We were shown to one of the outer tables at the cliff, and I felt I was on the right track.
‘You order for me,’ said Diana.
I opted for langoustine, mullet and white Burgundy and was unable to refrain from instructing the waiter to make sure the chef was careful not to overcook the mullet. It was a difficult fish.
Maybe it was the surroundings. For the first time in three months I didn’t know what to say to her, and with that realisation came the peculiar feeling of foreboding. At some point we would sit like this again. The same mood. Neither good nor bad. Just empty. Like staring into the kitchen sink after two days on speed.
‘No, we’re not going to do this!’ I said. And then she was listening.
I cancelled the mullet and we left the wine where it was.
We sang ‘Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word’ all the way home and woke up tightly entwined.
Lisa got off the train in a bright yellow, gossamer-thin dress, and within fifteen minutes she had made the Dan Turèll cabin all her own. Her decorative dresses on hangers along the wall, a stack of books on the bedside table, vases resplendent with flowers and sprigs from the garden.
When Nikolaj Krogh showed her round the house it wasn’t the Finn Juhl chair or the imposing Franciska Clausen canvas that grabbed her attention, but the big pile of jigsaw puzzles on the dresser.
‘I was a strange child,’ said Nikolaj Krogh. ‘I’d do them all day. It doesn’t make me very interesting, I know.’
‘I love jigsaws!’ said Lisa, picking up the one on top. The lid said two thousand and four hundred pieces.
I left them to it and made dinner: pirogs with courgette, fennel, onion, curry powder, coarse-ground black pepper, cream and lovage. Nikolaj Krogh lit a campfire after dinner and I found a dusty guitar and played some Parkering Forbudt:
On Gråbrødre Torv you can hang around
You can be yourself with time to kill.
At four in the morning we went down to the beach and swam in the dawn.
I woke up at half past eight and looked out on the dew-drenched garden. Nikolaj Krogh and Lisa crossed the lawn hand in hand, and it was striking how young they looked together. He put his arm around her and she leaned against his shoulder and fitted his height perfectly.
After breakfast they turned their attention back to their jigsaw and could not be reached. Diana went off into the woods to look for wild strawberries and I sat writing in Skotte Olsen, until Nikolaj Krogh suggested the two of us drive over to Gilleleje to buy fish.
I knew exactly how he felt.
On the first stretch we were silent, but as we approached Unnerup he pulled over, put the handbrake on and stared out across the fields.
Then he turned to me and laughed with every fibre in his body and didn’t care that he was crying too. We bought a big turbot in the harbour.
There is nothing as peaceful as the hour between six and seven on a still evening in summer. Lisa lay with her head resting on Nikolaj’s bare chest, Diana was drawing, and I sat with the guitar, trying to find the chord that best encapsulated the mood, and no matter how I tried to avoid it there was no getting around C major 7.
‘Ever the melancholy,’ I said.
‘Brazil’s like that too,’ said Nikolaj Krogh.
‘Have you ever had a physically demanding job?’ Diana asked.
‘Not really. Why?’
‘The only thing you can think about in that sort of job is knocking off.’
Lisa had begun to kiss Nikolaj Krogh, and for that reason she was the only one of us who failed to notice that Mille had appeared in our midst. She stopped a couple of metres away and dropped her leather bag on to the dry grass of the lawn.
I tried to lean the guitar up against a chair, but it toppled over and let out an open chord. Lisa turned and saw Mille. Mille stared intensely at Nikolaj Krogh and Lisa narrowed her eyes to focus.
‘He’s needed it,’ she said, and smiled.
Diana tossed away her charcoal and gave Mille a big kiss.
‘I got the feeling it was important for me to be here,’ said Mille.
She went and crouched down next to Nikolaj and kissed him, smoothed her hand across Lisa’s cheek and looked at them both for a long time.
‘Welcome, Lisa,’ she said.
‘Would you like a drink?’ I said.
‘Too bloody right I would!’
On my way in to get the spumante I glanced at Diana’s drawing pad.
She had drawn a fat version of herself.
‘Why don’t we have a party on Friday?’ said Mille.
‘Of course, why not,’ said Nikolaj Krogh. ‘What sort of party should it be?’
‘How about red?’ said Lisa.
‘Red it is,’ said Mille. ‘Who are we going to invite?’
‘People who want to do more than just talk,’ said Diana.
‘Let’s make it a shag-in, shall we?’ said Mille.
Nikolaj laid his hand on the small of Lisa’s back.
‘We shouldn’t forget the love part,’ I said.
‘Prim now, are we?’ said Mille.
I picked up the guitar and sang:
Touch me now, so I may feel that I’m alive.
Take my hand and hold me by your side.
Diana and Mille swayed, arm in arm.
‘A touch-me party,’ said Nikolaj Krogh.
The guest list took a whole evening to compile.
We wanted people who were likely to contribute, which disqualified arm candy, male bimbos and professional mothers. Dull couples were ruthlessly excluded, and resumé-toting networkers went the same way. Film directors were either constantly sounding off or else talked about themselves to the detriment of everything else, for which reason we preferred their producers. We invited such actors as could have passed for tradesmen or waitresses, and instrumentalists were more coveted than lead singers, especially if they happened to play a brass instrument. Classical musicians and opera singers were invited across the board, and Lisa hand-plucked a selection of young designers, some imposing lived-ins, three wayward photographers, the most unpretentious of stylists and the most gossipy, a couple of has-been hairdressers and a make-up artist known to piss her pants when drunk.
Diana invited the Icelandic contingent from Jolene’s, a few club promoters, DJs, a bevy of skateboarding models, and a cross-section of younger creative types still playing around with their careers, while Nikolaj Krogh and I put together an all-star team of single acid-jazz mothers, eighties models, assorted fops and dandies and a best of the old punks from Gammel Torv.
Visual artists were richly represented on the basis of our romantic notion of their combining the outgoing with unpredictability, and in their wake came senior hiphoppers of both sexes.
Authors were under-represented on account of their seldom getting any farther than fortifying themselves with drink. Male poets were included as they were always brazen, whereas their female counterparts were too serious by half.
The opposite was true of scriptwriters, the men tending towards Holbergian self-importance, while the women had a habit of tossing glasses over their shoulders. The communication crowd weren’t even considered, not even ordinary journalists, though a couple of more flamboyant individuals managed to slip through the net.
Arts columnists were generally valued, especially the most pompous, whereas graphic artists, furniture designers and architects only got an invite if we knew their private lives were a shambles.
There were a number of chefs, foodies and wine people. And, of course, dancers, modern as well as classical. Few artist-craftspersons. Mathematicians and physicists we liked, and linguists working on obscure projects. A couple of wayward solicitors made the grade, as did a psychologist with an accelerating cannabis habit and two neuroscientists.
And then there were all those who seemed not to be interesting on paper, but who outshone everyone once the music kicked in.
We went for dinner at the Bistro and you could say we’d
gone Brazilian. We kept touching each other and smiling, carried along on the tide. The party brought us together, and Nikolaj Krogh and Lisa were enjoying their new partnership with Mille’s full support.
I looked up from my fish. A local artist had been allowed to hang their pictures up, and if nothing else they were certainly colourful. And then I saw Kreuzmann. He was on his own with a bottle of champagne. The same suit trousers, the same worn-out Adidas, but his cravat was small and grubby. He had grown a beard and sat blinking his eyes as if trying to recapture a memory. He got up and tucked the champagne bottle under his arm.
‘The party’s over,’ he said.
Nikolaj Krogh got him a chair.
‘What party?’ said Diana.
‘It’s all over for Dave “Boy” Green,’ Kreuzmann said in English.
He tipped to one side and nearly overbalanced.
‘You’re talking in code,’ said Nikolaj Krogh.
‘Our Adam’s apple was better than a plate of chips!’
Sweat trickled down his brow.
‘Chips?’ said Nikolaj Krogh.
‘Who’s Dave “Boy” Green?’ said Mille.
‘A British boxer,’ I said. ‘KO’ed by Jørgen “Old Man” Hansen.’
‘They’ve cleaned me out,’ said Kreuzmann.
He smelled like a lion’s cage.
‘Spitting and fuming in their Learjets. They pressed the off button.’
‘Who did?’ said Mille.
‘The Yanks, for Chrissake. They’re shutting up shop.’
‘I think he’s talking about the financial crisis,’ said Nikolaj Krogh.
‘Have you lost money, Kreuzmann?’ said Mille.
Everybody knew that Kreuzmann was made. He’d sold his firm to the Americans – something to do with mobile phones and branded entertainment – for a vast fortune.
‘I put the whole caboodle on black,’ he said.
‘But you can’t just lose two hundred million,’ said Mille.
‘Get rid,’ said Kreuzmann, and ran his fingers through his filthy hair. ‘Sell, sell!’
‘Sell what?’ said Diana.
‘Your houses, your art. I’m the first man down, but you’ll be next. Sell the lot, for Chrissake. Get rid, while you can!’
He tipped his head back and emptied the bottle in one.
‘Kreuzmann’s not feeling well. Kreuzmann needs champagne.’
‘You’re coming home with us,’ said Diana, and kissed his brow.
I woke with Kreuzmann next to me in his pitiful get-up, snoring like a bellows. While that on its own might have been barely tolerable, the falsetto rattle of his throat was disturbing, his subsequent grunts came in uncountable time and the pauses in between were positively nerve-racking. Pathologically, it was like he was dead for about a minute at a time.
I recalled only a couple of detached scenes from the night before. There had been some dancing, and I could see myself rummaging through the DJ’s CD collection. Mille and Diana had head-slammed tequila with the chef’s crash helmet on. Nikolaj Krogh and Lisa must have gone home early.
I went into the main house and found Lisa in the kitchen.
‘Will you make us some scrambled eggs?’ she said.
‘Where’s Diana?’ I said.
There was an original woodcut by Dea Trier Mørch in the hallway: a rear courtyard, a sun and a mother with two children in Icelandic sweaters. I went up the stairs, and in the first bedroom the homely, fluffy bedding was untouched. In the second I found Mille and Diana. They lay entwined, Diana with one brown leg on top of the duvet and a hand on Mille’s full breast.
‘Are you awake down there?’ said Diana. ‘I’m starving.’
I went round the garden and looked up at the sky, and just as I had located its great, white space, the wretched wood pigeon began its lament. Pure fucking Grundtvigian misery.
The eggs were fresh, their shells thin. A big knob of butter in the frying pan, eggs in, lots of coarsely ground pepper and coarse salt. A pinch of curry powder. Essential to stir just enough so as not to end up with an omelette, and then off the heat while the eggs still glistened.
‘I always thought Café Victor’s scrambled eggs were the best,’ said Kreuzmann.
‘They use cream,’ I said.
Mille was in a flimsy dress, while Diana had taken a man’s shirt from the nearest wardrobe and had her hand on Mille’s inner thigh.
I put sandwiches in the oven: spinach, chilli, fresh mozzarella.
Mille and Diana didn’t get as far as tasting them; they went upstairs again together.
Lisa and Nikolaj Krogh cleared the table and washed up.
‘Everything under control, Vallin?’ said Kreuzmann.
I shook my head.
‘All shagging except you, are they?’
‘Except you,’ I said.
He sobbed with laughter.
‘You got me. You got the dead man!’ he said.
We laughed until we cried.
‘When’s Diana’s exhibition opening?’ he said.
‘October the seventeenth.’
‘Too late.’
‘For what?’
‘As soon as word gets out what dire straits we’re in, they’ll shut off the dosh. Art’s going to be the first thing they stop buying.’
I watched Weekend from 1962, directed by Palle Kjærulff-Schmidt, script by Rifbjerg, a film that kicked up a fuss at the time. Men sporting well-groomed beards chased giggling women through the dunes.
When eventually Diana came in, I picked a T-shirt up off the floor and folded it neatly, even if it did stink of sweat. She put her hands around my neck and I did nothing to stop myself and held her in a tight embrace on the bed.
‘There’s something about women,’ said Diana. ‘You can keep on opening them up.’
‘You looked like a Hamilton photo,’ I said. ‘Soft and gentle.’
‘You’re gentle,’ said Diana. ‘Mille’s brutal.’
Kreuzmann had put a tent up at the far end of the garden and I helped the beer man carry the kegs to the bar. Lisa made figures out of bright red cellophane, Mille made tomato soup and Diana ironed.
Levinsen came slinking in with two slutty-looking girls in their thirties.
Maybe they had once been dancers. Their dramatic curves were set off by skimpy clothes, and neither was wearing a bra.
Levinsen introduced them as the Sisters of Mercy, and they curtsied coyly.
‘But we’re not sisters,’ one of them said.
Mille came out from the kitchen.
‘Good idea, the tent,’ said Levinsen, gesturing towards Kreuzmann. ‘Do you mind if we put one up too?’
‘If you promise to put your two gorgeous tarts inside it,’ said Mille.
‘It’s not easy to put us in anything,’ said one.
‘We’d like to party with these two, wouldn’t we, Mikkel?’ said Mille.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d blushed.
‘Let’s go and buy a tent, girls,’ said Levinsen.
‘Let’s get you to go and buy one,’ said the first one.
Levinsen produced two bottles of Launois Millesime from his bag.
‘This’ll make you horny.’
The Sisters of Mercy swung their hips as they made off.
‘It’s going to be a good party,’ said Mille, and put her arm around my shoulder. ‘You’re very handsome today.’
‘I think we’re all becoming more attractive,’ I said.
Diana came with shirts on hangers.
‘I’ve ironed your light blue one.’
‘Men in light blue shirts can’t go wrong,’ said Mille.
She put her hands on Diana’s hips and kissed her deeply. I refused to feel embarrassed and stayed put.
I gathered everyone together before the guests arrived, and there were nearly thirty of us: the bar staff from Jolene’s, DJs, lighting crew, all of us, and various hangers-on.
‘Anything can happen tonight, and we don’t need
to know where it’s going to end.’
We stood in a circle with our arms around each other.
‘Tonight we’re venturing into something new, and we’re doing it together!’
Lisa lingered at the bar afterwards; she was in a turquoise dress with long slits and in need of a glass of spumante.
‘I’m absolutely mad about him, Mikkel!’
‘He’s mad about you, Lisa.’
‘But I don’t even know who’s minister of transport,’ she said.
‘I’m pretty sure Nikolaj Krogh doesn’t care in the slightest whether you know the names of the cabinet off by heart,’ I said.
‘He says he wants to have a baby with me.’
‘He’s very much in love!’
‘Mille knows who’s minister of transport.’
The temperature was still twenty-three degrees as the guests poured in.
Long days at the beach had made everyone loose-limbed and accustomed to the sight of bare skin. Hair was thick and crusty from the sea, and even the painters were tanned. The women were in airy dresses with loose straps, the men had loosened the top buttons of their shirts. A smell of musk hung in the air.
Nikolaj Krogh had designed and built it all, and everything was glossy red.
The DJ booth was set up under the big floodlit oak tree. The bar was an elegant curve and the bar stools were done out in red nylon. The big round rice-paper lamps were lit with red bulbs, the same as the fairy lights. Lisa’s cellophane figures hung from the trees all around the edge of the garden.
By half past nine the party was two hundred strong. Selecting our guest list on the basis of capability and lifestyle verged on fascism, but any reservations I might have had were put to rest when it became obvious we’d got it right. The dance floor was packed and everyone wanted each other.
Clara was in an Elvira Madigan dress and looked spectacularly out of place.
Erik Brinch danced, squirming like a serpent in black leather trousers.
‘What is this anyway?’ Clara said.
‘It’s Noah’s ark,’ I said.
‘And you remembered the sheep!’ she said, with a nod in the direction of the Sisters of Mercy, who sat on display at the bar.
Am I Cold Page 16