Gerbrand Bakker - Ten White Geese

A woman put a plate of bitterballen down between them. ‘Careful,’ she said. ‘Hot.’

‘Thanks,’ the policeman said.

‘It’s not even what she did,’ the husband said. ‘But her having done it. Someone doing things, secret things, things from which you — me in this case — are completely excluded.’

They both ate a bitterball .

‘Go online when you get home,’ the policeman said. ‘Find one and give them a call.’

‘Yes.’

‘You really have no idea where she’s gone?’

‘No. Abroad, I think.’

‘Why do you think that?’

‘How long can you stay in hiding here?’

‘For all we know she could be round the corner. The closer you are, the further away.’

‘That’s true.’

‘So your mother-in-law wanted you in jail.’

‘Yeah. She thinks it’s all my fault.’

‘And your father-in-law?’

‘He says “no”, “yes” and “ ach , woman”. He takes it all in his stride.’

They ate the rest of the bitterballen in silence, washing the heat off their tongues with beer.

‘Shall we take in a disco?’ the policeman asked.

‘Jesus, man.’

‘How much longer?’

The husband looked down at the cast on his foot. ‘Three weeks or so. It was her books.’

The policeman laughed.

The bar grew busier, noisier. The barman gestured at the policeman in a way the husband didn’t understand. He stood up, grabbing his crutches. ‘I’m off before it’s too crowded for me to get through.’

‘Keep me up to date.’

‘I will.’

They shook hands. The husband paid the tab on the way out and when he turned back at the door, he saw the policeman sitting at the bar. The barman watched him go. It was raining. He hobbled to the tram stop, trying to imagine what a real-life private investigator would be like. In the glass hoarding there was a poster of a skater in a vest, advertising bread. A taxi sped by in the tram lane, splashing water up over the plaster cast.

‘Rotterdam,’ Bradwen said. ‘Is that a nice city?’

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Not really. It’s ugly actually.’

‘Is that why you’re here now?’

His hair was tousled, he’d come straight from the divan, and never before had she so longed to run her fingers through it. She had already noticed the particular way he had of sighing, and when he did, it was almost impossible to resist touching him on the head. The dog seemed to have picked up his sigh. It was only natural for him to ask questions; people talk to each other. Maybe she needed to pre-empt him. ‘ Ach ,’ she said, pouring the coffee.

‘I think that’s a beautiful word,’ he said.

‘ Ach ?’

‘Yes. We don’t have a word like that. One that means “Shut up, you”.’

‘Eat,’ she said.

He cut the bread, tossing a crooked slice to Sam, who had found a fixed spot in front of the cooker. He smeared on a thick layer of butter. The traffic news was on the radio. While he ate, he drew circles on a piece of paper, alternating between yellow and brown felt tips. ‘What are we going to do today?’ he asked.

‘The garden.’

‘And the TV?’

‘Oh, yes. Do that first.’

‘Fine.’ He passed her a slice of bread. ‘You’re not eating.’

‘I’ve never eaten much in the mornings,’ she said.

‘OK.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll go and brush my teeth.’ The dog went upstairs with him.

She got up and went over to the kitchen window. It was misty again and still. Good weather for working, but she had to lean on the draining board. She lit the two candles on the windowsill and hummed along with the radio. The cooker warmed her. Water ran in the pipes. He turned off the upstairs tap, sending a loud clunk through the whole system. The boy and the dog came back down. She heard him open the front door. ‘Go and catch some grey squirrels,’ he said. Before he came back into the kitchen, she wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand.

‘Grey squirrels?’ she asked.

‘Immigrants. Taking the place over.’

‘Just like me.’

‘Yes, you’re an immigrant too.’

‘But you don’t set the dog on me.’

‘Of course not.’ He gave off a sharp smell of toothpaste. ‘Living room?’

‘I think so.’

He walked out of the kitchen. Rhys Jones in socks had been laughable, but that didn’t apply to Bradwen. His were hiking socks, blue and grey, the kind with an L and an R. She heard him pace through the living room, where she kept the standard lamp on all day. Distant barking came from outside, from the far side of the stream by the sound of it. ‘Got it!’ the boy called.

She went into the living room. He was standing in a corner holding a cable that came down through the ceiling.

‘Now there’s a moment’s tension while we see if we can plug it in somewhere on the TV,’ he said.

She needed to sit down. The boy in the yellow light of the lamp, happy to have found the aerial cable; the wood-burning stove whose coals she had raked over like Cinderella earlier that morning, blowing to get it burning again without matches. She watched him lift the TV out of the cardboard box and put it on the floor in the corner. He went down on one knee and fiddled with the back of the set, his T-shirt creeping up to reveal a strip of lower back above the waistband of his jeans. ‘Done it,’ he said. ‘Now, a power point.’

‘There.’ She pointed to the double socket the lamp was plugged into.

He plugged the TV in too and turned it on. A picture appeared immediately: a rough sea, people in rowing boats bobbing around what looked like the wing of a small plane. ‘ Real Rescues ,’ Bradwen said. ‘Every morning from quarter past nine to ten o’clock.’

‘Fantastic,’ she said. ‘Turn it off.’

He turned it off and stood up. ‘Shall I carry on with the trees?’

‘If you don’t mind. I find it very heavy work.’

‘Of course I don’t mind.’ He looked at her.

‘Are you going to finish that path too?’ she asked.

‘Sure. It’s my job. That’s what I get paid for.’

‘But not tomorrow?’

‘If that’s OK by you. My time’s my own.’

‘Mine too,’ she said.

‘Maybe we can do a section together?’

‘I would very much like to go up that mountain sometime.’

He went upstairs and came down soon afterwards with his coat and hat on. ‘Do I use a kitchen chair?’

‘Yes. It’s still out there. I forgot to bring it in.’ She didn’t move from the sofa, even though she wished she was standing next to him at the front door.

He pulled on his boots and went out, calling the dog. A gust of cold air blew into the room. She lit a cigarette.

After a while she got up to put a log in the stove. Then she swept the kitchen floor. An old kettle was steaming gently on the cooker. Now and then she looked out. Sometimes Bradwen was standing on the chair sawing, sometimes he carried a branch to the pile against the low garden wall and disappeared almost entirely in the mist. The dog was nowhere in sight. She wondered if he’d noticed that she’d lain on his divan.

She sat on the sofa in the living room watching Escape to the Country . Bradwen was doing the shopping in the car. Sam was lying at her feet. While an agitated couple walked around on the screen with the woman shouting, ‘I’d rather die than give up my cats,’ she wept silently. The wood-burning stove, the big cooker, the new TV and radio, the boy and the dog, the garden. ‘Dog,’ she said and Sam raised his head, licking the back of her hand. How on earth had Dickinson done that, withdrawing further and further, writing poetry as if her life depended on it, and dying? The life of the spirit, human truth — or authenticity? — expressed through the imagination and not by deeds. She sipped her red wine. Always red wine, as if it were some kind of tonic. Her uncle used to drink a medicinal glass of Pleegzuster Bloedwijn every night. Did they still make that? Red wine fortified with health-giving minerals? ‘Watch the cat,’ said the woman on TV. She climbed a staircase with a hideous carpet, neither stroking nor paying any other attention to the cat, which was lying on one of the steps. At least, she assumed her uncle drank a glass every night; she didn’t know what he did when she wasn’t there. She wondered what the boy would bring home. She had wanted to give him a shopping list but he wouldn’t have it. He also refused the money she tried to give him. She thought briefly about her husband and saw him before her: pulling the laces of his running shoes tight, straightening his back and opening the door. Gone. Would he be sitting at home now, quietly drinking a beer and thinking, She’ll come back? She took another mouthful of wine and lit a cigarette. Here, she thought. I’m here. Now. The Englishwoman was standing in a garden with a view of a meadow. ‘I can imagine myself living here. Dogs in the garden and a horse in the shed over there.’ Fucking cow, she thought.