.

“That’s Hektor,” whispered Miss Adlerberg, grabbing Feddersen by the arm.

“Ssshhh”.

They reached the trees. Miss Rosenfeld went slowly behind all the others.

Five lamps were lit beneath the beeches. They sat down at the table and started to make festoons. Miss Falkenberg sat on the stile looking out into the night that lay over the meadows like a great dark cover.

“Emmy,” called someone quite quietly. It was Falkenberg.

“Yes.”

And the two of them, standing close to each other, looked out into the darkness.

When morning came, Falkenstjerne and the gardener hung the festoons on the front of the house; they were both whistling. Old Brandt, who had raised the flag, was busy with the pennants. But he was off colour and went around coughing.

He stood for a time looking down towards Brædstrup, where the flags were being raised in front of the farms; the morning breeze was fresh as it caught the red banners.

“It’s so beautiful,” he said. “And then the stacks – aye, this is a lovely place.”

He made off towards the bailiff’s wing; he wanted to have something warm. But when he arrived there, he said:

“I think I’ll lie down a bit.” He was shivering and could scarcely stand on his legs.

“Yes, Brandt,” said his wife, who was bathing Ida in a zinc bath. “But you must get up to present the candlesticks.”

“Yes, Mariane,” said Brandt, half asleep.

The carriages were already starting to drive in through the entrance, and Sofie ran back and forth to announce who they were. Mrs Brandt was in her underclothes, doing her hair, and the whole bedroom was awash with her white petticoats. She got her skirt on and her bodice buttoned while Brandt lay half asleep in bed, waking up and then dozing off again.

They could hear more and more carriages arriving and large numbers of footsteps on the gravel path.

“Here comes the band from Horsens,” shouted Sofie, running out to the fence in her stocking feet.

“And Brandt does nothing but lie there,” said Mrs Brandt as she put on her lace sleeves and best bonnet in the garden room.

The band sounded loud and high spirited, and there was the sound of many voices.

“Well, Brandt, here come the veterans,” said Mrs Brandt; she had his clothes over her arm and spoke all the time as though to shake him out of his lethargy.

“Where’s the child?” was all Brandt said.

Ida, who had been crying because her curlers were too tight, came in wearing a white dress.

“Now not too close to the bed,” said Mrs Brandt as she smoothed Ida’s skirt. But her father took hold of the tip of her belt and held it in his hands.

“Aye, I suppose I ought to get up,” he said, smiling at her all the time – but oh such a weak smile.

They continued to hear steps and instruments and a voice giving orders: that was Madsen. Then came the band again. It seemed to Brandt that they were so strangely far away.

“Here comes His Lordship,” shouted Sofie; she opened the door wide with her cotton apron in her hand, for it had come undone in her fright.

“Now we’ve got the County Council, Brandt,” said his wife, who had gone on walking to and fro more and more ponderously. She put the clothes down on a chair.

“Yes, Mariane,” said Brandt, sitting up in bed. But Mrs Brandt had run out to receive the guests: this was where they were to congregate.

“Ida, Ida,” she shouted.

Ida, who was still standing a little way from the bed, said as though to wake him up:

“Daddy, you must get up now.”

“Yes, dear. I’m coming.”

He heard His Lordship’s voice in the garden room, and he got up to sit on the edge of the bed. He had such a pain in his side.

Then the door opened. It was the forester in full dress.

“What the devil, Brandt,” he said; but he suddenly came to a halt. “What’s wrong? You look awful.”

“No,” said Brandt. ”I’m not well.”

“I can see that all right. And your wife said it was only the usual thing.”

Brandt sat there for a moment.

“No,” he said and his head sank on his chest. “I can’t go over there.”

The forester went out and fetched the doctor, who came in wearing tails and adorned with his decorations. “What’s wrong, old friend. Are you going to stay in bed on this happy day?” he said. But he suddenly became serious when he saw Brandt. “Lift him up,” he said to the forester and hurried to listen to Brandt’s chest and back.

The music had stopped outside, and Madsen’s voice could be heard through the noise.

“Now Madsen’s there with the flag,” said Brandt with a smile.

The doctor continued to listen to Brandt’s back while the forester stood at the foot of the bed, leaning forward as though he, too, wanted to listen. “I need someone to go to Brædstrup,” was all the doctor said, and he went out.

He sat down to write a prescription in the sitting room, surrounded by all the guests, while Mrs Brandt stood beside him and the members of the County Council were all talking in loud voices about the day and about the speakers and the festivities.

“If Brandt has anything wrong with him it is always bad,” said Mrs Brandt.

The doctor made no reply; from the bed, where he seemed to have settled down a little after seeing the doctor, Brandt said:

“And how are things going to be arranged this evening?” He was thinking about the fireworks.

They heard the members of the County Council go out through the garden. They had suddenly fallen quite silent.

“There’s no need for anyone to bother about me,” said Brandt. “I’m feeling better now.”

“All right,” said the forester.

He went into the sitting room, where his wife still sat on a chair.

“Let’s go then,” he said quietly. “We mustn’t frighten His Lordship.”

They went out together with the doctor, and their footsteps could be heard dying away in the corridor until all was quite quiet. Mrs Brandt went around tidying up in the sick man’s room, dressed in black, her full silk dress rustling.

“But one must never give up,” she said, tidying his pillows.

She stood by the bed for a moment and then in the same voice said:

“Now the pharmacist is going to present the candlesticks.”

The sick man only shook his head – perhaps it was a fly – and said:

“Aren’t you going to take the flowers over…?”

“We’ll have to, of course,” said his wife.

But out in the sitting room Ida started to cry because her father was not going to come.

“Come, come,” said Mrs Brandt, wiping her face; but the child continued to cry a little as they went through the garden.

Then it fell completely silent while Sofie sat knitting behind the door, and all that was to be heard was the buzzing of flies and the ticking of the grandfather clock, which suddenly sounded tough and hard.

The sick man lay there, moving about in the bed. Having a temperature made one so restless.

Now he could hear His Lordship’s voice – Sofie ran in stocking feet across to the fence – and he raised his head a little as though he was listening. Now he was welcoming His Excellency.

But Brandt could not hear anything, and there were so many images in his mind, coming and going, from all his days and from the time when he came here and Her Ladyship was still alive and from the time when Ida was a baby.

How fragile she was then and red and tiny…And she had known him before she knew her mother.

Brandt suddenly took hold of the rope hanging there for the purpose and pulled himself up; now they were shouting three cheers for His Lordship.

Then he fell back and dozed a little.

When he opened his eyes, Miss Rosenfeld was sitting by his bed with Ida on her lap. Ida was scared and held her tight.

“We just wanted to come across and see how you are, Mr Brandt,” said Miss Rosenfeld.

“Aye, Miss Rosenfeld,” he said, not taking his eyes off Ida, “this is where I am.”

“Yes.”

The sick man continued to smile and moved his burning hands over to where Ida sat.

“But won’t she be creasing her dress?” he said, shutting his eyes.

They heard the clock strike, slowly, as though not in a hurry, and Miss Rosenfeld gently took Ida’s hand out of that of the sick man. They tiptoed out, Ida holding on to Miss Rosenfeld’s dress, and they sat down on the sofa. There was nothing to be heard. Only the solid ticking of the clock.

“Miss Rosenfeld,” whispered Ida, “Is father going to die?”

“Oh dear, child, my dear child,” said Miss Rosenfeld. She stroked Ida’s hair; the child had started to weep, without a sound.

They heard footsteps on the garden path. It was Mrs Brandt, who entered in front of His Lordship. He was wearing the decorations betokening his knighthood and his cheeks were flushed.

“What’s this I hear?” he said in a rather loud voice. “Have we someone ill here?” And Mrs Brandt, who preceded him to the sickbed, said as though to wake her husband (there seemed to be a trace of anger in her voice throughout that day):

“Brandt, it’s His Lordship.”

Miss Rosenfeld heard His Lordship say, in a festive tone:

“My dear Brandt…” But then he suddenly lowered his voice; he sat down on a chair, moved a little way away from the bed, vaguely troubled as all old people are when confronted with illness:

“But what on earth is wrong? What on earth is wrong?”

“Well…I suppose the pharmacist has presented the candlesticks,” said Brandt, attempting to take hold of his hand.

Ida had tiptoed gently out. Miss Rosenfeld was out among the redcurrant bushes and called softly to her, but there was no reply. Then she found her sitting on a wooden bench just outside the window, huddled up and quiet like a little dog. And Miss Rosenfeld sat down beside her, crouching in almost the same way.

They heard His Lordship return through the garden and Mrs Brandt go into the sickroom. Now she sat down at the foot of the bed, holding her broad cloak out in front of her as though in an attempt to block the way.

There came the sound of gentle footsteps in the living room, and Mrs Brandt rose. It was Mrs Lund, who came on tiptoe, hesitating at every step.

She stopped again and put her hands on Mrs Brandt’s hips.

“Lund and I think it’s so dreadful,” she said.

And when Mrs Brandt said nothing, she went on: “Couldn’t we help with something?”

“No, thank you,” said Mrs Brandt, who was still thinking of Miss Rosenfeld as she had sat over in the sofa before. “I think we can manage it ourselves.”

Mrs Lund left in a curiously hasty manner and went along the garden path to find her husband the forester waiting for her.

“Did you see him?” he asked.

“No,” was all she said; it was as though she was shedding silent tears. And (the two of them always understanding each other without uttering a word), Lund said:

“Yes, she’s as stiff-necked as they come.” He felt something like a desire to hit something with his clenched fists.

Mrs Lund had her handkerchief out.

“Oh, Lund,” she said. “I suppose that’s just the way she is.”

Mrs Brandt remained in the sitting room. She then closed all the windows firmly and went inside again – on guard.

Evening had fallen and it was dark in the sickroom, where a small lamp burned and the doctor came and went; there was a striking red glow on the curtains.

“It’s so bright,” said the sick man as he turned his head.

“It’s the torches,” said the doctor.

“Aye, it’s lovely,” said Brandt.

The forester was sitting outside on a bench. He had got himself drunk on the twentieth of August.

“How’s it going?” he said.

“Not very well,” said the doctor.

When they reached the avenue, they met Miss Adlerberg with Mr Feddersen from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“We are taking a walk,” said Miss Adlerberg – it was rather dark in this avenue – “How is he?”

The doctor shrugged his shoulders.

“But it’s very unfortunate,” said Feddersen, “for His Excellency. In some way or other you can sense it everywhere in the house.”

It was quiet in the sickroom, and the only sound to be heard was that of Mrs Brandt’s knitting needles, as regular as the ticking of the clock, and occasionally the music from over where they were dancing.

Then Brandt called out.

“Mariane,” he said, taking her hand:

“It’s a pity for you…”

But it was as though his wife’s hand with her countless rings had weighed his down, and he let go of it as he closed his eyes.

“Sickness will take its course,” said Mrs Brandt as she tidied the sheet; Brandt still lay there clutching it with his thin fingers.

“I’ d like to speak to the lieutenant,” he said.

“Yes, all right,” said his wife, feeling down his legs, which were cold up above the knees. She stood there for a long time, motionlessly looking at the old man whose body was seen to be so thin beneath the blankets, and then she sat down again.

So now she was going to be left on her own.

…The lieutenant was running around down on the lawn; he was busy with the rockets. They were to be set off now after they had finished dancing. The music came to an end and Falkenstjerne shouted up to the bailiff, who was standing at a window: the first rocket went off like a thin red line that divided into two…

The guests stood at the open windows as the rockets whistled and made slender tracks up in the air, and the gentlemen from Horsens, standing with their hands in their trouser pockets and smoking big cigars, exclaimed in admiration and a dumpy little lady who had tied a handkerchief around her bare neck to protect her from draught, said:

“Good heavens, fancy stopping dancing just for that!”

At the upstairs window, Miss Rosenfeld had lifted Ida up in her arms. Ida stayed with her throughout the day, saying nothing, just following her, with cold hands, like a weak little shadow:

“Ooh, just look,” she said.

Another rocket went up as Feddersen came past with Miss Adlerberg.

“They are not going very high,” he said.

And Miss Adlerberg, laughing as she walked, with her train over her arms, said:

“They are a country product.”

Miss Rosenfeld turned round quickly with Ida, and she heard His Lordship say from over by the window:

“It is delightful, really delightful…” and, looking up in the air, he added:

“And he was such an excellent man.”

Miss Rosenfeld was walking with Ida across the open space when she suddenly felt tears on her hand.

“Why are you crying?” she asked.

The child made no reply.

The forester was up in the ballroom, standing in the corner by the bottom window: the rockets were still being let off in the night, for there were many of them, though they were only small.

“Oh dear, love,” he said. “How sad it all is.”

Quite quietly, Miss Rosenfeld took Ida into the sick man’s room, where Mrs Brandt sat enthroned in the same place.

“We just wanted to say good night,” she whispered.

And while Mrs Brandt got up, Ida bent down over her father (her eyes had the same expression as those of a sick child). Brandt opened his eyes.

“Is it Ida?” he said.

“Did she see the fireworks?”

∞∞∞

Ida slept in Miss Rosenfeld’s bed that night.

Miss Rosenfeld sat at her window. The guests had gone, and the night was dark. Then a carriage drove rapidly out of the bailiff’s gateway down over the road, through the darkness, like a shadow…

All the dogs barked furiously.

When they came down in the morning, His Lordship went across to the piano and quietly closed it and took away the key.

Old Brandt was dead.

All the guests dispersed, far into the woods and the garden. Miss Rosenfeld sat alone with Ida on her lap.

Over in the bailiff’s house, Mrs Brandt went around and took a large number of sheets out of her deep cupboards.

∞∞∞

Mrs Brandt was in her sitting room, pitch black and mighty, waiting for the carriage that was to bring Mrs Reck, the wife of the newly appointed bailiff, who was to inspect her house. The embroidered rugs were out on all the floors, and there was a garland of dried flowers around Brandt’s portrait. Ida was over at Schrøders.

Then Sofie opened the door out to the corridor:

“There she is,” she said. It sounded like a command to stand to attention, and she remained standing, tall and in black, behind her mistress, who opened the outer door.

“Yes, I’m Mrs Reck,” said a confused lady, who was small and slender and held the train of her dress in her hand.

“I’m pleased to meet you,” replied Mrs Brandt, slowly holding out her hand. She had retained the handshake of a peasant girl, merely touching the other’s hand. And now her hand was icy cold.

“Help Mrs Reck,” she said to Sofie.

And Sofie took Mrs Reck’s cape with her bony hands.

They went into the rooms.

“Oh, aren’t they big!” Mrs Reck burst out. She blushed immediately. She had stood still for a moment, quite frightened in face of the long floors of a rural residence.

“Yes, the house is quite roomy,” said Mrs Brandt, offering Mrs Reck a seat opposite her. Mrs Reck was not herself aware that she twice dabbed her forehead with her handkerchief, while Mrs Brandt said something about the cold weather and about the drive there.

“Yes,” said Mrs Reck, “it was rather cold.”

She thought she had said something about Mr Brandt and that it would certainly not be easy for Reck (she was quite flustered, and somewhere in her head she was thinking about the floors).

“No, it certainly won’t be easy,” she said once more and heard Mrs Brandt say:

“Of course, Brandt and I were both born and brought up near here.”

Mrs Reck hesitated a moment.

“Of course,” she said then. “Reck and I are both townsfolk.”

Mrs Brandt had undoubtedly seen that, but all she said as she got up was:

“Can I offer you some refreshment?”

And they went into the dining room.

Mrs Reck thought she had never seen so much food, and she ate and ate as though she dared not do otherwise, while Mrs Brandt offered her more and more without taking anything herself, like someone barricaded behind her own food.

She spoke of the big debt they had incurred on alterations. “We have had to cope with it,” she said, continuing to offer refreshments in the same cold, dry voice and with her eyes never moving from Mrs Reck, as though she would have liked to choke her guest with the food.

“Yes,” said Mrs Reck, “we know a lot has been done here.”

Mrs Brandt replied:

“There were stone floors when we came.” Mrs Reck thought that there could well still be stone floors as far as she was concerned.

After the meal, they went around the house, Mrs Brandt leading, opening, closing, showing everything from downstairs room to downstairs room, bedroom to bedroom.

Mrs Reck, who was cold in her thin town dress, said:

“Thank you, I’ve seen it now…but thank you, I really have seen it now, Mrs Brandt.”

But Mrs Brandt went on, showing everything: cellar, milk cellar, potato cellar, lofts, the whole house, refusing to let go of Mrs Reck – the entire perfect house that she had built up and which she, the widow, was now to leave.

She talked about the beds, their own beds, the servants’ beds, the beds for visitors. Mrs Reck said:

“Yes, it means buying a lot.”

“Here are the cupboards,” said Mrs Brandt when they came down into the corridor.

She opened her cupboards, showing the linen, the pillows, the pillowcases, the curtains, making a show of her peasant affluence, speaking a little louder, her mouth twitching a little in a sudden attack of widow-like playful malice.

Mrs Reck was thinking to herself:

“No, she shall never cross my threshold,” and said:

“Well, Mrs Brandt, if only I were half as able.”

“Well, one has to look after one’s house,” said Mrs Brandt, shutting her cupboards and putting on some wooden-soled shoes: they were to go and see the garden. When they arrived there, they encountered Ida along with Schrøder, who wanted to see the new mistress.

“I’m the housekeeper,” she said, shaking hands with Mrs Reck with a red hand. Mrs Reck felt something akin to relief and, bending down over Ida, who was with her mother, she said in a kind voice:

“So this must be your granddaughter, Mrs. Brandt.”

“My daughter,” replied Mrs Brandt, and they all flushed suddenly, while Mrs. Reck made matters worse by quickly saying to Ida:

“What a lovely garden you’ve had here.”

“Yes,” said Ida, withdrawing the hand that Mrs Reck was holding.

No one said any more before they were back in the corridor, where they found the pharmacist’s wife, who had arrived in the pony chaise and was dressed in a sealskin coat. To the accompaniment of a torrent of words, she began wildly to embrace Mrs Reck without vouchsafing the others a glance:

“Oh, my dear Henriette (they had been at school together), dearest Henriette, I am so delighted, my dear, to have someone here I know (they had hardly seen each other for twelve to fifteen years),I really do need that.

“Yes, dear Mrs Brandt, I’ll just take my coat off. Dearest Henriette, we have dozens of things to talk about.”

She led the way into the sitting room, holding Mrs Reck by the waist, while continuing to talk about the house and about how delighted she was and about what would have to be bought.

“You know, my dear, it can be made so lovely here…Well, Mrs Brandt, you know how often I have said that I could not exist even for an hour in these rooms, with all the furniture stuck up against the walls as it is now.”

“We have always made modest demands, Mrs Mogensen,” said Mrs Brandt, offering her a seat. Ida and Schrøder stayed in a corner.

Mrs Mogensen went on: “There are really only three rooms here. I suppose your piano is a Hornung, Henriette? Yours is German, of course, Mrs Brandt…But then no one has played it very much.”

She stood in the doorway between the two main rooms, talking without cease, pointing and advising, deciding where to put furniture, getting rid of the old things, giving Mrs Brandt such benevolent looks, as benevolent as though she were striking her:

“That is where you can put that, and that can go there. Dear Henriette…it can be quite delightful in here – ”

Mrs Brandt offered them coffee in the silver pot that had been presented to Brandt to mark 25 years of service.

Mrs Reck, too, became quite enthusiastic and spoke about her furniture and curtains and the doors, while Mrs Mogensen moved the silver coffee pot to make a plan of the Recks’ rooms on Mrs Brandt’s tablecloth.

She asked for a tape measure. “Because you must have the measurements,” she said, and Ida brought the tape measure while Mrs Reck measured up, standing on a chair, walking to and fro across the floors, cheerfully asking Mrs Brandt’s advice.

“Don’t you think so, dear Mrs Brandt, don’t you think so, dear Mrs Brandt,” she said repeatedly as she hung invisible curtains, arranged alien furniture and took the entire house to pieces bit by bit. Mrs Brandt continued to make brief replies and Schrøder stood panting over her cup: she felt the cakes turning into great lumps in her mouth.

“Yes, you know, I think it can be made quite nice here,” Mrs Reck concluded, jumping down from a chair.

Shortly afterwards, Mrs Mogensen took Mrs Reck home with her to the pharmacy in her pony chaise.

While still standing in the doorway – Mrs Reck was in the chaise – she said goodbye.

“Yes, dear Mrs Brandt,” she said, gently placing her hands on hers, “it must be rather difficult…”

She stood there for a moment looking straight into Mrs Brandt’s face and said once more as she touched her arm:

“Really difficult.”

And then the carriage was gone.

Schrøder hurried to get away: she was not keen on being there alone.

“Well,” she said: “That was that. Now the pharmacist has finally got the measurements of the bailiff’s house.”

Schrøder went.

Mrs Brandt washed the china herself, collecting it piece by piece in large stacks. But then, all at once, she sat down on the chair near the sideboard. Mrs Brandt wept.

Ida just stood in front of her; she had never seen her mother really weep like this.

Then she gently touched her knee. And Mrs Brandt picked the child up while still weeping.

But that afternoon she went down past the pharmacy, veiled and in mourning, carrying a wreath. She was on her way to the churchyard…there were the sounds of music in the pharmacy.

∞∞∞

It was starting to grow dark, but Schrøder continued to walk about in the garden, bending down over the remaining snow and searching; there were always snowdrops around here – the first ones.

But they were so frail and difficult to find.

She had found ten or twelve, delicate and cold. She would give them to Mrs Brandt before she left.

She went inside into the stripped, bare rooms. Ida was toddling around, wrapped in a shawl and had nowhere to lay her head. It was dark and there was straw on the floors.

“Is it you, dear?” said Schrøder, attempting to adopt a happy tone.

“Yes,” said Ida.

“Good Lord, but it’s cold,” said Schrøder, feeling her hands.

“Mother’s in there,” said Ida.

“In there” was the bedroom. Now they had packed and tidied up for a week, room by room, as though they were losing a bit of the house with each passing day. There was a candle in a jar on the bare window ledge in the bedroom. Otherwise there was only the bed and the servants’ old wardrobe. Christen Nielsen’s wife was sitting on the edge of the bed, and Mrs Brandt was going around clad in a black shawl.

Christen Nielsen came and spoke slowly in a low voice with his hands on his stomach: “Well, there you are, the butter and the hams and that’s that.”

Mrs Brandt went around packing the last things as he spoke: now she had surely seen to everything and made all the necessary arrangements…For when all was said and done, it was cheapest for her to buy from the estate when she had to buy things. They owed her that at least.

“Aye, aye,” said Christen Nielsen’s wife.

“I suppose that’s it,” and she got up from the bed.

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Schrøder, putting the snowdrops on the edge of the bed. Ida took them; her mother had put gloves on her, and she held them tight while the other three stood there quietly, looking at the candle in the jar.

They heard the carriage turn up at the door, and Sofie came in, wrapped up so that only her nose was to be seen. She took the candle, and they all went in through the rooms. Mrs Brandt had dropped her veil over her face. But Ida went along holding the twelve snowdrops in her gloves.

Lars was out in the yard with the horses. They were the old ones. But the carriage was His Lordship’s phaeton, for Brandt’s barouche had been “sold privately”.

Mrs Brandt gave orders, behind her black veil.

“I won’t be a moment,” said Schrøder, running over towards the main building.

There was a host of sacks and jars that had to stand upright, and Mrs Brandt continued to give orders from behind her black veil. The steward came out, and they all helped, though no one spoke except Mrs Brandt, and Ida was helped up into the carriage, followed by her mother.

Schrøder came running back. She had a parcel, she said, something for Ida…Schrøder’s voice broke a little. It was the house that Miss Rosenfeld had drawn during the summer.

“And Ida was to have it…to remember it all by,” she said, weeping as she handed it up into the carriage.

Then Sofie was up there, and Lars said slowly:

“Have you anything else, madam?”

There was nothing else. Ida sat there, looking strangely small alongside her mother, and Schrøder continued to weep.

And then they left.

The other three stayed on the steps and watched them go; and now the carriage disappeared.

Without saying anything, Schrøder took the candle that was flickering in the corridor window and held it up in the doorway, lighting up the bare rooms. Then Lars lit a lamp, and Schrøder extinguished the candle between two fingers.

“It’s very painful after all,” said Lars.

They went out and locked the door to the corridor. Then they left.

“It’s not easy when the breadwinner dies,” said Christen Nielsen’s wife.

And then they went off each in their own direction.

∞∞∞

But then the years she spent as a child in the town came back to her, and her confirmation and the first year as a young adult, that bright year, and then the sickness and the long days…

∞∞∞

Half awake, Ida could hear Sofie fiddling by the chimney and her mother’s difficult breathing beside her – it was as though the sounds of that breathing were to fill the entire house – and almost in her sleep and quite mechanically she put her bare feet out on the knitted rug.

She must get up now. Hans Christensen was there with the milk.

She did not light a lamp, but tiptoed gently around in the dark to dress. She just looked at her mother sitting up in the bed like a broad shadow shutting out the dawn light behind the curtains.

Down in the kitchen, Hans Christensen had already arrived – he was so wrapped in scarves that only his eyes and the tips of his ears could be seen – and she gave him the milk money that lay counted out on the shelf.

“Yes, it’s cold this morning,” he said (his breath emerged from his scarves like a long cloud):

“The pond’s frozen solid now out by our house…”

He took a couple of steps in his clogs to make it sound as though he was going, while Ida managed to pass him the coffee cup and Sofie moved some things over by the chimney in case madam should wake up and hear that they were giving Hans Christensen coffee.

“Goodbye,” said Hans Christensen when he had finished, and he lifted the latch ever so gently.

Ida had taken the frozen butter over to the fire to soften it: there was less of it now. Just as she thought, for she had heard stocking feet in the loft yesterday evening.

She went into the sitting room and started to take the covers from the chairs and to do the dusting while quietly moving the little low-legged lamp from one piece of furniture to the other. This was really her best time – it was almost as though she were stealing it – these mornings while her mother was asleep and she could potter about, quite quietly, engrossed in her own thoughts.

Oh, there was plenty to think about…there was always the question of money and the problem always had to be hidden…Now Hans Ole’s widow was dead, too. So they probably would no longer be provided with meat; there soon would not be any of the old folks left in Ludvigsbakke. And how could you expect the young folk to remember them…

Now Christian from the mill was out of work again – so they would use almost twice as much now – but it was reasonable enough that Sofie should stick with him when she was so fond of him, poor thing.

Ida stopped in front of the mirror and stretched out to polish it; she had a distinctly virginal way of bending her head.

Then there was to be the christening at Olivia’s as well, as soon as the weather was a little milder…She would have to give them a spoon and fork if she was going to be the child’s godmother.

She stopped in front of the mirror and smiled.

“Oh, the little chap had such a lot of hair, and his eyes were just like Jørgensen’s.”

Ida continued to smile; she always thought of so many happy things when thinking of the brickworks and Olivia.

She started to water the flowers and moved them from the floor up on to the window ledge. Her mother’s myrtle was very heavy, and its stem was almost like that of a tree. It looked so healthy as it stood there. And Ida plucked every dead leaf off it. She did not know why, but she thought that myrtle was like a reminder of her father.

“Ida, Ida.”

Mrs Brandt was awake, and Ida put the plant down.

“Yes, mother.”

“I’m lying here awake,” said Mrs Brandt.

Out in the kitchen, Sofie poured some warm water into two dishes.

“I suppose you do intend to get me up,” said Mrs Brandt.

“Yes, mother.”

Ida started to turn her attention to her mother, tending her and talking to her, tying and untying and telling her the news as she dressed her: they could expect the Lunds today – for they were coming from the wedding – and the pond was frozen solid now according to Hans Christensen.

Ida continued to recite the news; Mrs Brandt simply looked down at her nervous hands:

“You’ve got your father’s fingers,” she said: “they are all thumbs.”

When her hair was set – Mrs Brandt still had a full head of hair – all the food in the house was brought up so that she could inspect it, in bed. Sofie went there, slow and sullen and brought it in, dish after dish, while Mrs Brandt sat up in bed, with her thoroughly padded hair, carefully inspecting the leavings.

She said nothing, but merely sat silently calculating – Ida looked like a customs officer during an inspection of the cashbox – while Sofie stood by the bed, straight as a pole. Mrs Brandt watched every dish that Sofie took out again as though she wanted to follow its way through the door when it was closed.

“And then we must do the joint, mother, for the Lunds…”

“If they come,” said Mrs Brandt.

Ida had again started to attend to her: “But you know they always come when they are in town,” she said.

“Yes,” said Mrs Brandt. “It’s cheaper than eating at the inn.”

She had got out of bed and wanted to go into the sitting room. Ida and Sofie had to support her, one under each arm, (Mrs Brandt was never so heavy as when she had to be moved), and she managed to reach the chair by the window. There all her gold trinkets lay waiting for her on the table. Ida hung the watch chain around her neck.

“The watch,” said Mrs Brandt.

“Here, mother.”

She wanted to have Ida’s watch in front of her on a frame, beside her purse. They finally had her settled down. The door to the kitchen was left slightly ajar so that she could “listen”.

Her mother could not stand a warm room, so Ida was wearing a shawl as she bent over the three new sets of sheets, for the linen was taken care of as it used to be in the “old bailiff’s wing”.

“Your threads are always too long,” said Mrs Brandt.

Ida pulled at the thread.

“Mrs Muus is waving,” said her mother.

Ida looked out and flushed as she nodded. Mrs Muus always took a quick and deliberate path close to Mrs Brandt’s window and only waved to Ida.

Mrs Muus was the judge’s wife, and Mrs Brandt continued to follow her in the mirror and watch her fur coat bouncing against her energetic little backside.

Ida also looked out and smiled. Mrs Muus never reached the corner. She stopped in front of every other house as she went by, swinging her hips and stamping and showing all her friends’ windows that she was wearing fur boots.

“Have the Muus’s got a housekeeper?” said Mrs Brandt, continuing to watch her.

“I don’t know, mother.”

“I thought she would be going to the Jørgensens,” said Mrs Brandt. “She’s a Copenhagener.”

And as though in defence of the judge’s wife, Ida said:

“But of course, they haven’t any children, mother.”

Mrs Brandt merely shut her eyes, said nothing and nodded. Sørensen, the local treasurer had appeared at the window of the house opposite and was nodding. Mr Sørensen was going downhill, very much downhill; he could hardly manage to open the newspaper when he wanted to read it.

Mrs Brandt continued to look across at Mr Sørensen. She had the same look in her eyes as when she examined Ida’s hands.

Then she turned her head.

“Do they use coke in the brickworks?” she said.

“Coke and coal.”

“Hm,” said Mrs Brandt. “No, wood is not sufficient in those furnaces, I suppose.”

Ida made no reply, and Mrs Brandt said:

“But it’s a good thing there is plenty of it.”

Sofie was making the beds in the bedroom. She straightened all the duvets as though she wanted to beat them. She was always so energetic with everything when Christian from the mill was out of work.

“It’s eleven o’ clock,” said Mrs Brandt.

Ida knew that; it was time for coffee.

There was the sound of a loud voice from the kitchen. It was Miss Thøgersen, the “housekeeper” to their neighbour, the coppersmith, who was a member of a German “company of confirmed bachelors”. She had brought the newspapers.

“Good heavens,” she said. “It is bitterly cold today.”

Her face was red and blue with cold, and her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows.

“Yes, yes,” she said. “I stand in the midst of den Wäsche, and no help do I have.”

She emerged in the doorway, completely filling it; the tartan ribbons on her bonnet were fixed with pins and were flapping around her ears like a pair of blinkers.

“Yes, yes,” she said, following this with a torrent of words about the washing.

“And you know what a lot of woollens Thønnichsen uses.”

Miss Thøgersen sat down on the chair by the door, her stomach resting on her distended lower regions.

“Ach, and now that Julie has got herself into trouble,” she said.

Ida was in the kitchen, and Mrs Brandt said that Mrs Thomsen could not be so far gone.

“Ach nein, ach nein.” Miss Thøgersen moved across to the basket chair; she moved and collapsed into ten chairs in the course of ten minutes. “But Maren has. She cannot control herself and yesterday they had to send for the midwife.”

Maren was her “niece”, Julie’s maid-of-all work (the three fruits of the coppersmith’s life with Miss Thøgersen were all referred to as belonging to a collateral branch of the family) and she loyally ran the entire household except for the ten days when the midwife was needed. That happened, almost to the day, around the first of April.

“Ach ja, ach ja…” Miss Thøgersen went on to give them a detailed account of the circumstances surrounding Maren and the need for the midwife. When she was sitting in the basket chair she always spoke quickly and in a half whisper, while Mrs Brandt remained seated, immovable, but with a singular expression on her face as though she was absorbing Maren’s words through an ear trumpet.

“Ach ja, ach ja,” Miss Thøgersen finished, placing her hands down on her legs.

“And otherwise she is such a decent person.”

With her Schleswig accent, Miss Thøgersen accented her words differently and then she sat there in silence.

Mrs Brandt waited for a few moments. Then, from her raised position, she said:

“Who is it – this time?”

“Gott, Gott.” If only she knew.

Miss Thøgersen shook her head.

“But she is so good-natured,” she said in explanation.

Ida came in with the coffee; they both had a cup, Miss Thøgersen holding hers as though it were a basin.

From the platform came an admonition:

“Ida, your mouth …”

Ida often had her mouth open a little when she was carrying something. She offered sugar and went back; she tended to withdraw to the far reaches of the room when Miss Thøgersen was there.

But Miss Thøgersen went on. She had so many concerns.

“And then there was this Gustav who wrote from America – and wanted to come home…But Thønnichsen was not having any of it.”

Miss Thøgersen groaned (Gustav was one of the three).

“Ach nein,” she said, putting the cup down. “Ach nein, it is not the same as when you have stood before the altar.”

Miss Thøgersen had many concerns regarding her family.

The church bells began to ring, and Miss Thøgersen rose from her chair.

“Oh dear, oh dear…and I have to spread sand.”

“It’s Christensen, the painter,” said Mrs Brandt.

“Ach, ja, so sad,” said Miss Thøgersen, assuming a quite different voice. “And with four children.”

“Will his widow stay in the house?” asked Mrs Brandt.

Miss Thøgersen did not know. “But there are people,” she said, “who are kind to a widow.”

There was something about the word “widow” that always touched Miss Thøgersen.

“Yes,” said Mrs Brandt. “He was a freemason of course.”

Miss Thøgersen had gradually moved into Ida’s seat by the window, when she suddenly shouted out in horror:

“Gott, Gott, there comes the minister…”

Miss Thøgersen lived in constant fear of clergymen on account of her illegitimate social position.

The minister went past to the house of sorrow and Miss Thøgersen rushed away. Thønnichsen the coppersmith, spread box cuttings and sand on the road for all his more important customers.

“Have you forgotten the cups?” said Mrs Brandt, and Ida took them.

Mrs Brandt watched through the mirror to follow events in the house of mourning.

The blind was down in Mr Sørensen’s window opposite to keep out the sun. It was always a source of irritation to him when funeral processions came down the street in the middle of the day.

When they came out of school, the boys shrieked as they ran along the pavement. Olivia’s eldest boy was at the front with the remains of a snowball over his left ear.

“Do they let him run about with bare legs now?” said Mrs Brandt. “Oh well, I suppose that’s supposed to be a good thing.”

“Olivia says she thinks it toughens them, mother.”

“Ach, there they are,” shouted Miss Thøgersen from outside on the pavement. She scattered the last handful of sand over the gutter plank and then helped with the box cuttings.

Mrs Brandt had already seen the hearse in the mirror. It was the expensive one with curtains.

The boys continued to run past on the pavement and the procession approached.

“Oh, look at the children,” said Ida.

Christoffersen’s two eldest were walking, stiff and shocked, in their new clothes, behind the hearse and in front of the minister, who was holding his white handkerchief up to his nose. The minister could not stand the smell of iodine.

There was a squeal from the pavement as Miss Thøgersen struck out at a couple of boys.

“Fie,” she said and went up her stone steps again. “You should be ashamed, getting in the way of that funeral procession…”

The cortege continued to walk past, and the bells were ringing. The last were mourners coming now: two round-shouldered old men wearing grey mittens.

Mrs Brandt looked away from the mirror.

“I suppose it’s the masons who are paying,” she said.

Miss Thøgersen still stood on the coppersmith’s stone steps. Miss Thøgersen wept bitterly every time she saw a coffin.

“It’s one o’ clock,” said Mrs Brandt. Ida had already started to set the table for dinner, on the mahogany table, beneath the mantelpiece clock.

∞∞∞

There was a loud noise by the door, awakening Mrs Brandt from her nap. It was the forester knocking the snow off his boots out in the corridor.

“Hello, everyone,” he shouted, opening the door to the kitchen. “You have guests from afar.”

“Good day, Ida my dear. Good day, Sofie.”

“Hello. Hello…” Ida emerged, and her voice took on a quite different sound. Then she opened the door to the sitting room.

“Good day, Mrs. Brandt,” said the forester in a rather more reserved voice as Mrs Brandt rose a little from her chair.

“Well,” said Mrs Lund as she was divested of a mass of clothes, the innermost layer consisting of two red-striped capes: “It’s been a lovely time. But it makes one quite giddy,” she said. “And then I always feel a little strange travelling by train…”

Mrs Lund sat down and Mrs Brandt said:

“Are you not going to take your hat off?”

“Oh, thank you. Just for a while.” Mrs Lund took off her hat and her grey hair stood on end and made her look like an uncombed poodle. Meanwhile she started telling all about her son’s wedding.

“Yes, we celebrated the wedding in the hotel. There’s a really lovely hotel at Kolding – and everything is so clean and tidy there. And there were sixty of us, just imagine, all those happy people. Yes, it was lovely to see so much happiness.”

“Did she wear silk?” asked Mrs Brandt.

“Oh yes, they do nowadays…and Good Lord, you know it can always be dyed afterwards.”

Mrs Lund went on with her account; she spoke rather quickly, for she always became as it were a little out of breath when sitting in the basket chair in front of Mrs Brandt; she told all about the dinner and the guests and the speech…

“It was a jolly splendid do,” said Lund, who was walking up and down over by the stove.

“And what about presents?” said Mrs Brandt.

“Yes, people really did remember us – even the smallholders sent telegrams…Oh, do sit down, Lund.”

“I need to move about a bit,” said Lund, but he nevertheless sat down by the door.

“Yes,” he said. “People have been really generous, indeed they have.”

“Yes,” Mrs Brandt intervened. “People will always remember those who have a bit of money behind them.”

Ida, who was setting the table again, said:

“And there were bridesmaids as well, of course.”

“Seven,” said the forester, slapping his hands against his thighs.

“And then we saw all the boys,” said Mrs Lund with a smile: “It’s so lovely when the children are growing up.”

The forester sat for a while nodding. Then he started to laugh and said:

“And our daughter-in-law went and made merry with all her brothers-in-law after the meal, fooling around in one room after the other, just as though she was at home, and even though she was still wearing her veil.”

“Yes, dear; that’s the way they are,” said Mrs Lund: “They are so much at home there.” She turned to Mrs Brandt as though needing to explain it to her.

“Yes,” said Lund, “and that was the only thing that brought tears to my eyes…For it was lovely,” he added quite quietly.

Ida laughed quietly, almost tenderly:

“How like Henriette that is.”

She continued to smile as she stood behind the table, as though she could picture Henriette going around in her veil and fighting with all her brothers-in-law for pure joy.

“Yes, it was lovely,” said the forester again.

“You have remembered the table?” said Mrs Brandt.

“Yes, mother.”

The table was ready and – holding on to the chairs in order to walk over the floor, but not using a stick – Mrs Brandt said:

“Well, I was not sure we could expect you.”

The forester sat down heavily on his chair and looked pleased to see so much food.

“It’s good to see,” he said, “that there’s plenty of food in the larder here.”

Mrs Brandt sat in the big chair, in front of the dishes.

“Well, at least we can still afford butter on the bread,” she said.

“It reminds me of the old house,” said little Mrs Lund who, as always when at Mrs Brandt’s, took a large amount on her plate and never managed to eat it.

“Aye,” said the forester. “It was always good to visit old Brandt.”

“Have you remembered to offer second helpings?” Mrs Brandt’s lips were trembling a little over her teeth.

“We simply had what suited our condition,” she said.

Mrs Lund took still more on her enormously filled plate.

“Oh,” she said. “I have so often felt ashamed of my house, Mrs Brandt, when I came to visit you.”

Mrs Brandt made no reply, but the forester started to talk about Christoffersen’s funeral.

Mrs Lund continued to tell Ida about the wedding, while Ida sat smiling. She knew all the forester’s boys, of course.

“There was a huge cortege, I must say,” said Lund. “Aye, Christoffersen was well liked.”

“Christoffersen’s,” said Mrs Brandt, “was always a place where there was plenty to throw around.”

Lund gripped his knife rather hard as he cut his ham, and the clocks could be heard ticking.

“Ah well,” said the forester. “Cheers, Ida my dear. Here’s to your turn, my girl…” He raised his glass. “Young ladies must always get to the altar and populate the world, damn it.”

“Yes, here’s to your turn, Ida,” said Mrs Lund. She had loosened the last shawl.

“There’s no hurry about that,” said Mrs Brandt. “Thank goodness, Ida is not one of those who need to be provided for.”

“Oh no, of course not,” said Mrs Lund. “That was not what I meant. But we always look to the future, Mrs Brandt, to the children’s future.”

She started to pat Ida’s hand, which was quite cold.

“Yes,” said the forester, “that’s what we’ re here for.”

“Yes, dear, but we often had to leave ours to fend for themselves.”

“You never did that, mother.”

“Yes we did, Lund. I know it only too well, for there were so many of them, and the little ones had to be looked after while the bigger ones did as they liked…But even so, it’s strange to think that they simply saw us doing our best, and now we can as it were always enjoy sharing their everyday lives with them.”

“Yes,” said Lund.

Mrs Lund continued to stare ahead.

“And the joy, that always comes from the heart, as they say, whatever pressures there are…”

Ida bent her head a little down in the direction of Mrs Lund, and from her sofa Mrs Brandt said:

“Yes, people have to talk so much about the children these days.”

“Well, Mrs Brandt,” said Lund in a rather loud voice, “I’ d jolly well like to know what else there would be to talk about once you’ ve brought them into the world.”

There was a knock at the door; it was Niels, the forester’s coachman, coming with some parcels, and Mrs Lund went out with Ida into the kitchen.

“It’s only a tiny bit, my dear, but I had said they could put it in the coach – a little ham and butter…I just wonder how the butter has stood the journey.”

“Oh, Mrs Lund, it’s far too much.”

“Well then, we’ll not say anything to your mother, and then you can arrange things…Your mother simply can’t get used to buying everything. And that’s quite understandable when she has come from such a house as you had…”

“Yes,” said Ida. “It really is difficult for mother…and then it would hurt her so much to know that she’ d been forgotten by everybody at home…Thank you.”

“Oh, heavens, my dear,” said Mrs Lund, “who is it up to more than to those who were so fond of your father? But if the butter hasn’t kept well, Ida” – they went into the bedroom and closed the door – “you must use it in the frying pan.”

Mrs Lund sat on the edge of the bed and Ida sat beside her.

“We’ re all a little confused,” she said, “but it was a lovely time.”

She still sat with Ida’s hands in hers, and the rooms were beginning to grow dark.

“For you know, it was what you could call such a safe wedding, those two who have known each other since they were children.”

“Yes,” said Ida – they were both speaking slowly and quietly – “It’s so lovely to see when people are happy.”

Mrs Lund nodded.

“Yes, so lovely, my dear.”

There was another knock on the sitting room door, but they both remained seated. It was Sørensen the borough treasurer and his daughter who were coming from their afternoon walk to the “Grove”.

“Are we not going to have the lamps lit?” said Mrs Brandt from the sitting room.

Ida lit the lamps and returned to the edge of the bed, where Mrs Lund was still sitting.

The borough treasurer sat in the basket chair and pulled his mittens off while Mrs Brandt followed him closely with her eyes. There was nothing but bones and veins left in Sørensen’s hands.

“Oh, so you’ve been to a wedding,” said Sørensen.

“Yes, we have indeed,” said Lund.

“Hmm, yes, everybody’s getting married these days…”

“It’s the way of the world, Mr Sørensen.”

“Yes,” and the borough treasurer tapped the floor with his stick. “Well, leave them to it.”

He looked up at Lund:

“I’m getting too old, Mr Lund; I don’t mix myself up in anything.”

The forester said something to the effect that that was probably the wisest course.

“Wisest? Yes, but (and he banged his stick down again) where is it all going? Where is it all going?”

“One just sits here…”

The treasurer was silent for a moment and then he said in a quieter voice:

“That’s all there is.”

Miss Sørensen had gone into the bedroom and sat down on a chair in front of the bed. She had undone her cloak, revealing a satin-clad breast that rose like a mountain of gold.

“Oh, heavens, of course,” she said, “you’ve been to a wedding. Aye, we all go and think all sorts of thoughts, now we’ve had an offer for the house again…It’s Mathiesen, and he is very keen to have it for a shop.”

Miss Sørensen spoke in a whisper, but in an unbroken stream:

“And it would be best to sell it, you know, for when father is no longer with us I shall move to Copenhagen – that’s where my sisters are. But as long as father is alive, Mrs Lund, no one is going to make any changes, neither my sisters nor I.”

“That is only reasonable,” said Mrs Lund.

“That’s right, both my sisters and I are agreed. He’s an old man when all is said and done, and no one knows how long he has to go.”

The borough treasurer, who had the ears of an owl, said in the sitting room:

“Oh, they are on about the house again. But,” – and he spoke more loudly – “I’m still here.”

He banged his stick on the floor:

“Once they have me in the cemetery, they can do as they like. That’s all there is to it.”

Total silence descended on the bedroom.

“Now you can see what father is like,” said Miss Sørensen.

She sat for a few moments with her hands in her clean black lap and then she said:

“But after all, Mrs Lund, we human beings have to think about the future as well.”

The treasurer got up from his chair; he wanted to go. The forester went out to the steps with them; he nudged Lund’s arm and said:

“Hm, the old girl’s tongue is getting a bit swollen in there, isn’t it? I suppose she’s got fat round her heart as well.”

“Yes, she seems to me to be going downhill,” said Lund.

Sørensen nodded and looked up at Lund.

“Her tongue’s swollen,” he said. “Good night.”

Lund returned to the sitting room.

“Sørensen’s not looking too good,” he said.

“He’s old,” said Mrs Brandt.

Mrs Lund and Ida were still seated on the bed. It was as though Ida had woken from her thoughts, and her voice was trembling:

“Oh, fancy if they had to sell everything they have here.”

“Yes,” said Mrs Lund, who did not really know what sort of thoughts she herself was playing with. “Yes, it’s a strange world.”

Lunds had to be going; they had also to do some shopping before driving home.

Perhaps Ida could go with them?

“’Cause mother here lets herself be persuaded by any smiling face,” said the forester. “And it will do little Ida good to see a few people.”

“I can perfectly well be left on my own,” said Mrs Brandt. “But give me a hand first.”

She wanted to move across to the sofa again. Lund offered to help her.

“No thank you,” said Mrs Brandt. “Ida is still able to help her mother.”

She sat down.

When the Lunds and Ida came out into the street, Lund said:

“Now, my lass, just you go over to your friends the Jørgensens and get a breath of fresh air. We’ll see to the rest…So get along with you now. That was the idea.”

“And thank you for all those things,” whispered Ida as she kissed Mrs Lund.

When the Lunds had gone further along the street, the forester, walking arm in arm with his wife, said:

“Did she get the butter and the ham?”

“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.

Sofie continued to weep; she was thinking of her own situation.

“Aye, that’s it,” she said. “That’s it, but some people find it easier to get into bed than others.”

Ida sat looking into the lamp; she was so used to Sofie’s confidences. Then suddenly, in a completely different voice, Sofie said:

“You’ll have to get some money this evening. We haven’t got a penny in the place.”

“Again,” said Ida.

“When we never dare say what we’ re buying…and we have to kid your mother that we’ re having everything given to us…”

Ida sat silent for a moment. Then she closed the book.

“Yes,” she said. “Then it’s best we lock up.”

Ida locked the door and put the flowers down on the floor and spread the white sheets over all the chairs. There were sounds of a lot of people talking down there in the street…it was folk going home from the theatre.

Hm, how handsome that man had been who played Palle – that evening when she had been there with Olivia – so slim and dark.

She could always see the actors’ faces for such a long time afterwards – and their smiles – and how they walked.

He had had such beautiful teeth when he smiled.

Ida tiptoed in. She undressed quietly, listening to her mother’s breathing. She was fast asleep now.

Ida lay in her bed and, quite gently, beneath the blanket, she slipped her hand in under her mother’s pillow, where her purse lay. In the darkness she took a couple of kroner coins and put the purse back.

Her mother never kept a check on the small coins.

Everything was quite quiet now; her mother’s groaning was the only sound to be heard in the house. Ida hid the two coins in her stocking.

∞∞∞

Ida was in the pea bed at Ludvigsbakke; she and Schrøder were picking peas and putting them in a large container.

“There,” said Schrøder. “It just struck nine.”

She had seen Mrs von Eichbaum, stiff and straight, turn into the path along the pea bed. After Aix-les-Bains, Mrs von Eichbaum was following a course of treatment at Ludvigsbakke, and she followed instructions to the letter.

She came along the path with precise steps, as though she were counting them, past the bed of peas.

“Ah, it’s little Brandt,” she said without stopping. It was as though, in the most kindly way, she discovered Ida afresh each time she saw her.

“Hmm,” said Schrøder as she watched her go. “She ought to see about getting that little lad of hers up of a morning. God knows what she’s going to make of him now.”

It was a fortnight since Karl von Eichbaum had failed for the second time to get into the Zurich Polytechnic, and now he was resting.

“But he’s good looking,” said Schrøder.

It was quite quiet in the garden, and each peapod could be heard as it fell into the container, while the white butterflies flew in and out among the vines.

“The air is so lovely,” said Ida.

“Ugh, it’s going to be hot and I have to stir the mince for the rissoles.”

Schrøder was always mixing mince. His Lordship, who was almost ninety years old, could hardly eat anything else. There would soon not be a tooth left in the house, said Schrøder. She herself had acquired six new front teeth during the spring, something that imparted a taut appearance to her mouth – otherwise she was unchanged; and on days when she had most to do, the six teeth came no further than to the glass in which they were kept.

“But I’m not going to have him anywhere where there are young girls,” said Schrøder, continuing with the subject of Eichbaum. “He’s the sort that has his eyes all over a girl.” Schrøder probably noticed how the girls swung their hips when Eichbaum set foot in the kitchen.

“I think he has such kind eyes,” said Ida.

There was suddenly a chorus of children’s voices screaming and laughing down by the pond.

“Hm,” said Schrøder. “Now we’ll have to start drying sailor suits again.”

It was all the Falkenberg children who were wading in the pond, and Mrs Falkenberg, née With, came down the path – she had to “keep an eye on the children”.

“Oh, are you here?” she said (speaking in a somewhat faint, rather outdatedly-girlish voice). “Isn’t it lovely here in the sun!”

She seated herself on Schrøder’s kitchen stool with her hands in her lap – she always looked as though her wrists were tired.

“Falkenberg is not coming this year,” she said.

“Is he not?”

“No, he has written to say that there are some reports.” She shrugged her pointed shoulders in her dressing gown; Mrs Falkenberg had actually acquired a child-like figure again by presenting five children to Captain Falkenberg, Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog.

“I don’t understand these things,” she said. “It is his duty.”

“Yes,” said Schrøder. “A man has so many things to think about.”

“Yes,” Mrs Falkenberg nodded. There was an expression in her eyes as though she was sitting there looking in wonder for something that had disappeared:

“They have their problems as well.”

There were sounds of laughing and shouting from down by the pond and then one boy started to cry.

“That’s Edvard,” said Mrs Falkenberg, making as though to get up.

“I’ll go,” said Ida, and she rose.

“Oh yes, Ida dear…would you…” And Mrs Falkenberg remained seated.

Schrøder sat down on Ida’s kitchen stool and continued to shell the peas, while Mrs Falkenberg looked on through her pretty eyes.

“Oh, so you have a lot to think about,” she said, with her eyes on Schrøder’s hands. “Yes, it must be lovely to be strong…”

Ida returned: it was nothing – they were merely quarrelling over the barge.

“Was Erik there?” asked Mrs Falkenberg.

“No, Mrs Falkenberg, I didn’t see him.”

“Hm,” Mrs Falkenberg shook her head. “Heaven knows what that boy gets up to…”

Erik was a gangly seventeen-year-old who spent his holiday in some loft or other surrounded by modern novels and who, on leaving the heated hiding-places where he spent his time, always looked as though the light hurt his eyes.

Mrs Falkenberg continued to sit there, lost in the sunshine.

“Oh dear,” she said, “It’s a funny thing to have children. It’s lovely while they are small but then they have to be sent to school…”

As long as the children were small, Mrs Falkenberg spent the entire day singing with them, but once they went to school it was as though the big door closed behind them.”

“It is not easy to keep up with them,” she said.

“No, they all go their own way,” said Schrøder. “Get hold of this now.”

She took one end of the tray and Ida the other and they went.

Mrs Falkenberg stayed where she was. She could stay like this for hours sitting in the sunshine, looking up in the air as though she were staring up into some enormous holes into which everything in life disappeared.

Miss Rosenfeld was reading up on the veranda at the end of the house.

She raised her head and nodded to Ida and Schrøder before continuing.

As Schrøder and Ida entered the kitchen, Karl von Eichbaum put his head in through the other door. “I would like a cup of tea, Schrøder,” he said and Schrøder, putting down the peas, murmured something to the effect that there was presumably going to be tea with the meal. But Ida prepared a tray of tea and biscuits and took it out to von Eichbaum, who lay stretched out on the lawn.

“You are always so kind,” he said – he had his own straightforward and polite way of speaking to Ida – and he turned over on to his stomach, with his head over his tea.

“Thank you,” he said.

Ida offered him the biscuits.

“Is it Wednesday today?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Ugh,” said Eichbaum, stirring his tea. “Then I’ve got another three weeks…and…” – he looked up at her – “God knows what’s coming then.”

Karl von Eichbaum turned over on to his back again.

“No, it’s incredible,” he said.

He continued to stare into the sunshine and presumably reflect on “what was coming then”.

Ida gave a hand in the kitchen. She was thinking of Karl von Eichbaum: there was nobody he could look to, not really. He used to have Herman Reck…but now he, too, had settled down, in Aalborg, and was no longer at home.

Ida suddenly smiled.

She thought of the time when Karl and Herman were boys and Karl borrowed her few coins to buy cigarettes in Brædstrup.

Karl always used to go in through the window into Schrøder’s room after dinner:

“Have you any small change?” he would whisper saucily.

With the help of a knitting needle they would wheedle a few coins out of the piggy bank.

“Thanks,” he would whisper before jumping out through the window again.

But on one occasion, when he was a little older, he had also taken four kroner wrapped in paper and intended for tips that he found lying on the bottom of her suitcase…and on that occasion she had wept, for now she had nothing to use as tips when she travelled anywhere.

There was a knock on the ceiling. It was His Lordship, knocking from upstairs in “Her Ladyship’s sitting room”; he could no longer get up from his chair and so he called for help by knocking with his stick.

“Oh, is it you, Ida dear,” he said. “Are they all out?”

“Yes, Your Lordship.”

All visitors to Ludvigsbakke were sent out to get some fresh air.

“Fresh air is good for young people,” said His Lordship, “so that they can feel their blood flowing. Young people must have big lungs and strong hearts.”

He nodded.

“Would you just open the doors.”

Ida opened the doors through the sun-drenched rooms. “Thank you,” said His Lordship. Now, seated in Her Ladyship’s chair, he could sit in peace and look through all the light-filled rooms he had built and in which he had lived.

He turned his head towards the window; he could see into the bailiff’s garden through the opening.

“They are a colourful crowd,” he said with a nod.

Four ladies dressed in an array of colours were running around on Reck’s croquet lawn together with three young men with their trousers rolled up.

“They are not like your father’s people, Ida,” he said.

“Well, there we are.” He turned his head again towards his tranquil rooms: “You see so many things when you grow old.”

“But,” said the old man, “the world witnesses a great deal of madness, my girl, and yet it survives.”

Ida, too, remained there, looking out across the garden towards the bailiff’s wing. She so rarely went there now: what a lot of trees they were felling every year…there were so few of the old trees left.

“And how are things at home?” asked His Lordship.

“It is kind of you to ask, but I have not had a letter recently,” said Ida.

“Oh, well.”

His Lordship sat there in silence, pondering like someone who has lived a long time.

Ida returned to the kitchen, but Schrøder sent her away.

“You’ re on holiday, my girl,” she said. “Go out and get some fresh air. It’s so hot in here that you need to take your clothes off.”

Schrøder was mixing the mince, and she had taken hers off.

Ida went. She intended to go over to the Lunds. But she stopped out on the main steps: a carriage was just leaving the Home Farm. It was all the children, who were going bathing. The carriage looked like a white nest full of chickens in the sun.

Then the voices moved away, and all was quiet again. Lawn and fields with the cows resting on them like lazy patches, and the houses in Brædstrup – everything seemed to be dozing in the sunlight.

“It is lovely here today,” said Miss Rosenfeld, who was walking along slowly, with her book under her arm.

They stood beside each other on the steps.

“Just look how straight the smoke is,” said Miss Rosenfeld.

Smoke was rising from the houses in Brædstrup, slowly and straight like pale blue torches in the pale blue air.

Ida and Miss Rosenfeld rarely had much to say to each other. But they often stood together in this way for a short time, looking at the same things. Miss Rosenfeld fetched Ida when she wanted to go for a walk, especially when it had been raining and the trees were still dripping – then they went along together, without saying much, on the damp paths, for a long time.

Ida went down through the garden – she did not really like the road past the “wing” – and she turned in on the path through the forest. The birds were no longer singing, and the only sound she heard was that of her own steps on the soft ground.

At the forester’s house, old Lucy was sitting in front of the kitchen door peeling potatoes, and the watchdog, which knew Ida, wagged its tail in front of its kennel.

“Is there anyone at home, Lucie?”

Lucie raised her palsied head.

“They are inside,” she said and then sat there and said no more.

All the doors in the house were open and the sun shone on the floors and the well worn furniture. Mrs Lund was sitting in the hall in a basket chair, surrounded by linen, her large glasses on her small face.

“Oh, is it you, dear,” she said. “I’m mending sheets, love…We wash and we mend, you know…with all these visitors. But they’ re welcome, they really are…Oh, could you just give me a hand…”

Ida gave her a hand and threaded needles while thinking how Mrs Lund’s hand had really started to shake.

“Oh dear,” said Mrs Lund as she pored over the sheets, for there was hole after hole in them. “I think these must be the oldest ones. But during the holidays it’s as though they still have a bit of their old home dear, and who knows how long it will go on.”

“The children are in the garden,” she said and set about her sewing again.

They could hear that; a chorus of bright voices rang out down there. There were a lot of flies buzzing around in the sitting room, and the whitewashed ceiling bore clear traces of where they had been.

“O dear, no,” Mrs Lund went on: “His Lordship is failing…and who knows what is going to happen then?”

Ida did not know why she had suddenly had the same thought. But she said:

“But the forests will still be there, Mrs Lund.”

“Oh yes, dear, but it will be others felling the trees.”

Mrs Lund stared out from behind the big glasses that sat so uncomfortably on her nose.

“And now we’ve lived here undisturbed for almost thirty-five years.”

Old Lucie approached along the path, grumbling and mumbling.

“There,” said Mrs Lund, “Lucie’s off again now. Oh, it’s not easy, my dear. If only she would just sit down. But she wants to be in on everything and she is not one of the cleanest. One minute she is over the food, and the next she’s making beds.”

Mrs Lund shook her head and Ida smiled, though a little reluctantly. There were those in the area who found it a little difficult to eat in the forester’s house because Lucie liked to help with the food.

“But,” said Mrs Lund, “as I say to Lund, she must be allowed to die here.”

The “student”, the youngest of “the boys” poked his head in through the garden door.

“Is it Ida,” he said. “Come on, come on out. We’ re picking cherries.”

All the young people were down by the cherry trees, shouting and laughing. Two of the “boys” were up in the branches, picking and throwing down the cherries.

“Is that Ida,” shouted one of them.

“Catch.” Ida received two cherries in her face as she looked up.

The girls were catching the berries and laughing.

“O-o-h,” the cherries flew down.

“O-o-h,” how good Emilie Frederiksen was at catching.

“There,” one “boy” jumped down from the branch in the midst of the group.

“Here’s some more for you,” shouted the other, and he threw some cherries down to Ida. But by that time they were all lying down on the grass beneath the trees.

“Oh, it’s so nice here,” said Emilie, stretching her legs right out.

“Yes,” said Ida, almost with tears in her eyes; she did not know how she had fallen into that mood, sad or perhaps as it were uneasy… ever since she had been indoors with Mrs Lund.

Emilie lay there, looking down at her skirt, which bore the stains of three crushed cherries.

“I shall never get rid of those,” she said, patting down her skirt.

Ida rose. She would rather go home…such a strange mood had come over her

“Oh well, dear,” said Mrs Lund, who went with her to the outside door and stood there, nodding to her. “Remember me to your mother when you write.”

As Ida was walking down the road through the woods, Reck’s wagonette was approaching. It was full of ladies with coloured parasols.

Miss Constance Reck, sitting on the box and holding a slender ivory whip, stopped the horses and spoke to Ida.

Ida said something in return, and Miss Constance said:

“It is really lovely for Miss Schrøder to have got you out here.”

Miss Constance lowered the whip and the parasols moved a little as the carriage moved off.

Ida went on. She was lost in thought and turned down to walk past the bailiff’s wing without realising it…

Two of the young gentlemen were standing on the steps leading up to the big new glass-covered veranda; they were each leaning against a doorpost, smoking cigarettes, each with his trousers pulled half way up his legs to display his colourful socks. One of them raised his white felt hat to Ida, as did the other after a brief pause, and after she had passed she heard him say:

“Was that Miss Brandt?”

Ida increased her pace. She felt all the time as though something must have happened in the main building, and she said to the maid in the corridor:

“Is everything all right?”

The maid, who was bringing flowers for the table, replied:

“Yes; we are about to have dinner.”

And Ida felt quite calm again as she changed her clothes… She heard a dress rustling out on the garden path. It was Mrs von Eichbaum, who was going for a walk before dinner.

Ida was standing in front of her mirror when the gong sounded.

Sitting at table must surely be the worst thing of all for Karl Eichbaum, she thought.

Schrøder was standing by the open kitchen window pouring the soup into the soup plates when she saw a bare-legged boy coming up round the lawn.

“Who’s it for?” she shouted out of the window, past the two maids who were waiting.

It was the telegraph boy. But he was not in a hurry.

“It’s for Miss Brandt,” he said.

“Who?”

“It was for Miss Brandt,” the boy said again, slowly.

“Oh Lord,” Schrøder let go of the saucepan. “Oh Lord, then it must be bad news.”

“Where is she?” she said immediately afterwards, but then in the same breath: “Oh, let me serve the soup first.”

One of the maids took the telegram; she would take it up.

“Are you out of your mind?” said Schrøder and snatched it from her.

“You take the soup in.”

Schrøder calmed down again: she would tell John the coachman to be ready in case he was needed; and she went into the servants’ room, where he sat waiting for his coffee.

“Then she’ll be able to have her meal first,” thought Schrøder, and suddenly she began to weep.

“Poor thing,” she said.

When she arrived back in the kitchen, in tears, Ida was standing there.

“What on earth is wrong, Schrøder?” she asked. “What is it?” she repeated, in a more worried voice. And when Schrøder, confused, reluctantly held out the telegram to her, she said:

“It’s mother…” and she had torn the telegram open and read it.

“Oh dear, Ida, dear Ida,” was all Schrøder said, putting an arm around her.

Ida had not spoken. It was as though her eyes failed to see anything as she went into Schrøder’s room.

“Dear child,” Schrøder went on. “Dearest child…what is it?”

But Ida made no reply, and, scared as she stood there before the pale, stiff face, Schrøder simply went on using the old pet name, dear child, dear child – rocking Ida’s head backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, as though, in fear, she wanted to shake the tears out of her.

“I’ve ordered the carriage.”

“Thank you.” And then Ida voiced the only thought she had:

“If only I can manage to see her.”

Speaking made her start to weep, and Schrøder said – quite relieved – she had, of course, simply not known whether Mrs Brandt was still alive.

“Oh yes, oh yes, it’s not as bad as all that…she’ll get over it all right, you’ll see, my dear.”

Ida simply placed her arms wearily down on the chair.

“You must go,” she said. “They are waiting for you up there.”

“Oh,” said Schrøder, almost angrily, “let them wait.”

The door opened; it was Miss Rosenfeld.

“Have you ordered the carriage?” she asked, in a low voice, as though she had entered a sickroom.

“Yes.”

She nodded to Schrøder, who went out.

“We’ll get off straight away,” she said, sitting down quietly and taking hold of Ida’s cold hands.

From the kitchen, Anne Marie, the kitchen maid, had crept out into the servants’ hall to hear what was going on.

“So I suppose it’s all over,” she said slowly.

“I suppose so,” replied Johan.

Anne Marie stared vacantly ahead, standing straight, in her black socks.

“She’ll leave a bit,” she said, nodding.

“She’ll leave a lot,” said Johan.

“Aye,” and he stretched his artilleryman’s legs in front of him: “Is there any coffee?” He drank it and got ready.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose we’ll take the landau on an occasion such as this.”

Ida was fetched and put in the barouche.

Silence fell on the dining table as Mrs Falkenberg attended to His Lordship and left the doors ajar.

“It doesn’t sound as though they are enjoying themselves in there. Why not?” asked His Lordship.

“We are enjoying ourselves, Your Lordship.”

“Good, but, when people are enjoying themselves, you can usually hear it,” the old man said.

Mrs von Eichbaum said she had recently been reading what Bishop Mynster had written in his “Reflections” on the subject of dying suddenly: “They were words to remember”.

“But,” she added: “little Brandt’s future is assured, I suppose.”

When the carriage drove up on the gravel path, Ida quietly entered it – her eyes had as it were become very big in her face – and Miss Rosenfeld, who had put her coat on, climbed in and sat down beside her.

“You are not going to go alone,” she said.

Karl von Eichbaum had left the table and gone down. He stood, beside the bailiff, over in front of the house by the horses. Then he reached a hand in over the carriage door, without saying anything.

When Schrøder turned to go inside – the coach was right down on the Brædstrup road by this time – she saw the telegraph messenger still sitting on the bench in front of the kitchen windows; he was waiting for his receipt.

Dinner was over and all the dishes were in disarray on the kitchen tables. Schrøder had to have them tidied up before she could start on the servants’ dinner. The sun betrayed a large number of grey hairs above her temples as she stood bending over the big bread slicer.

The gardener’s assistant came out of the garden. He slowly raked the gravel path, hiding the traces of the carriage that had just left.

The white marker stones flew past the rattling carriage, in which no one spoke. Mile followed after mile, as the horses trotted.

Ida saw nothing and heard nothing. All her life seemed to be gathered in her clenched hands.

One single thought was forcing its way out in words without a sound, as though she wanted to overturn a sense of guilt:

“I had said I wouldn’t go…”

She rocked her clenched fists up and down.

“Now I shan’t even be able to see her…”

“But…Ida…”

“No, I shan’t be able to see her…”

And then they were there. The horses refused to stand still – two dogs came rushing at them.

Ida saw nothing but Sofie’s puffed-up face as she came down the stairs.

“The doctor’s here,” said Sofie in a whisper.

Ida supported herself on the banister.

“So she’s not dead.”

“I’ll fetch Mrs Jørgensen,” said Miss Rosenfeld.

Ida nodded without having heard, and she opened the door to the sitting room; it was dark, and she waited. She could hear the doctor’s footsteps in the bedroom.

“It happened at twelve o’ clock,” whispered Sofie.

But Ida simply groaned.

“And then we sent a telegram,” Sofie whispered again.

As though glimpsing a couple of shadows, Ida saw Miss Sørensen, who came in carrying two silver candlesticks, and Miss Thøgersen, who was bringing a cloth.

“Oh,” said Sofie, starting to tremble: “this is for the last communion…and she sat down on a chair.

“We’ re expecting the minister,” whispered Miss Sørensen and the two continued to tiptoe around – with so many things.

Ida only listened to the doctor’s footsteps.

Then she heard the sound of her mother’s heavy breathing, just as she knew it…And suddenly she started to sob, quietly and desperately with gratitude.

The doctor approached her, and she made to get up.

“I heard the carriage,” he said, and she looked up into his face.

“It might be best not to go in immediately,” he said. “Your mother has been rather irritated…”

Ida continued to look at him.

“In her condition…that you were not here…”

Ida made no reply. She had closed her eyes for a moment, and she failed to notice the hand he reached out to her.

“We will wait until this evening. Goodbye.”

Ida had bowed her head. She had understood: she was not to go in there.

She saw Miss Sørensen drag the myrtle across the floor, and she heard the doctor’s voice again. “Keep that out of the way,” he said and actually struck out at the myrtle.

She merely thought that she was not to go in there.

She did not realise that she had risen and gone across the floor, in to the little sitting room, to the stool, her stool behind the big chest of drawers.

Doors were opened and doors were closed; there was the sound of footsteps. Miss Thøgersen came and laid a desperate hand on her shoulder.

“The minister,” she breathed, and they could hear Sofie weeping.

“Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ.”

But Ida did not move.

There was no sound but the minister’s murmur. Then came the sick woman’s breathing. Ida heard only that.

“Vater unser, Vater unser,” Miss Thøgersen suddenly prayed in her own language, but she got no further.

“The Lord Jesus the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; And when He had given thanks, He brake it and said, Take, eat; this is my body which is broken for you; this do in remembrance of me.”

Ida did not pray; she had no room for prayers. She only felt her heart stopped and heavy like a stone in her breast.

“Vater unser, Vater unser…”

“After the same manner also, He took the cup, when He had supped, saying, this cup is the new testament in my blood; this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me…”

Looking in through the door, Sofie could see, against the candles, the minister bend down over the dying woman and lift her pillow.

“God the Holy Spirit, God the Holy Spirit,” she whispered, falling back against the back of the chair. There was silence for a moment, and then Sofie got up again.

“The keys,” she said all at once, almost shrieking.

She had seen the bunch slide from under the pillow, slip over the sheet and fall down on the floor.

“The Body of Christ…”

They heard no more, while the night nurse also started to weep.

Ida had folded her hands on her lap:

If she fell asleep, she could go in there; when she was asleep, she could go in…

“The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face shine upon you, and be gracious unto you; the Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.”

It became quite silent. Miss Thøgersen had ceased weeping and sat rocking her head to and fro.

“She is nevertheless dying as a respected person,” she said, and her tears began to flow again.

Ida heard her name as in a fog, and she stood up. It was the minister, who held out a hand to her.

“You have been away?” he said in a mildly concerned voice.

“Yes, I have.”

The minister stood for a moment in front of the tearless face. He tried to think of a text, but failed to find one.

“Aye,” he said then, “a mother’s a mother. May God give you strength.”

Miss Sørensen showed the minister out and crossed the road to go home for a moment. She could not quite forget that episode with the myrtle: she had really only wanted, with the best of intentions, to provide some “embellishment” for the sacred act.

But it was well known that Dr. Berg was a man without much sensitivity.

All was quiet now. The only sounds were those of the clocks’ ticking and the night nurse when she moved quietly in some way.

Ida sat in the same chair while Sofie tiptoed to and fro.

“Is she asleep?” Ida whispered.

“She’s still awake.”

Again, they heard the ticking of the clocks while Sofie lit a solitary candle on which the wax curled up in the form of long threads towards the flame and then fell.

“Is she asleep?” Ida asked again.

“She’s awake.”

They could hear the laboured breathing and a voice mumbling.

“Is she saying something?” Ida asked.

She had got up. She felt hope almost like a thorn in her breast when the night nurse opened the door.

“Has she asked for me?” Ida could scarcely speak.

The night nurse shook her head.

“She is probably not going to ask for anyone any more,” she said.

“She is asleep now.”

They all three stood listening for a moment in front of the silent candle: she was asleep.

“Then I’m going in,” whispered Ida.

Carefully, she took her shoes off and crept in. She looked at her mother’s face for a moment. Then, quietly, she sat down on the floor at the end of her own bed without drawing a breath.

Mrs Brandt did not wake again. She died about midnight.

∞∞∞

It was cold and empty now. From door to door nothing but the white, dead floors. On the walls only patch after patch, above which were rusty nails.

Ida went from room to room for one last time.

“Well then, you’ll close the doors,” she said to Sofie.

Sofie stood with her hand on the latch.

“Yes,” she said, weeping so the tears streamed down her face as she spoke:

“I don’t think I’ve told you…that the upshot is we’ re going to get married…”

“Married? But he has nothing, Sofie.” (Christian from the Mill was becoming more and more hopeless, and now he was out of work all the time.)

“No,” said Sofie, still weeping. “But Hansen’s wanted this for a long time…and then he’s got his three children to look after…”

“Oh,” said Ida, who only now realised that Sofie was not talking about Christian from the Mill; Hansen was a widower; he worked at the gasworks, and he drank.

As though she understood what Ida was thinking, Sofie, continuing to sniff, said:

“And it’s not everyone who can be left to live on their own…”

Ida looked at her. She did not herself know why the tears came to her eyes.

“Then I hope it may bring you happiness,” she said.

Sofie stared ahead through her tearful eyes, and her voice sounded quite different.

“And I’ll be sure of a place to live and a bed to sleep in,” she said. “And one’s got to live.”

She was overcome with tears again, and in despair Ida put her arms around this ageing woman and she, too, wept, though she hardly knew why.

Then, slowly, Sofie closed all the doors, one by one, and left.

She slept at Miss Thøgersen’s that night.

Ida had gone to Olivia’s house and had supper there on her last evening.

Now she and Olivia were sitting on the veranda steps, looking in the dusk out towards the Sound and Boller Woods, the outline of which was dark and heavy. They had not spoken. Olivia had simply gently slipped her arm under Ida’s, and they were standing shoulder to shoulder.

Jørgensen’s rocking chair could be heard rocking up and down on the veranda…Rolf, the dog, crept down the steps and lay down at Olivia’s feet.

“So I suppose I’ll be a nurse,” said Ida.

“But why, Ida? You don’t need to.”

Ida looked out over the darkening sound, and her voice sounded very gentle:

“I suppose it’s the only thing I can do.”

Olivia made no reply, and they sat for a while in silence.

“And then I’ll be of some use to someone.”

Ida suddenly thought of Sofie and, still in the same tone, said:

“Now Sofie is going to get married.”

“To Christian?” Olivia asked, suddenly in a louder voice.

“No, to Hansen from the gasworks.”

“Oh, good Lord,” said Olivia. “Is she going to have him to fight with now?”

“Yes,” said Ida with a half smile. “I don’t think she can live without something like that.”

They fell silent again and could hear nothing but the dog’s deep breathing as it lay at their feet.

“How quiet Rolf is.”

“Yes.”

They were both whispering. Not a leaf stirred in the darkening garden.

“It’s as though everything knew you were going away.”

They sat motionless. But Olivia felt a couple of tears fall on her hand in the dark.

“Let’s go up to the children,” said Ida.

They stood for a moment more, looking out over the still garden. Then they went in.

Ida ran in first into her own room; then they crept up to the sleeping children. The lamp was burning low beneath the ceiling and the maid sat knitting in a corner.

“How sweet they are,” said Olivia.

Ida said nothing, but she lingered for a long time by each of the white beds.

“What are you doing now?” whispered Olivia.

Ida put a small sealed package down under each pillow.

“You do nothing but give things,” said Olivia.

Ida stood in front of Dumpling’s bed.

“If only I had someone to give to,” she said.

They came down into the sitting room and Olivia told Fritz about the parcels.

“I must be allowed to do that,” said Ida. “It’s my last evening.”

“Oh yes, I suppose so,” said Olivia with a laugh. “But if you fall in love one day, my dear, you’ll give him everything down to your last stitch.”

Olivia had gone up with Ida and came back to the quiet sitting room. She and Fritz sat in silence, each in their own chair, in front of the white stove.

“Oh,” said Olivia, “if only Ida could be made happy.”

Fritz sat for a time looking at the smoke from his cigar and said:

“I don’t think she ever will be.”

Olivia seemed to ponder this.

“But why?” she asked.

“Because she will never learn to seek her own happiness,” said Fritz.

“No.”

There was silence again before Olivia said in a voice that betrayed much emotion:

“Do you realise how grateful happy people should really be?”

Fritz merely nodded. But, as though the words were coming from deep down inside her, Olivia said:

“And then death comes even so.”

∞∞∞

The following afternoon, Ida left on the steamer.

Darkness was beginning to fall – the first day in Copenhagen. Ida had wandered around among unfamiliar things and had sat at table among unfamiliar people. Now she went out, across squares and along streets. She wanted to see a ship, the Brage, which was to sail back home again.

She walked along the quayside, where ships lay side by side. There it was, at the far end. She stood there and looked at it, the big hull and the masts and the cabin doors that were all closed. It was going home to sail the waters over there.

The windlasses were working and there were still people working in the holds. They were going to go along the shore and past the woods and all those lovely meadows.

And Karen would stand there watching for the ship and raise the ladies’ flag above the white bathing hut.

Ida stood there for a long time. She hid herself, beneath the eaves of the big warehouse. There, it was dark.

∞∞∞

Ida was tossing about in her bed. One moment, she was dreaming and the next she was awake.

The doors were opened and slammed. The porters were bringing patients.

Two long shouts from “the noisy ward” resounded throughout the building and then the doors closed.

Half awake, Ida heard the porters’ footsteps and the cries of the difficult patients, as though they were coming from far, far below, from deep down beneath the earth.