Erwin Mortier - Shutterspeed

‘There there, Laura,’ soothed Uncle. ‘There’s not much we can do about it anyway.’

A loud thunderclap rattled the windows. It was as if a mighty block of ice had shattered in the air, right over the roof.

‘Well that was close,’ said Aunt. Shortly afterwards we heard the wail of sirens out in the street.

Uncle sat down with us again, around the table. He pushed his cup towards me.

‘Our pa used to get us out of bed at night when there was a thunderstorm,’ he mused as I poured him more tea. ‘He’d make all three of us — our ma, your dad and me — keep watch at separate windows in case the barn was struck by lightning. We thought that was stupid. We laughed at him, and he flew into a rage. But the only time he gave us a hiding was when he caught your dad and me lying down on the bleach field during a thunderstorm so we could watch the lightning. I can still see our pa in the doorway, giving us what for. Shaking his fists, swearing and yelling for us to come inside. And we just laughed. Until the nut tree about ten metres away from us split in two with a deafening crack. We ran back to the house as fast as we could. Worst hiding I ever had in my life.’

He dipped a lump of sugar in his tea and held it between his lips to suck the sweetness.

‘Dead scared, he was. You don’t realise these things till later.’

The whole time he was speaking I was stirring my spoon around in my empty cup.

‘Joris,’ Aunt sighed, ‘stop that please, it’s getting on my nerves.’

‘I want to go in the vault too,’ I said. ‘It’s not fair to leave me out.’

They exchanged looks.

Uncle Werner broke the silence. ‘Joris, my boy,’ he said with a smile, ‘whatever’s got into you? No sense in you worrying your head about that, you’ve got a while to go yet.’

Even Aunt brightened at this. ‘He’s jealous,’ she chortled. ‘Did you hear that, Werner? The lad’s jealous.’

‘I’ve reason to be,’ I replied gruffly, although I was close to laughing myself. ‘I always have to sleep on my own, anyway.’

‘Your turn will come,’ said Aunt. ‘Just you wait, there’ll be plenty of times when you wish you could sleep alone.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ cried Uncle in feigned indignation. He leaned over the corner of the table to kiss her on the neck.

She pushed him away, giggling. ‘Get off, you silly old goat.’

Then, turning to me, she smiled and ran her fingers through my hair.

For once I did not shrink away.

THE COBBLED STREET WAS STREWN WITH BROKEN BRANCHES. Workmen disentangled a wayward sheet of plastic from a tree near the church and swept up the fallen leaves.

Not a minute went by without the bell tinkling. It was Saturday, the busiest day of the week, because the shop would be closed on Monday, too.

Uncle and Aunt were run off their feet. The breakfast table had not yet been cleared, the newspaper was spread out among the breadcrumbs.

Aunt had left the breadbasket next to my plate, with a clean tea towel folded over it because of the flies, and a note for me: ‘Joris, you must call at Miss van Vooren’s before 11. Like I said. Remember to comb your hair.’

‘Like I said’ meant there was no point in trying to skive off. Trifling with Miss van Vooren would not go unpunished.

‘Ah, Miss van Vooren,’ Uncle used to say, ‘a spinster if ever there was one. Looks it too. To tell you the truth, I have never known anyone as spinsterish as her. Sour as a lemon, she is.’

He never made such remarks in his wife’s hearing. Aunt was rather impressed by Miss van Vooren.

Miss van Vooren lived on the outskirts of the village, near the dairy and the stream. Her house was surrounded by cedars which had shot up taller than the roof over the years, and which now plunged the paths at their feet into deep shade. It was a sturdy, brick building with narrow bay windows on either side, a dilapidated south-facing veranda and, over the front door, a wrought-iron balcony that had seen better days.

Even in the freshness of that morning, the air above the garden path seemed to turn viscous as I approached the house. The sounds from the road were muffled by the trees, and the farther I walked the eerier I found the silence and the more ominous the crunch of my shoes on the gravel.

When I pressed the brass doorbell, ornate but somewhat tarnished, the tinkle took some time to die away in the hallway, suggesting spacious, gracious living quarters. Once upon a time there must have been a maid, and even a manservant according to Aunt, but the current mistress of the house had been its sole occupant for years.

It was a long while before she answered the door. Perhaps she had paused in front of the mirror above the umbrella stand to pat her hair into shape or to straighten the lapels of her slate-grey two-piece suit.

‘Ah there you are, Joris,’ Miss van Vooren said drily, checking to see whether I was wiping my feet properly on the coconut doormat. ‘Come in.’

She did not extend her hand. She never did. I don’t know that she ever really noticed me. In her eyes I was probably little more than a glorified lackey, a shopping bag on legs, something serviceable that only merited attention when failing to respond, which did not happen often.

I followed her into the hallway. The sound of her clunky heels on the white marble floor tiles drifted up the formal staircase, which seemed all the grander for the landing with a flower arrangement from which protruded long, plumed grasses so delicate as to be pulverised at the least current of air.

A second door opened, and Miss van Vooren ushered me into the parlour. The dark wooden cabinets and crochet doilies resembling ropy cobwebs were always bathed in a muddy sort of light, as if the sunbeams, having infiltrated the room through the lace-edged net curtains, were imprisoned there, glancing from lampshade to table leg to the plates on display and back again, growing old and stale in the smell of snuff tobacco that billowed towards me each time I entered.

I found it hard to imagine that Miss van Vooren would indulge in such an eccentric habit as taking snuff. She was generally considered a beacon of rectitude and virtue, which in her case amounted to being incredibly stingy. Uncle Werner used to say she’d sooner lick the floor of the church clean with her own tongue than stump up for a floor-cloth.

Perhaps she took a pinch now and then as a kill-or-cure remedy for her chronically congested nose, a topic which, when she was feeling brighter than usual, warranted several minutes of conversation with Uncle.

For some reason he always referred to her as ‘the skinny woodpecker’. But to me she was more like a dried flower in a botanical album, a flattened, faded buttercup or a poppy with vestiges of colour still in the stamens, but almost transparent and powder-dry.

Aunt pressed me to be polite to Miss van Vooren at all times. ‘She’s had more than her share of troubles, poor thing. You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy, what she’s been through.’

There were rumours, which seemed all the more plausible for the hushed tones in which they were passed on, that she had been jilted at the altar, that she had waited in vain at the church, where the pillars and candelabras had been decked with roses and carnations at considerable expense by her father, a man reputed to prefer sleeping with his money than his wife.

He had also paid for the crêpe de Chine gown worn by the bride, his only daughter: a shockingly expensive garment according to Aunt, though in my mind it was just as dingy and drab as the old bedspread draped over the sofa on which she now motioned me to sit. She sat down on a straight-backed chair, clasping her hands on the tabletop in front of her in a pose of authority.