Free Between Two Seas by Marie-Louise Jensen Page B

quickly find myself down on the beach. I thought I’d never want to see it again, but it’s beautiful in the early morning light. Where the sun is rising over the sea, the sky is flushed with pink and orange, but the beach is bathed in a light blue, so pale it is almost turquoise. Away from the houses, the air is as fresh as can be.
    There are groups of fishermen working hard in the sea already. They wave to me as I go by. My host, Søren Jakobsen, isn’t among them, of course. He came in drunk and quarrelsome late last night, after I’d gone to bed.
    I walk for a while, thinking about my situation. I can’t bear to go on living in that dirty house with a mad woman, a drunk, and a horde of louse-ridden brats. Our rooms in Grimsby were poor, but never squalid. We kept them spotlessly clean. But what alternatives do I have? With less than one krone in my pocket, not many.
    Especially now that my father …
    My throat constricts when I remember that he’s dead. I’ll never meet him now. I clench my fists and grit my teeth to stop myself from crying. I don’t want to go back with red swollen eyes.
    I’ve come all this way for nothing.
    I left Grimsby to escape loneliness and poverty. And I’ve ended up in an isolated huddle of tumbledown shacks where almost everyone is poor. It stinks, and they don’t even have privies. Everyone just goes out to the nearest sand dune.
    Now I have no money left either. In Grimsby that sum of money would have been a buffer against poverty. Now I am as good as destitute. Dependent on other people’s goodwill. How naive and stupid I’ve been.
    Should I go to that man they say is my uncle and make myself known to him? It is possible he might help me. I shudder at the thought. I can’t face the shame of it. I would prefer to make my own way, no matter how hard it is.
    If I at least had money I could leave here. Although … where would I go? There is nowhere in the whole world where I belong. No one anywhere needs me or wants me.
    I stop walking and just stand, despair weighing down my limbs. The enormity of what I’ve done crashes in on me. For a moment I feel completely without hope. I don’t belong anywhere.
    But there’s always hope. While I have the strength to draw breath, there must be hope. I have to find it, no matter how well it is hidden. I push myself to resume walking and to think. There must be some good things about being here. At first I can’t think of anything at all.
    I try harder.
    At the most basic: I have a roof over my head; I won’t starve.
    I look around me, and I can see that it is beautiful here on the beach. I was so focused on the journey the last few days that I scarcely noticed the beauty of the coastline as I travelled.
    My father grew up here. That gives me a connection to this place that I wouldn’t have anywhere else. And nobody knows me here. They don’t know or care who my father was. It’s my secret, and I’ll keep it that way.
    Those are lots of reasons to be thankful. And then there’s Peter. I would like to meet him again. As I think this, I realize that, despite everything, he has been at the back of my mind since yesterday. His blue-grey eyes and the feel of his arms around me as he carried me across the stream. I was strongly drawn to him.
    I feel breathless and stop walking for a moment, my eyes closed, remembering. Then I give myself a shake and move on.
    Until I can learn some Danish and find some work, I have no choice but to remain here. So I need to find a way to make my situation better at once. The only thing I can think of that I can change here and now is the state of the house where I’m staying. I need to earn my keep in any case.
    As soon as I’ve had that thought, I begin to feel better. Now I’m clear about what I can do, I turn around and begin to walk back.
    I’ve emptied out all the stale bedding from my bed and gathered fresh dune grass and heather to stuff the covers with. I’ve drawn and heated water from the