Nothing But Fear (15 page)

Aunt Annelise had been spoilt from the day she opened her eyes on the world. She was the only girl, the youngest, and every day was her birthday. She was pretty and she always had her way, toying with people as though they were her dolls, and they did as she said and played along with her. As she entered her teens, she behaved more and more outrageously. She read novelettes and wanted to be an actress, and she went to dance classes at Birgitte Reimer's, flirting with
her husband even though he was old and married with children of her age. One day she would be a film star on her way to Hollywood, the next she would be a nun and renounce everything. When the royal yacht came by and anchored in Nykøbing, she was knocked sideways – rumours were going around about King Christian having affairs in the town – and after that for weeks she was a lady-in-waiting and impossible to talk to. She was a cut above this world, and when she came home with notes from school, Grandfather said that Annelise just had too much imagination.

Annelise lived in a dream, longing for life in the big city, and her great love was amateur dramatics. She lived and breathed for the performances at the Baltic Hotel. On stage she became herself, spreading her wings in the tension of high drama, was Desdemona, was Nora, and could not come down to earth again. She would go partying after the performances and began drinking and going with men, and before her eighteenth birthday she was pregnant. The man was a photographer, Lars Krusell – he had taken pictures of her. They were married by special licence, and Annelise got away from Nykøbing.

They moved to Haderslev and had a daughter, Pernille, but nothing was as she had imagined it would be. There was no part for her to play. Life didn't revolve round her – she boiled nappies and cooked meals – and every day Annelise died a little in normal life. She started hanging out in bars again and met a doctor from northern Zealand, Jørn-Erik, whom she seduced and later married. He was far older than she and agreed to get a divorce. She also was divorced
and took Pernille with her – and now the good life started rolling in Copenhagen with theatres, dinners and dancing. She drank cocktails, smoked with a cigarette-holder, and Jørn-Erik wrote prescriptions and supplied her with the substances her dreams were made of – sedatives and morphine. She was a star, she was part of a film, and her success story knew no end.

As a rule Annelise was foul-tempered and depressed – but emerged transformed after every visit to the bathroom. She wore theatre make-up and dressed in dramatic costumes made of satin with sequins and feathers that swirled around her. When she walked down Bredgade with her daughter, people turned to stare, and Pernille hunched up her shoulders and fixed her eyes on the ground. When they reached the square in front of the royal residence at Amalienborg Castle, Annelise would stop and point at the palace saying, ‘You see! There it is!' Then she walked up to the gate and rang the bell. They waited and waited, until finally a man opened the door and asked how he could be of assistance. Annelise measured him with her eyes from head to foot and asked what ever he was thinking of. Didn't he know who she was? Princess Ann! He slammed the door shut, and they went on their way – and some weeks later they would be standing there again.

Jørn-Erik could do nothing about it. He was just as hooked on her as she was on medicine. He was a weak, pallid fellow, and she satisfied all his desires as long as he provided her with pills and eggnogs and money to buy clothes and shoes and to hold court – her acquaintances all
came to call and played along and laughed at her and continued knocking back the drink. She had another child – a son, Klaus – and never looked after him. It was all chaos. The flat was piled high with mess, the washing-up was never done, they never had meals or clean clothes, Pernille didn't go to school, and one day Jørn-Erik had had enough. He had come home to find all their furniture thrown out of the window of the third floor and strewn across the street with people crowded round. He let himself in, and Annelise gabbled at him, shouting that he had to go down on his knees, and so he fell on his knees and begged her to stop and come to her senses, but she just grew even more furious, and from now on would only be addressed with her royal title.

It was high time Jørn-Erik pulled himself together and did something about it – even though he was worried they might take a look at his prescriptions – and he told Annelise that they were invited to a ball in Corselitze, which the royals visited every summer. She decked herself out in long dress and jewellery and put her hair up, complaining about the car – it was a Volvo and not suitable for her standing – and spent the entire journey talking about the Lord Chamberlain and about the latest gossip from ladies-in-waiting and hairdressers and about affairs in high places. At Vordingborg he turned off the main road and drove towards Marienberg. At the end of the avenue stood some large white-painted buildings. Annelise touched up her make-up in the mirror and prepared for her grand entrance – her eyes were shining and she was lit up for a party – and so they
entered Oringe Mental Hospital side by side.

The mental hospital was Vordingborg's largest employer, and that said everything about the place. But if Jørn-Erik thought that he could get rid of Annelise that easily he had another think coming. She had grown up on the other side of the bridge a few kilometres south. She knew people like she knew the back of her hand and immediately picked up what was going on. She exchanged looks with the nurses and the doctor who was filling in the forms: ‘Application for the admission of a mentally ill patient'. Once he had completed the forms, he looked up and winked at Jørn-Erik before passing the papers across to Annelise, who was to sign them. And so she did. And then it was Jørn-Erik's turn. He smiled and lowered the pen and started. Something was wrong! This was impossible – they had written the wrong name, it wasn't Annelise who was due to be admitted but he, Jørn-Erik Mølby! He threw down the pen, shook his head and asked what on earth was going on. He wasn't the one who was ill, it was she – he pointed at Annelise and got up – he was a doctor, he should know what he was talking about! Annelise sighed as though she had heard this hundreds of time before, and the doctor sent her an understanding nod. He said that it would, of course, require the signature of the chief of police for him to be forcibly committed using the pink forms but that could be taken care of by a telephone call – and was her husband a danger to himself or to others?

It was Pernille who told me – she was a thin girl with slides in her hair and timid as a mouse. We were at the
funeral in Herlev and were standing on our own outside the church, while round us the family was divided into groups, all ignoring each other. Most of them I hadn't seen before and only knew by hearsay, so it was as though they didn't exist in reality. Aunt Annelise was in mourning dress with black veil, black hat, black gloves. She was sobbing like a thing possessed. Jørn-Erik, pale and broken by grief, crossed to talk to Hanne and Jens – he was a commodore in the navy and Pernille had been taken into care by their family. And then Uncle Ib joined the company and gave me a wave – he had developed a beer-belly – and at that point Mother came rushing over, took me by the hand and said that we had better be leaving now, and we drove back to Falster; the atmosphere in the car you could cut with a knife.

Jørn-Erik had been under Annelise's thumb ever since the trip to Vordingborg – how she avoided being certified was still a mystery. She threatened to take the children away if he didn't come to heel and waved the hospital forms and laughed. And Jørn-Erik resigned himself and did as she asked and consoled himself with morphine and booze. He more or less became her slave, said Mother with a shake of her head, and Father said, ‘Enough of that now…' and turned on the car radio – only to switch it off again because it was music. We tried to avoid thinking about it but that was, of course, impossible.

It had gone on for years, until finally Annelise lost interest and went along with a separation provided she was guaranteed a substantial allowance. She kept the youngest, Klaus. Jørn-Erik moved out. Pernille was taken into care at
the commodore's – and after a while Jørn-Erik could come and go there as he pleased. He would make drinks before dinner and kept the commodore's wife, Hanne, warm when her husband was away on naval exercises. They celebrated Christmas together and spent holidays together at a derelict farmhouse and kept the threesome going until the telephone rang and it all blew up in their faces. It was the police. They wished to inform him that his son, Klaus Mølby, was dead. He had been found hanging from the kitchen door at the home of Jørn-Erik's former wife, Annelise Romer Jørgensen, and everything pointed to it having been suicide. There were, however, a number of circumstances that they wished to speak to him about. For example, a large quantity of morphine and Valium and amphetamines had been found in the flat along with prescriptions made out in his name – and was he acquainted with someone called… Princess Ann?

W
e lived in a house under siege, and Father took no chances at New Year, when things got particularly bad. Children were always ringing the doorbell, throwing bangers and squibs through the letterbox and running away. They nicked the garden gate, overturned the rubbish bin in the garage and stuck a Christmas tree in the chimney. We didn't notice until the following day, by which time everyone had seen it and was laughing at us. He hated New Year's Eve and muffled the doorbell with cardboard, taped up the
letterbox and lifted the garden gate off its hinges and put it in the shed. Then, he would lay down tripwires of string everywhere and go on about fireworks. They were a public nuisance and shouldn't be allowed. How many thatched houses would be burnt down this year? And what about the fingers lost and eyes damaged?

The Hagenmüller family came to visit for the New Year once – with their sons, Axel, Rainer and Claus. It was a fantastic sight, watching Uncle Helmut's car drive up Hans Ditlevsensgade. It was much bigger than ours, but Father said that ours cost four times as much because of import taxes. If we had lived in Germany, we would have had a Mercedes 500! We fetched Grandmother from the station, and Axel took her suitcase, Rainer opened the door, and Claus sat himself beside her in the back and sucked up to her. They were only doing it for the sweets and money, to screw her for what they could get and to take my Grandmother away from me, and I found myself wishing that they would all go to hell. It didn't cross my mind that in a way this was where they had come.

Mother laid the table with the Meissner. We were to have lobster and champagne and Danish marzipan ring cake. She had bought streamers and paper hats – and, best of all, fireworks! They were fun, she said, and evil spirits should be driven out of the house over New Year. Father sighed, and I looked forward to midnight all evening. The atmosphere was unpleasant. Father compared Danish and German prices for everything under the sun and went on about taxes and duties. Helmut shook his head in amazement that they
could be so high in Denmark. It really was incredible. The most important thing was to avoid any mention of sensitive issues, especially inheritance.

Papa Schneider had died without writing a will, and Eva was his direct descendant, related by blood – she was a ‘
blutsverwand
t' – and therefore, in principle, the sole heir. When compensation for losses in East Germany came through at last – ‘
Entschädigung
' – Eva took the lot. It was beyond belief. How could she do it? And to her own mother and sister? It was as though the boil had burst. The grievances and accusations poured out of her – Grandmother had never loved her father, had only married him for his money, she had never been a love-child as Mother had been – Hilde was ‘
Tochter des hochgeliebten Heinrich Voll
', while she was ‘
Tochter des nicht so hochgeliebten Papa Schneider
' – and Mother had stolen all her men from her and ruined her life! She shouted and screamed and became hysterical – and they got no more than the 8 per cent they were entitled to – not a penny more – and Mother gave her share to Grandmother and swore to take revenge.

At midnight we heard the chimes from the tower of City Hall in Copenhagen on the polished mahogany radio – it had been plugged in for the occasion – and raised our fine cut glasses and toasted each other, Eva and Helmut, Axel, Rainer and Claus and Grandmother. And Father said ‘Steady!' and ‘Careful now' as I clinked glasses with Mother. She smoked her cheroots and said that now it was party time, took out the bag with the fireworks and went out into the street – and then she let off the rockets. She lit the fuses
with her glowing cheroot, and they whistled up to explode far above, filling the sky with a sea of stars and golden rain – and the tears rolled down Grandmother's cheeks.

‘Ach, wie schön!'

People came outside to watch. There were Shooting Stars and Catherine Wheels and the Golden Rain cascaded up and threw out their sprays of flowers to crackle down upon us. It ended with a single massive detonation, and when all was still again, we could hear a whining sound that went on and on and came from inside the house. It was Eva – she had got a shock during a bombing raid and had never got over it. She was standing in the dining room, white as a sheet and petrified, her screams piercing the air like a crack fracturing the porcelain.

T
hey slaughtered him, Mother said, Horst Heilmann – her Horstchen. He was executed and hanged from a meathook. Her voice hurt. It belonged to another woman. She lived inside Mother and had died long since. I was afraid of her and hid in my room when she came out, when her eyes turned cold and distant and looked at me from the other side of the grave.

Mother drank to keep her at bay and that only made it worse. Each time she emptied a vodka bottle, it would be an execution.
‘Vollstreckt,'
she would say – and her eyes looked out at a grey December day in Berlin in 1942. Behind the walls and the iron doorway stood the Plötzensee prison, the
buildings and yards made impregnable by barbed wire, railings and iron bars. The floors of death row were polished till they shone, and down the middle ran a strip of green linoleum that no one was ever allowed to walk on. It was smooth as glass – ‘
blitzblank
' – and it was awful.