Postcards From No Man's Land (8 page)

So all would be evacuated from our cellar. All except Jacob. He was too weak to stand unaided, never mind walk, which his injured calf made impossible. For a while he tried to persuade the others that he could make it if two of them would give him support. But the sergeant in charge said no, he would never do it. They might get him to the river bank, but what then? What if they had to swim across? They asked me what the river was like. I told them, about two hundred metres across and, I had to admit, the current was strong, especially after heavy rain such as we were having then. And very cold. ‘It’s too risky,’ the sergeant told Jacob, ‘you’re not going.’

But this didn’t satisfy him. When his officer visited, checking how things were going, Jacob tried to persuade him that he could go if he had help. But the officer refused and gave him a specific order to remain where he was.

After that he brooded for a while. Then announced with cheerful bravado that if he had to stay behind he might as well make himself useful. ‘Carry me upstairs before you go,’ he said to the others, ‘and leave me with a gun and plenty of ammo. I’ll keep Jerry’s head down while you scoot out the back.’

I could not believe it when the others agreed.

‘How can they let you do this?’ I said.

He shrugged and smiled. ‘It’ll give me something to do. Take my mind off the pain in my leg.’

‘You aren’t strong enough,’ I said. ‘You’ll certainly be killed.’

‘Better than being taken prisoner,’ he said. ‘Can’t stand being cooped up. I’d rather cop it, fighting. Honest.’

‘No!’ I said, quite beside myself by now. ‘It’s wrong!’

‘Look,’ he said, trying to take my hand to hold me still but I tugged it away. ‘You don’t understand. It’ll help my
pals get away safe and sound. In my place, any of the lads would do the same. We’re trained for it. Honest. Just my rotten luck. I’m the one who’s lumbered.’

‘Rotten luck!’ I shouted. ‘How can you say that? This is not rotten luck! This is because of fighting. Because of war. Rotten war! I hate it! I hate all of it! I hate those who have done this! How dare they! How dare they!’

Everyone heard. Stopped what they were doing. Gave me sorrowful looks. I had not meant to make such an outburst. Fear and anger mixed with hunger and exhaustion cooked it up. And something to do with Jacob and myself of which I was still not conscious. This, I think, more than anything.

Mother came and put her arms round me.

‘Remember your manners, my dear,’ she whispered as she hugged me. ‘Don’t make things worse for these poor men. Think what it must be like for them. Soon they must risk everything to escape. Some will die. They know that.’

‘If only we could do something to help,’ I said, when I could speak calmly again.

Mama looked me steadily in the eyes. ‘We’ve done all we can. I don’t know what more we can do.’

It was not long before we found out.

POSTCARD

How long before my death

is the necessary question.

John Webster

BY THE TIME
his tram arrived at the railway station the rain had started again, heavily and with no sign of slackening. For a few minutes Jacob sheltered in the crowded bustle of the station concourse but soon began to fret that Daan van Riet might tire of waiting and go out again. But he didn’t want to arrive soaking wet.

A flower stall occupied one corner of the concourse. His grandmother had dinned in to him that it was a Dutch custom for a guest to take flowers when visiting. He fingered Alma’s guilders in his pocket. But it was not flowers he had in mind.

‘Hi,’ he said to the man who was serving.

‘Low,’ the man said, without a grin.

He held out the coins and indicated the flowers. ‘What for four guilders?’

The man pulled a dubious face, but smiled, surveyed his display with elaborate consideration for this big sale, and selected one modest sunflower.

‘And that bag,’ Jacob said, pointing to a large brown plastic bag discarded by some tubs of flowers.

‘There goes the profit,’ the man said, wrapping it neatly round the sunflower before handing over the singular bouquet with a mocking flourish. ‘You must really love her to spend like that.
Succes ermee!
’

Outside, Jacob held the flower in his teeth by the stem
while he tore the bag down one seam, then draped it over his head and shoulders like a hooded cowl. And thus protected set off at a brisk pace in the direction of the landmarks Alma had described.

Van Riet’s address was not hard to find and looked like an old warehouse. A makeshift
stoep
, four steps of scuffed and weathered wood, led to an ancient heavy black-painted door. To the left of which Jacob found two insignificant bell buttons with faded nameplates. He pressed the one labelled
Wesseling en Van Riet
.

While he waited he surveyed the short street, which looked as if all of it had been ancient warehouses at one time. But now on one side of Van Riet’s was a restaurant and a new-looking hotel, on the other a freshly renovated facade with big warehouse doors on each of its five floors converted into windows. Beside the narrow street ran an equally narrow murky-looking canal, out of the other side of which rose the back of the church, an oppressive bulk of dirty old red brick with arched, grimy and wire-netted windows. To the left of the church, a contrast and a challenge, was the back of a newish building with many regular modern windows: the rooms of a hotel, Jacob assumed. In the fogged greyness of the pouring rain the lowering church and the high flat-fronted buildings, narrowly separated by the sluggish canal and the cobbled street, appeared to him like a forbidden canyon. He shivered in his damp clothes, and tugged his plastic hood well over his face.

A bolt unlatched, the heavy door swung, surprisingly, outwards, and a tall young man with a shock of black hair, handsome triangular face, pale, with sharp bright blue eyes, long straight nose, wide thin-lipped mouth, and a slim body dressed in grey sweatshirt tucked in to black jeans, bare feet in thonged sandals, said, ‘
Mijn God!
Titus!’

‘Jacob Todd.’

‘Sorry,
hoor
.’ Sounding like ‘surrey whore’, but couldn’t
be. ‘Daan.’ Like darn. ‘Come in.’

An ill-lit passage, wooden stairs painted rust red rising steeply at the end, rough bare old brick wall on one side, white-painted partition with a blue door in it on the other. Smell of damp dust and new paper.

‘Smart hat.’

‘Bit wet.’

‘Want to take it off?’

‘Thanks.’ He presented the sunflower. ‘For you.’

‘Stolen for me. And before we’d even met! How gallant!’

‘Stolen?’

‘The woman who called said you lost all your money.’

‘Oh, yes, but she gave me five guilders, just in case. I bought that for four. To be honest, what I wanted was this bag to keep the rain off and—’

‘So I’m only an excuse. I’m devastated already.’

He held out a hand which Jacob shook, his own cold and rain-slicked in Daan’s warm dry grip.

‘Follow me. Are you used to our Dutch
trap
yet?’

‘Stairs, you mean?’

‘Stairs I mean and
trap
I mean. Your Dutch is brilliant, I see.’

‘And,’ said Jacob deciding he must match the challenge, ‘your English is tricksy, I see.’

Daan let out what might have been a chuckle. ‘I live at the top.’

The apartment was like none Jacob had ever seen before. He was all eyes. An expanse of shining exotic tiles in an intricate pattern of flower-like circles and rounded squares in olive green, pale and dark blue, triangulated on a white background, was repeated and repeated diagonally across the floor, which swept uninterrupted from front to rear and side to side of the building, until at the back a concertina Chinese screen, thin black frame and paper covering, cut off from view what could be glimpsed as a bedroom area.

The whole floor was immense, longer, he guessed, and as a wide as a tennis court. The walls were untreated old brick, hung here and there with a picture, some old oil paintings—a portait of a man who looked like an aged Daan, a landscape of old Holland—others modernist photos and coloured drawings. The ceiling was supported by thick wooden beams like the deck ribs of a sailing ship. Towards the front end of the room, the ceiling had been partly removed so that the floor above was visible and banistered like the upper deck of a ship, which was reached by a white-painted free-standing staircase like a ship’s gangway. Looking up, he felt the floor beneath his feet swell and fall on the shift of the sea.

In the front wall a window made from large round-topped loading doors looked out on to the back of the church. A group of potted plants was arranged on either side. In this front part there was very little furniture: a large black leather sofa, two large leather armchairs set around a heavy wooden coffee table. An antique side-table against one wall carried an expensive TV and sound system, and further along a large glass-fronted sideboard full of nicknacks and unfamiliar objects. Towards the rear of the room a kitchen occupied a recess formed by the enclosure of the main stairs and landing outside. Beyond the kitchen was the bedroom screen.

But what took his eye most of all was a floor-to-ceiling bank of books covering the wall between the front and the recess that contained the main stairs—about half the length of the whole room. He stared at it, stunned by this panorama of print among which, leaping out at him like the faces of friends among strangers, were a large number of books in English.

The whole apartment was such an attractive, odd mixture of old and new it made him reel with pleasure and envy. What a place to live! But how could Daan afford it?

After planting the sunflower in an empty wine bottle and
standing it on the coffee table, Daan had disappeared upstairs. Now he reappeared bearing a red sweatshirt and a pair of jeans which he handed to Jacob saying, ‘There’s a bathroom on the landing to the left of the stairs. Would you like something to eat?’

‘Thanks. I am a bit wet. And a bit hungry as well, to be honest.’

‘Go and change. I’ll prepare something for us.’

They sat on high stools at either side of the work top that separated the kitchen from the main room and talked while they ate tinned vegetable soup zapped in the microwave, Dutch farmhouse cheese, ham, tomatoes dressed with garlic, fresh basil and olive oil, and a stick of French bread.

Daan wanted to know about the mugging. Jacob told the story, now after practice on Alma nicely honed and entertaining, but playing down the meeting with Ton and omitting the still too shying detail about Ton’s crotch so that he remained a she. Again he posed the question of Red Cap’s come-on behaviour.

Daan shrugged and said, ‘Fancied you, I expect.’

‘What,’ Jacob said, ‘you mean, she was making a pass?’

‘Sure.’

‘At me? Never! Just making a game of it. Having a bit of fun. Don’t you think?’

Daan smiled. ‘If you like.’

‘You remember when we visited you?’ Daan said. ‘You were about five, I think. I was twelve.’

‘No, I don’t remember.’

‘I played with you in a sandpit in your garden.’

‘It’s a fish pond now.’ Jacob grinned and shrugged. ‘Dad’s mid-life crisis. He redesigned the garden.’

‘You had a fight with your sister when she tried to join in. You threw sand in her face.’

‘Sounds likely.’

‘Your father told you off.’

‘He would.’

‘You shouted at him. Fuck you, you said.’

‘Never!’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘There was a fuss.’

‘I’ll bet.’

‘I hadn’t heard that word in English before. Couldn’t understand what all the upset was about. Your parents were embarrassed. Mine thought it was funny. They explained later, when they were laughing about it again.’

‘And what happened?’

‘You were sent to your room, screaming. But after a while your grandmother brought you down again. And you were grinning like—what is it you say?—the cat who drank the milk.’

‘And my father was furious.’

‘He didn’t say much.’

‘Not while you were there.’

‘Only that your grandmother should not have done it, that she was spoiling you. I remember what she said, it was such a funny word.’

‘Let me guess. Tosh.’

‘Right.’

‘Means nonsense. A favourite of hers.’

‘You live with your grandmother now.’

‘Yes.’

‘Geertrui told me. She and your grandmother exchange letters now and then.’

‘I know.’

‘You and your grandmother are very close?’

‘Very. Always have been.’

When they had finished eating and were tired of the stools,
they migrated with their coffee, Daan to the sofa, Jacob to an armchair with his back to the window so that he could view the room while they talked.

‘The buildings in this street,’ Jacob said, ‘they look like they were old warehouses once.’

‘They were. In the old days, the ships came right up to here. They would dock and discharge their cargo. At one time this house stored tea and another time perfume from Cologne. You saw that building like a tower at the end of the street?’

‘The round one, with the little spiky spire on top?’

‘It’s called the Wailing Tower because the women used to wave their farewells from there when their men set sail.’

‘It’s a great apartment.’

‘Used to belong to a man who loved sailing ships. And also Spanish tiles. Geertrui bought it from him. I’ve lived here since she went to the
verpleeghuis
… What do you call it?’

‘I think you mean a nursing home. That explains it.’

‘What?’

‘The funny combination of furniture and stuff.’

‘Funny?’

‘Not funny funny. Just meant unusual, interesting.’

‘How?’

He was beginning to wish he hadn’t started on this. ‘Well, the combination of old things and modern. The pictures on the wall, for instance.’ He gave a nervous laugh.

‘Most of it is Geertrui’s, some is mine. I couldn’t live here with only her stuff. But I don’t like to make big changes. It’s still her place, after all.’