June Read online

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Six o’clock.’

  ‘Is it almost teatime?’

  Her mother turns her head to look at the stove, which doesn’t have any pans on it. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Go and look for him.’ She stubs her cigarette out in a brown ashtray that is already full to overflowing.

  Dieke slides over the laminate floor in her socks. Her yellow wellies are on the coconut mat in front of the door. She pulls one on, then starts walking before she’s finished pulling on the other and tumbles over. ‘Doesn’t matter, it doesn’t hurt,’ she says to herself, getting up again. It’s cooler in the long corridor that separates the house from the barn, but the concrete floor is as dry as a bone. When the floor’s damp it’s going to rain, she knows that. It’s not going to rain. She jumps into the old milking parlour from the corridor, over the two concrete steps. After the milking parlour comes the barn. She stands still for a second and looks up. ‘Doesn’t hurt, doesn’t hurt.’ It’s very big and gloomy in here, even with all the doors opened wide like now. The biggest doors are at the back of the barn, thirty steps away or more, big steps. An enormous rectangle of light, so bright that when she looks back up at the roof, she can no longer see the giant beams.

  She starts to run. Halfway she yells out at the top of her lungs, ‘Dirk!’ The bull turns his enormous body towards the sound, but Dieke doesn’t even look at him. She keeps running. She stops in the doorway. In front of her is the shadow cast by the farmhouse, stretching almost to the sheep shed. One of the two doors is hanging crooked on its hinges. On one side of the sheep shed is the old dungheap, on the other a salt-stained, concrete silo. The dung left on the slab is as black as ink and teeming with fishing worms. There are elderberry bushes growing in the silo.

  Somewhere out the back, that’s what her mother said. But somewhere is a very big place. In the sheep shed? Past the heaps of silage? Or all the way out in the fields? ‘Uncle Jan!’ she bawls. Behind her, in the gloomy depths of the barn, the bull starts snorting. ‘I’m not calling you,’ she says, without looking back. She takes a couple of steps forward and calls again, even louder.

  ‘Here.’

  ‘Where’s here?’

  ‘Behind the sheep shed.’

  She can choose: either cut through between the silo and the sheep shed – but there are tall prickle bushes there – or take the path alongside the wide ditch and then go a bit to the right. She decides on the path and kicks the dust up as she goes. ‘Watch the ditch,’ she tells herself. ‘Watch the ditch, watch the ditch.’ When she spots her uncle, she glances back. The cloud of dust over the path is taking a long time to settle. Her uncle is sitting on a causeway gate looking out over the fields. She grabs the top board and carefully puts one foot on the bottom board, then waits until she’s sure she’s standing firmly before lifting the other foot. Uncle Jan doesn’t say a word and doesn’t look at her either. He’s not the kind of person to just launch into conversation. She’s now standing with both feet on the second board and her upper body starts to lean forward. It’s getting difficult. She has to keep her balance with her hands on the top board, but if she puts her feet up any higher, she’ll topple over forward and land face first on the hard cracked ground on the other side of the gate. She stays there like that, wavering between carrying on, stopping and climbing back down.

  ‘Can’t you manage?’

  ‘No,’ she says.

  Her uncle jumps down on the other side of the gate and grips her under her arms. When he lifts her up, she swings her yellow wellies over the top board and sits down. Just like Uncle Jan, who’s climbed back up onto the gate, though his legs are a lot longer. His feet reach down to the second board, hers are up on the third. She holds on tight to stop herself from falling forward or, even worse, backwards. She lets out a deep sigh.

  ‘Is it still too hard?’

  ‘No,’ she says.

  ‘Hold my arm.’

  She does and that’s better. As long as she’s holding on to Uncle Jan, she won’t fall. She doesn’t fidget or slide around because it’s an old gate, a gate the cows have chewed on.

  Uncle Jan stares into the distance. Grass, yellowish stubble in Brak’s fields next door, blue sky. There are no cows out in the fields and no sheep either. There aren’t any animals in the fields at all. A bit further along there’s a second gate and beyond that a third. Between the gates, two dead-straight parallel tracks. Shadows are starting to appear where cows dropped their pats and the grass is a little longer. The blades of the big wind turbines past the third gate aren’t turning. Dieke feels the evening sun on her neck.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asks.

  It takes too long, her uncle refuses to answer. ‘Why are you sitting here?’

  ‘Because.’

  ‘Because what?’

  ‘Just because. Because I like sitting here.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Dieke. ‘Did you come on the train?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘From Den Helder?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Did Grandma pick you up?’

  ‘No, Grandpa.’

  ‘Was it hot on the train?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘And was it on time?’

  ‘Course not. The rails expanded in the heat.’

  ‘Oh. I went to the swimming pool this afternoon.’

  ‘Have you got a certificate yet?’

  ‘I’m only five!’

  ‘Oh, sorry.’

  ‘I’ve got a card.’

  ‘What kind of card?’

  ‘The card you get for swimming through a hoop underwater, with your head under and everything.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Dieke, who thinks so too. ‘Evelien was too scared.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘My friend.’

  ‘Oh, her.’

  Dieke can tell from his voice that he doesn’t have a clue who Evelien is. ‘Grandma’s too scared to put her head underwater too.’

  ‘Yes, that’s terrible. Grandma’s seventy-three and she still doesn’t have a swimming certificate.’

  ‘You don’t have a driving licence.’

  ‘You’ve got me there, Dieke.’

  She waits. ‘Grandma’s stupid.’

  ‘Is she? Why?’

  ‘Because.’

  There are no cows making their way into the fields, no hooves kicking dust up along the path, which is still lined with electric fencing. It’s quiet; even the birds think it’s too hot to chirp. Then there’s a dull bang, wood on concrete maybe. Dieke jumps and squeezes her uncle’s arm.

  ‘What could that be, Dieke?’ Uncle Jan asks.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she squeaks.

  Rot

  Klaas was sitting in the old cow passage on an easy chair that an acquaintance had left there because the old cow passage is a cheap and dry place to store furniture. He was watching the swallows flying in and out and catching mosquitoes in their wide-open beaks. There were no noises coming from up on the straw. Unlike the bull’s pen. Dieke just ran past it. She’s terrified in the barn.

  He was sitting there, now he’s stood up. The sliding door is open and when he goes to close it a little, it tilts slowly forward and bangs down on the concrete. The wood hardly splinters at all, the boards simply disintegrate from dryness and wood rot. He pulls a tobacco pouch out of his back pocket and pokes what’s left of the door with his foot while rolling a cigarette.

  To his left is the old dairy scullery, rolls of sheep wire standing upright on the bone-dry floor. Houseleek is frothing out of the roof gutter like boiling milk, and under the roof gutter is the wheelbarrow with the dead sheep, four stiff legs sticking up in the air. He doesn’t remember how long it is since he pulled the creature out of the ditch
. He’s forgotten why he didn’t call the collection service. He doesn’t know why he still hasn’t. The sheep has been here so long it no longer stinks and yet it’s still a sheep.

  He sees his brother and his daughter sitting next to each other on the causeway gate. Jan’s back is wet. Dieke is wearing her yellow wellies. Slowly he walks over to them. He lays his forearms on the top board.

  ‘Hi, Dad,’ says Dieke.

  ‘Hi, Dieke.’

  ‘Klaas,’ says his brother.

  ‘Jan.’

  ‘Did you break something, Dad?’ Dieke asks.

  ‘No, Diek, it broke all by itself. Because of the weather, or because it was so old.’ Klaas pulls pieces of rotten wood out of the gatepost and suddenly sees it on fire, years ago, after he and Jan had stuffed leftover crackers into it on New Year’s Day. Lighting a cracker, watching the explosion, walking off, and half an hour later coming back with something else on their minds and seeing the gatepost calmly burning. Like a giant matchstick. Only now does he light his roll-up.

  ‘You want to get down?’ his brother asks Dieke.

  ‘Yes, please,’ she says.

  Jan slides off the gate, lifts Dieke up and puts her down on the ground next to Klaas.

  ‘Uncle Jan’s really strong,’ she says.

  ‘What brings you here?’ Klaas hears himself asking. It’s something he almost always says, as if his brother would never come home without a specific reason. But he doesn’t mean anything by it.

  ‘Painting.’

  Klaas looks at his brother. What’s that supposed to mean? He doesn’t pursue it. ‘Come on, Dieke, it’s teatime.’

  ‘Are you going to eat with Grandma?’ Dieke asks Jan.

  ‘Today I’m going to eat with Grandpa.’

  ‘Can he cook?’

  ‘I don’t actually know.’

  ‘Where’s Grandma?’

  Klaas looks at his brother.

  ‘She’s not here just now,’ Jan says. ‘But I’m sure you don’t mind that.’

  ‘No. Are you going to be here tomorrow too?’

  ‘Yep, sure am. All day.’

  ‘Fun! Are you coming to the swimming pool?’

  ‘No, I’m not going swimming. I’m working.’

  ‘Did you go to the swimming pool a lot when you were little?’

  ‘They couldn’t keep me away.’

  ‘Why don’t you go now then?’

  ‘I’m going to do something else.’

  ‘Too bad.’ Dieke turns and runs off.

  Klaas turns away too. ‘I’ll see you.’

  ‘No doubt,’ says Jan.

  Dieke yells out ‘Dirk!’ again as she runs through the barn. It sounds muffled, as if the emptiness inside the barn and the dust of almost a hundred years are smothering her voice. All the bulls have been called Dirk, as far back as Klaas can remember.

  ‘I’ll be there in a minute, Diek,’ he calls out to his daughter, who has already reached the door of the old milking parlour.

  She doesn’t answer, rushing on in her yellow wellies. Dirk has stuck his square head out through the iron bars of his pen.

  ‘Klaas?’ he hears from above.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you talked to Jan yet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You have to tell him to stop.’

  ‘Stop what?’

  ‘Just stop. Stop it. I never see him, he just stays on Texel. Of course, if there’s something to celebrate, he’ll come, and then he trudges round the zoo looking completely miserable. You boys are horrible.’

  Klaas looks over his shoulder. He’s the only one here, isn’t he?

  ‘You still there?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You’re all in league with each other. You and your father and Jan. And Johan too.’

  ‘Johan?’

  ‘Yes, Johan.’

  ‘When are you coming down?’

  ‘That’s for me to decide.’

  ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to eat now.’

  ‘Do what you have to do.’

  Klaas stays standing there, waiting for more. He rubs Dirk between the eyes.

  ‘I’m never celebrating anything again. Ever!’

  After that, nothing. He throws his roll-up on the floor and carefully crushes it underfoot. Then he walks through the side doors and into the yard. A young woman rides past on a bike and waves hello. He raises his hand, even though he’s too busy looking at her legs to see who it is as she flashes past. Rekel, his parents’ chocolate Labrador, is sitting waiting on the other side of the ditch. As if someone has forbidden him from crossing the bridge. His tongue is lolling out of his mouth and his tail beats listlessly on the paving stones of the path that leads from the wooden bridge to the side door of the house. He can’t see his father anywhere. When he walks over to the kitchen window to see if tea’s ready, he bangs his head on the drinking trough his father once screwed to the wall as a planter for colourful spring flowers.

  ‘Shit!’

  There’s been grass growing in it for years.

  Gold

  Dieke creeps down the stairs. She knows it’s really early, that’s why she’s creeping. It’s nice to be downstairs again. Not that she’s scared upstairs, but once she’s outside her bedroom there’s a lot of empty space, with a couple of empty rooms and a high-peaked roof with a crossbeam and a bare bulb hanging down that doesn’t give enough light.

  The door to her parents’ bedroom is wide open. Inside it’s orange – that’s the curtains. She stares at her father and mother, who are bobbing up and down slightly on the enormous waterbed as they sleep. Her mother almost completely under the duvet, her father only half. She used to have her mother to herself at this time of day. She tugs on the arm her mother has out on top of the covers.

  ‘I already heard you,’ her mother says. ‘You don’t need to pull my arm too.’

  ‘Where’s Uncle Jan?’ Dieke asks.

  Her mother looks at the alarm clock. ‘It’s six o’clock, Diek. He’s still in bed, where else would he be? Everyone’s still in bed at six o’clock. Except for farmers.’

  ‘When’s he going to get up, then?

  ‘Later,’ her mother sighs. ‘You go back to bed now too.’

  ‘I want to stay here with you.’ Without waiting for permission, she climbs in next to her. A wave passes through the bed. It’s almost like a swimming pool, and then being on a wooden raft, like the raft that floats in zone two, the part of the pool she’s allowed in with water wings.

  ‘But no wriggling, OK?’ her father says.

  ‘Can you do your legs?’

  Her mother rolls over onto her side and pulls up her legs. Dieke slips her feet in between her raised thighs. It feels lovely, even now it’s summer, with her feet warm almost all the time, but in winter it’s even better and never gets clammy. She lies calmly on her back staring at the red curtain.

  ‘Is he staying today?’

  ‘Yes, Diek,’ her mother says in a sleepy voice. ‘I think he’s staying all day.’

  ‘Why isn’t he coming to the swimming pool then?’

  ‘Because he’s got something else to do,’ her father says.

  ‘I think it’s strange. If it’s this hot, you go to the swimming pool.’

  ‘Go to sleep, Diek,’ her father says. ‘Now.’

  Dieke closes her eyes and folds her hands together on her stomach. Sleep, she thinks, now. And falls asleep.

  Three hours later she’s standing on the wide windowsill in the kitchen; her mother is down in the cellar. Even the brown tiles under her feet are warm. She hasn’t got dressed yet, she’s still in just knickers and a vest. There is one plant o
n the windowsill. It’s a kind of cactus, she knows that, but it’s a cactus that doesn’t have prickles. She’s waiting for her grandfather to appear. ‘Where is Grandma? Where is Grandma?’ she hums. ‘Stay away. Stay away.’ Keeping her balance by pressing her forehead against the window, she rubs her right shoulder for a second. It’s still a bit tender. The grass in the rusty drinking trough isn’t moving.

  Then she sees her grandfather, fiddling with something on the sideboard under his kitchen window. Maybe he’s going to put on some coffee. For Uncle Jan. She starts to wave, both hands at once, becoming more and more frantic. She only realises that her mother has come up out of the cellar when she falls over backwards and doesn’t end up on the floor. She feels hands under her arms and sends the cactus without prickles flying with a kick of her right foot.

  ‘Unbelievable!’ her mother says. ‘Why do you always stand on the windowsill?’

  ‘Ow!’ she yelps.

  ‘What?’

  ‘My foot!’

  ‘Look at all those dirty smudges.’

  The cactus has fallen onto the floor and Dieke doesn’t even look at all the dirty smudges on the windowpane. There’s something between the roots, something that was once shiny. She kneels down in the soil, avoiding the bits of broken pot, and stretches a finger out to it.

  ‘And now you’ve got your knees dirty too!’

  She’s not listening to her mother, who sits down at the kitchen table to light a cigarette. It looks like a ring. She rubs off some of the moist soil and cautiously pulls it. Roots snap.

  ‘Oh, go ahead, break it too. That Christmas cactus has been there since your father was a little boy.’

  Dieke hasn’t really started listening yet. She spits on the ring, then rubs it clean on her perfectly white vest. A gold ring, but not for a finger.

  ‘Repotted just three years ago. As if I don’t have enough to do. Old junk. Do you have to wipe that thing clean on your vest?’ Her mother stands and, with the cigarette dangling between her lips, pulls the vest up roughly over Dieke’s head. ‘Back in the wash with this, then.’

  ‘Ow,’ Dieke says softly, but hardly feeling a thing. A gold ring. But not for a finger. Then she thinks, Christmas cactus. A plant like this is called a Christmas cactus.