My mother pulls me towards her and takes me onto her lap. ‘Darling,’ she laughs brightly, ‘you come and sit with me. You’re a little bit more used to me again now, aren’t you?’
I strain away from her slightly.
The children are sitting around the table, unusually still and obedient, staring at the lady from the town without uttering a sound. I feel the gulf, plainly and painfully, and am ashamed.
‘Has he always been as quiet as that here?’ my mother asks softly and anxiously, as if I shouldn’t be listening. ‘Was he homesick a lot? You know, he always was a bit different, always a dreamer. He could sit in a corner playing for hours, not a bit like a child. Hey, Jeroen?’
Suddenly I fling my arms violently round her and cling to her tightly.
Walt, why aren’t you here? Why did you go away like that?
From her movements I can tell that she has begun to sob uncontrollably, although sometimes it almost sounds as if she were laughing wildly. I look at her in astonishment.
‘Yes, we’ll be going back home pretty soon now,’ she says. ‘Back to your Daddy and your little brother. Don’t cry.’
I am not crying.
Won’t Mem find it odd to see me sitting on somebody else’s lap, since I still belong a little bit to her too?
‘Are you glad that we’ll be going back home soon?’ asks my mother.
‘But not straight away,’ I say quickly and almost imploringly. It suddenly hits me that if we leave here, Walt will never be able to find me again; I will have vanished without trace.
In the cupboard-bed Meint whispers to me. ‘How pretty your mother looks, she could be your sister.’
I hear subdued voices from behind the cupboard-bed doors, and time and again they speak my name.
‘Perhaps I’ll be staying on here all the same,’ I say hopefully.
‘I’m sure she’s not taking me back with her.’ I no longer know what I really want. Leaving seems unthinkable and yet I don’t want to stay here either.
‘Ah, well,’ says Meint with a laugh and gives me a dig under the blankets. ‘In a month’s time you’ll have forgotten all about us.’
I hear footsteps and then the little doors open a chink. ‘Keep quiet and go to sleep,’ says Hait, ‘dream about being back home.’
When I am about to say my prayers I realise with surprise that I won’t need to pray for my parents any longer. The only one left will be Walt.
God, please keep him safe. Don’t let him be wanted for the war and please let him come back. I’ll always go to church, even in Amsterdam. If he just comes back.
He unbuttons my clothes and puts his hand inside my shirt, sliding it down between my shoulder blades. I shiver and stiffen.
Not until next morning does it really sink in that my mother is here, and then the day seems unimaginably bright and carefree. I scramble up the attic stairs to wake her up, but she is already sitting on the edge of the bed pulling her socks on.
‘How peaceful it is here,’ she whispers, ‘what a wonderful time you must have had. All I can hear are the birds.’ She looks at me long and hard. ‘Thank your lucky stars you were able to come here, you look so well. Back in Amsterdam we had a horrible time. Aunt Stien’s little Henk is dead, and Mijnheer Goudriaan as well. Thank goodness, darling, all that horrible business is over now. Won’t Daddy be surprised to find you looking so well!’
We walk around the house and I show her everything, the sheep, the little plant I sowed myself under the window, my collection of pebbles. As for the grave, I think, I’d better not show her that, because a little bit of her is buried there. My prayers have changed now and the grave feels different as welclass="underline" it is as if all the cornerstones of the life I have built up here have caved in.
‘Look, that’s where Jan lives.’ I point across the sunny landscape to the group of trees in the distance. I recall with surprise how long ago it was that I used to stare across to those trees, sometimes day after day, longing for Jan and weaving fantasies around him.
Her bicycle is leaning against the wall at the side of the house, old and rusty but with real tyres. ‘Daddy got those from a colleague at work,’ she says, ‘especially for our trip. But they are old ones, let’s just hope we don’t get any punctures on the way back.’
I walk round it and touch it. So I shall be leaving Friesland on that. I look inside the pannier bags hanging from the carrier, and see that they are empty. ‘That’s where we can put your bits and pieces. It’s easier than a suitcase. We’ve got quite a long way to cycle.’
After breakfast we go and see Jan. During the meal Pieke had stood right next to my mother the whole time, fondling her and clamouring for attention. She had admired everything, the dress, the shoes, the watch, and by the time we went outside the two of them were as thick as thieves.
‘If we go on the bicycle, she can come along too, on the back,’ says my mother, but I insist that we walk and that we go alone. Suddenly I feel that I don’t want to share my mother with anyone else. We walk along the dyke, and near the spot where the car had parked she says, ‘Is the sea behind this? Let’s have a look!’
She runs up the dyke and spreads her arms out wide. ‘Wonderful,’ she shouts, ‘oh, isn’t this wonderful!’ The wind blows her yellow skirt up as she comes flying through the grass. ‘Come on,’ she says, ‘I’ll race you.’
I do not want to go up the Red Cliff. ‘It’ll take too long,’ I tell her, ‘we’ve got a lot to do still. First we’ve got to go to Jan.’
Jan’s mother is sitting in the front room with the farmer’s wife looking at photographs spread out on the table.
‘Jan?’ The farmer’s wife opens the door to his little room and calls up.
‘He’s probably in the barn,’ says his mother, ‘he’s full of it, he talks of nothing else.’
She shows a photograph to my mother.
‘Just take a look at that,’ she says. ‘You can’t tell from looking at it, but he’s dreaming of cows and sheep. He is set on being a farmer.’ She roars with laughter at the thought. ‘He’s a real boy, that’s for sure!’ she says bluntly, looking straight at me. What does she mean, a real boy?
The farmyard. I seem to be seeing it all in slow motion now; the light over the tiled roof, the stinking yellow-brown manure heaps, the weeds shooting up in corners, the muffled sounds from the stables, it all comes home to me suddenly and I go cold for a moment: am I here for the last time?
‘How nice it all is,’ says my mother. ‘Wouldn’t you have preferred to live on a farm, too, with all these animals?’
Stung, I answer crossly. ‘Laaxum is much nicer, and you don’t have to work there all the time. And I’d much sooner go to sea, anyway,’ I add sourly.
We walk through the lofty stables towards the sound of intermittent banging and find Jan on his knees in a dusty corner, doggedly hammering away at some boards.
‘Hello,’ he pants. ‘A pen for the calves.’
He stands up and with an air of satisfaction plants his boot on his work. With a manly gesture he blows his nose, calmly wipes the back of his hand down his overalls and holds it out to my mother. ‘It’s a bit different from Amsterdam here, hey?’
I am amazed to hear him talk to my mother like an adult, calmly and easily. She takes him seriously, too, and they have a short conversation that makes me jealous. If Walt were here now they would see that I am grown up as well, that I have a big friend who likes my company.
‘Hey, you,’ Jan gives me a companionable nudge, his shining eyes close to mine, ‘we’ll be going back home in a few days. On the boat, my mother says, that’ll be fun.’ He drums his fists in a friendly way on my ribs and then, in an outburst of exuberance, throws an arm around my neck.