Asta's Book (7 page)

‘You’d have to ask Ann about that. It’s hers, remember.’

‘What does a big girl of fourteen want with a baby’s toy?’ said Mormor rather grandly. Her bright blue eyes, a hard, almost ugly turquoise blue, snapped with their kingfisher flash. She proceeded to shock everyone, as she always could. ‘My husband’s dead. He won’t get to know about it where he’s gone to.’

A month later she moved in with Swanny and Torben. But first she put ‘98’ on the market and sold it within days. If she had ever had the chance she would probably have turned out to be much better at business than Morfar. No one would have ‘schvinded’ her. She drove a hard bargain and, refusing offers, stuck out for the £5,000 she had asked for the house. Today it would fetch forty times that but it was a good price in 1954.

The four-poster that had possibly belonged to Pauline Bonaparte was one of only two pieces of any size she kept and took with her to Hampstead. There had been valuable furniture, for Mormor’s own father had owned property in Copenhagen and when his tenants defaulted on the rent he took their tables and chairs from them in lieu of the money. Quite a lot of this Morfar had managed to get his hands on. But everything went and, apart from the bed, a big black carved table and her ancient couturier-designed clothes, all Mormor took with her were her albums of photographs, her complete works of Dickens in Danish translation, and the notebooks, by then forty-nine of them, in which she had been writing down her life since she was a young girl.

Now that the diaries have been published, now that
Asta
and its sequels are bestsellers and it is fashionable to say how wonderful they are or what rubbish they are, it seems strange that none of us was in the least interested in what Mormor wrote or had even noticed that she wrote anything particular at all.

Open about matters most women of her age are anxious to keep dark, she was secretive about that one thing. When she was writing and someone came into the room, the notebook was quickly slipped away. Sometimes, I believe, she sat on it. So when I say that the notebooks arrived along with the bed, the complete works of Dickens and the photograph albums when Mormor moved in with Swanny, I don’t mean that any sort of parade of them was made. I only know that they must have arrived with her because Swanny found them when Mormor died nearly twenty years later.

The fashion for ‘granny annexes’ had hardly arrived in the fifties. Swanny’s house was quite large, big enough for a flat to have been contrived in it, but Mormor lived
en famille
with her daughter and son-in-law. They had no children and she was with them as much as if she were their child. That is, I think, she was with them when it suited her. She ate all her meals with them, sat with them in the evenings and was determined always to be there when they entertained. But she never went out with Swanny, she never came to us at the same time as Swanny came. She went out alone or, as often as not, with Uncle Harry, and was gone for hours, just as she spent long hours alone upstairs.

Mormor was a very old woman by this time and it was inevitable she repeated herself. The interesting thing was how seldom she did so when telling her stories. Some, of course, had passed into a family mythology, the one about her own parents’ maid Karoline from Jutland, for instance, and the one about the drunk but otherwise puritanical uncle who disapproved of Morfar’s brother being divorced and threw a bottle at him in a bar in Nyhavn. But she was always coming out with new ones. She could always surprise us.

My mother and I were with her in Swanny’s house when she recounted one none of us had heard before. Mormor had been living there for about a year by then and her seventy-fifth birthday wasn’t far off. Out of courtesy to me, for my Danish was never good, she spoke in English, a heavily accented, drawled English, though immeasurably better than Morfar’s had been.

‘My husband married me to get my dowry. Oh, yes. Not very nice to think of, is it? But I’m used to it, I have had to live with it.’

She didn’t look as if it particularly distressed her. She looked as she habitually did, astute, calculating, rather pleased with herself.

‘That’s the first I’ve heard of that,’ Swanny said.

‘No, well, I haven’t told you everything. Some things I have kept back.’ She gave me one of her hard, intense smiles. Age had not made her face sag but tightened it so that there was not much flesh left, only a mask of bones and deeply lined skin with those bright harsh blue eyes staring out of it. ‘It’s good for old people to have some new things left to tell. Otherwise they might become very boring to their poor children.’

My mother asked, what dowry?

‘Five thousand kroner,’ said Mormor, rather triumphantly, I thought.

‘It doesn’t seem much.’ It was about £250.

‘Not to you perhaps,
lille
Swanny, you with your rich husband and lovely house. It was a lot to
him.
He came to Copenhagen and heard about old Kastrup’s daughter who would have 5,000 kroner when she married and the next thing he was coming round to our house and making eyes at
lille
Asta.’

It sounded like something out of Ibsen. Mormor’s utterances often did. It also sounded fairly unlikely. I could see from their expressions that neither Swanny nor my mother believed a word of it. Mormor shrugged her shoulders, levelled her blue gaze at each of us in turn in the way she had.

‘What did I know? He was tall, he was good-looking. He had a weak chin but he wore that brown beard to cover it up.’ Something made her laugh. She laughed harshly. ‘He was a clever engineer, he could make anything, everyone said. He could make a silly girl fall in love with him. For a little while.’

It wasn’t much of a revelation after all. Much of it was probably in her imagination. It seemed unlikely to me that any man would marry a girl for the sake of £250. I thought the story on a par with one we had heard before and which she now proceeded to re-tell, about how when she was pregnant for the first time, she thought the baby would come out through her navel.

‘Imagine my surprise when he was born the usual way.’

All this is in the diaries of course, but we knew nothing of that then. It saddens me sometimes to think that my mother never knew, that she died before the diaries were found. Some of Asta’s stories could be disproved. The anecdote about Hansine, asking as she cleared the dinner table when guests were present, ‘Are we gentlefolk or do we stack?’, I later found out had originated in a
Punch
cartoon from the twenties or thirties. The birth of Mogens coming as a surprise to his mother was perhaps another fantasy that had found its way into her mythology. A lot of her stories were funny, some bizarre or grotesque. The biggest one from her past she might never have told but for a malicious intervention, and then she did no more than put up a kind of defence.

It was good for old people to have something left to tell, as Mormor herself had said, for otherwise they might become boring to their poor children.

4

August 30th, 1905

IGAAR VAR DER SOLFORMØRKELSE
. Vi havde fortalt Drengene at det vilde blive mørkt—Lærerne giver dem ikke altid de rigtige Oplysninger – saa de var meget skuffede over at det var bare Tusmørke og at det ikke varede længe.

Yesterday there was an eclipse of the sun. The boys had been told it would get dark—these teachers don’t always give accurate information—and were very disappointed when it only became twilight and that not for very long.

Things are getting worse in Russia and now they are having riots against the Jews. There is cholera in Berlin. I haven’t heard from my husband since he sent the money and that was before Swanhild was born. But I don’t care. We’re all right on our own, the boys and the baby and Hansine and me. In fact we’re a lot better without him and but for the money, which we’ll soon need, I’d as soon he never came back.

For one thing, he won’t like the baby’s name. He’ll say it’s a Norwegian name and it is, but so what? Just because he has a lot of stupid prejudices and despises the Norwegians. I expect he will want her called Vibeke after his ugly old mother. Even if he makes me have her christened Vibeke or Dagmar I’ll still call her Swanhild. And when I cuddle her and put her to the breast I’ll call her Swanny. There’s no one can stop another person calling someone what she wants.

I’ve loved the name since I was a young girl and read the
Volsunga Saga.
Svanhild was the daughter of Gudrun and Sigurd Fafnersbane. When Gudrun killed her second husband, Atle, she tried to drown herself but the waves took her to a land where King Jonakr ruled. She married him and Svanhild grew up at his court and was later wooed by the mighty King Jormunrek.

He sent his son Randver to ask for her hand in marriage, she accepted and followed him home on his ship. But Bikke, the evil servant, tried to persuade her to take him for her husband instead and when she refused told Jormunrek she had been unfaithful.

Jormunrek hanged his son and sentenced Svanhild to be trampled to death by wild horses, but the horses could not touch her so long as they could see her beautiful eyes. Bikke blindfolded her and then nothing could stop the horses. There were more terrible revenges and Wotan came into it all somewhere. I was romantic when I was young and I liked the idea of beauty taming wild beasts. It’s all so ancient too, lost in the mists of antiquity, as Onkel Holger says, a favourite phrase of his.

September 1st, 1905

We weighed Swanhild on the kitchen scales this morning, Hansine and I. They belong to the man who owns this house and they weigh in pounds and ounces, not kilograms. It sounds strange to me, nine pounds, two ounces, it doesn’t mean anything much, but it must be all right because it’s a lot more than when she was weighed at the chemist’s a month ago. I’m proud of her. I love her. I like writing that down because a few weeks ago, if anyone had asked me and asked me to be really honest, I’d have said I don’t love anyone in the world.

I’m only twenty-five and I could honestly have said I felt love for no one. I thought I’d love my husband when I married him but that didn’t last five minutes. In fact, it was over that first night when he hurt me so and I thought he was a madman who was trying to kill me. I get worried about the boys if they’re ill or I can’t find them in the street but I don’t care about being with them. The truth is, they bore me. You can’t call that loving. As for my father and Tante Frederikke, they’re just old people who heaved sighs of relief when I was safely married and out of the way.

The friends I had at school have all disappeared. Well, they got married too. When women get married they’ve no time for friendship. A woman I talked to before I came to this country told me her husband was her best friend. I ask you! So I’d come to the conclusion I didn’t love anyone and it frightened me a bit, thinking like that. It seemed wrong, it seemed wicked, even though I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t anything I’d
done
but just something which
was.

As I wrote that last word Swanhild started crying upstairs. She always cries at the right time, when my breasts are getting uncomfortable and too heavy with milk.

I’m coming!

October 15th, 1905

The trial has begun of the man who murdered his wife in Navarino Road. Hansine is fascinated by all of it. She has begged me to read the account of it to her from the
Hackney and Kingsland Gazette
but of course I won’t. I didn’t know these people and I don’t want to read about them. The next thing was that I came upon her asking Mogens to read it to her. He can read anything, both in Danish and English, I think he’s going to be a bright boy, but naturally I said no, on no account. I’ve told her not to mention anything about that trial or those people in this house. I was so fierce I frightened her. Anyway, she was quiet.

Rasmus might murder me if he knew everything about me, if he knew everything that goes on in my heart. For that’s where I’m free, free to be myself, to do as I like, to think as I wish and not pretend. There are no noisy schoolboys there and no screaming baby—not that I’m complaining about Swanny, she’s the best thing in my life—no chattering thick-headed maid and no absent wandering husband who may be anywhere.

I know he’s all right, though. More money has come, another 500 kroner, so we’re safe and can pay the rent and eat plenty of good food. We shall have a fat goose for Christmas and a
kransekage.
As soon as the money was in my hand I went to Matthew Rose’s store and bought material to make clothes for Swanny. I haven’t written in this diary for days because I’ve been sewing, doing drawn thread work and making fine tucks on her long gowns.

This afternoon Mrs Gibbons called to see me. I think she only comes here to find out if I’ve really got a husband, she’s always asking about him. First she wanted to know when Swanny was going to be christened. She’s very religious (though that doesn’t stop her laughing at my accent) and she’s always hob-nobbing with the curate at St Philip’s. I said, never, I didn’t believe in god. (See how I write it with a small g.) ‘I don’t believe in god,’ I said, ‘or any of that. It’s all the invention of ministers and vicars.’

‘Oh, my dear,’ she says, ‘you shock me, you really do.’

She didn’t look shocked, she looked greedy for more. So I gave it her.

‘You people talk about god being a loving father,’ I said, ‘but even a bad father wouldn’t kill his daughter’s babies.’

She gave me a funny look because I had Swanny on my lap. My right hand was under her head and my left hand lying lightly on her chest and I could see Mrs Gibbons start looking at my hand. She’s so plain you really want to laugh. For one thing she’s very stout and the way her corsets push up the top half of her and push down the lower part makes her look like a parcel that’s tied up in the middle with too tight a string. What makes it worse is that her dress is just like brown paper, creased the way brown paper is, and pleated like a parcel where you fold in the edges.

She lifted her eyes and then looked very pointedly back at my hand.

‘You don’t wear a wedding ring, Mrs Westerby.’