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
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
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