June Read online

‘How do you find the countryside around here?’

  ‘Empty. Empty and cold.’

  ‘Cold?’ The Queen smiles. ‘You’re having a hard time of it today, then. Have you ever been to the island of Texel?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘Tomorrow will be more to your taste.’

  ‘Oh, I already think it’s tremendous. I have the privilege of accompanying you for two days.’ The sister’s pencil scratches over the page.

  The Queen pats her hair into place. ‘Are you sure you won’t take a small glass of sherry?’

  ‘No, thank you, ma’am, really not.’

  ‘Then I’ll have another half a glass for you.’

  Röell sighs and sips her sherry with a sour expression.

  During lunch she is next to Van der Hoeven. The unmarried pedigree-cattle breeder has been seated diagonally opposite. Otherwise, the usual guests are sitting at the long, impeccably set table. The chairwomen of the countrywomen’s association and the women’s branch of the employers’ federation, polder-board members, dyke reeves, councillors. But not the GP and not the notary. Kwanten isn’t here either, she’ll be having lunch somewhere else in the Polder House, probably in the company of the driver, amongst others. She’s pleased to see that someone has thought of putting out sweet peas in a number of small vases. The inevitable oxtail soup – presumably the reasoning is that if one eats a certain soup at Christmas it must be appropriate on other festive occasions as well – is spicy. Milk and buttermilk are the drinks at the table. Or would Your Majesty prefer a dry white wine with her soup? She would, after a brief hesitation. Van der Hoeven and the mayoress join her and, on the other side of the table, the pedigree-cattle breeder has also accepted a glass. Her second private secretary’s warm young voice is a calm counterweight to the nervous, somewhat high-pitched voice of the mayor.

  She herself doesn’t say much. She eats and drinks. The bread is fresh, the cheeses and sliced meats various and abundant. That Blom fellow bakes delicious bread, she thinks. Bright light enters the room through the tall windows and only now does she hear excited voices outside, even though the children seem to have gone. The cattle breeder is sitting just a little too far away for her to strike up a conversation. She nods almost imperceptibly at the handsome woman and raises her wine glass slightly. The woman nods and raises hers in reply, as if she’s understood that the Queen would love to talk to her about the whys and wherefores of stud bulls, the weather, or anything else that might come up, if only they were that little bit closer. Then one of the women in the company stands up and is introduced by the mayoress as Mrs Backer-Breed, elocutionist.

  During the performance, which is delivered partly in the local dialect, her thoughts drift again. She thinks about Pappie. Wondering if he’ll be on the Piet Hein this evening. The man is impossible, of course, but he feels at home on the yacht. In just under a fortnight it will be his birthday and now, approaching sixty, he surely won’t get up to any more foolishness. She sips a second glass of wine, evidently chosen by someone who knows what he’s doing. When the company begins to applaud, she joins in. Then large dishes of fresh strawberries are brought out to the table with bowls of whipped cream. The coffee that concludes the lunch is strong. There’s a soft crunching underfoot. They’ve scattered sand on the wooden floor of the council chamber.

  She was right: the schoolchildren have disappeared. But there are still plenty of people about. Several newspaper photographers are hanging around too. The visit has already been officially concluded inside, now it’s just a question of walking to the car and driving to the next village. The village that was named after her great-grandmother. Will the people who live there realise how strange that is? In contrast to the two previous mayors, this mayor will not lead the way. Röell has taken her bag off her hands again; she herself is walking towards the road with the flowers. The coffee has tempered the effect of the sherry and the white wine, but she still has a pleasantly light-headed feeling. Van der Hoeven is walking beside her, bumping gently against her arm every now and then.

  Out of the thinned and now disordered line of people, a large man in immaculate overalls steps forward onto the path. Lengths of cord in both hands and on the cords are two little goats. ‘Ma’am,’ he says.

  ‘Yes?’ she asks.

  ‘I would like to offer you these two pygmy goats.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘On behalf of whom?’

  ‘On behalf of myself.’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Blauwboer.’

  One of the goats starts to nibble at a bunch of Sweet William a woman is holding a little too close by. She hands Van der Hoeven her flowers and kneels down. The other goat sniffs at her leather glove with its soft nose. The animals are brown with a black blaze. And so small she could easily pick them up. She does just that and feels their tight round bellies against the palms of her hands. The farmer pays out a little cord.

  ‘I have three grandsons,’ she says.

  ‘I know that, ma’am.’

  ‘They’ll be very pleased with this gift.’ She feels the goats’ little hearts racing in their chests.

  ‘That was my idea,’ the farmer says.

  Photographers push forward, a policeman steps between them. Queen ignores protocol to play with pygmy goats. She can see tomorrow’s headline already. When she bends to put the goats back down on the ground, she is overcome by a slight dizziness. Van der Hoeven takes hold of her elbow as she rises. One of the goats starts to bleat loudly.

  ‘We can’t take them with us now,’ says her second private secretary.

  ‘I realise that,’ the farmer says.

  She thanks the man warmly and walks on, leaving Van der Hoeven behind to arrange things. She has her hands free again. No handbag, no bouquet, no goats. Wiry brown hairs are stuck to her gloves. A goat for Willem-Alexander and a goat for Maurits. Someone from the stables will come to pick up the animals in the next few days. And they’ll think of something else for Johan Friso.

  The driver is standing beside the open door.

  ‘How are we for time?’ Röell asks.

  ‘Nicely on schedule,’ he replies. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

  Before getting into the car, she looks around. Flags are flying on almost all of the houses, and on the other side of the waterway that divides the village in two she sees the gleaming van again. Only now does she ask herself why the baker isn’t out doing his rounds. Or is the area he covers so small that he can get it all done in the morning? People are walking away from the Polder House, still turning to look back, but not crowding around the car. They’re returning to the order of the day, the children might be back in the classrooms already. No, they’ll have the afternoon off, it’s a holiday. Perhaps there’s a village swimming pool they can go to. Then she sees a young woman coming towards her against the flow of the dissipating crowd, holding a child on her hip and trying to wheel a bicycle with her other hand. Someone running late and hurrying to catch a glimpse of the Queen. She gestures to the driver and walks towards the woman, seeing Röell start off after her out of the corner of her eye.

  ‘What are you doing?’ her private secretary asks.

  Without replying, she waits for the woman to reach her.

  ‘The time,’ Röell says. ‘We have to watch the time.’

  Then the woman is standing opposite her, a little short of breath from hurrying.

  ‘Were you too late leaving home?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes, I . . .’

  ‘What an adorable little girl you have. What’s your name?’

  The child, two at most, looks at her with big blue eyes.

  ‘Will you tell me? What your name is?’

  ‘An-ne,’ the child whispers.

  ‘Hanne,’ her mother says.

  She pulls off her right glove to stroke the chi
ld’s cheek. ‘The “h” isn’t easy.’ The girl shrinks away, pressing her face against her mother’s neck. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Anna Kaan, ma’am.’

  Ah, this woman knows how things should be done. ‘Did the time run away with you this morning?’

  The woman looks at her, her startled expression making way for a smile. She doesn’t answer. The bicycle, leaning against the woman’s hip, slowly slides down and clatters onto the asphalt.

  The Queen instinctively reaches out with both hands.

  ‘It’s fine,’ the woman says.

  ‘We have to go,’ says Röell, standing somewhere behind her.

  It’s turned into a photo session after all. She doesn’t see it, she hears it. Annoyingly close by. Queen takes impromptu stroll. A second potential headline for tomorrow’s newspaper. ‘There you have it,’ she tells the woman. ‘We have to go. Bye, Hanne.’

  ‘Goodbye, ma’am,’ says the woman. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Taking the trouble to . . .’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she says. When she turns, it’s not Röell but Jezuolda Kwanten standing behind her. Right behind her. She feels her warm breath on her face. It’s as if she’s trying to soak up every pore and imperfection in her model’s skin so that she can make her bronze bust as lifelike as possible. The sister from the Order of the Sisters of Charity takes a step aside and follows her to the cars, one pace behind.

  She gives one last wave in the direction of the Polder House gates, where the mayor and his wife are waiting politely. Then all the car doors bang shut. Even before they drive off, Röell has gathered up all kinds of documents and started to ruffle through them. The Queen lights a cigarette. The car turns and drives through the village extremely slowly. When she looks to the right she sees a graveyard, just behind the Polder House. Something she neither noticed nor heard mentioned before. They pass a water tower and a pumping station. At the very edge of the village, at the foot of a dyke, there is a windmill.

  ‘Those goats,’ Röell says.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘That’s really not done.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘With all due respect . . . goats!’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Who’s going to take them to Soestdijk?’

  ‘Van der Hoeven has arranged all that.’

  ‘And that woman with that child.’

  ‘She was late. That could happen to anyone.’

  ‘You can just leave things like that to run their course.’

  ‘I don’t want things like that to run their course. It’s just nice. For her and for that little girl. They’ll remember it for the rest of their lives, this beautiful sunny day in June.’ She draws on her cigarette. ‘Not to say that’s why I do it, of course.’

  Röell purses her lips and looks through her papers.

  ‘Try to put yourself in those people’s shoes for once. What difference does a couple of minutes make?’

  Röell doesn’t respond. ‘Eighteen forty-six,’ she says. ‘The polder is named after the consort of King Willem II.’

  ‘You don’t need to read that to me. What’s this one called?’

  ‘Warners.’

  ‘What’s on the programme?’

  ‘A waterskiing demonstration. At two thirty in the afternoon on the Oude Veer.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘The fourth event is barefoot waterskiing.’

  The Queen stubs out her cigarette, pulls her right glove back on and goes back to staring out the window. This area is again slightly different from the previous district. Different roads and farmhouses, less grass. If only that waterskiing was already over. They’ll have old-age pensioners there as well. If only Den Helder was over too. She’s looking forward to the Piet Hein, it’s been months since she was on the yacht. The polished pear wood, the green upholstered Rietveld armchairs, the bunks. Pappie, possibly, in the top bunk. And otherwise a quiet conversation – the drinks cabinet open – with Van der Hoeven. Tomorrow morning she might take the helm for a while, or at least stand at the captain’s shoulder. Two months from now she’ll be spending another few days on board for the naval review during the Harlingen fishing festival. ‘Barefoot skiing,’ she says. ‘What will they think of next?’

  Straw

  I’ll never celebrate anything again. Ever. What for? Celebrating your fiftieth wedding anniversary with only sons to show for it, what was I thinking? Never again. Straw’s nowhere near as hard as you’d think. If you want to sit or lie down on straw you have to know how. You have to rub against it like a cow or a sheep and keep rubbing until all the sharp stiff bits have turned away. I’m an expert: three-quarters of a lifetime’s experience with straw. It’s not just a couple of bales, there are hundreds of them. What’s all this straw still doing here anyway? What’s it for?

  She’s lying on her back and staring up at the spot where a few roof tiles have slid down. It would have been different with a daughter. She wouldn’t have just sat there drinking and stuffing her face. She wouldn’t have made any snide remarks about the zoo where they spent the afternoon. She would have made a scrapbook with photos and stories; she would have written a song ‘to the tune of’, a funny song that rhymed and would have been sung by a lot more grandchildren than just that one, who made things even worse by sulking and answering back. A daughter would have squatted down next to her, next to her chair, to ask quietly if she was enjoying herself. Those horrible boys just drank and roared with laughter even though there was nothing to laugh about and all Zeeger did was join in, even if he didn’t drink. Zeeger never drank.

  Through the hole above her, a ray of dusty sunlight shines into the barn at an angle. An angle that tells her that it must be late in the afternoon. Friday afternoon.

  Earlier in the day, just before climbing up the ladder, she’d turned on the light. It’s still light now, but tonight it will get dark. She anticipated that. She pulled the rickety ladder up behind her, leant it against the straw to climb further, then pulled the ladder up behind her again. Lying on a pricklier bale of straw next to her are a water bottle, a packet of Viennese biscuits, a bottle of advocaat and the parade sword that normally hangs from the bottom bookshelf. The rickety ladder is a little further away.

  Even though the side doors and large rear doors are all open, the air in the barn is motionless, not the slightest hint of a breeze. She sits up and grabs the water bottle, one and a half litres. While drinking, she looks at the junk in the milking parlour attic diagonally opposite the straw loft. A washing basket, bulb trays, a rusty boiler, roof tiles, an old coat (light blue), zinc washtubs, a pedal car, a crate with sacks of wool. The three round windows with the wrought-iron frames – one up near the roof ridge, the other two a good bit lower down, above the doors at either end of the long corridor that runs the whole length of the barn – remind her of a church. Tiles have come loose all over the place and, despite the spare tiles she’s just seen, they haven’t been replaced. In those spots, stripes of sunlight shine in.

  Beneath her she hears the bull shuffling and groaning. Dirk. A superfluous lump of meat. Otherwise it’s quiet, as quiet as only a hot day in June can be. The swallows flying in and out are almost silent. She screws the cap back on the bottle, holds it up to see how much water is left, then lays it back down next to her. When the straw stops rustling, she hears footsteps. Very quick footsteps. ‘Dirk!’ she hears. Dieke. The child doesn’t know her grandmother is up above her. A little later, when the footsteps have almost reached the barn doors, the child shouts, ‘Uncle Jan!’ Dirk starts to snort. Dieke says something else, but she can’t make it out. Soon after, it falls quiet again. She leans back carefully and, once she’s rubbed against it for a while, the straw is reasonably comfortable again. Inasmuch as anything other than a soft mattress can be reasonably comf
ortable when you’re the wrong side of seventy. She gives her belly a slow and thorough scratch, then rubs her face with both hands.

  What’s that bull still doing here? Why doesn’t Klaas sell that enormous beast? She stares at the outside world through the hole in the roof. A very small, rectangular outside world. For now, that’s plenty. I’ll never celebrate anything again. Ever. We’re not cut out for celebrating. We always say exactly the wrong thing. The long faces of those boys as they tramped around the zoo. A daughter would have taken photos or said things like, ‘Look, a baboon. My first ever baboon!’

  Somewhere in the barn something creaks. It’s a dull dry creaking, loud too. The timbers? The boards of the hayloft? The big doors?

  Dust

  There are six windows in the living room. Dieke looks out through the one with the crack. She’s staring at the lawn that extends from the front of the house all the way to the road. In the middle stands an enormous red beech. The leaves of the tree aren’t moving. The blades of grass in the unmown lawn are completely still too.

  The crack bothers her. It has for a long time now. She’s scared that the glass might fall out of the window frame, maybe while she’s looking through it. Dieke sighs and walks out of the living room, across the hall and into the kitchen. Her mother is sitting at the kitchen table smoking a cigarette. ‘What are you sighing about?’ she asks.

  Dieke doesn’t answer. She goes over to the window and uses both hands to wave at her grandfather, who she can see on the other side of the yard, past the wide ditch and her grandmother’s vegetable garden, standing at his own kitchen window. If there were sheets on the clothes line, or towels and trousers, she wouldn’t be able to see him. He doesn’t wave back. The sun’s almost reached the kitchen. Her grandfather walks away from his window.

  ‘Where’s Uncle Jan?’ she asks.

  ‘Is Jan here?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ says Dieke. ‘He just came over the bridge.’

  ‘I don’t know, Dieke. Somewhere out the back, I guess.’