The first thought to spring to my mind when I see her climb over the fence, loose-limbed and youthful, is that she doesn’t look in any way hungry or poor and that makes me feel almost cheated and disappointed. Quickly and apprehensively the two women walk towards Hait and Mem. I can see that they are talking to each other nervously and that they are feeling ill at ease on the grass without a proper road under their feet.
I recognise my mother at once, her movements, her hair-do, her familiar yellow dress. Both of them are wearing colourful summer frocks, billowing out behind them.
Mummy, I think, as the sound of her girlish voice suddenly reaches me. For a moment it seems as if I have lost all control over my muscles and am about to wet my pants. Desperately I squeeze my legs tight together and arch my back.
‘Oh, my goodness,’ I hear Mem say as the slight figure in the yellow dress walks up to her, ‘isn’t this wonderful. So you are Jeroen’s mother.’
Far away on the sweltering horizon I can hear an indistinct threatening rumble, as if the war is still going on, and behind the deserted dyke the sky is a luminous white. The evening is stifling and the air full of dancing mosquitoes. I watch them shaking hands, laughing, their delighted surprise: we have made it, we have found you!
Suddenly, as if on command, all four turn round towards the house. I can hear their footsteps in the grass. If I go back to bed, I think, I might be able to put off having to meet them until tomorrow.
‘Come on, Jeroen, it’s your mother. Here she is now.’ Mem’s voice sounds like a trumpet in the night air. ‘What are you hanging about back there for?’ and she adds in an apologetic tone, ‘He had already gone to bed, Mevrouw.’
I don’t move, pressing myself against the wall. All at once I have become suspicious and mortally afraid of the moment for which I have been waiting for nearly a year. I look down at the floor and keep quite still.
‘He’s never like that normally, is he now, Wabe? He’s a bit shy because everything has happened so suddenly.’
Gently insistent, Mem pushes me towards the back door. I can feel the pressure of her large warm hands as they lie calmly but firmly against my shoulders. Outside stands my mother, a stranger still, somebody I know no more than vaguely and have no wish to know better than that.
‘Hello,’ I say and walk towards her. ‘Hello, Mum.’
She throws her arms around me, kisses me, and then holds me at arm’s length and says in a choking voice, ‘How tall he’s grown, and how he’s filled out! My word, son, don’t you look well, haven’t you put on weight!’
I recognise the catch in her voice, the same pinched way of speaking she used when there was an argument at home and a row suddenly flared up with Daddy.
Don’t cry, I think, please don’t cry, not now and not here.
But she doesn’t cry, her eyes shine and her hair dances in light curls around her forehead. Her joy is something I recognise and it sets off a thrill inside me, as if to drive home to me how strong the ties between us are.
She pulls me back against her once more and this time I am aware of the gentle slope of her belly and the curve of her thigh. The familiar smell of her clothes tickles my nose and brings me closer to home, to our street. I can see the bedroom again, the kitchen, the veranda, the stairs.
Mechanically I put one arm around her, but it feels awkward, artificial. When I turn my head a little I see Hait and Mem standing stiffly side by side in the doorway with lost little smiles, as if they don’t know quite what to do with themselves or about the situation. When I meet Mem’s gaze she nods at me with gentle, helpless eyes and raised chin, as if trying to stifle a sneeze.
And then recognition floods up from deep inside me, a wave that runs through my knees, my belly, my gullet and stays stuck in my throat. My hand makes a few panicky movements and finds a small hole in the soft material of my mother’s dress. I bore my finger into it, a burrowing, frantic finger. I can feel the material give and gently tear.
‘What are you doing?’ My mother’s voice has a sharp, nervous edge to it. ‘Are you trying to ruin my dress? My only good dress!’
She gives a childlike laugh and abruptly pulls my hand from her body. When she sees how crushed I look she bends down and kisses me warmly. How odd to be kissed without the rasping prickles of a beard; it takes me by surprise and I’m not sure if I like it.
Now I ought to put my arms around her neck, hold her tight and never let go again, tell her everything that happened while she listens patiently and finds the answer to all my problems. But again I don’t move and just stand there sullenly between the adults.
‘What do you say, young ’un, isn’t that something now? They must have gone at a fair lick to get here so quickly, musn’t they?’ Hait bends down and shakes my shoulders gently as if waking me from a deep sleep. ‘Don’t just stand there. Say something to your mother. Why don’t you show her round the house?’
I nod and say nothing. The words won’t come and my throat refuses to move. I lift my head to see if my mother is looking at me and discover that Jan’s mother is standing next to her with an arm around her. What is she doing with her hand over her eyes? Is she crying?
Then we all move into the house, somehow.
‘Why don’t you say hello to Mevrouw Hogervorst?’ My mother’s voice sounds worried, she whispers the words almost inaudibly into my ear. My feet are wet and cold from the grass and I put one on top of the other to warm them. Jantsje and Meint are standing huddled together in the semi-darkness of the room. I can hear their suppressed laughter and see that Meint is trying to draw my attention by waving his hands about urgently.
‘Scharl is a bit further back, you passed it on the way here.’ Hait is standing by the window and points into the dusk for the benefit of Jan’s mother. ‘In the daytime you can see it clearly, it isn’t far.’
Of course, they’ve come for Jan as well. Will they go back again after that, will everything be as before, this family, this little house, my loneliness? For a split second I fervently hope so.
‘I’ll walk with the lady down to the harbour to find Popke, then he can show her the way to Scharl. And I’ll bring your bicycle over the fence at the same time.’
My mother sits at the table, her eyes radiating light. As she looks around the room, her gaze always ends up on me so that I begin to feel ill at ease. It is strange to see her here, small and slender, a little bird unflustered by her sombre surroundings. She doesn’t belong here, I think, she makes the room look strange. The yellow dress, her townish ways of talking, the little shoes that she had kept on inside the house.
‘How small it is in here for so many people,’ she says, ‘it must be terribly hard for you with so large a family. Jeroen did tell us in one of his letters, but I never imagined it would be this small…’
Stop, I think, for goodness’ sake stop.
She strokes my cheek and I draw back shyly. ‘It was awfully good of you to be willing to take in one more.’
‘My goodness me,’ Mem folds her sturdy round arms, ‘it’s no more than our duty. God arranged it that way.’ She pours tea into the best cups with careful, almost respectful movements. ‘It’s nothing to feel grand about and for us one more doesn’t make that much difference.’
I hear a mixture of modesty and pride in her voice and her eyes are filled with the gentleness that always disconcerts me.
‘Jeroen has been a good boy. He’s never given us the least trouble. He was like one of our own.’