Birds

Dieke thinks about what she says when someone like Grandpa asks her what she’s doing. It depends what she’s doing, of course. If she’s drawing, she’ll say, ‘I’m drawing.’ But sometimes she’s really deep into her drawing and then she doesn’t say anything, if only because the tip of her tongue is in the way. Grandma’s never once asked her what she’s doing. But it’s not a hard question. Uncle Jan could easily come up with something. His shoulder blade goes up and down, he keeps scratching and poking, he keeps swearing under his breath. She takes a couple of careful backward steps until she’s back on the path with the broken shells. She squeezes her eyes half shut. There’s her rucksack. First, a drink. She gets the Jip and Janneke drinking cup out of the bag and shakes it from side to side before taking a couple of sips. The water’s already warm. An apple? No, she’ll save that for later. Anyway, she wants to eat the apples with Uncle Jan, not by herself. The bag shouldn’t be on the path, she needs to put it somewhere tidy. She looks over at the big tree. There’s a bench under it, in the shade. That’s a good spot.

It’s not really that much cooler by the bench, but the white shells don’t hurt her eyes here and the wooden seat isn’t hot to touch. She thinks of her red sunglasses, lying around somewhere at home, although she can’t quite remember where. On the back of the bench there’s a metal plate with writing she can’t read. She sits down next to her bag and takes her time to look around. All she can see of Uncle Jan is his head with the T-shirt wrapped around it. He’s talking to himself, but she can’t hear what he’s saying. Now he scratches his head with his fingers in his hair. She rubs her knees, which are still slightly black from the soil in the pot with the . . . ‘Cactus,’ she says. ‘Cactus, cactus . . .’ No matter how hard she rubs, her knees won’t come clean. ‘Christmas cactus!’

She looks up at the tree. Sitting next to each other on a low branch are two small birds. From this angle she can only see their heads. She stands up to get a better look. Both of the birds have their beaks wide open and she can almost hear them sucking the air in and blowing it out again. Are they sparrows? Or starlings? They must be a mummy and a daddy. Do they live in this big tree? She can’t see a birdhouse hung up on it anywhere. She takes another mouthful of warm water. As she’s carefully putting the cup back in her rucksack, a jet fighter tears overhead. She looks up at the birds in fright, but they don’t do a thing, not even rustling a feather or snapping their beaks shut. It’s like they don’t even hear the roar of the plane. ‘Hmm,’ she says, wiping her forehead with one hand and heading off to investigate the surroundings.

There aren’t actually many paths in the cemetery. One long path from the Polder House to where she’s standing, and then a square that leads to the one she and her mother came in by. Uncle Jan is at work on the square. There are wide stones, tall stones, white and black stones, a blue stone, a stone the light shines through. Sometimes there’s only a thick stone lying on the ground. Cemetery. What does that mean anyway? A little bit further along there’s a big hole in the tall hedge, on the side with the new estate. She doesn’t know if she’s allowed to just walk between all the hot stones, but she still wants to go over to look at that hole. Just before she gets there, she accidentally kicks over a vase on the side of a rectangle with little stones in it. There’s a bunch of flowers in the vase, very old flowers, because when they fall onto the ground they crumble into dust. She looks around, picks up the vase and puts it back where it was. There’s only a very small chip out of the top. Nothing too bad.

She reaches the hole in the hedge and looks out over a lawn and a wide ditch along the back gardens of a row of houses. The houses are a good bit lower than the cemetery. There’s someone standing at one of the windows, a woman with black hair. She starts tapping on the window. With a ring, Dieke thinks, because it makes a loud ringing sound. Is that for her? She doesn’t think so, and because she doesn’t think so, she doesn’t do anything. She just keeps standing where she’s standing and staring at the woman.

‘Dieke!’

She turns and walks, even more carefully than before, between the stones to the shell path. ‘Yes!’ she calls.

‘Where are you?’

‘Here!’ She walks back past the bench, the birds and her bag to where Uncle Jan is working. ‘Do you want an apple?’ she asks.

‘No. Later.’

‘What are you doing?’ Just try again.

‘I’m doing up this headstone.’

‘Cleaning it?’

‘That too. And then I’m going to make the letters white again. With paint.’

‘I like painting!’ She lifts up a leg, lets her foot hang limply and starts to shake her leg.

‘Shells in your sandals?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Can you do something for me, Diek?’

‘Sure.’

‘Could you fill this bucket up with water?’

‘From the ditch?’

‘No, of course not. From the tap.’

‘Where’s the tap?’

‘Over there.’ He points to a small house near the entrance behind the Polder House. ‘There’s a tap on the outside wall. It’s the cemetery worker’s tool shed. Can you manage that?’

‘Of course,’ she says indignantly.

‘OK, fine. I didn’t mean to offend you.’ Uncle Jan hands her the green bucket.

Dieke takes the bucket and walks over to the little house with the long name she’s already forgotten. The tap is at the front next to a door. Before turning it on, she pulls on the door to see if it’s locked. It doesn’t budge. Next to the door there’s a window. She turns the bucket upside down on the paving bricks and climbs up onto it, holding the window ledge to keep her balance. Even before she’s had a chance to pull herself up far enough to get a good look at whatever’s inside the house, she’s shocked to see a bird strung up on a piece of string. A dead black bird, blurry behind spiderwebs and dirty glass. She jumps down off the bucket. Takes a moment to get over the fright, then puts the bucket under the tap. It’s not that hard to turn it on, you just have to try. If it doesn’t work in one direction, it has to go the other way. The water starts to flow and splashes up, the drops turning into dark spots on her grey dress with purple flowers. Now it’s time for her to turn the tap off again, but no matter which way she turns it, the water keeps coming, pouring over the rim of the bucket and wetting her bare toes. Her heart is pounding, but she doesn’t want to start bawling straight away. She tries again first.

‘Uncle Jan!’

‘Couldn’t you remember which way to turn it?’

‘No.’ She sniffs.

‘It doesn’t matter, no problem. It’s off now.’

‘Yes.’

Uncle Jan half empties the bucket between the shrubs in front of the tool shed. Then unties his T-shirt and dips it in the water that’s left. He wrings it out and ties it back around his head. He takes her by the hand. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Now we’re going to scrub it.’

‘Scrub it?’

‘Clean it.’

‘Bananas first?’

‘Mm, yeah, a banana. I feel just like a banana now. On the bench under the tree?’

‘Yes.’

They walk over to the bench. Dieke gets the two bananas out of her bag and gives one to Uncle Jan. After peeling hers, she points out the birds.

‘Ah, blue tits.’

‘They’re hot.’

‘There’s a bucket of water right here.’

‘That’s way too deep.’

‘True. They’d drown in that.’

‘Are they a mummy and a daddy?’

‘I haven’t got a clue, Diek. You can’t tell with tits.’

Dieke’s finished her banana and hands the peel to Uncle Jan.

‘What am I supposed to do with this?’

‘Put it in the rubbish.’

‘Oh.’ He stands up, takes a couple of steps towards the hedge and tosses the banana peels over it. There’s a splashing noise and now Dieke knows that there’s a ditch on that side of the cemetery too. The cemetery is almost an island.

‘What is this place?’ she asks. ‘A cemetery?’

‘Well,’ says Uncle Jan. He comes back to the bench and sits down. But he doesn’t say any more.