Asta's Book Read Free

mostly, looking at the houses, the churches, the great buildings, but sometimes I walk on the grass of the marshes or by the canal. It’s too hot to wear a cape but if I didn’t I’d feel too ashamed of the shape of me to go out at all.
    Hansine makes smørrebrød for luncheon but it’s not the same without rye bread. I’d as soon not eat but I force myself for her sake, the baby’s. If I don’t go out walking again in the afternoon, and sometimes I do, I sit in the drawing room by the bay window. Our house in Lavender Grove is one in a row of nine, all joined together. It’s not very pretty, in fact it’s one of the ugliest I’ve ever seen, not as tall as it should be and built of grey bricks with clumsy stonework and wooden windows. There’s a funny little stone face wearing a crown over the front porch and two more faces just the same over each of the upper windows. I wonder who they are or who they were meant to be, those girls with crowns on. But the house does have this bay window and a bit of garden in front with a hedge. I won’t have net curtains, whatever Hansine says, because if I did I couldn’t see out when I sit here and do my sewing.
    Mother taught me to sew long before I went to school and I hated it. I hated the thimble—I remember I specially hated being given a thimble for a birthday present!—but I hated the needle going into my finger worse. Still, now I’m glad I learned. It’s something I’m better at than Hansine who gapes at my tiny stitches and my careful darning of the boys’ clothes.
    Sometimes she fetches Mogens from school and sometimes I do. It was she who went today, on her way back from Mare Street where she got some thread for me from the drapers. She and Mogens came in talking English together. She had quite a tale to tell. An adventure had happened to her. Walking along by London Fields, she saw an old man ahead of her come out of the public house and stagger from side to side of the pavement. All that was important to her was to avoid cannoning into him but as she stepped to one side he crashed into the wall and fell down unconscious.
    It was a great shock for her and she was kneeling there beside him, trying to find his pulse for a sign of life, when a crowd began to gather. Of course there was no policeman or doctor. There never is when you want them. She was sure he was dead. Then a young woman came up and gave a great scream when she saw him. She said she was a servant in the house where he was a lodger. Everyone became very excited, as you’d expect, and some said it was the heat but the young woman said, no, it was the spirits he drank had got to him at last. Hansine said she would stay with her until help came, which she did, making her late getting to the school.
    ‘I hope you didn’t talk about all that to little Mogens,’ I said. ‘Old drunken men falling down in the street.’ ‘Of course not,’ she said, ‘as if I would,’ but I’m not sure I believe her. To women of that class such an incident is the most delightful and exciting in the world and they can’t keep a word of it to themselves.
    I said I didn’t want to hear about it but she went on just the same, coming out with all the details in front of the boys. ‘That’s quite enough,’ I said and I put my hands over my ears. ‘It’ll be in the newspapers,’ she said, playing into my hands. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘that wouldn’t be much use to you, would it, even if it was in Danish?’ She went red as a geranium and held her hands over her stomach which is nearly as big as mine, she hates anybody talking about her illiteracy, but I just turned away. I don’t care. I don’t care any more about anyone but myself—oh, and my daughter that’s coming, of course.
    July 6th, 1905
    My birthday. I am twenty-five years old today. Not that anyone knows that. You can’t expect a servant to know and the boys are too young but I confess I did expect my husband to remember. I ought to know him by