Estas son las mañanitas…

61

It had taken Mum a whole weekend to finish the traditional woollen sweater Úrsúla had begged her to knit for her father. She had run into him downtown, shivering in an old padded boiler suit, its lining worn too thin to be of any real use against the piercing December chill. Her mother had flatly refused to invite Dad home for Christmas dinner, and said he’d be better off having a meal at the Salvation Army hostel with his friends. But she agreed to knit a sweater.

Úrsúla had watched in fascination as the eight-leaved rosette took shape in her skilled hands, and she felt a warm feeling inside as she saw how much effort her mother put into the pattern. She could have understood if she had simply rattled off a sweater with a straightforward design, or even something with just a single colour – it wasn’t as if her father deserved anything better. But Úrsúla had looked forward to being able to bring him this beautiful Christmas gift. Her father had wept tears of delight. He had stroked the sweater with his scarred, grubby hands, and shed tears. 149

‘This has been made with love,’ he sniffed.

He wanted to hug and kiss Úrsúla, but he smelled so rank that she turned away, telling him to try the sweater for size. He pulled it on, and it fitted him perfectly. He strutted around in circles, calling out to everyone in the community canteen that his daughter had brought him this fine sweater, made by his old lady.

Everyone at the canteen was like her father, so this time Úrsúla didn’t feel awkward when he crowed that he had the finest and most beautiful daughter in the whole world, before bursting into song.

Úrsúla sighed. These days her father was on her mind all the time.

She slowly ascended the stairs at the Social Democrat Party’s central office and tried to shake off the angst that was so firmly attached to those memories. For the last few years she had followed the advice given her by a psychologist: to think back to positive memories of her father, from the days when he’d smell of aftershave and would plant a kiss on her neck, and the times he read to her from the sagas until she fell asleep.

That was before he walked out.

There was a crowd at the central office, and she knew that she’d have to pull herself smartly away from those memories and concentrate so that she could be congratulated on becoming a minister, and cope with the smiles, the pats on the back and the kisses that were showered on her. Also present were representatives of the affiliated groups; the morning was supposed to be spent giving them the opportunity to ask her about the work of the ministry of the interior. She had been looking forward to the opportunity of meeting party members in a more relaxed atmosphere than at the ministry or in the parliament’s coffee room, but now she had a sharp sense of her lack of experience in party matters. She didn’t know most of the people present, but she was anxious to clear the air over the media storm that had erupted around the request for Pétur’s medical records. The party chairman 150brought her coffee and showed her to an armchair at one end of the hall. The party’s brightest young hopeful, Edvard Thórsson, approached her with a smile on his face.