Straw

Now everything’s finished. The biscuits, the advocaat, even the water. The advocaat ran out after Dieke had stood downstairs for a while, calling up. When was that? An hour ago? Half an hour? Things about Jan, who ‘was painting a stone with a really little brush’ and about ‘an auntie, but I don’t get that’. About someone called Leslie and Jan saying that Leslie is ‘a pick ninny’. Dieke herself had ‘cleaned all these stones with dead people under them’ and that had ‘felt a bit funny’. She hadn’t said anything in reply, of course, and eventually Dieke went away again. Dirk snorted for a while, then he too fell silent.

Anna Kaan has crept over to the edge of the straw and tries to look out through the open barn doors. He’s cut down a tree, but which one? She can’t see anything except a rectangle of gravel. And Rekel of course, hanging around the doorway: a paw on the concrete for a while, then a paw on the gravel. If she really wants to know what Zeeger’s up to, she’ll have to get down, and her whole body’s itching, she’s that keen. I’m not going, she thinks. Not yet. That raindrop. That’s what I’ve decided on. They can wait a bit longer.

Again she hears the chainsaw starting up. Another tree? A little later, Rekel reappears at the barn door. Why doesn’t that dog just come in? What’s all this indecision about? She rubs her hands to warm up her fingers. It’s because of lying still, she thinks. Her blood’s not flowing properly.

Fortunately no memories of earlier celebrations have surfaced. She had dozed off and was half asleep when her granddaughter woke her. The old Queen’s hat had appeared before her. It was a beautiful hat with a broad round brim, and made of fabric that complemented her dress. A dress with flowers on it, stems included. Leather gloves, but not for the cold, because it was beautiful early-summer weather. And the one glove she pulled off, and the words she said. The cheek she touched, briefly, with her bare hand. The two women behind her, one very posh with a yellow pillbox hat, and one who kept studying the Queen from close quarters, almost shamelessly. The one glove held loosely in the other, gloved, hand. ‘The Queen touched her,’ she was mumbling, as if it had just happened, when Dieke shocked her awake with a blaring shout of ‘Grandma! What are you doing up there?’ Incomprehensible, that child still wanting to talk to her, hoping for an answer.