Postcards From No Man's Land (2 page)

In the ensuing daze he was aware of Ton standing up, saying ‘My tram’, of himself standing up to allow her (him) to squeeze by, of her (him) saying what sounded like ‘
Good thingsh
’, and of her (him) slipping away through the crowd and climbing in to a tram, and of her (him) waving through a window as the tram door closed, its bell tringalinged, and it moved off. Only then did he find his voice again and as he raised an impotent hand heard himself call out, ‘Hey, you took my pen!’

You took my pen?
He looked down at the table and saw that indeed she (he) had. But lying beside her (his) empty glass was a book of matches. His actions still running ahead of his thoughts, he picked up the book, turned it over, front, back. Nothing. Was about to lift the flap when the edge of his chair rammed in to the back of his knees and he collapsed on to his seat. Turning instinctively, he saw his anorak flying past his face, clutched in the hand of a scrawny youth, the bright red of whose reversed baseball cap mapped his path like a beacon as he dodged through the crowd.

Letting out a yell, ‘Hey, that’s mine! Come back!’, he struggled to his feet, stumbled away from the table, sending beer glasses shattering to the ground as he set off after the thief. Who, pausing in the middle of the plein, stood on the
upturned litterbin earlier occupied by the bongo player, where he remained, with a blatant grinning cheek that inflamed Jacob’s rage, for long enough to be sure that his victim had spotted him. It was as if he wanted to be chased. ‘Stop him!’ Jacob shouted, pointing as he careered through the crowd, but people only gave him startled glances and did what they could to get out of his way.

As soon as Jacob was three or four metres from him, the thief was off again, this time making for a corner of the plein that led in to a narrow street full of bars and cafés and touristy shops. So fleet was Red Cap and so obviously practised that he easily put distance between himself and Jacob, who was only a few strides down the street when his quarry swerved left. Arriving there, Jacob saw him standing twenty metres away at the other end of an alley, holding up the anorak, leaving no doubt he was waiting for Jacob to catch up, before setting off again, along another narrow street parallel with the first.

And so the chase continued: right at the end of this second street, where it joined a canal, up to the top of the canal, left across a bridge and half-left down a narrow street of houses, left and right again, and then left in to a busy wide shopping street with trams running down the middle. On went Red Cap, agile as a whippet, Jacob now hampered by a stitch and beginning to lose breath. At a bridge over a major canal Red Cap sprinted across the road and along one more block before swinging right in to another narrow street, this one mostly of houses with here and there a small shop or art gallery, a longish stretch with few people or vehicles to inhibit Jacob’s progress. Feeling there wasn’t much left in him, he put on a desperate last-try sprint, almost catching his quarry by the time they reached the end of the street. But Red Cap bobbed to the right along yet another canal and with dispiriting ease accelerated away.

Out of puff and out of heart, Jacob couldn’t help himself, but clung to a canalside tree, while catching his
breath and watching in tear-jerking anger as Red Cap paused long enough on a humpback bridge a hundred metres away to look back and wave a perky farewell before disappearing down, oh god yes, another canal that intersected this one by which Jacob was panting. Red Cap had certainly all along been leading him a fool’s dance. But why? It made no sense.

Sour beer rose in his gullet and emptied itself in to the canal. He thanked heaven there was no one about to witness his humiliation. The canal was deserted. But no one to ask where he was, either.

Rain now began to fall in a limp and dreary fashion. He welcomed it as a face douche and mouth wash. Then realised that, dressed only in sweat-shirt and jeans, he would be soaked before long. Nor could he see anywhere to shelter except for a strange-looking wooden building, the Kort, a restaurant?, in a large open space on the other side of the water, and he could guess how he would be received there without money and in his present gungy condition.

What to do? Not having a clue where he was, he didn’t know which way to turn.

His stomach clenched in a fit of minor panic.

His nature, when caught in a fix, being to do something rather than nothing, and to go on not back, he took a deep breath, swallowed hard, belched and trudged off to the intersecting canal. Which, to judge by its width compared with the one he had just left and the larger imposing houses on both sides, must be one of the main waterways. He looked for a sign and found it on the corner building between the first and second floors: Prinsengracht.

Yes!

In the whole of Holland, never mind Amsterdam, there was only one address he knew by heart: 263 Prinsengracht. The house where Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis in the secret annexe during the Second World War, the house where she wrote her famous
Diary
, one of his
favourite books, the house which was no longer a house but a museum, and the house from which earlier that morning he had fled in distress at what he had found there.

Even in his fuddled state he knew that if he walked the right way along the canal he would reach 263, where perhaps the staff would help him. Or a visitor. There had been plenty while he was there, mostly back-packing youths about his own age and English-speaking. He had had to wait in a long queue before he could get in.

His stomach unclenched.

The corner house was unnumbered, the next was 1045, the one along from that 1043. The right direction. He walked on at a brisk pace. But the rain was seriously wet now, he’d be drenched before reaching 263. Maybe it wouldn’t last long, and he could do with a rest, if only there was somewhere to shelter. He could find nowhere that would do till quite soon he reached a house, the entrance of which was in a portico, a steep flight of six stone steps leading up to a hefty wooden door. At least he could sit there protected from the rain.

Having turned round on the top step a couple of times, like a Jurassic dog inspecting his bolt-hole, and seated himself, and dried his hair with his handkerchief to stop water draining down his neck, and draped it on the door-handle to dry, he wondered whether anything else was in his jeans pockets that might prove useful. No money for sure; all he’d had was in the anorak. A comb in his back pocket, as usual. He gave his hair a going-through before returning it. Nothing right front, where his hanky had been. Left front: the book of matches. Quite forgotten. Couldn’t even remember putting it there.

He examined it again. Nothing on the outside. Flipped the flap. Inside, not the expected parade of cardboard matches, but a circle of crumpled pink plastic poking from a pocket where the matches would have been. He had slipped the object from its pouch before he realised he was holding
a condom. Only then did he also take in what Ton had scrawled in a spidery hand on the inside flap: a row of telephone figures under which were the words:

BE READY

NIETS IN

AMSTERDAM

IS WAT

HET LIJKT

GEERTRUI

PARACHUTES FALLING LIKE
confetti from a clear blue sky. My most vivid memory of his arrival.

Sunday 17 September 1944.

‘Good flying weather,’ Father had said. ‘We must expect more raids.’

All week British aeroplanes had bombed nearby. The railway line at Arnhem had been sabotaged by the Resistance and on Saturday the German authorities announced that if the culprits did not give themselves up by twelve o’clock on Sunday a number of our people would be shot. Everyone was very tense, now hopeful, now despondent. We knew the Allies had reached the Dutch border. Surely, people said, they will be here soon. But German soldiers were on the move all the time and more of them than ever were billeted in our village.

‘Are you ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of your freedom?’
De Zwarte Omroep
, our underground news-paper, had asked and told us: ‘Keep a bag ready with some underwear, some food, and your valuables.’ Mother had sewn money into our clothes. Father had instructed me in what to do if the worst came to the worst and we were separated. He meant, of course, what to do if he was killed.

I had just had my nineteenth bithday, and that Sunday morning should have been at church with my parents. But my brother Henk and his friend Dirk Wesseling were in hiding in the country with Dirk’s family on their farm because they did not want to be sent to the German labour camps, where many of our young men had been forced to
go. I was anxious about him. So early that morning took the risk, despite Father’s warning, and bicycled to Dirk’s farm from our home in Oosterbeek.

I was on my way back when I heard the planes and saw the parachutes. ‘Oh look!’ I called out, though there was nobody to hear me. ‘Look! How beautiful!’ And then I raced for home, saying to myself over and over again, ‘The Tommies have come! The Tommies have come! Liberation! Liberation!’

Father had been right. There had been more bombing while I was away. This time on the railway line near home. Windows were shattered in the houses near the railway dyke. And a Spitfire had strafed the German anti-aircraft guns in the meadow, killing some of the soldiers and wounding others. By the time I reached our street, the Germans were lined up waiting to leave. Trucks were already taking some of them away as I arrived at our house, where Father was fretting for me, sure I must have been killed. Mama, calm as ever, was busy carrying food into the cellar. But I knew she was not as calm as she appeared because between each trip she paused at the top of the cellar stairs and vigorously cleaned her spectacles. She always did that when she was excited. I stopped by her on my way down with an armful of blankets, and gave her a kiss. ‘Four years,’ she said, ‘four years I have waited for this day.’ I admired my mother and loved her dearly, and never more than at that moment, which, as things turned out, was the last quiet time we had together until it was all over many weeks later.

I was coming up from the cellar two or three trips after that when I heard a German soldier running by, shouting, ‘
Die Engländer, die Engländer!
’ I wanted to go out and see but Papa said no, frightened soldiers were the most dangerous of all, we must wait inside. We huddled together in the hall behind the front door, the three of us, Mama, Father and myself, but did not have long to wait before we heard
men going by in the direction of Arnhem and the sound of voices that were neither German nor Dutch. So many times we had sat round the radio, secretly listening to the news on the BBC. Papa and I had even practised our English on each other to be sure we would understand as much as possible when the liberators finally arrived. Yet now suddenly to hear English spoken right outside our own front door was a shock. Not that we could make out what was being said. But we knew from the sound, so different from German and Dutch. Papa whispered to me in English, ‘Music to my ears!’—one of a list of ‘familiar sayings’ we had used in our practice. We giggled together like small children before a long-awaited party. ‘You two!’ said Mother. ‘Behave yourselves!’ Mother had been a school teacher and was always very proper, even when we were on our own. But it was also a game; she liked to pretend Papa and I were naughty children.

At that moment there was a burst of gunfire, a thud against our door as if a couple of sacks of potatoes had been thrown against it, and then silence. We three clung to each other. Nothing happened for an age. Then we heard a man’s voice. What he said was such a shock, I still remember his words exactly. ‘By Christ, Jacko, I can’t hardly spit for thirst.’ He was so close up against our door that we all jumped. It took a moment or two for the words to sink in, but when they did, I ran to the kitchen, drew a jug of water, grabbed a glass, and ran back to the door. ‘Be careful, be careful,’ Mother was muttering. Papa held me back, and himself cautiously opened the door a crack and peered through. When he saw that two English soldiers were standing there, he threw the door wide open and held out his arms in welcome. But instead of saying anything, we three found ourselves tongue-tied. The soldiers were as startled by our door opening as we were by their arrival. They swung round, guns at the ready. But when they saw Father with his arms held out, Mother behind us with her
stern but smiling face, and me grinning stupidly, with a jug of water in one hand and a glass in the other, the one who had spoken before said, ‘Blimey, that’s what I call service!’

At which, Father found his voice and said in his very best English, ‘Welcome to Holland. Welcome to Oosterbeek. Welcome to our home.’

We laughed and there was hand-shaking all round, except for me, with my hands full. So I filled the glass and when the formalities were over, gave it to the soldier who had not yet spoken, who now said, ‘Thanks, miss, you’re an angel of mercy.’ He had eyes that made me melt. While they drank we exchanged names. Theirs were Max Cordwell and Jacob Todd.

By this time doors had opened all along the street and people had come outside, bearing flowers and food and drink, and waving orange ribbons, and even some with Dutch flags, which were strictly
verboten
by the Germans. There was kissing and hugging too.

When they had drunk, the soldiers asked how far it was to Arnhem. ‘Five kilometres,’ Father told them. As he spoke a Jeep drew up, and an officer stood up and shouted an order. ‘Sorry, got to go, sir,’ said Max. ‘
Veel succes
,’ said Father, forgetting his English. ‘
Succes!
’ Mother repeated. ‘Goodbye, miss,’ said Jacob. ‘Thanks for the water.’

As they turned to leave us, a member of our air-raid precaution volunteers came striding down the street, shouting, ‘Go inside, everybody! Go inside! It is still dangerous.’

The soldiers moved off. Father closed our door. Mother started polishing her spectacles more vigorously than I had ever seen her polish them before. And I realised only then that I had not uttered a word. ‘Oh Papa,’ I said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry; ‘I didn’t even say
hallo
!’ Father and Mother looked at me as if I had gone mad. Then Father broke into gales of laughter, and Mother put her arms around us, and swirled us round and round,
saying, ‘
Vrij, vrij, vrij
, free, free, free!’, till we were too giddy to stand. I don’t think I have ever felt so light-headed, before or since.