The car drives past, a raised arm sticking out of the window.
‘The liberators,’ she says, ‘look, they’re waving.’
She doesn’t dare return the wave, but nods her head graciously at the passing car.
I walk to the other side of the house and place my head against the wall. The box of coloured pencils tips open and the pencils fall out, vivid little streaks of colour in the grass. I hear the sound of the car dying away gradually in the Sunday stillness.
Chapter 4
On the day of the celebrations the sky is stretched tight, a blue sheet flecked with birds. The shrubs are in blossom and the trees dressed in young green shoots. Today everything seems to be on its very best behaviour.
We set out early from Laaxum, excited but silent at the thought of what is to come. Hait and Mem are joining us later. There is to be a procession with a band, a street display with pictures of the queen, and a tribute to the soldiers when we will sing the songs we were taught specially at school. For the soldiers, our liberators!
I keep thinking of Sunday: the soldier on the rocks by the sea, my hand on his body and the strange things that happened after that at the foot of the dyke. I try to shut it all out because it bothers me, but the image keeps returning. Don’t think of it, today is celebration day… Meint is carrying a small, shiny trumpet which he is going to be playing soon with the brass band, and he holds the instrument in his arms like a trophy, proudly and triumphantly.
Just don’t let me see the soldier in the village. I must try to stay inconspicuous and not get into any more trouble. But secretly what I am hoping is that I shall be seeing his face again and that maybe he’ll want to talk to me.
The road is a line of people all making for Warns. Clearly something out of the ordinary is going on there. Meint jumps exuberantly on to my back and waves his trumpet. ‘Keep walking, you’ve got to carry me all the way to the church. Gee up!’ I push him off and join the girls. Trientsje takes my hand.
‘It’s going to be a lovely day, poppet,’ she says, ‘you’ll see. Everybody will be there.’
The village is all decked out: flags have been hoisted in many of the gardens and in front of one of the houses there is an arch decorated with paper flowers and orange streamers fluttering in the gentle breeze. The street is one long colourful festoon.
A narrow piece of cloth has been strung up across the road between two poles with ‘THREE CHEERS FOR THE LIBERATORS’ blazoned on it in big letters. We stop and look at the writing above our heads, solemnly, as if we were in church. Walt is one, too, I think proudly; he is one of them. Three cheers for my liberator…
There are a few carts standing next to each other by the crossroads, the horses’ backs gleaming in the sun. Every so often a slight odour of horse manure drifts through the village and mingles with the strong smell of mothballs and eau de Cologne given off by the Sunday best of the crowds out in the village street.
‘You must come with me to the Sunday school,’ I tell Trientsje as soon as we have reached the village, ‘to see if my drawings have been put up.’
We push our way through the crowd and I hold her hand tight.
‘First the exhibition.’ She pulls me to the side of the road where picture postcards and photographs cut from newspapers have been set up on display in a booth.
‘Our queen and the princesses,’ says the man running the stall. I see pictures of a short, stout woman in a long creased overcoat and a funny hat, her arms hanging limply by her side in sleeves that are too long for her. She is looking into the distance with a vague, rather haughty smile.
Is that her then, our queen? Up with Orange, long live Wilhelmina? She must have been made poor by the war.
A large picture, coloured with garish greens and blues, seems to be the main attraction. Trientsje has to elbow her way in to get close to it. We see a woman sitting on a sloping meadow, her arms folded around her knees, with three girls in white dresses and bows in their hair smiling happily beside her. Behind them is a white house, and just to their left is a man in spectacles with his head held on one side, his shiny hair plastered down and smoking a pipe.
‘Juliana with the little princesses,’ says Trientsje, and swallows. ‘Lovely, aren’t they? What little darlings.’
I look at the well-cared-for children on that improbably green grass. ‘Do they have soldiers to protect them?’ I ask, but Trientsje is busy talking to the man from the booth.
A picture postcard with scalloped edges is lying under a sheet of glass among some sombre prints. The Royal Palace In Amsterdam, it says in white letters underneath. I bend forward to get a good look: that was the street where the lorry was waiting, that’s where my journey to Friesland began. A boy is standing there beside a delivery bicycle, and a woman in a long dark dress and a wide-brimmed hat looks in surprise at the camera while a little girl hides her face in the woman’s skirts. It is a fetching scene that has nothing in common with my grey memories of the place.
There is music in the distance now. Everyone is suddenly moving in the same direction, and Trientsje, spurred on by the general commotion, pulls me along. ‘If we’re quick, we can still get to the front.’
A bit further up the road I can see the band coming towards us, a group of people marching shoulder to shoulder with flags and banners held gaily in the air, instruments flashing in the sun. Their footsteps are sending clouds of dust up into the sunny sky and the monotonous thump of the drum lends the approaching dust-shrouded procession an air of doom. ‘Hullo.’ Jan is standing beside us, wearing a jacket that is too small for him so that his wrists stick out from the sleeves. He is pale and his eyes have a defensive look. Wrinkling his nose, he points meaningfully to Trientsje and gives me a knowing grin. ‘Walking out with your own sister, huh?’ He whispers something incomprehensible in my ear and gives a disdainful laugh. His hands have grown broader, there are black edges to his bitten nails and his eyes examine me closely.
‘Have you heard from home yet?’ I ask. I must remain friends with him, the two of us are going back together to Amsterdam. Jan spits into the palms of his hands and rubs them together vigorously.
‘No,’ he says, ‘but I don’t care, I’m staying on here anyway. I like it better here.’ There is a soft shadow on his sweaty upper lip and little white spots of sleepy dust in the corners of his eyes. He gestures with his head in Trientsje’s direction, gives me a knowing wink, and says, ‘She’s a bit of all right. Mind you squeeze her good and proper.’ He digs me in the ribs and runs across the road, right in front of the brass band. The noise thunders over us and overwhelms me. The musicians march past taking small shuffling steps, the sound they make rising up like a cloud of dust into the sky.
I can see Meint blowing his trumpet, red-faced, his eyes starting from their sockets. He keeps his gaze fixed rigidly on the sheet music clamped to the front of the trumpet, looking neither up nor down. My throat tightens at the sound of the music, I am being ground down between the mournfulness of the melody and the doleful counterpoint. A small open car follows behind the band with a soldier at the wheel and beside him another military man with a cap who brings his hand up to his head every so often in solemn salute. A tulip with a bright green leaf comes sailing out of the crowd, lands on the bonnet and lies there limply.
The car behind is full of soldiers hanging over the side and waving, some holding bunches of flowers in their hands. I look for a special face among them, but in a few seconds the procession has passed by. The people throng the road once more in the wake of the car and walk together towards the church.