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“Father Forgive Us...” Coming to terms with my tears

Family History / Autobiography by Mien Blom

ISBN 0646-41301-5 National Library of Australia Cataloguing March 2001 “Father Forgive Us...” Coming to terms with my tears

Published by Centre Press P.O. Box 4072 Alice Springs NT 0871

Fax: (08) 8955 0214 Ph: (08) 8955 0064 Mobile: 0438 610 070 Email: [email protected] Website: www.mienblom.com

Copyright @ Wilhelmina J. Blom, 2001

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in an archival system or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.

Second Edition, August 2001

Printed by Asprint Alice Springs NT AUSTRALIA INTRODUCTION

MIEN BLOM was born in Holland in October 1939 where she grew up on a small farm. In 1971 Mien emigrated with her husband Fred and six young children to Alice Springs in Central Australia where she still lives today. She has worked as a nursing aid at a local nursing home for five years before starting their picture-framing / leadlighting business in 1980. While recuperating from a nervous breakdown following the death of her mother, Mien joined the FAW in 1990 to obtain help with writing her family history. “Father Forgive Us”... is the first part of her autobiography. She is now working on her second and third book about the family’s first years in Central Australia and her lifelong interest and involvement in elderly care. DEDICATION For children and adults of all ages; that they may find the peace of forgiving and forgiveness and enjoy the freedom of coming to terms with their tears. The Author’s Family

Johanna (Opoe Jans) Voskuilen, born 30 December 1880, married in April 1906 to: Simon van de Grootevheen, born 28 July 1876. Jans Voskuilen and Simon van de Grootevheen They had three children: Johanna (Tante Jans) born 22 March 1907 Aleida (Aaltje, mother of the author) born 7 April 1909 Johannes (Ome Hannes) born 18 August 1910.

Simon van de Grootevheen died 13 August 1916. Jans van de Grootevheen re-married on 8 October 1919 to: Hendrikus (Hendrik) Kleter born1 April 1883. Jans and Hendrik Kleter had three children: Wilhelmus (Ome Wim): 23 November 1920 Anna (Tante Annie): 21 January 1923 Cornelia (Tante Cor): 26 May 1927

Aaltje van de Grootevheen was in the convent from 1929-1934 Annie and Cor Kleter emigrated to Canada in 1948 Hendrik (Opa Kleter) died on 6 July 1951 Aaltje van de Grootevheen married in August 1936 to: Bart Hooft (father of the author) born 23 January 1902 only child of:

Wouterus (Wous) Hooft, born 11 January 1862, and Wilhelmina (Mijntje) Epskamp, 22 September 1870. Bart Hooft’s first wife Wilhelmina (Wijm) Kok died in 1934 They had no children.

Aaltje van de Grootevheen and Bart Hooft had 7 (8) children: Wouterus (Wout): 16 August 1937 Simon (Siem): 3 November 1938 Wilhelmina (Mientje): 30 October 1939 (Author) Hendrikus (Henk): 16 July1941 Unnamed, stillborn baby-girl, born in April 1942 Wilhelmus (Wim): 9 March 1943 Johanna (Joke or Jopie) 7 May 1944 Bartholomeus (Bartje) 1 January 1946. Wous (Opa) Hooft died in September 1943 Mijntje Epskamp (Opoe Mijn) died 5 September 1950

Father Bart died on 17 October 1945. Mother Aaltje re-married on 9 May 1951 to: Gerrit (Pa) was born on 8 November 1902 They had one son: Ties, born on 11 December 1954 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As this is a true story I have used real names except where it was not appropriate to do so. “Father Forgive Us...” is my honest recollection of what happened and I acknowledge that others involved would have seen and felt the facts differently. I am fully aware that by writing about my own experiences I also put my family and the many people I encountered into the public eye, while some would have preferred to have kept private. Without them the story would not be complete and I sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this may cause them. I am very grateful for the help and encouragement from my friends at the Fellowship of Australian Writers, including Gabrielle Dalton, the author of “No Place for a Woman”, who worked on my first draft in 1991, who helped me on my way. Special thanks to my friends Marjorie Gook, Rose Coppock, Rose Barry, Jacinta Reeves and Betty de Groot, and to my sons Eugene and Richard for their valuable comments, their editing skills and their patience while I grappled with English spelling and grammar during the ten years I worked on the story. I am indebted to Marjorie Gook, who spent more than sixty years teaching “proper English”, for the many hours she devoted to correcting my work. Speaking English is quite different to writing it correctly! I apologise to her for not always following her advice when I felt that it stunted my way of speaking. I don’t know what I would have done without her!. My heartfelt thanks also go to my own, as well as my husband’s family for their support and encouragement, to each of my children, my son-in-law Brian and my grandsons Steven and Darrell for their generous patience while teaching me the use of the computer, and to our youngest daughter Regine for scanning the many photographs included in this book. I am also very happy that the printing of “Father Forgive UsÉ” could be done locally by Max Kleiner of Asprint. I have known Max for many years and knew that my book was in very good hands. Thanks also to Deven Crawford for her dedication while preparing the printing of the book. A special thank you also goes to Leoni Read for encouraging me to speak with the students at Catholic High, and Mrs Minna Sitzler, Deputy to the Administrator of the Northern Territory and Mrs Bev Ellis of Dymocks in Alice Springs for making the launch of the first edition on the 26th of May 2001 such a wonderful experience for me. I also thank everyone of my readers, especially my friend Francoise Barkeij and Wabe Roskam from the Dutch Weekly, for their enthusiasm and support which enabled me to have my first book reprinted so soon. Last but by no means least my appreciation goes to my husband Fred. Without his trust in me, and his continuous support picking me up whenever I was down, “Father Forgive Us..” would never have been as complete as it now is.. FOREWORD

“Father forgive them, they don’t know what they do...” my stepfather always said, no matter whether he was talking about a salesman who was dishonest or Hitler killing the Jews. I in turn, needed to forgive, not only my stepfather for sexually and verbally abusing me, but also my mother for turning a blind eye to what was happening, and the local priest for destroying my belief in a loving God. Through researching and piecing together the story of what happened in the lives of my grandmother, my mother and myself, I became strongly aware of how little we know why we say and do things, which hurt others. I had always loved my mother. It wasn’t until after her death that I became angry with her for the harsh way she had treated me when I was a child.

In November 1987, I went to Holland with my husband, as Mum was very ill. I had worked with elderly people in Alice Springs as a nursing-aide for five years and looked forward to nursing my own mother. I expected to have a happy time with her, getting closer as we were talking about her life. But that was not to be. Instead of having a loving time, my mother seemed to take all the frustration of her difficult life out on me. Some of the things she hurled at me were too painful to be repeated for a long time, even to myself. Because I could not get through to her, I wrote a letter to her, in which I told her that we all loved her, despite the bad way she was behaving, not only towards me, but to visitors and most of her other children as well. When she read those lines, she put the letter aside angrily, scoffing at me for lying, as she regarded herself unlovable. A few days later, when I came downstairs to wash and dress her early in the morning, I found Mum reading my letter again. She looked up to me with great pain in her eyes. “Honestly Mien, I don’t know why I’m so nasty to you”, she said. We had hugged each other and cried. I expected our relationship to improve but it didn’t; it got worse instead. One night, after a particularly bad incident, I cried bitterly. Thinking that my mother’s mind had gone, she had died for me at that point in time. But the following morning she let me know that she was not crazy; she was only being honest with me, she said. Hearing her say calmly that she meant every word of the nasty things she had said the previous evening, was much harder to bear than anything she had said to me, ever before. Unable to be with her any longer, I had gone to stay with a friend in the far south of Holland, where I bawled my eyes out for a couple of days. My friends saying that people usually hurt the child or person they loved most only made me more angry and frustrated. When I returned a week later, the situation had not improved much. Our goodbye, before I returned to Australia after those six awful weeks, was very cold and dry-eyed. I had ordered flowers with a message of love to be delivered immediately after my husband and I had gone, and I cried uncontrollably in the car, all the way to the airport. As soon as we came back to Australia in the second week of January 1988, I rang Mum. My sister-in-law, who was looking after Mum, passed on her message that she was too tired to talk to me. I felt terribly hurt when I put the phone down, as she clearly did not want to talk to me. But then, the next day, Mum rang me herself, and we talked as if I had not been there at all. That was the last time I heard her voice. During the following three weeks she was too tired to get out of bed to answer the phone. She died in her sleep on the eighth of February 1988. The months following her death became a nightmare for me and I was heading for a nervous breakdown a year later. Although my children say that I never talked about my mother, she controlled every thought I had, day and night. In the end, I was convinced that she had taken possession of me, and that I was going crazy. By writing her life story, I now know that Mum’s selfishness was a way of self-preservation. Not only the way she had been treated as a child by her own mother, but her four years of unquestioning obedience as a nun in the convent, and above all, her nine-month stay in a mental institution, after giving birth to me, had made her the way she was. Mum never talked about what had happened in the institution, “that awful place” and, without her written permission, I was not permitted to see her records after her death. A person had to be dead for seventy-five years before authorities could give out any information from their archives, even to the patient’s closest relatives. But, from the history of the institution, which is now a museum, I know that they were experimenting with shock and deep sleep therapy at the time, which often had disastrous consequences, such as loss of memory and a zombie-like existence. Until I reconstructed the happenings before my wedding, I had no idea how Mum had struggled with her feelings of jealousy towards me. It slowly became clear to me that people handled others according to the ways they have been taught and treated, especially as a child. Our characters are obviously formed by our particular circumstances, the times we live in and, above all, our inherited emotions as well as the influences of every person we encounter. Therefore, we can not judge anybody and we are all responsible for each other. Writing “Father Forgive Us...” has not only made me feel more compassionate towards my mother and my grandmother, but it freed me from the burden of my recurring childhood problems. After my mother’s death, I only saw the negative things that happened to me whilst I grew up; now I can see the good times we had and the many positive things that came out of it. I am grateful for the many times Mum stood up for me while she struggled with her jealousy. I also realised that my stepfather, who made life miserable for all of us, could hardly have acted in any other way because of his own background and upbringing. It made me able to forgive them as well as myself for the mistakes I made, and still make myself. As it made me aware that we know nothing about people, even of those we meet on a daily basis, I am now giving everybody the benefit of the doubt. It has also rekindled my marriage which suffered because of the abuse of my stepfather, even though mine was insignificant compared to what still happens to millions of children today. Until I had counselling at the age of fifty, I did not really know what was meant by ‘being sexually abused’. I thought that that was ‘going the whole way’, which was not what happened to me at all. I didn’t know what was meant by ‘coming to terms’, and how to go about it either. That is why I wrote “Father Forgive Us...” in such an explicit way. I have since learned that I was not the only ignorant person; many, even well educated people don’t really know what ‘being abused’ entails, when depression becomes a ‘nervous breakdown’ and how to go about ‘coming to terms’ with it. Children are now a lot more protected; some of them barely dare to say “hello” to us because we are ‘strangers’. But they are exposed to far more violence, via the media as well as the careless conversations of adults around them. To ‘dig deep’ is heavy going at times, but the result, being able to forgive through understanding, was well worth the effort as it made me come to terms with it all, and my cheerful inner strength, which has undoubtedly helped me through the difficult times, returned. However, it wasn’t until I came to the fine tuning of the last chapters of this book, which sums up the last forty years of my life, that I realised that my inability to accept my tears, has caused me the most hardship throughout my life. I now hope that my story will make us all more aware of the far-reaching effects our words and actions have, especially on children.

Mien Blom Alice Springs, August 2001 Chapter ONE

In 1947, six months after my father’s death, I was sent to live with my mother’s mother at her farm for a while. I was six at the time and avoided her as much as I could, as she was a cranky old woman. Later, when I was a teenager, I visited her often in her depressing little room at the convent where the nuns cared for her. She just sat there, praying her rosary day in, day out for years, asking God to release her from “this valley of tears on earth”. I always tried to make her laugh but the only times she managed a smile was when her picture was taken, and when her wish to die was finally granted; she lay in her coffin with a contented smile on her face. Through learning about her life, I slowly began to understand how a happy young girl could turn into such a bitter woman, and this made me more compassionate towards my mother, who made life rather difficult for me.

Opoe (grandma) Jans was born in the early morning of the 30th of December 1880, on an isolated farm in the wide-open fields called polders, in the middle of Holland. Being Catholics, her parents had to have their newborn baby baptised as soon as possible as the baby’s soul would not go to heaven if it died in a state of ‘original sin’. It was mid winter. It had been raining for weeks, followed by a spell of frost and snow. The low-lying polders were flooded, the roads impassable. The little girl’s parents racked their brains to find a way to take her to the church, more than ten kilometres away. A priest would only come to the house if it were matter of life and death and only in extreme circumstances could a child be baptised by a lay person at home. By mid-morning, Jansje’s father decided to clean the gierbak (the manure cart) and use it as a boat. The rectangular tank of the manure cart was about two metres long, one metre wide and a metre deep, made from thick timber and waterproofed with a layer of tar. It had a wide plank around the top edges, which the farmer stood on while he scooped the sloppy manure out of the tank and spread it over the land, as the horse pulled the cart around the paddock at a steady pace. The plank would keep the cold wind out of the ‘boat’. With the help of the live-in knecht (farmhand) and Jansje’s two older brothers, her father lifted the heavy box off the axle. Then they heaved and pushed it through the snow, down to the edge of the flooded canal next to the boerderij (farmhouse). They scraped for hours to remove the thick layer of muck, which had accumulated over many years, not overly concerned that they could not get rid of the smell. “No true boeremeid (farmer’s girl) would bother about that!” they laughed. After the midday meal a thick quilt was put in the bottom of the tank and with great difficulty the ‘boat’ was pushed to the edge of the water. It was bitterly cold even though the sun was shining. Little Jansje was tightly bundled up in a warm blanket and carefully carried into the funny looking boat by the neighbour’s wife, who had assisted with the birth during the night. After they had settled in Jansje’s father climbed in too and with a long polsstok (jumping-pole) he pushed the awkward boat through the waterways, trying to keep it afloat in the middle of the stream. When they came as close to the church as they could get, Jansje’s father secured the boat to a tree. With the tiny baby in the neighbour’s arms, they walked the last kilometre and a half to the church, carefully picking their way along the slippery, snow covered track. By the time Jansje was baptised and her soul saved, it was four o’clock in the afternoon. The sun had already set when they climbed back into the boat and it was well after dark when they got home, tired but relieved to be able put the ‘innocent little angel’ safely back in her mother’s arms. Most Catholic families had a lot of children but Opoe Jans had only two, much older brothers. Her mother had had several miscarriages before Jans (‘je’ for small or little) her last child was born. Being the only girl and very pretty, Jansje always had plenty of attention from everyone around her but she was apparently never spoilt by either of her parents. Like every other girl at that time she had to help her mother with the many tasks in and around the house from a very early age. The Zuiderzee, now called IJselmeer, was an inland-sea at that time only five kilometres away from my great-grandparents’ boerderij. Because the dykes were low in those days, seawater often flooded the land, isolating the farms in the area for weeks at a time, ruining their crops. But, although the isolation and the flooding made life difficult at times, my great- grandfather made a good living. His farm was on higher ground than most and was considered one of the best in the area. The house, built around 1850, was typical of the region in the centre of Holland. Both living quarters and stables were under one long thatched roof that came down steeply to about a metre and a half off the ground. The front of the house was built of clay bricks and consisted of one big, square living-room-cum-kitchen called the heert (pronounce ‘hered’). It had two tall windows at the front and an open fireplace, which took up the entire back wall. On one side of the room, were two built-in bedstees, (pronounced ‘bed-stays’) cupboards the size of a double mattress. The indispensable chamber-pot, with or without a lid, was kept in the storage space underneath the bed amidst all sorts of household goods as well as the potatoes and a supply of wood for the kachel (wood and coal burning stove). The walls of the bedstees were whitewashed and they had no window. The entrance was usually hidden from the livingroom by double doors or curtains for privacy. On the opposite side of the heert was the geut (scullery), a narrow room with a flagstone floor where milk-cans and buckets were scrubbed after milking, butter and cheese were made and the weekly washing done. The outside door of the geut was the only entrance to the living quarters of the house. Behind this door was a hand-swung pump where the farmers washed themselves, and in the opposite corner, beside the door to the stables at the back of the house stood a furnace, used to boil the white linens as well as the potatoes for the pigs. In the geut, towards the front of the house was the kelder (cellar), a two by three metre room, dug about a metre into the ground, where dairy products, preserves, fruit and vegetables were kept cool along with a good supply of brandy and jenever (Dutch gin). The entrance door to the kelder was no more than a metre high and the room was just high enough to stand up straight in if you were of medium height. On the wooden floor above the kelder was a small room for the maid, called the op-kamer. It had a tiny window and only enough space for a stoel (chair) beside a narrow single bed under the sloping roof. Being the only girl, and there were no live-in grandparents, young Jans did not have to share her double bed in the bedstee unless visitors were staying the night. Her two brothers, Hannes and Kees shared a double bed in the kit, a small room, built with match-boards under the thatched roof on the timber platform (called the hilt) above the cow stables at the back of the house. Like most farmhouses at that time, the back of my great-grandparents’ boerderij was made from large planks, preserved with a layer of black tar. Cows, calves and horses were stabled on both sides of the long walls. The open space in the middle, called the deel (pronounced ‘dale’), was paved with clay bricks. The horses were free standing in small compartments but the cows stood side by side tight between wooden posts with ropes with their heads towards the deel, leaving just enough space for them to lie down in the thick layer of straw. The long feeding trough in front of them and the square ditch along the back wall to catch their valuable manure were made of concrete. Hay and sugar beet, the animals’ staple food in winter, were stacked on the hilt above the cows, leaving an open space for the knecht to sleep. At my great-grandfather’s place, the pigs were kept outside in separate sheds, but poorer families had to keep those foul-smelling animals at the back of their houses too. All animals were kept indoors from mid October until the end of April, when the long winter usually finished. When the animals could stay outside, the stables were emptied out and scrubbed clean. Because the men were busy on the land at that time of year, spring-cleaning was the women’s job. Until a pump was installed at the back of the deel around the turn of the century this messy job had to be done with buckets of water, carried from a nearby sloot or the well if they had one. When the stables were scrubbed clean the walls were whitewashed with lime and water. During the summer months the family used the deel to live in. That way, the heert could be kept clean and fresh and was used only for important visitors like the priest or the children’s teacher. My great-grandparents’ boerderij was appropriately called ‘Far in the Field’; it was miles away from any town or village, by Dutch standards, that is. The Catholic Church owned many farms but most of my grandmother’s family had their own places. The endless stretches of grassland in the polder were cut into small paddocks by sloten (deep ditches) and canals, two to three metres wide. A lot of those paddocks were also owned by the church and hired out to the boeren (farmers) who needed more land. My great-grandfather was caretaker of most of those paddocks. He kept the waterways clean, informed the owners when the grass was ready to be cut, helped with the hay-making and looked after their cattle, mostly young heifers and ‘dry’ cows. Milking cows were kept as close to home as possible but six weeks before their calves were due, the pregnant cows’ milk was allowed to dry up; they were then taken to the paddocks further away in the polder. The caretaker kept an eye on them in case they were sick or calved prematurely. My great-grandfather’s pure-bred bull proved very profitable as his customers often let him have first choice of their calves to add to his own herd. School became compulsory in Holland around the time Opoe Jans was born. Her brothers went to the public school at Hoogland, a small, fast growing dorp about fifteen kilometres away. In 1888, the nuns opened a school for Catholic girls in the same village but, as she had to walk for more than two hours to get there, Opoe’s parents did not send their daughter to school until she was nine. By that time Hannes, her eldest brother had already left school and Kees only had one more year to go. On their way to school Jans and Kees always called in at a relatives’ farm halfway, to have a drink or to warm their hands and feet. In winter their klompen (clogs) were filled with straw to keep their feet warm. They had to leave home at six-thirty in the morning to be at school at nine! Their lunches, which consisted of a few slices of roggebrood (black rye bread) with smout (molten pig fat) and kaas (cheese) or spek (smoked, solid white pig fat), an apple in summer and a carrot in winter, were carried in a string bag around their necks. The only times they had butter on their bread was on Christmas day, a wedding or a funeral. To enable children closer to the village to go home for the customary hot midday meal, there was a two-hour break, from twelve until two and school did not finish until five o’clock in the afternoon. During the winter months, when darkness set in as early as four o’clock in the afternoon and lingered on until eight or nine in the morning, the children who lived far away were allowed to arrive an hour later and leave an hour earlier. That still meant that Opoe and her brother had to walk most of the way in complete darkness. Sometimes they were lucky when a cart passed them on the road and they were given a ride, or they were allowed to hang from the back of it. Like every other child, they loved sliding along the loose sand, the slippery mud when it was raining or along the solid, frozen track in winter. Bad weather conditions and floods often kept young Jansje home and when she was twelve she was no longer required to attend school. From then on Jans helped her mother, replacing the maid who was no longer required. She could read and write and knew how to add up, multiply and subtract; there was nothing more a girl needed to learn. Like every farming family, Jans’ parents grew their own fruit and vegetables and chicken feed, which was mainly the women’s job. Feeding the calves, pigs and chickens was also regarded as the boerin’s task and they were often called upon to help the men-folk with milking, planting, weeding, harvesting and hooien (haymaking). Fruit had to be dried or bottled and vegetables were preserved with salt in big earthen pots for the long winter months. In autumn, a fat pig was slaughtered and preserved, which in most families had to last for a whole year. Only rich farmers could afford to eat beef occasionally in Holland at that time. To prevent the milk from going sour, it had to be made into boter and kaas as soon as possible. Eggs, butter and cheese, along with any cows or pigs the boer wanted to sell, were taken to Baarn or Nijkerk, several kilometres away to be sold to merchants and towns-folk at the markets. Because her two brothers were both working at the boerderij, Jans was seldom needed to help in the stables or on the land except during haymaking, which she loved. Everyone worked long hours, especially in summer when the sun rose at four in the morning and did not go down until ten-thirty at night. In winter, when life slowed down, Jans and her mother still had to get up at six in the morning to have the kachel burning and breakfast ready for the men and the maid when they came in from the milking. But there was more time then for knitting new socks, woollen underwear and jumpers, sewing and embroidering. Girls started work on their uitzet (glory-box) as soon as they could hold a needle. To sew and embroider the many tablecloths, sheets and pillowslips by hand took years as a minimum of a dozen of each was required for a girl of their standing. Opoe still had a couple of magnificently embroidered tablecloths in her cupboard more than fifty years after she married. Come to think of it, I never saw her use any of them. Winter was also the time to make and repair clothing. Although Opoe’s family was considered ‘well-off’, nothing was ever wasted. Because clothes were hand-made and the materials were very expensive, they had to be mended until they literally fell apart. The sombre, dark clothing of the boeren matched their life-style perfectly. A woman’s embroidered, black wedding dress with its high neck, long, puffed sleeves and enormous gathered skirts, was often the only neat dress she had. It was worn every Sunday to church, at weddings and funerals and had to last for decades. Sunday morning was the highlight of the week for the farming community. It was strictly compulsory for Catholics to attend Mass on Sundays and, as it was usually the only time that the women could leave the house they would only forego the ‘outing’ in extremely bad health or weather conditions. As soon as the milking was done early in the morning the family left for the long ride to church in the tentwagen, (a hooded buggy), dressed in their best Sunday clothes. The feeding of the animals was left to the older sons and the knecht who would go to the Hoogmis (High Mass) at eleven o’clock. The solid gold jewellery the women wore on their black costumes and on their white, lace bonnets, was the boer’s main sign of wealth. Catholic women wore a four-string choker made with red coral beads, which closed at the front with a big beautifully embossed golden knob. They also wore a golden cross on a very long chain, draped around the neck two or three times. The heavy, embossed cross was usually given to a young girl at the time of her confirmation when she was about twelve years old. The clasp of the necklace, the cross and the ornaments on the white knip-muts (bonnet), were made of high carat gold, hand-crafted with fine, intricate patterns of flowers and vines. The lacy white knip-muts was worn over a black bonnet or a solid gold cap and fitted firmly around the women’s face. The base of the knip-muts was made from fine tulle, decorated with round flower patterns, usually of bobbin lace. It had a narrow frill around the face made from stiff, darned gauze. The gauze was stiffened with sugar water and dried in a tightly gathered, three centimetre wide rounded zigzag. Attached to the back of the bonnet was a twenty-five centimetre long frill from a strip of gauze with a wide border of bobbin lace, zigzagged in the same fashion. Apart from the golden hangers and knobs, married Catholic women also wore two plain gold spirals, standing forward like horns on the top of their bonnets. Some people said that these sharp pointed ornaments were a sign of fertility but others claimed they were meant to keep their men at a safe distance. The men’s black suits were decorated with gold or silver buttons and two ornamental knobs on the plain band at the neck of their black shirts. A large pocket watch was fastened onto a button of their vests with a long, heavy chain. Apart from showing off their wealth, the gold and silver jewellery was also an investment for the farmers, until Pastoor Pieck, the local priest set up the first Catholic Farmers Bank in the area at the turn of the century. Opoe’s parents left their horse and buggy at a boerderij close to the church among a row of other buggies closely parked on either side of the long driveway. From there they walked to the church meeting up with relatives and friends on the way. When Mass was finished, the women gathered at a relative’s or a friend’s house for coffee and something to eat. Everybody was expected to be able to receive Holy Communion during Mass, which meant that they could not eat or drink anything except plain water from midnight on Saturday evening. After coffee, the women had a small glass of liqueur, advokaat, sultanas preserved in brandy called boere-jongens (farmer’s boys) or apricots in brandy boere-meisjes (farmer’s girls). While the smaller children played on the floor, the older girls sat stiffly on high-backed chairs, listening to the conversation of the adults. They were frequently sent out of the room on an errand if the women wanted to talk about something that was not suitable for their ears. Because most farmers’ wives only came to town on Sunday mornings, some grocery and general stores were open for a few hours after Mass. While the women gossiped and did their shopping the older boys went with their fathers to the boerderij where the horses and buggies were stalled. The farmhouse, which doubled as a cafe, was a popular meeting place for the farmers. The latest news was discussed while they drank coffee and ate a sandwich. Then they played cards and business deals were made with the help of stout beer and a borreltje or two (small glasses with strong liquor, usually jenever or brandy). The farmer-publican always did a roaring trade on Sunday mornings! Goods were collected before the families drove back to their farms, in time for their sons and the knecht to fulfil their Sunday obligations. The women would change and cook the hot midday meal they had already prepared the previous day. When they had eaten, the adults took a nap until about four o’clock in the afternoon; time for feeding and milking again. In the spring and summer after the Sunday evening meal (usually a plain sandwich) the boer and the boerin (farmer’s wife) would walk at leisure through their vegetable garden and nearby fields, inspecting their crops and discussing the work that lay ahead for the coming week. They always went to bed early, regardless of the sun still shining in summer. From the day Opoe’s father became a caretaker in the polder farmers often came to the house to discuss the state of the land and the condition of their animals. Jans and her mother served them coffee, usually followed by a borreltje or two. The heert at ‘Far in the Field’ doubled as a cafe for years until my great-grandfather obtained a licence and built a room onto the side of the house for this purpose. Winters in Holland seem to have been a lot longer and colder around the turn of the century than they are now. The sloten and canals in the polder were often frozen solid for months, according to Mum’s brother, Ome (uncle) Hannes. Because little work on the land could be done at that time of year, people went visiting relatives and friends in distant villages, on their skates. The skaters, nearly all men, called in at ‘Far in the Field’ for a drink and usually stayed the night. They played cards all evening with Jans’ father and her brothers, made more lively with a bottle of jenever or brandy. Sometimes a traveller would brighten the evening by playing an accordian, a mouth organ or just using a comb with a cigarette paper wrapped arround it. Afterwards they crept into the hay on the hilt above the cows at the back of the house or in the hooiberg (haystack with adjustable thatched-roof) outside. Young Jans happily helped her mother providing an evening meal and breakfast the following morning before the skaters went on their way again. Chapter TWO

By the time she was sixteen, Jans had grown into a very pretty girl. A lot of young men called at the isolated boerderij in the polder, pretending to want to help or play cards with her brothers. Jans loved their attention but the only one she really cared for was Simon, a tall, very quiet fellow. She already knew when she was twelve that she was going to marry him but she was careful not to show her feelings for him openly. Enjoying the attention the young men were giving her, she was in no hurry to tie herself down to any of them and she did not worry that her parents would not approve of Simon, who was the middle son of a Catholic but penniless farmer. The choice of partner was restricted for youngsters in the sparsely populated area. They had to stay within their class as well as religion, which was even more important. The saying was that “the devil himself slept between two people of different religions”. At that time, marriages were still arranged by many parents in order to keep whatever riches they had within the family. Inter-marriage between children of families of ‘standing’ was common in the region. More than half the farms in the area were owned by four families which included Opoe’s parents Voskuilen on her father’s side and Huurdeman on her mother’s. Apart from the occasional visit when Simon came to play cards with her brothers, Jans only caught a glimpse of him in church on Sundays when they happened to attend the same Mass. There were only two other days a year on which the young people of the surrounding villages met, the ‘field-day’ in July and the celebration of the end of harvesting in the last week of September. Young and old came to watch the horsemanship and traditional horse races on the ‘field-day’ which included horse training, show-jumping, buggy races and ring-staking. Ring- steken was the most popular of the buggy racing events for women. Sitting in the buggy, dressed in their Sunday costumes, the ladies tried to snatch a ring from the top of a tall, decorated pole with a long stick while their partners showed their ability in controlling their fast running horses. The end of the harvest festivities in September opened with a parade, followed by traditional games like polsstok-springen (pole-jumping), sack-racing, tug-of-war and climbing up a slippery pole to get a ham or a fat mettwurst. The cheerful day ended with a ‘klompen-dans’ (clog- dancing) in the evening, but young Jans could never persuade her parents to allow her to stay. They said that nothing good could ever come of it and took their sulking daughter home in time to feed the kippen (chooks) and the pigs and milk the cows in the afternoon. When Jans was eighteen her mother’s father died and her father took the option of taking over his farm in Hoevelaken. ‘Far in the Field’ was rented from the Catholic Church and this was a good opportunity for him to have his own place. Jans had visited her grandparents in Hoevelaken once, sometimes twice a year with her parents. Hoevelaken was a small dorp (village) about five kilometres from Amersfoort, the biggest stad (city) in the area. It took two hours to get there from the polder over rough, sandy tracks and narrow clay-brick roads. Sometimes, when her father was busy, she had gone there alone with her mother who handled a horse and buggy as well as any man. The yearly ride through the lush green paddocks and the freshly ploughed fields had become an important event for Jans and her mother. The long boerderij in Hoevelaken (now a youth hostel) was a lot bigger than the one the family had left behind in the polder. Beside a big living-room it had a pronk-kamer, a formal dining-room which was only used when very important people, like the local priest, came to visit. There were also two spacious bedrooms and a big keuken (kitchen). At the back of the house were three large horse stables and enough room for at least forty cows along the walls. A narrow strip of grassland at the back of the house and across the road, behind the Protestant church, also belonged to Jans’ parents. Each of those paddocks stretched as far as you could see. There was no Catholic Church in Hoevelaken, as almost the entire population was Protestant. But Amersfoort, a nearly seven hundred years old city, had several beautiful old churches, of which one was for Catholics. Although he had to travel a lot further than before, Simon became a regular visitor at the boerderij in Hoevelaken on Saturday evenings. Around the turn of the century push-bikes had become fashionable. They made the trip much faster in summer when the roads were dry but in winter, when the tracks were flooded or covered with snow and ice it was easier for Simon to walk across the fields, jumping over the sloten and canals with a polsstok. He was one of the best pole-jumpers in the district and when the waterways were frozen, he would skate wherever he could. Simon was a quiet fellow with an endless amount of patience. While Jans and her mother knitted or embroidered, he made polite and witty conversation with her father and her brothers, occasionally having brief eye contact with Jans when her parents weren’t looking. As custom expected him to leave when the old folks went to bed at ten o’clock he could never stay longer than an hour or two. When Jans was allowed to let him out and her parents gave them a few minutes alone, Simon whistled all the way home, as the long trip would have been worthwhile. It would still be after midnight before he reached his parent’s home in the polder again. There was no sleeping in on Sunday mornings for either of them as the animals had to be fed and the cows milked by seven o’clock in the morning, so that their families were in time to fulfil their church- going obligations, Simon in Nijkerk and Jans in Amersfoort. In the autumn of 1901, when Jans was twenty-one, she lost her mother in a terrible accident. Jans and her parents were ready to go to church on that dreadful Sunday morning. Sitting in the koets holding the reins, Jans’ mother was waiting for her husband and daughter to get into the hooded buggy when something upset the young filly which suddenly became uncontrollable. Coming out of the house, Jans and her father watched as the horse reared wildly time and again, its eyes terrified, its front legs waving high in the air. Foam appeared at the horse’s mouth and the buggy tilted and swayed. Jans’ father walked slowly towards the bewildered animal, talking softly trying to calm it down. Before he could get near, the horse suddenly made a sharp turn and galloped away, breaking free from the buggy. The whole family watched, struck with horror, as the buggy rolled over and over and finally came to a halt in the deep ditch at the front of the house, some twenty metres away. The men carried Jans’ mother, badly injured and unconscious, into the house on a ladder. The doctor, who came a few hours later, could not do anything for her. She had suffered a heart attack and did not regain consciousness. She died during the following night, at the age of forty- nine years. Opoe’s mother came from a very large family and everyone liked her. As was the custom, she was laid out in the pronk-kamer of the boerderij for three days. Relatives and friends travelled from all over the district to show their sympathy for the grief-stricken family. An endless line of black hooded buggies followed the coffin to the church in Amersfoort. After the funeral service the mourners’ buggies lined the main street in Hoevelaken for the traditional koffie-tafel; lots of coffee and white, fancy bread-rolls with cheese, smoked beef and mettwurst, followed by a few borrels to help them cope with their own vulnerability and their sorrow. Running the household without her mother, to whom she had been very close, was a difficult task for Jans. Watching her father turn his attention more and more to the maid, made her bitter and resentful. As the maid slowly crept into her mother’s place, life soon became unbearable for Jans. She longed to have her own home but she knew that she had to wait a long time before Simon would have anything to offer her. Simon’s name, ‘van de Grootevheen’, indicates that his ancestors came from a big fen-area, poor, swamp-like land. In 1813, when Napoleon ruled Holland, he made it compulsory for everyone to have a surname. Most people in the area were already known by the name of their farm, their occupation or the place they came from, which in Simon’s case was the groote-vheen. Simon’s family was not ambitious. Their farm in the polder, five kilometres from Nijkerk, was nothing compared to Jans’ family home. But, as they were devoted Catholics, always ready to help others, they were highly respected in the area. One of Simon’s uncles was a priest and two aunts were nuns. Their ancestors had been closely involved with the Catholic Church for centuries. During the Reformation in the seventeenth century, when Catholicism was forbidden in Holland, travelling priests regularly held secret Masses at their farm. Endangering their own family’s safety, they arranged marriages and helped people from all over the district to have their children baptised during Mass in the darkest hours of night. In 1870, Bishop van de Wetering had sent Pastoor Pieck to Hoogland to build a new church. The bishop, born in Hoogland himself, had carefully selected the best man for the job. Being a farmer’s son, the energetic priest rode from farm to farm on a fiets (push-bike) or a horse, telling the farmers how to make better profits before he asked them for a donation for his church. His sound financial advice won the admiration of the community and people often gave him far more than they had intended. Simon’s uncle Rijk was probably one of them. On his fiftieth wedding anniversary in 1873 Ome (uncle) Rijk gave his boerderij and all his land to Pastoor Pieck to build the church on! The story goes that uncle Rijk was penniless and lived in great poverty during the final years of his life. Every day, he had to ask the Sisters of Mercy who cared for him in an old people’s home beside the new church, for a little tobacco for his pipe. One day, he had asked Pastoor Pieck, to whom he had given his entire farm, for a new cap. The priest had inspected the cap and said: “You don’t need a new cap Grootevheen; if we have a new front put on this one, it’ll still last you for years!” The lovely, gothic-style church at Hoogland was built on Ome Rijk’s land and his boerderij, called ‘The Langenoord’, is now used as a youth centre. Ome Rijk will thus be remembered forever; what more could he have wanted? Grandfather Simon was one of eight children. Three of his siblings died at an early age. By the time his only sister married, Simon and his eldest brother were the only ones left at the boerderij with their elderly parents. According to tradition the eldest son would inherit the family home. Simon’s only hope was to be able to hire a place so that he could ask Jans to marry him. Apart from working on his family’s farm, Simon worked at other people’s places, often without pay. One of them was an old Protestant neighbour whom he had helped out since he had been a mere boy. When the lease of the couple’s run-down farm came up, the boer signed the new lease over to Simon. But, when the Dominee, the minister of the Protestant Church in Nijkerk, heard about it, he was furious with the old man for giving his farm to a Catholic while so many young, Protestant men were also eager to find a place of their own. During the service the following Sunday morning, the Dominee condemned the old farmer from the pulpit. But the old man stuck to his decision. He told the Dominee in no uncertain terms that he far preferred to deal with his Catholic neighbours, as he had experienced nothing but trouble from the jealous Protestants in the area. Simon needed a lot of money to make the old farm workable. Like every other boerezoon, he had always worked at home without being paid. In return, the parents helped their sons financially and paid for their daughters’ weddings and their uitzet, if they could. There wasn’t much Simon’s parents could do for him and they objected strongly when their son wanted to borrow money from the ‘Catholic Farmer’s Bank’ which had been set up by Pastoor Pieck some years earlier. They had always done without if they could not pay cash; they would feel extremely uncomfortable with such a debt hanging around their necks, they said. Although Simon was thirty and no longer needed his parents’ permission to sign for the loan, he preferred to have their blessing and asked Pastoor Pieck for advice. It did not take the priest long to convince Simon’s parents that borrowing money to start his farm was a wise decision. There was no doubt in his mind that the young couple would make a great success of their farm, he said. Chapter THREE

Opoe Jans was twenty-five when Simon, the man she loved, asked her to marry him shortly after her twenty-fifth birthday and she was very happy when she could finally leave her unhappy home three months later. Simon and Jans were married in April 1906. Dressed in the traditional black costumes of the area, they rode in a decorated buggy to het Gemeentehuis, the Council Office in Hoevelaken, early in the morning where they signed the marriage certificate. The civil service was regarded as a mere formality in Holland and was attended only by a few members of the family to witness the marriage. After the short ceremony, Simon and Jans rode to the Catholic Church in Amersfoort where they were married ‘properly’ at the beginning of Mass at ten o’clock. Because people were unable to eat before receiving Holy Communion, marriages were held early in the morning and, according to farmers’ tradition, the bruiloft, (wedding-party), was held at the bride’s home. Jans and Simon’s wedding was the talk of the district for months. Young farmers usually postponed their weddings until the cows could stay outside at the end of April so that the deel (the area between the stables) could be used for the bruiloft. A couple of days before the wedding, friends and neighbours helped cleaning the stables and the whole boerderij was decorated with greenery and lots of spring flowers. A big archway with ‘Welcome to the Bride and Groom’ was set up at the beginning of the driveway with a smaller one at the entrance to the house. On the evening before the event the yard was raked and long trestle tables were set up at the deel, covered with white bed sheets, ivy vines, vases of flowers. About fifty close relatives, neighbours and friends attended the Mass that had lasted an hour and a half. While the newly-weds were at the photographers having their official portraits taken, the guests at the house were served coffee with a gebakje (fancy little cakes) followed by their choice of spirits. They were already in a very happy mood when Jans and Simon came back at midday and the traditional koffie-tafel (elaborate bread-meal) was waiting for them. At the reception in the afternoon, a stream of relatives, friends and more distant neighbours, not invited to the big party in the evening, came to congratulate the couple. They, too, were given coffee or tea with a fancy little cake before the bottles came back on the tables, jenever, brandy, cognac, beer and stout for the men, and advocaat, liqueur, boere-jongens and boere-meisjes for the women. Most of the elderly women preferred jonge jenever, adding a couple of spoons full of sugar to enhance the taste. Unaware that it doubled the strength of the already high content of alcohol of the gin, it put even the most embittered woman in a happy mood, for at least a couple of hours! When most of the well-wishers had left, Simon and Jans made sure they met and talked to every one of their newly acquired aunts and uncles, especially the old ones who had come a long way. In the meantime, the bride’s brothers, with the help of some of the younger guests, milked the cows and fed the pigs, calves and chickens. The main meal of the day was served at six to close relatives and friends who had been invited for the whole day. Hors d’oeuvres were served first followed by soup and the main course consisting of lots of potatoes, vegetables and a piece beef, simmered until it fell apart, served with sweet and sour onions and cucumber to prevent heartburn. Then there was a dessert, and more coffee and cake when the evening guests arrived. A hundred and fifty relatives, friends and next-door neighbours were invited for the big party at night. Festivities always started with coffee and the famous Dutch gebakjes, before any liqueur was served. When the glasses were filled, a toast was proposed and messages were read out to the newlywed couple. To the tune of popular songs the bride and groom were teased about their pasts, especially about their courting years, in songs made up by members of the family and neighbours. Other cheeky songs warned the young couple what they could expect from the night ahead and their future together. Funny games were played and young and old sang and danced to the tunes of mouth-organs and accordions until well after midnight. Favourites were the Vienna waltz, the foxtrot and the polka, and most popular of all: the ‘polonaise’! Only the very old and feeble would be able to stay in their seats when those long rows of enthusiastically jigging and singing people bounced around the deel, winding in and outside the yard behind the leader with his funny antics. Jans and Simon did not escape the traditional jokes played on newlywed couples. When they finally went to bed after the long day, they fully expected to find their bed sabotaged, the bed-sheets tied together, the blankets hidden and things like dried beans hay or sand between the sheets. They also knew that their ‘friends’ would be waiting outside the bedroom window for their reactions when the bed crashed to the floor roaring with laugher and shouted smart remarks at the couple for what they presumed they were doing after the long wait to be married. Early the following morning, the animals were to be fed and the cows milked as usual. Although newlyweds were allowed to sleep in for another hour or two after their busy wedding night, Jans and Simon were up early as there was a lot of work to be done. Simon had left home at four the previous morning with his own horse and cart and they wanted to be at their own place in the polder before dark that evening, which would be around eight o’clock at that time of the year. After a hasty breakfast, they packed their wedding presents and other belongings in baskets and wooden crates and loaded them in the hooded buggy, one of the wedding presents from Jans’ father. They only stopped briefly to eat and watch how some men, who had got drunk at the party and slept in the hay, were sobered up with a bucket of icy cold water. After the hot midday meal, Simon, with the help of his two new brothers-in-law, loaded his own cart with furniture and other household items which Jans was allowed to take. Before they were ready to leave, at three in the afternoon, Simon tied the four premium milk-cows, another gift from Jans’ father to the back of his cart. Waving farewell to her family and neighbours, Jans proudly drove the koets behind her husband’s cart, keeping an eye on the cows. She was happy with her father’s gifts, which included some fine pieces of her mother’s crockery, silver cutlery and copperware. Her father had also given her her mother’s inheritance, which included a piece of land in the polder not far from the old farm, which Simon had been able to lease from his Protestant neighbour. But she was very disappointed with the amount of money he had given her, as it would not be near enough for the changes she needed to do the old house to make it more comfortable. She had hoped that there would be some money left to buy a few more cows, a couple of pigs and some chickens, but it was not even enough to do the most necessary repairs to the rickety house and the crooked sheds she had only seen once. Even though she had heard the popular saying many times before, her father’s parting words stung her deeply and echoed in her ears: “If you burn your bum, you’ll have to sit on the blisters; there is no need to come to me for help!” Although he had not objected to her marrying Simon, her father had been unable to hide his disappointment on the night before the wedding. “So this is what you want!” he had remarked grumpily: “You could have done better for yourself than settle for a haring-boer!” (meaning ‘little fish’). Knowing that she was lucky to be able to marry the man she loved, Jans straightened her head and shoulders determinedly. She would show them all that she could make a success of her life with Simon! Like most other newly married couples at that time, Simon and Jans knew nothing about having children except what they had seen happening with the animals on the farm. Sex was never mentioned and adults stopped talking about childbirth immediately when children came within earshot, even when those children were in their late twenties. Most parents in the farming communities regarded their children as ‘snot-noses’ until they were well into their thirties. They would find out soon enough what married life was all about when the time came, just like their parents had done when they got married... Growing up on the isolated farm in the polder, and later without her mother at the farm in Hoevelaken, Jans had always been surrounded by men and she had never had anything to do with babies or little children. She was eager to give Simon a son, an heir to the farm, but when she realised that she was pregnant, she became very frightened. Children died sometimes during birth. Hadn’t she seen things go terribly wrong with the cows? A cow’s ‘inside’ had come out with the calf one day. The intestines had been pushed back into the mother after the calf was freed but the cow had died a few days later. Another time she had heard how a neighbour had to cut a calf in pieces from its mother as it was too big to be born without killing the mother. Hadn’t many women died while giving birth? As soon as she was married her aunt and other married women gave Jans a lot of advice. The horror stories they told her did nothing to ease her apprehension about the approaching birth. Her aunt told her that her own grandfather, who had been the first burgemeester (mayor) of Hoevelaken, had lost two of his three wives in childbirth. His first two wives had been sisters and he had fathered twenty children! Jans could not bother Simon with her worries, as women on the land did not burden their husbands unnecessarily, their men had enough on their minds with the animals. The priest, who had instructed them on the duties of man and wife prior to their wedding, had emphasised that the body of a woman was ‘the Temple of God’ in which He let a new life grow. He said that God would look after her in her blessed state: she would be in God’s hands, so she had nothing to worry about. Nobody at that time went to a doctor during pregnancy to check the growth of the baby or prepare the mother-to-be for giving birth. Her husband would go to the nearest village, or even further, to get a doctor when the first contractions started. The whole ordeal was often taken care of by a capable neighbour while he was away. Unless things went wrong... Opoe’s first child was born on the 22nd of March 1907. The birth was long and difficult, even worse than she had anticipated from her worse nightmares and she could not hide that she was very disappointed that it was a girl. According to tradition, the little girl was named after her father’s mother, ‘Johanna’ and her mother’s mother ‘Aleida, shortened to Jans(je), just like her mother. Father Simon was very happy with his little daughter but the new mother felt uneasy with the screaming bundle. She soon realised that she could never be the ‘natural mother’ she was supposed to be. Breast-feeding was an ordeal for her from the start but, as mother’s-milk was believed to be the ‘greatest gift of God after motherhood’, she had to persist with it. Refusing to give your child breast-milk during the first three months, if you had any milk at all, was considered a mortal sin. On the 7th of April 1909, two years after little Jansje was born, Opoe had her second child, another girl, who in time would become my mother. Mum was called ‘Aleida Johanna’, also after the two grandmothers but in the opposite order, ‘Aaltje’ for short. Her mother again had a very difficult time with the birth. Simon, Mum’s father, was a big man and Opoe was a tiny woman. Despite the fact that she could hardly eat, she had been worried sick at having to give birth to another big baby. During her whole pregnancy she was unable to relax. Stiff with fright, she had feared for her life continuously. With trembling lips, Mum often told me how angry her mother had been when she was born. “ Mother resented me from the start”, she cried time and again, especially during the last years of her life. “I should have been a boy; having another girl meant that she had to go through the agony of giving birth again; she had to produce a son to keep the farm going!” “Father Simon was easy; he never made a fuss about anything,” Mum assured me whenever she talked about him. He had adored both his little girls, saying that one day they would have a boy, if that was in God’s plan. Eighteen months after Mum was born, my grandmother’s wish came true. On the 18th of August 1910 she gave birth to a healthy son. The price she paid was very high as she again nearly died in the process. But, as she was overjoyed with him, she recovered quickly this time. Mum’s little brother was named Johannes, after Simon’s father. He later became my favourite Ome Hannes. As far as Opoe was concerned, her family was complete, and Opa (grandfather) Simon apparently agreed. He could not bear to see his wife go through such agony again. “He preferred to live in celibacy rather than risk losing her”, Mum said. Although they had to work hard, Jans and Simon were happy and their farm grew steadily until disaster struck shortly after new year in 1916. Heavy rains had flooded the area for weeks, making it impossible for people in the polder to get into the towns. Then, during the early hours of Friday the 13th of January, the Zuiderzee suddenly washed over the low dykes between Nijkerk and Bunschoten/Spakenburg, followed by huge tidal waves. The freezing water flooded most of the houses in Bunschoten and Spakenburg, the well-known fishing villages on the edge of the Zuiderzee. Nearly every farm in the area was under water to the roof, drowning cows and horses in their stables and pigs in their pens. Several families spent the night in the attic or on top of the thatched roofs of their houses, brought to safety by small boats the following day. It was considered an absolute miracle that no one died in the disaster as several farmhouses crumbled under the weight of mud and water. It was nearly a week before the water subsided sufficiently to bury the dead animals and assess the damage. My grandparents had saved their lives by climbing onto the platform above the cows at the back of their house. At dawn the following morning, they discovered that all their animals had drowned except some chickens perched in a tree and a calf born during the night. By some kind of miracle the calf had been swept up onto a board which was floating on the water above the deel. The animal was balancing awkwardly on the board until it was pulled onto the platform by my grandfather. Of course there was no insurance of any kind those days. Practical help from people all over the district got the family back on its feet again. But, seven months after the floods another, much worse disaster struck. My mother was seven years old when her father died after an accident at the farm on Sunday the 13th of August 1916. Late on Saturday afternoon, grandfather Simon came in from the paddock with a cart heavily loaded with hay that had to be stacked on the platform above the pig shed near the house. A few neighbours were helping him as usual. Mum, her younger brother Hannes and her older sister Jans were standing beside their mother, watching from a safe distance as Simon slowly backed the horse and cart towards the pig shed. He was standing beside the horse’s head when the horse snorted nervously. A mouse had run out of the hay and frightened the skittish animal. While Simon tried to calm it, there was a sudden gust of wind, a loose plank came off the pig shed and clattered down beside the cart. As the horse trampled and snorted, trying to break free, Simon’s jacket got caught on the edge of the cart. He lost his balance and fell to the ground. The horse staggered, then bolted, the wheels of the heavy cart crushing Grandfather Simon’s chest. When I was in Holland in 1991 collecting information for this book, Ome Hannes, Mum’s then eighty-one year old brother, took my husband and me to the old farm. He showed us exactly where the accident had happened. “ It all happened so fast; nobody could do anything to prevent the disaster”, he said with trembling voice, ignoring the tears streaming down his face. “Mother rushed to him and took him in her arms. She was screaming and howling like a wounded animal when the neighbours put him on a ladder and carried him into the house. All his ribs were broken; they had torn his lungs. Father died the following day. He was buried on my sixth birthday,” Ome Hannes added softly while he fumbled in his pocket for his hanky to blow his nose and dry his tears. My mother (who died in 1988) told me many times how devastated everyone had been. “Mother was inconsolable for weeks,” she said. “She loved father Simon dearly and he thought the world of her. Part of her died with him; she never was her old self again.” Mum had always been with her father. She missed him terribly when he was gone. Although awful things happened to her all through her life, she always said that her father’s death was the saddest experience she had ever known. “Father Simon was such a lovely man,” she would tell us over and over again. “My brother Hannes is just like him in looks as well as in manners.” Grandfather Simon must have been a great man; Ome Hannes is just about the nicest person I have ever met. Shortly after my grandfather’s funeral the village people started to whisper, turning their heads away from her when they saw my grandmother at church or in the village. The fact that she had lost her husband in such dreadful circumstances was God’s punishment because she had not let him touch her after her son was born. Preventing nature taking its course was against God’s will; God would get that proud, stuck-up woman on her knees one day, they said. “If a woman died in childbirth you could be sure that would never have happened unless God wanted it,” Mum explained to me when I was growing up. “He always knows what is good for you, and you have to accept whatever crosses He gives you to bear on your way to heaven. Life on earth doesn’t count for much; it’s the here-after that you work towards.” Ignored by the people in the village, with three young children on a fair sized farm and no money to hire help, my proud grandmother relied heavily on her late husband’s family and her neighbours. She struggled on for three years, then she had no choice but to marry the only man who was prepared to take her on. I remember Opa (grandpa) Kleter very well. He was a tall man with a very red face. I liked him a lot, especially for the rides on his push-bike, sitting on the bar in front of him, chatting non- stop. He often took me home from our house to ‘Opoe’s place’, (for some unknown reason we never called it ‘Opa’s place’). He invariably asked with great urgency in his voice: “And Marretje was..?” I had to answer: “A good child!” He’d keep asking and I would answer louder every time until he was satisfied. He asked my older brothers the same question too. They all remember it well, along with a few other funny habits Opa Kleter had... Opa never wanted to tell us who this mysterious Marretje was. His answer was always the same; “She was a good child!” But for some reason Opoe always got very angry when we mentioned her name. Mum told us many years later that Marretje had been Opa’s former girlfriend but I learned what really happened when I was in Holland in 1991. When Opa was thirty, he was courting a sixteen-year-old girl, Marretje, which was regarded as scandalous by the village people. They called him a cradle snatcher and worse. Marretje died after a long, painful illness called tering (tuberculosis) when she was eighteen. A few months after her death Opa proposed to my widowed grandmother. At thirty-nine, Opoe was still regarded as a very good-looking woman even though she had lost all her teeth during her pregnancies. Opa was thirty-two, seven years younger than she was, when they married in October 1919. By marrying my grandmother, taking on the responsibility for a despised widow with three young children, Opa Kleter saved his reputation in the village. But he was a young man; no matter how terrified Opoe was of getting pregnant, she could not expect her new husband to live in celibacy and deny him the right to have children of his own. And Opa Kleter was a big man, just like her beloved Simon had been... It did not take long for Opoe to fall pregnant. In November 1920 she gave birth to Ome Wim, followed by Tante (auntie) Annie in January 1923. Even though she hardly ate anything while she was pregnant, her children always weighed over eight pounds when they were born. Her pelvis was too narrow to let such a big child through; these days they would all have been born by caesarean section. Being terrified all though her pregnancy meant that she always felt worn out. By the time she was due to give birth she was weak from starvation and her muscles were cramped with resentment and fear. Opoe was forty-six when she was expecting her last child. She referred to the growing life inside her as ‘another lump of poison’. Mum was fourteen when her youngest sister, Tante Cor, was born in May 1926. “I’ll always remember that dreadful day as if it had only happened a few weeks ago,” Mum told me when I asked her why Opoe was always angry with Tante Cor. “I’ll never be able to forget Mother’s terrible screaming and howling,” she said while she stroked the goose bumps on her arms. “I ran away to the furthest paddock. Even though I had my fingers in my ears, I could still hear her screaming as she did when father Simon died. Cor was literally torn from mother’s terrified and unyielding body while they held her down on the kitchen table.” Mum said she had decided then that she would never scream if she ever had to give birth herself, no matter how painful it would be. Mum’s words, saying that Tante Cor was as ‘stiff as a heavy wooden doll’ came with a shock back to me when I picked up my brother’s eight month old baby daughter a few years ago. This little girl’s mother had resented her pregnancy because she was terrified of giving birth, too. However, as time went by, my sister-in-law came to love her daughter and my nieces’ little body relaxed accordingly. Like Mum, none of her three sisters or her youngest brother felt that they could ever do any good by Opoe. She only cared for her first born son, they said. But Ome Hannes felt that Opoe always favoured Ome Wim, her son from her second marriage. Unfortunately, Ome Wim never noticed. Chapter FOUR

“Hannes and I have been going places together all our lives,” Mum said when I helped her and her brother cross a creek in the magnificent Standley Chasm, in April 1983. “Here we are in the Centre of Australia, seventy and seventy-two years old and still gallivanting the countryside as we did when we were kids!” she laughed. A lump of ‘envy’ - Mum would call it ‘jealousy’- never failed to stick in my throat when I heard my mother talk about her wonderful, carefree childhood. It also does when I read or hear about people who were allowed to read whenever they wanted as a child. It always makes me feel that I missed out on something very important.

Mum often talked about the way she and her brother were roaming around in the polder, looking for kiviet eggs, digging worms for the chickens, picking blackberries and wildflowers and catching moles. They had fallen into a sloot numerous times while they were practising pole- jumping, first under their father’s watchful eyes and later after he died on their own. They had been lucky not to drown as most sloten were very deep and they never learned to swim. Being afraid they would have caught a cold Opoe’s temper had flared up something shocking whenever they came home wet. As there was no penicillin in those days, many a child died of pneumonia, all the family could do was pray, hoping for recovery. Opoe always cooled her anger by hitting her children with the pook, the hooked iron poker that was used to stir the fire in the kachel. When Mum and her brother were out in the fields one beautiful Sunday afternoon Mum had ripped her brand-new dress on a barbed wire fence when she fell backwards into a muddy sloot. Knowing what to expect she tried frantically to clean her skirt but the dark clay left ugly stains. There was nothing they could do to hide them or the big tear that had ruined her dress. Too scared to go home, it was well after her bedtime and close to dark when she finally plucked up enough courage to face the consequences of her carefree adventures. Beside herself with rage, Opoe had hit Mum black and blue. Watching from a safe distance, Ome Hannes said he thought that his mother was breaking every bone in his little sister’s body but Mum bore her mother no grudges; “I deserved it,” she said after telling me the story. The huge green stretches of grassland in the polder, divided into paddocks by sloten and canals, was Mum and Ome Hannes’ playground from the time they could walk. Their older sister Jans was ‘different’, they said; she always stayed home and helped Opoe around the house. It never occurred to either of them that their mother would not allow young Jans out, just as Mum had treated me when I was a child... While my mother was little, the water levels in the polder were kept under control by numerous watermills. After the floods of 1916 a twenty kilometre long dyke was built which blocked off the Zuiderzee, turning it into a freshwater lake. It was called IJselmeer, as the main water supply now came from the river IJsel. In 1928 a start was made to drain the lake which since made a lot more land available for farming. Keeping the sloten and canals free of weeds so that the water could flow freely out to the pumps, was a lot of hard work for the boeren in the area. Some of them were only a metre wide others were three of four metres, more like fast-flowing channels. They were all deep enough to keep the cows in the paddocks without the need of fences. Twice a year in spring and autumn the fast growing weeds had to be cleared out of the waterways for which long handled rakes were used. The smooth handles of the rakes were also used as a pols-stok to jump over the sloten in order to clean the other side. While Tante Jans stayed home to help, Opoe Mum and Ome Hannes were always outside with their father. After the accident that killed father Simon when they were six and seven years old, they went out on their own. During the three following years Opoe was so distracted by her own grief that she did not bother much about either of them. They were as free as the birds. Although Mum always said that she had such a happy childhood she often cried, especially during the last years of her life over incidents that had happened when she was a child. “Mother always predicted that nothing good would ever become of me,” she sobbed time and again. “I never did anything right; I’d drop things or manage to spoil them. Mother always said that all I wanted to do was play and she was right. I skipped on the long way to school or hung on the back of a cart, not taking any notice of people saying that I was too old to skip and that I should be walking like a young lady. I climbed trees like a boy and day-dreamed for hours on end.” Mum never failed to add bitterly: “I should have been the boy Mother hoped for when she was expecting me!” Other times Mum would tell us proudly how stubborn she had been even as a little girl. She was ten or eleven in a sewing class when the nun who was teaching asked her: “Aaltje, will you pick up those pieces of material from the floor?” “No, I will not!” Mum had answered indignantly; “The girls who dropped them should pick them up themselves!” The nun had repeated the question, with Mum insisting that she had not dropped them, so she should not have to pick them up. It was unheard of for a girl to dare to disobey a nun or any teacher in class like that. The children stared in shock at her but Mum was not going to give in. When she refused for the third time, she was made to write many pages of lines: “I have to do as I am told; being stubborn is a great sin”. “The writing did not bother me at all,” Mum said, “but I had to stay indoors while the other children were playing outside. It was terrible having to listen to them cheering and laughing!” In her old age, she was still angry at the unfairness of it all.

In 1991, when Ome Hannes took me to the old farm where they had grown up, we checked the distance they had to walk to the school in Nijkerk. By the speedometer in Ome Hannes’ car it measured nearly eight kilometres -walked twice a day! Times had not changed much. With a cut lunch in a string-bag around their necks and straw in their clogs in winter just like their parents before them, they had set off early in the morning to be there at eight-thirty. They could be home by six in the evening but as they were easily side-tracked on the way home they often had to do without their evening meal. The weather had to be extremely bad for Opoe to allow them to stay at home. “Mother had to walk a lot further to school herself when she was young,” Ome Hannes said. “She could not bear us under foot all day and she knew very well that we would be out no matter how bad the weather was if she had let us stay home,” he chuckled. Although Mum had missed her father terribly, she had transferred her love immediately to her stepfather, Opa Kleter when Opoe remarried in 1919. She was ten at the time and followed him around like a young puppy starved for the love and attention her mother could not give her. Opa Kleter came from a large farm beyond Nijkerk. Like every other son he had not been paid for all the years he had worked at home. There had not been any money for him when he married Opoe at the age of thirty-two either; his father was an alcoholic accumulating big debts. By marrying the widow ‘Hendrik had his bed made,’ people said. In 1927, eight years after she married her second husband Opoe’s father divided his farm in Hoevelaken where she lived before she married Simon, between her and her two brothers. Opoe inherited the long strip of fertile grassland at the back of the boerderij. Beside the paddock was a narrow strip of forest, called it ‘Hoevelakense Bos’. The beautiful oak and elm forest was known as ‘Kozakken Bos’ (Cossack Forest) at the time as Russian Cossacks had hidden there during the 1914-18 war. Around the same time, Opa’s father died and his farm was sold. The proceeds of the sale were divided among Opa and his four siblings. The money he inherited enabled him to build a house on Opoe’s land instead of leasing the old farm in the polder. Most of the building materials for the beautiful boerderij were brought up by Opa and Ome Hannes, then eighteen, with their own horse and cart from the harbour in Nijkerk, eight kilometres away. The dirt track that went from Nijkerk to Amersfoort is now a major highway; Opoe’s place was half way. It had taken nearly two years to build the place which was named ‘Achter het Bos’, meaning ‘Behind the Forest’. The house was a modern version of the old model farmhouses of the area; stables behind the living quarters under a long, thatched roof. But the back as well as the front of the new house was built of clay bricks and it had four tall windows with timber shutters, at the front. The two windows in the middle were Opoe’s pronk-kamer, used only to impress important visitors. The two other windows on either side, looked out from spacious bedrooms. The kitchen-cum-living- room, called keuken at the side of the house, also had a large window. The front door next to it, opened into a small room where the dirty overalls and clogs were to be left before the men went into the keuken. Unfortunately, the house was built with single walls, only ten centimetres wide, which made it extremely cold in winter. When the boerderij in Hoevelaken was completed and the family left the polder in the autumn of 1929, Mum was nineteen. Her stepfather, whom she adored, had taken her several times to help on the building site and she had already made some friends in the neighbourhood. There was one particular boy, Ebert whom she liked very much. But she could not show her feelings for him openly as he was a Protestant and definitely not for a Catholic girl! Mum’s family were the only Catholics in a mainly Lutheran neighbourhood. Her family now belonged to the parish of Hooglanderveen, a rapidly growing farming community. The village was only a fifteen-minute walk across the forest from Opoe’s place. The Gothic style church built in 1918, had a fifty-metre high pointed tower and several tall stained glass windows and seated about five hundred worshippers. Like the neighbouring village Hoogland, ninety percent of the population of Hooglanderveen was Catholic. Unlike in some other places in Holland, there was seldom any friction between the different religions in the two villages. In spite of the firm belief that only members of their religion had a chance to get to heaven, people accepted each other. In the eyes of a Protestant, Catholics were frivolous and easygoing, while the Catholics thought that Protestants did not practise what they preached. Mixed marriages were unacceptable to either religion. Stubborn lovers had to leave the area if they continued their sinful relationship to avoid some of the terrible shame they would bring upon their parents and siblings. Mum knew that she had to stop seeing Ebert. But, as he was Ome Hannes’ best friend and their closest neighbour, living only a hundred metres away that proved easier said than done. Ebert came over regularly to help on the land where Mum was working with her stepfather and her brothers. Her heart had thumped ferociously one day when he held her hand when nobody was looking. Later, when they were picking blackberries on the edge of their properties he had kissed her on her cheek. For a moment Mum had felt in heaven but nearly died of shock when she saw her ten-year-old brother Wim watching them from behind the bushes. From then on Mum was scared to death of Ome Wim who threatened her time and again to tell their mother. She gave him anything he asked for to keep her secret safe. Mum talked to me about Ebert quite often especially later in life, wondering what her life would have been like if she could have married him. Changing their religion was unthinkable for either of them, as that would be like selling your soul to the devil, she said. There was only one Catholic man, several years older than her, who Mum felt attracted to at the time. Sometimes he came to help at the farm and she saw him regularly in church on Sundays. Mum had smiled at him a few times but she had never dared to speak to him. His name was Bart Hooft, who would eventually become my father. Mum knew that her mother would not approve of him either, as Bart came from a family of goat farmers, poachers and labourers, far below my grandmother’s class. When she was sixteen, Mum’s older sister, Tante Jans had fallen in love with a boy who was a good Catholic but of very poor stock. Opoe had forbidden her to have anything to do with him. They (her parents) had not worked their guts out to have a landarbeider (labourer) squander away their hard-earned money and make their daughter live in poverty, she said. Tante Jans had become deeply depressed and never recovered from her broken heart. When Mum heard that Bart was planning to marry Wijm, one of the most beautiful girls in the area, she prayed daily to God to make him change his mind. When he married her anyway Mum accepted that God had other plans for her. From then on she put all her energy into her faith, trying hard to be more serious. It was difficult for her not to skip and dance when she was working in the stables or on the land. She greatly admired the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, who had recently come to the parish. The idea of becoming a nun, spending her life praying and helping sick and needy people, grew steadily in her mind. That way she would be useful and become a credit to her family instead of being the ‘good for nothing, empty headed butterfly’ her mother scolded her for. Before the Catholic Church was built in Hooglanderveen in 1918, people had to go to Hoogland or Amersfoort to fulfil their Sunday obligations. Either of these places was an hour and a half’s walk away. The roads were mostly dirt, which turned into sticky mud whenever it rained. The first one-room school in the village was built in 1910 and opened with twenty children. When the church was built eight years later, the new parish counted eighty families, which doubled in number in the next twelve years. In 1923 an impressive new school was opened with eighty-one pupils and three teachers. The headmaster started agricultural lessons for the farmers’ sons in the evenings, which became very popular. Thanks to a childless couple who had left their farm to the local parish in 1926, a convent for the nuns was built next to the church. But as those hardworking ‘angels’ were in great demand in Holland as well as in the missions overseas, attracting the Sisters to Hooglanderveen had not been easy. Regular prayer meetings were answered when four ‘Daughters of the Sacred Heart’ moved into the completed buildings two years later. The Sisters proved an absolute blessing to the community. They not only provided extra teachers for the school and cared for the sick and elderly they also started a kindergarten and a pre-school which children could attend as soon as they were toilet-trained, relieving the ever pregnant or nursing farmers’ wives. Shortly after Mum turned twenty-one, she shocked her family when she decided to give her life to God; she was going to be a nun and work in the mission. Opoe was furious, saying that having to pay her dowry (Mum’s rightful inheritance) to the convent was a waste of good money. She (Mum) would never be able to tolerate the tough discipline and keep her mouth shut, she said. Because it was considered a great honour for a Catholic family to produce a priest or a nun, Opoe could not speak her mind or show her feelings openly. Mum’s mentally disturbed sister, Jans thought it was a great idea, but her two young sisters, Annie and Cor, laughed at her. Mum was such a jonges-gek (boy-crazy), she could not possibly be serious, they said. Ome Wim teased her no end. Tante Cor told me how Mum stood in front of the mirror with a black skirt draped like a veil around her head, the white edge of a hankie showing close around her face. Twisting her body this way and that, she had tried to see what she would look like in a habit. “Nuns are not supposed to be vain!” Tante Cor had shouted at her, drawing the attention of the rest of the family. Mum had taken the skirt off immediately and dropped to her knees, asking God’s forgiveness for her frivolous behaviour. Three months after Mum had made up her mind she joined the Sisters of Saint Joseph. The ‘mother-house’ was in Amersfoort, only eight kilometres away. “Father Kleter and Hannes took me there in the buggy,” Mum recalled years later. She had been happy to leave home to become Jesus’ bride, but she could not help crying when she had to say good-bye to her stepfather and her favourite brother, as she suddenly realised how much she was going to miss them. The novices were not permitted to have visitors during the first months. Nuns were expected to distance themselves from all worldly ties to enable them to devote their lives solely to God. Mum’s mother had refused to go to the convent for the yearly visits, as she could not bear to see her daughter in a nun’s habit. Talking with Mum’s old friend Heintje, who immigrated in the early fifties with her husband and ten children to Australia, made me realise how lonely Mum’s life had been when she was young. At the time, Heintje had been a live-in maid at a large boerderij close to the village church. The farmer’s wife had died in childbirth when her tenth child was born. Like every other maid on a boerderij, Heintje worked around the clock every day and was only free for a couple of hours on Sunday afternoons. “Aaltje was a very lively girl, always looking for a bit of fun,” she said, when I asked her what Mum had been like. She told me how Opa Kleter, Mum’s stepfather had bought silk stockings for her and her older sister Jans at the market in Amersfoort one day. Opoe had been furious with him. “Why was that?” I asked. “They were beige, the ‘in’ thing in the stad at the time. Your grandmother said that only whores would wear them,” Heintje laughed. “She forbade the girls to wear them. But in the forest, on their way to visit me the following Sunday afternoon Aaltje changed her black, hand- knitted stockings for the thin, light coloured ones.” We laughed and talking about some other happenings in the family. Then Heintje went on; “Jans was a strange girl,” she said. “There was something wrong with her but I could not put my finger on it at the time. She was dead-scared of her mother. She had the new stockings in her pocket but she would not put them on. She later gave them to me.” I was puzzled when Heintje told me how shocked she had been when Mum come to say good-bye to her before she had gone into the convent. “I could not believe that she was serious; she was such a boy-mad, fun-loving girl!” she said. “But Heintje, Mum always said that you were her best friend. How could you not know about her intentions?” I asked curiously. After a short silence Heintje said thoughtfully: “I’ve really only seen Aaltje a couple of times. She was always with Jans; we never had any real conversations...” Poor Mum! She had not even been able to talk to her best friend about one of the biggest decisions in her life... Chapter FIVE

Apart from the fact that nuns spent most of their time in prayer, Mum did not know what to expect of life in a convent, as no nun would ever talk about life behind the high walls of their religious community. She did not mind having to get up at four in the morning as she was used to early rising. She also accepted the long, daily hours of prayer, sitting on her knees on the bare wooden pews or lying flat on the cold marble floor of the chapel, asking God’s forgiveness for all the sins of the world. But she was appalled by the bitchiness and childishness of the large group of women, closely confined day in day out. To enable them to concentrate solely on their love for God, they were not allowed to engage in personal friendship with each other. The novices were only allowed to speak during the recreation hour in the evenings when they did the mending, made the beautifully embroidered decorations for the church and the chapel and the vestments for the priest to say Mass. On the many fasting days throughout the year and during the long periods of Lent before Easter and the Advent at Christmas, they were not permitted to speak at all except for the bare necessities. Not being able to talk and obeying seemingly silly and unnecessary orders such as polishing the already shining floors, sometimes with a nailbrush, was very hard to take for my fun-loving mother. But she was not going to quit lightly; the alternative did not bear thinking about. After two years Mum took her temporary vows. She chose her father’s name and became Sister Simone. The big convent in Amersfoort is still the mother-house of the Sisters of Saint Joseph, from where the sisters were sent to smaller convents around the country and missions all over the world to work in hospitals and schools. My eldest brother, Wout worked there for many years as a gardener and chauffeur. The big convent in Amersfoort is now more like a nursing home, the oldest nun being over a hundred years old and the youngest in her late sixties. In the late sixties there were more than thirty thousand nuns in Holland. In the early seventies, when no new nuns were replacing the frail elderly ones, the many convents in Holland began closing down one by one. When there were not enough Sisters left to keep a convent open Wout helped them move back to Amersfoort. Wout loved his job. “But it was never an easy task to satisfy a hundred nuns,” he remarked, with a cheeky gleam in his eyes at his retirement party recently, which raised a lot of laughter from the Sisters. Mum still hoped to be sent to one of the missions in Africa, the Dutch colonies in the West Indies, Indonesia or New Guinea, but that did not happen. “I enjoyed working in the garden but I was always sent back to the kitchen,” she said. “We were constantly reminded that we were not there for our own pleasure, but to do penance for our sins and the sins of others.” Mum worked in the hospital for a while where the professed (invested) Sisters looked after old and sick nuns, overworked missionaries and elderly priests, but she did not last there for very long. After being reprimanded several times for talking unnecessarily to the patients, she was sent back to the kitchen again polishing endless miles of marble and wooden floors on her knees, as a reminder of the need to be humble. Once a week every nun had to confess her sins in public. Lying face down on the floor of the chapel, they asked God and the congregation to forgive them for whatever wrong they had done. “What sins could you possibly commit in a convent?” I asked innocently. “My biggest sins were the provoking and obstinate thoughts which forever pestered me; I had to confess them week after week”, Mum said as she sat staring straight ahead. Tears rolled down my mother’s face more than fifty years after leaving the convent, when she talked about the humiliation of having to confess before everybody that she had touched herself between her legs. The smug looks on some of the other nuns’ faces afterwards, was more than she could bear. When she had reached the isolation of her own cell, she wanted to hide there for the rest of her life. She kissed and washed the dirty feet of her fellow nuns and she had doubled the long prayers she had been given as a penance, but they could not remove her feelings of guilt and shame. Her urge to touch her most sensitive place became an obsession for her, which filled her mind with disgust for her body, and made her cry herself to sleep at night. Only by whipping herself with her karewats (seven straps of leather with knots at the ends, sewn onto a ring or wooden handle) time and again, had she been able to stop eventually. Although life in the convent was difficult for Mum, there were some very happy moments too. There was often a lot of laughter at recreation time, between the evening meal and the hour of bedtime prayers at nine, when the nuns were allowed to tell jokes and other funny stories. Mum loved the beautiful sounds of the Gregorian Mass, the Psalms and Hymns which were part of the daily routine. She had hoped to join the chorus but she was told that her voice was not suitable. The hope that one day she would be one of those nuns ‘whose faces shone with serene holiness’ and being sent out into the mission, had kept her going. But after four years, expecting to be allowed to take her final vows, Mum was called into the office of the Mother Superior who sent her home. “You obviously have no true vocation,” the Mother Superior said. “You are far better suited to making a man happy with a house full of children.” Mum was devastated. A set of worldly clothes to change into was already waiting for her in the superior’s office. She was not allowed to say goodbye to any of the other nuns, sent home just like other novices who had suddenly, without any explanation, disappeared from the convent. It was terrible for an aspiring nun or student priest to have to return into the ‘world’ when they realised they had no real vocation for the religious life after all, or when they were simply dismissed as Mum had been. The community looked down upon them as failures. The parishioners had prayed for them and most had donated generously when collections were taken up for the cost of their studies and later to travel to the missions. People felt that their money had been wasted on them when they returned.

As expected, Opoe was very angry. “She could not bear having me around,” Mum said, her lips trembling. “They didn’t know what to do with me. Jans (Mum’s mentally disturbed sister) was helping Mother in and around the house. Hannes (twenty-six at the time) and Wim (fifteen) were working with father Kleter on the land and the girls (Annie and Cor) were old enough to help after school with milking and feeding. They could easily do without me; I was just another mouth to feed.” Mum had been home just over a week when the butcher in Hooglanderveen suggested to Opoe that he take Aaltje ‘off her hands’ by offering her a job as a housekeeper. He could not afford to pay her but she would have food, accommodation and a bit of pocket money so that she could buy her own clothes. The butcher’s shop was connected to the front of his house, next to the church in the middle of the village where I grew up. A huge, old oak tree beside the house was a popular meeting point for the young men of the village. The butcher was a big, middle-aged man. He had lost his wife and every one of his four children from tuberculosis a few years earlier. He was an eccentric fellow, but he had not lost his sense of humour. Because he was not averse to joining the village youngsters in playing practical jokes on unsuspecting victims, he was often a target for them himself. One day the butcher got annoyed with some of the young men who stole freshly made metworsts from his cellar. With a long hook they had ‘fished’ the wursts through the iron bars of the little window which had to be left open to allow fresh air to circulate. The butcher swore revenge and kept his word. He added some powder to the filling of the next batch of wurst, and hung them close to the window. He soon discovered the culprits when they all got severe diarrhoea! When I was in Hooglanderveen in 1991 to learn about my family’s history, I visited one of my father’s old friends. Ome Willem was eighty-nine, the same age my father would have been, if he had been alive. He still lived beside the family’s bakery he had established next to the church in the early twenties and very active in the community. He was happy to see me and talk about my father who, when they were both young men, had been his closest friend as well as his brother-in-law. (‘Uncle’ Willem’s first wife, who died shortly after the birth of her eighth child, was a sister of my father’s first wife Wijm). Ome Willem told me a lot about the fun they had had together with the other youngsters in the village and the hardships they had both endured in later life. Between the many anecdotes and stories was a ‘joke’ they had played on the ex-nun, the butcher’s new maid. The young men of the village soon knew why Mum had been sent home and laughed about the advice she had been given. “I told you so!” some of the older ones were saying. “The girl has always been boy-crazy; she needs a man in her bed!” Looking for something to do on a Saturday night, they decided to have a bit of fun with Aaltje, the hot-blooded ex-nun. They filled about twenty big bloomers with hay and hung them in the oak tree beside the butcher’s house in front of the church. The following morning the early worshippers stopped and laughed at the bulging underpants, flapping high in the wind. After Mass, a large group of young people gathered around the tree, shouting for Aaltje to come out of the house and have a look at the spectacle. My heart bled for my poor mother when I listened to this story but Ome Willem seemed convinced that Mum had not been offended at all. “She just laughed shyly and went inside again,” he said. Mum never told any of us about the incident and I still wonder whether she really did not care, or if it had been too painful for her to remember. “We all knew that Aaltje was sent away to make a man happy with a heap of kids, and were guessing who the lucky man would be,” Ome Willem said. After a moment of pause he sighed: “And Bart fell for it!” “That sounds as if he was sorry he did!” I replied, without thinking. “Oh, no!” Ome Willem hastened to say. He paused again, then he added softly: “But you will understand Mientje that it was not easy for him to be married to a nun after my lively sister- in-law.” One of the first things Mum heard when she came home from the convent was that, at the age of thirty-four, Bart’s beautiful wife, Wijm had died of tuberculosis. She felt deeply sorry for him when she walked past him after church the following Sunday. He had smiled at her, setting her heart on fire. Shortly afterwards he started to visit the butcher on Saturday nights. After she made coffee for him and the butcher, she kept out of the way, as she always did when her boss had company, her heart beating faster every time she saw him. Being a widower himself, the butcher soon realised that Bart did not come to see him, but in the hope of having a word with Aaltje. “Buy me a new cap and a pipe and I’ll arrange for you to get her,” Mum heard him say one evening when she was making coffee in the kitchen. “I’m not that shy,” Bart replied, “I can talk to her myself.” Mum stood behind the door with trembling knees, overjoyed to hear that Bart had come for her. Although she hardly knew him, Mum did not have to think twice when he asked her to marry him. “I adored him and I felt very fortunate that he wanted me; a fellow like him could have had anyone. He was a handsome man with his thick bunch of dark curly hair and every body liked him,” she said. After a short pause Mum added with trembling lips: “Bart needed a wife. Living alone with his old parents was very depressing for him. But his mother never let me forget that ‘my bed had been made for me’. She told me time and again how lucky I was not to have ended up an old spinster”. My father lived only two kilometres from het dorp (the village) on the road to Hoogland. Shortly before they were married he had taken Mum to his house on a sunny Sunday after the late Mass. She immediately fell in love with the clean, friendly looking cottage with the immaculately kept garden in front of it. The walls at the front of the small, old boerderij were whitewashed with a two feet wide, black border at the bottom. There was a small, square window on either side of a tall one in the middle. With the dark green shutters, the bright yellow window frames and red geraniums between the white lacy curtains, the old house looked cosy and inviting. “ Wijm (my father’s first wife) had always kept the house spotless and Bart had freshly painted it before I came,” Mum said, then continuing dreamily: “I realised there and then that I would never be able to take Wijm’s place.” The old house and the ground around it belonged to the Catholic Church. It was leased on a yearly basis at a very low rent. A lot of sweat had gone into the property since my father’s father had first leased it in 1910 when the land had all been scrubland. They had cleared it, bit by bit, with an axe and a shovel. The old cottage was a far cry from Opoe Kleter’s impressive boerderij, but Mum loved it. “Wijm, had decorated the heert with lovely wallpaper, black with pink and mauve roses,” she said. The old bedstee joining onto the square livingroom had been used as a storage space since my father’s elderly parents had moved out, shortly after my father had married his first wife. Beside the bedstee was the usual geut with a small cellar. On the other side of the heert was a long, narrow bedroom. There was barely space enough to walk past the narrow double bed that stood against the whitewashed wall under the steeply sloping straw roof that came down to no more than a metre off the ground. But the room had two small windows, one at the front and one on the side of the house, which made it look fresh and spacious. The stables were at the back of the house under the same steep, thatched roof. Being summer the animals were all outside. At that time my father owned four milk-cows, a horse, a few pigs and some chickens and supplemented his income by a milk-run; picking up milk from other farmers and taking it to the milk, butter and cheese factory at Hoogland. My father was thirty-three and Mum twenty-seven when they married quietly in August 1936, one year after Mum had left the convent. As she had already received her inheritance when she had gone into the convent, Mum did not expect a wedding present. But, although grudgingly, Opoe had allowed Mum’s stepfather to give her two good milking cows, which brought their herd up to six. The old cottage was named ‘Den Olden Hof’ (The Old Garden) but Mum called it ‘Het Hemeltje’ which means ‘Little Heaven’, when she moved in. Unfortunately, my mother’s ‘Little Heaven’ was often more like a ‘Hell’ for her in years to come... Being an only son, my father was worshipped by his mother, who had always given him everything he had wanted. His quick temper had been well matched by that of his first wife Wijm who wore the pants, or, as the Dutch saying goes; “she had hair on her teeth!” Their marriage had been a happy one with only one great sorrow for both of them, not to be blessed by children. When my father married his first wife, they had moved in with his parents. But Tante Wijm soon had had enough of her mother-in-law’s interference and her sharp tongue. My father had bought a lovely little house called the ‘Temple’ for them from the landlord for whom my grandfather worked as gardener-coachman, three kilometre from Hoogland. But after Tante Wijm’s death, his parents had moved in again, as his mother insisted on looking after her only son. Married life was very hard for my mother. Although she loved him, she found my father’s ‘beastly desires’ difficult to tolerate. “It made me sick,” she said disgustedly when she told me the facts of life. “I was furious with God for making people lower than animals. Every animal has a mating season, but a man wants it all year round!” Mum had expected my father’s hot desires to disappear when she was pregnant, as happened with bulls and cows, but she soon found that it did not work that way either. My father had soon become terribly frustrated with Mum’s attitude. “He used to say that making love to me was like making love to a bag of flour,” she told us later. Poor people! Mum could only be passive, praying while undergoing her ordeal. As his wife she had to tolerate my father whenever he desired to relieve himself. She would close her eyes and offer her suffering to God for the forgiveness of sins in the world. My father’s fiery temperament was always met by my mother’s silent sense of duty, not only in their sexual relationship but also in matters of farming or the upbringing of their children. “ Bart got terribly frustrated with me at times,” Mum said sadly. “If you only spoke up instead of saying ‘yes’ and ‘amen’ all the time,” he would often say, throwing his arms up in desperation.” I have a vivid memory of seeing Mum on the floor with my father sitting on top of her, when I was little, his hands clasped tightly around her neck, saying that he was going to kill her. One day I asked Mum about it. “Oh? I don’t remember anything about that at all,” she said, seemingly surprised. But during the last years of her life, she told us about some of the violence she had endured with him. When I heard how he had sometimes belted her, my father tumbled down from the high pedestal I had put him on since I had been a child. Later that evening I cried bitterly while I tried to pick up the pieces of my shattered illusions... Chapter SIX

I was born on the afternoon of the 30th of October 1939, the third child in the family. My two brothers were still very small. Wout, the eldest, had turned two in August, and Siem would be one on the 3rd of November, four days later. My sudden arrival, and what happened afterwards, were dramatic events in our normally sleepy neighbourhood of small farmers. That afternoon, after the hot midday meal, Mum sat down heavily when she had finished washing the dishes. “It must be about time for the child to come,” she said to my father who was lying on the floor beside her, taking his usual afternoon nap. “My feet are filthy. It would be awful if the doctor saw them like that. I’d better get them washed.” She stood up and got a dish, filled it with hot water and a handful of washing soda, put her feet in and soaked them for a while. As Mum could no longer reach her feet, my father got onto his knees and washed them for her. While he was drying them, Mum suddenly had a bad cramp and a strong urge to push. “Oh! My God, Bart! The child is coming right now,” she gasped. My father quickly set the dish with dirty water aside and eased Mum down to the floor. A few minutes later, I was there, on the floor in front of the kachel, on the wet towel my father had used to dry my mother’s feet. “I had hardly any pain,” Mum told me years later in her down-to-earth fashion: “You just came as a harde keutel (big turd).” My father, who had not been with her when my two brothers were born, was in shock. “Don’t just stand there!” Mum cried. Get buurvrouw Besseltje!” My father ran across the road to get our neighbour’s wife. He was back within a few minutes with the buurvrouw at his heels, still drying her hands on her apron. “Aaltje toch! What are you doing now?” she asked, shaking her head in disbelief, “I have never seen anything like this in my life!” Buurvrouw Besseltje was a big, gentle woman with large, dark blue birth marks on her face and on her enormous earlobes. She was in her late fifties and had five children, one of whom was already married. Although she was Protestant, she helped nearly every woman in the Catholic neighbourhood delivering their children. She often also took care of mother and child during the first ten days after the birth. Unless there were complications, children were always born at home. Most women on the land still did not go to a doctor until they were in the seventh month of their pregnancy. Others simply called on an experienced neighbour or an older woman in the family at the first signs of the approaching birth. They would prepare the bed and stay with the mother while the father went to fetch the doctor. At that time there were only a few cars around; people relied on horses or their bicycles. Our doctor had a heavy motorbike, but because he had a huge district to care for, he was often not immediately available. While my father rode to nearby Hoogland, about six kilometres from our place to get the doctor, buurvrouw Besseltje took care of me and made the bed ready for Mum. By the time the doctor arrived roaring into our driveway on his BMW, followed immediately by my breathless father, Mum had been washed and changed into a nightie and the mess on the floor had already been cleaned up. She was carried into the bedroom and lifted onto the bed by the doctor and my father. Doctor’s orders of ten days complete bed rest after giving birth, were usually strictly observed as it was considered extremely dangerous for the mother to get up too early. My father’s mother, Opoe Mijn, had taken care of the household when my two brothers were born. But, as Mum could not stand her domineering mother-in-law, she had asked her sister, Tante Annie, to help this time. Opoe Mijn was furious that she had been passed over in favour of a ‘snot-nose of sixteen’; she was not going to let anyone push her aside! Every morning, as soon as my father had left for the milk-run she came and bossed my mother and her young sister around. The minute Opoe Mijn arrived on the morning after I was born, Mum had a fierce argument with her about my name. Being the first daughter, I had to be named after her, my father’s mother, according to tradition. But Mum refused to call me ‘Mijntje’. She insisted on ‘Mientje’, the modern version of Wilhelmina. A few days after I was born, Mum became very withdrawn. She just lay there, staring at the ceiling, not showing any interest in her sons or her new baby girl. On the third day, she got out of bed when no one was watching. Our next door neighbour, also called Aaltje, found her crying and shivering in her nightie in the grass behind the chicken coop. When Aaltje took her back into the house, Mum made her swear not to tell my father. “He would kill me,” she said. Mum did not remember anything about that terrible episode in her life. A few years ago, I asked Ome Hannes, Mum’s oldest brother, about it. “Nobody knew what was the matter with her at the time,” he said. “You know how your mother hated to be indoors. We expected her to get better when she could get out of bed on the tenth day, but instead she got worse. She just sat there in an armchair in the sun, staring into space. Your father grew quite desperate terrified that she would go mad like our sister Jans. He asked me time and again: “Hannes, what am I going to do?” The doctor, who came every day, called it a ‘severe depression’. He kept saying that she would come good again.” Later, that same day Mum had gone completely ‘off her rocker’. She was running around the house, yelling and screaming, foaming from her mouth, until she collapsed in a heap on the ground.” “The following afternoon, when I came to see her, she had another attack,” Ome Hannes continued after a brief silence. “Bart and I could barely hold her down. She had incredible strength, just like Tante Jans when she had one of her fits!” Our neighbour Aaltje ran to our place at Mum’s screaming. She had found my father sitting on top of her trying to keep her down. “Is Mama going to die?” Wout, my two-year-old brother asked her. “I hope she does if she is going to be like this,” my father had answered. The doctor admitted Mum to the hospital in Amersfoort but her condition kept deteriorating. During the following week, she was taken to a mental institution in Rosmalen, in the south of Holland. Ome Hannes, who was my father’s closest friend, went with my father to the institution a few weeks later to visit her. “Bart was devastated seeing Aaltje walking around like a zombie,” Ome Hannes recalled. “A doctor told us that it sometimes happened to the mother when a child was born too quickly. He said that she could snap out of it with the help of modern treatment. He was talking of letting her sleep under heavy sedation and using ‘shock-treatment’ whatever that might have been. Your father did not believe him. He knew what my sister Jans was like and mental illness was known to run in families. Although there wasn’t anyone else that we knew of in ours, it was a big worry for all of us,” Ome Hannes sighed. Soon after Mum had gone to the hospital, my father took me to Ome Hendrik and Tante Stein, a childless couple who lived in the village. Ome Hendrik was also one of my father’s best friends and a brother of Tante Wijm, his first wife. Because they had no children of their own, they were always the first to be called upon to take care of someone else’s children in an emergency. Only a few weeks before, they had had to give their one-year-old nephew, Gerard back, as his father (Ome Willem, the baker) had re-married. The little boy’s mother a sister of Ome Hendrik and Tante Wijm, had died of pneumonia a few weeks after Gerard her eighth child was born. Tante Stein had gone to pieces when the cute little toddler, for whom they had cared since he was only a few weeks old, had been taken from them. Even though they had said that they never wanted to go through such a trauma again, they did not hesitate to take me in as neither of them could ever refuse anyone in trouble. While Mum was away, Opoe Mijn, who was sixty-nine at the time, looked after my father and my two little brothers. As my father had to milk the cows and feed the animals before he started the milk-run at seven-thirty in the morning, she and my grandfather, Opa Wous moved into our place again. The bitterly cold winter months of 1939-40, the coldest on record, went by without any improvement in my mother’s condition. When war broke out in Holland in May, six months after she was admitted, the long, time-consuming journey by bus and train to visit her in Rosmalen, became even more difficult as well as dangerous. The few visits my father was able to make were happy ones for Mum, but they had broken my father’s heart. Like a little child, Mum would put her hand in his and smile happily at him. She never asked about home or the children. When spring turned into summer, she started to improve and in July 1940, after being away for nine months, she was considered fit enough to come home. During that time she had not seen any of her three children. Years later, Mum said that she had been happy to see my brothers again, but she had forgotten that she had me. “ The day after I came home I went with lead in my shoes to collect you,” she said, her mouth quivering. “I saw how broken-hearted Tante Stein and Ome Hendrik were when they lost Gerard. You were bouncing happily on Ome Hendrik’s knees when I came in; I felt terribly guilty to take you away. Tante Stein cried bitterly when she had to let you go. It was awful!” While I was growing up, I used to call in often at Tante Stein and Ome Hendrik’s place after school. I don’t remember ever hugging them, but I will always remember their friendly smiling faces and Tante Stein’s brightly shining eyes. They were always interested in whatever I was telling them and somehow, they made me feel very special. Whenever Mum treated me as if I was a stepchild, I wished that she had left me there. After Mum came home from the institution, Opoe Mijn still insisted on coming every morning to our place to keep an eye on Mum. Although she was seventy, she still walked the three-kilometre dirt road to our place. No matter what kind of weather it was, she was there as soon as my father had left to do the milk-run. From an early age Opoe Mijn had given her only son little ‘extras’, telling him not to share it with anyone else. Grandfather Wous had a good job, but my father’s cousins from his mother’s side, were very poor. One sunny afternoon, when my father was in his early twenties, he was working on the land with his nineteen-year-old cousin Hendrik, who hadn’t had anything to eat all day. Opoe Mijn had walked more than an hour to bring her son a little pan with rice, boiled in milk and covered with brown sugar, my father’s favourite dish. Water had dribbled out of Hendrik’s mouth at the sight of the delicacy. My father handed him the pan to let him eat first infuriating his mother who didn’t give a damn about her nephew’s empty stomach. My father had taken no notice of her. He just laughed at her, and called her names. My father’s father, Wous Hooft was in his late seventies when I was born. He was known as a gentle man, very fit for his age. As the old-age pension had not been heard of at that time, he still worked for the landlord of a mansion across the road from the Temple, where he had been a coachman and a gardener since he had been a young man. The neighbours called upon him often, especially at planting and harvesting time as Opa Wous was always ready to help anyone who needed a hand. While my mother was in the institution, Opa Wous rode his three-wheeler bike through the loose sand of the dirt road every day at noon to have his hot midday meal at our place. Later, when Mum was home again, he would come on his bike every Sunday afternoon for a visit. Wout and Siem were four and five years old, when they took Opa’s tricycle for a ride behind the house while he was having a cup of tea inside with my parents. Our next door neighbour’s boys, Johan and Eddy, who were the same age as my brothers, were hanging off Opa Wous’ three-wheeler too, when they rode out of the driveway and landed in the ditch across the road. Fortunately there was little water in the sloot but they were covered with weeds and frog-rit from head to toe when they crawled out of the mud. Lucky for them Opa Wous had laughed heartily about it even though the wheels of his bike were badly twisted. When Opa Wous died suddenly, at the age of eighty-one, Opoe Mijn decided to rent the Temple out and move in permanently into our place. Life for Mum, who was expecting her fourth child at the time, became unbearable. She was no match for my over-bearing grandmother, who forever scolded her and bossed her around when my father was not about. She knew better than to let her son see how she treated his wife. During the four years as a novice in the convent, Mum had learned to do as she was told, not to ask questions and never, ever argue with any of her superiors. Opoe Mijn did not hide the fact that she was disgusted with the ‘useless ex-nun’ her son had married, who was only capable of producing offspring like a rabbit. Tante Wijm, my father’s first wife, had always kept the house spotlessly clean and she was a good cook. Mum did not like housework and she did not care much for cooking either. And with another child every year, she had no hope of keeping the little house tidy no matter how hard she tried. Opoe Mijn had spoilt Wout, my eldest brother rotten. By the time he was three, he had become a little tyrant. Because he was named after Opa Wous, he could do no wrong in Opoe Mijn’s eyes. She laughed at everything he said or did especially when he was rude to Mum or refused to come when she called him. Wout resented me from the start. He was very angry with Mum for bringing me home from Ome Hendrik and Tante Stein’s place. His temper flared whenever Mum was feeding me or sat me on her lap. He even ran me over with the pram when I was crawling around on the floor. Because Mum was always angry with him, Wout never got any hugs from her, not even when he was little. One day, when Mum told him off for something or other, Wout threw a tantrum. Opoe yelled at Mum, hurrying to Wout to calm him down. But Wout spat in her face and kicked her in the shins. “Dat ouwe kreng (the old bitch) just stood there and laughed,” Mum said disgustedly, when she told me about it. The incident had made her ‘put her foot down’ for the first time in her married life. “Two captains on one ship can never work,” she said. “When Bart came home from the milk-run I told him: ‘Either she goes or I go!’ You’ll have to bring me back to the institution if I have to put up with that cantankerous old woman for much longer!” After a little pause Mum added sadly: “Poor Bart! He had no choice but to send his own mother away.” Opoe Mijn had left grudgingly. She went to live with Gartje-meu, her unmarried sister, and her alcoholic brother Teus who still lived together in the old cottage where they were born. When I went to pre-school with my two older brothers, we always called at Gartje-meu’s place (meu is old-fashioned for ‘aunt’) to get a peppermint which Opoe kept in a big pocket, hidden underneath her heavy black, gathered skirt. She always gave Wout one immediately and, after nagging her for a while, she would give me one too. But Siem never got any, only because he was named after Mum’s father, Simon. Siem told her that he did not like peppermint anyway, but when I let him have a taste of mine, he sucked it happily until I asked him to give it back to me. Opoe Mijn was a big, grumpy old woman, ‘cast aside like an old rag by my parents,’ she said. She always sat in an old rattan chair underneath a noisy pigeon in a cage on the wall. The pigeon was supposed to keep her rheumatism under control but it did not seem to help much. I never saw her walk and wondered if she would get out of the chair at night to sleep in a bed. Opoe Mijn died at eighty when I was nine years old, but I was reminded about her almost every day. Whenever Mum was angry with me, she would call me a bazig kreng (bossy bitch), which I probably was, saying that I was just like Opoe Mijn after whom I had been named. According to Mum, the doctor had told my father when she left the mental hospital that it would be too dangerous for her to have any more children. When I mentioned that to Ome Hannes, in search of the truth, he said rather sharply: “That is not what the doctor told your father! I went with Bart when he picked her up and I was there when the doctor told us that there was no reason to believe that another child would have the same effect on her,” he said emotionally. Being a hot-blooded man, my father was not prepared to live in celibacy, like Mum’s beloved father Simon had done, which was a big disappointment for Mum. She had been home three months when she fell pregnant again. About six months later Pastoor H, then the local priest, came to visit her. “You have been home for quite a while now, Vrouw Hooft”, he had said, when Mum handed him a cup of coffee. “Isn’t it time you had another child?” The coffee had spilled over the edge of the cup as Mum’s hands trembled with anger. “You don’t need to worry, Meneer Pastoor; there is already another one on the way,” she had said sarcastically. My brother Henk was born in July 1941 exactly one year after Mum had come home from the mental institution. The family now had three boys and one girl, me. When Mum fell pregnant again, shortly after Henk was born, she hoped desperately that it would be a girl. Eight months through her pregnancy, Mum had a frightening experience which she later blamed for the loss of her child. The Germans had occupied Holland at the time. Hungry people roamed the country, begging and stealing food wherever they could. Chickens were stolen regularly; there were only a few of them left in our pen. That morning in the spring of 1942, just after my father had gone on the milk-run, three German soldiers came to the back door, demanding eggs. Mum shook her head and pointed at the children, gesturing that she didn’t have enough eggs to give to them. One of the Germans pointed his gun at Mum when she tried to prevent the other two from going into the chicken-coop to help them-selves. During the following night the baby was born, one month premature. It was a little girl with a big gaping hole in the top of her head (ana cephalus), the sight of which haunted my mother for many years. Even though a lot more was known about birth defects in later years, Mum remained adamant that the incident with the German soldiers was responsible for the death of my little sister. She also firmly believed that it would have been all right if it had happened one month earlier, as it was a well-known fact that a seven month old baby would have a much better chance of surviving than one at eight months. Unfortunately, my little sister did not live long enough to be baptised at home. Because of that, she remained nameless and, as she was considered a ‘heathen’ her little body could not be buried in the consecrated soil of the graveyard behind the Catholic Church. My father had made a little coffin for her and buried her himself at a special place for those poor souls, under the hedge at the furthest edge of the cemetery. Believing that her little girl would never go to heaven, no matter how much she prayed for her, upset Mum for decades until she accepted otherwise. When I asked Ome Hannes about the incident, he was stunned. Although he and Mum had always been very close, he did not know that she had ever had a stillborn child. Mum always felt like a wet dishcloth for months after she had given birth, but the minute she was pregnant again, she felt better. She did not have to wait long. Within a few months she was expecting another baby. My brother Wim, my father called him Ted, perhaps because he was as fat as a teddy bear, was born in March 1943. Mum’s disappointment that he was another boy was short lived, as she was always grateful to see that her newborn child was healthy. Half a year later, there was yet another baby on the way. She knew from the time of conception that she was going to have a girl. My sister Jopie, my father nick-named her Pieps because she was so tiny, was born on the 7th of May 1944, when I was four and a half years old. A little calculation tells me that of the fifty-four months since I was born, Mum was nine months in a mental hospital and thirty-five months pregnant. That left her a grand total of ten months to recuperate between four pregnancies! Mum always called Jopie her ‘Sunday-child’ as she was born on a Sunday morning. From an early age I felt that she was Mum’s favourite, the only one of us she really loved. Eighteen months after Jopie was born Mum was thirty-six and six months pregnant, when my father died. He left her with six children, the eldest eight years old, the seventh on the way... “Bart always said that he wouldn’t live to be very old,” I heard Mum say many times. She had laughed about it at every time, pointing out to him that his grandfather had lived to be ninety- two and his father, Opa Wous had been eighty-one when he died. “It was just as well that Bart died when he did,” she would always add rather bitterly; “I would have ended up with twenty-four children or more. He only had to look at me for me to conceive.” Even though Mum always said that children were the greatest blessing that God could give, she had never wanted so many. “You just accepted them whether you wanted them or not, and you cared for them as well as you could,” she said. Seeing it in that light, she hasn’t done a bad job at all. Large families were common in our area. A family a few farms up from ours had eighteen children, which was a lot. Ten or twelve was quite normal. People who had only three or four were either regarded as lucky, or accused of interfering with nature by using forbidden forms of birth control like ‘leaving the church before the singing’ the only one Mum had ever heard of at the time. Celibacy was the only acceptable form of birth control for Catholics. For some reason rich people never had as many children as poor families who needed more children to care for their parents in their old age. I also read somewhere that poor, undernourished women conceived much more easily than strong, healthy women, which makes me wonder why God did not make women more like the kangaroos... Chapter SEVEN

Word War Two broke out in Holland in May 1940 when I was five months old. At the end of August 1939, two months before I was born, the whole Dutch army was called up for mobilisation as German troops had walked into Poland, in spite of the peace agreement Hitler had signed with England and France the previous year. The following winter was the coldest on record with temperatures dropping to twenty degrees below zero, which created many additional difficulties for the army preparing to defend Holland. As tension mounted the churches filled to capacity every evening as people prayed that God would save their beautiful country from the impending disaster. On the 8th of May 1940 Amersfoort and its surrounding villages were evacuated as heavy fighting was expected near the Grebbeberg, the crossing of the river Rijn, the main stronghold in the waterlinie (barrier). In an attempt to stop German troops advancing across the main rivers, the Maas, the Waal and the Rijn, a lot of farms were flooded in our area by the Dutch army. Along with some forty-five thousand people and thousands of cows, Ome Hendrik and Tante Stein took me to the province of North Holland. My father’s elderly parents had taken my two older brothers, Wout and Siem with them. It was a terrible ordeal for Opoe Mijn who had, like most other women, never been away from the village before. My father and several other men had left with the cows earlier that morning. Most people in the area went by train from Amersfoort but the population of Hoogland and Hooglanderveen travelled by boat, via het IJselmeer. They were accommodated in Edam and Volendam, two well-known fishing villages close to Amsterdam, about fifty kilometres away. Despite all the preparations German troops overran the Dutch army during the night of the 10th of May 1940. Terrible fighting continued at the Grebbeberg for another two days with many heavy casualties on both sides while the Germans bombed Rotterdam and threatened to do the same to Utrecht if the Dutch did not surrender immediately. Ten days after they were evacuated, the population was able to return home again. Although there were a lot of German soldiers around and several young men had gone into hiding, life went on as usual in our neighbourhood during the first years of the war but as time went by things slowly deteriorated. Every household lived in constant fear of losing their breadwinner as men were called up regularly to work for the Germans, with or without pay. If a boer could not prove that he needed every one of his horses for work on the farm, these were confiscated for Hitler’s cause. Ome Hannes had to drive high-ranking officers, who occupied the little castle in the forest close to his farm, to meetings, parties and the cinema in Amersfoort in Opoe’s hooded buggy. “I was always paid,” Ome Hannes said. “Most of the Germans were decent chaps. They often talked to me about their families, their wives or their girlfriends, worrying if they were still alive under the continuous bombing by English fighter planes. But there were some nasty characters too. You had to be very careful what you said to them, especially when they had been drinking.” Ome Hannes’ feet and fingers were often just about frozen off while he waited for parties to end or movies to finish. “The officers never seemed to be in any hurry to get back to their cold and empty beds,” he grinned. Our village, Hooglanderveen was built on the northern side of the railway line from Amersfoort to Zwolle, joining a direct line from Amsterdam to Germany. On the southern side of the line were mainly farmhouses, a few hundred metres apart from each other. Because it was too dangerous to live close to the railway, most people moved to farms a bit further away. Three families moved into the chook-houses, which my father had built a few years earlier at the back of our house. With the lacy curtains they looked like modern holiday homes. My father was very precise. Whatever he made was always perfect. “Bart used a spirit level whenever he was making a fence to keep the cows in, even while the war was on,” Ome Hannes laughed. My father owned a paddock near the railway on the edge of the village. One day the cows broke out of the paddock when shots were fired nearby and he had asked Ome Hannes to help him repair the fence. Even though Ome Hannes was the most patient man I ever knew he became very annoyed with my father’s way of working. The wooden posts had to be exactly the same distance apart and of exactly the right height. “My God, Bart! If you work like that, we’ll never get finished!” Ome Hannes had said in desperation; “I’ve got to be home by four to milk the cows. Remember?” My father had stamped his feet and shouted: “I can’t help myself, Hannes! That’s just the way I am!” Three of the four chook-houses my father had made were four by six metres the other one was a little smaller. They were built on a concrete footing, the first half metre with bricks, above that a wooden structure with a tiled roof. The planks were all meticulously planed and preserved with tar. There were big windows in every ‘house’ but the floor was only sand. When the chooks were in them my father had covered the sand with wood-shavings. The sand and wood- shavings were replaced every spring and the manure was used in my father’s thriving garden. The families made the chook-houses into very cosy homes. I loved to visit them, especially the family Bosch, who had lovely lace curtains, tablecloths and bedspreads. They had a twenty- year-old daughter, Susan, who was very nice to me. Like most other farmers, my father dug a shelter, big enough to accommodate everybody who lived on the property when there was an air-raid. It was built behind the hooiberg at the back of our house, within easy reach for everyone. It was a horrible dark and damp place. The ground water had to be scooped out regularly and fresh, dry straw put in. The ceiling was just a man’s height in the middle, with sleeping spaces under the edges of the roof, which was made with planks and straw and covered with a thick layer of black dirt. From the outside the shelter looked like a winter-storage for potatoes or sugar beet. At times we were all cramped inside for hours and once for a whole night. Most of us sat with our fingers in our ears so that we would not hear the awful sounds of sirens and gunfire, praying that we would still be alive when the shooting ceased. In June 1942, my father received a letter from Ome Albert who lived in The Hague. After the war of 1914-18, when underfed, sickly and orphaned children were sent to the country to recuperate, Ome Albert had lived with my grandparents. My father and his parents had not heard from him for twenty-five years. In his letter, Ome Albert told my father about the terrible living conditions in the city and asked if he could send his wife, Tante Lena, and his two little boys to Hooglanderveen for a couple of weeks. In my father’s reply, which Tante Lena has kept all these years, my father wrote in his beautiful formal style and handwriting that shortage of food also prevailed in the country. The whole potato crop had been wiped out, rotting in the ground because of the continuous rain that year. Wheat lay flat on the ground, growing mould, as the ground was too wet to harvest it. He asked Ome Albert to bring bread coupons, as that was the only way to get bread in the village, if any were available. Coupons were also needed for just about anything else that could be bought. My parents were reluctant to take the fancy city people in, as Mum had to share the bed with Tante Lena, while Ome Albert and my father had to sleep on the floor of the heert with us kids. But they got on well. Ome Albert and his family came first for a few days and later for long periods of time. Whole families of homeless people came to our house daily asking for food and shelter. They never went away empty handed even though my parents had little themselves. Because the farmers had to deliver a certain amount of milk per cow to the factory, they had to be careful not to give away or sell too much milk to people who came to the door. There were also quite a lot of people who did not bother asking and just helped themselves to whatever they wanted. Sometimes one or more cows had already been milked when my father got to them in the morning. One day a man, clad in rags, was lying unconscious in our driveway. He had taken the bottle of blue metho, which Mum kept in the geut to be used in the lamp, and he had drunk the lot. At the back of his immaculate garden my father grew his own tobacco which he chewed. Growing tobacco was apparently a hazardous occupation that attracted heavy penalties if the person were caught. “So far I have been able to lead the inspectors who are now calling in frequently, away from the plot,” my father wrote to Ome Albert in August 1942. He referred to the tobacco as ‘yellow stuff’, in case his letters were censored. Tobacco was a terrific swapping asset, just like homemade jenever and brandy, which was made at Opoe Mijn’s brother’s illegal distillery. “Men had to smoke and drink; no matter what!” Mum would say in a disgruntled manner. Together, with their friends in the neighbourhood, my brothers were always looking for bullets. They brought home all sorts of different shells and hulzen (cartridges) in all shapes and sizes. Some of those cartridges were made from shiny copper and were up to half a metre long. Sometimes they came home with live bullets, which they hit with a hammer... In a friend’s place, a hand grenade had been used as a doorstop until someone recognised that it was still intact! Living conditions steadily deteriorated during the last years of the war as the food shortage became worse. When the chickens were all eaten, eggs disappeared from the shops. Less milk was produced as the cows were sent to Germany and pigs were eaten before they were old enough to produce piglets; even horses were slaughtered to supply the demand for meat. Everybody had to hand in all gold, silverware and copper items, radios, rubber tyres etc. Whatever the Germans could use was confiscated. Most farmers buried wagon-wheels and harnesses in the back yard and people hid their radio and jewellery under the floorboards, which was extremely dangerous. The place would be ripped apart and the men taken to work in Germany or to a concentration camp if anything was found. Most of Opoe Kleter’s beautiful crockery survived the war, buried at the bottom of the hooiberg. Awful stories circulated about the way the Germans treated rebels. On the night of the 30th of September 1944 a German officer was shot and another badly wounded by the Dutch underground on the road between Nijkerk and Putten, a small village not far from ours. The following day German soldiers and local police ordered all men and boys to the church and women and children to the school, saying that they were going to burn the whole village down. They then drove six hundred and sixty men between the age of eighteen and fifty onto a train to Germany and ordered the rest of the population to leave the village. From a distance they watched their houses going up in flames. A hundred houses were destroyed but the church and the school were still standing when people returned. One hundred and twenty men tried to escape, but most of them were shot or killed when they jumped out of the train. Only a few men came back after the war, five hundred and fifty-two lost their lives. After the war, Putten became known as ‘the Village of the Widows’. I keep wondering how the men who caused the German’s revenge were feeling when they heard what had happened. Surely, they could have predicted what the cost of their sabotage was going to be... ‘Father forgive them...’ my stepfather would have said, and Mum undoubtedly prayed for them at the time. One day, when I was four I crossed the road with my brother Siem who was five. We were going to Mum, who was talking to Buurvrouw Besseltje in the garden in front of her house. A plane came over very low. “Shoot us if you can!” we yelled: “Shoot us dead! Shoot us dead!” Suddenly a thunderous explosion made us fall flat on our faces on the sandy road. Bullets hit the cobblestones of our neighbour’s driveway and flew in all directions. A small projectile fell in the neighbour’s yard rending the air with a deafening sound. The ‘Tommies’ had been aiming for the railway, which was about a kilometre away, but Siem and I were convinced they had heard us yelling. During that time I had a strange, recurring dream about the German soldiers. The scene was always the same, a beautiful sunny day not a cloud in the sky. The soldiers were riding towards me on a very strange pushbike; a construction of three bikes joined together, one after the other and three layers on top. Lots of soldiers, complete with helmets and guns, were hanging on all sides of this enormous contraption. Maybe it was a fantasy about the clever acrobatic shows the Germans put on, which people had been talking about. Or perhaps it had something to do with my grandfather’s three-wheeler with all those boys hanging from it. During the last year of the war an enormous channel, about twenty metres wide and one metre deep, was built just north of our village. It cut through the entire stretch of grassland only a few metres away from Opoe Kleter’s boerderij. A big, ugly looking bunker was built at the end of their property, near the crossing of the road from Amersfoort to Nijkerk. The farmers in the area were ordered to feed the hundreds of men who worked on the project. The channel was apparently made to stop the allied forces advancing from the south but it was never used. While I stood watching one day, a German soldier hit a man with a stick. When the man fell to the ground, the German kicked him, shouting to the others to get on with their job. On All Souls Day, the 2nd of November 1944, an English bomber set a goods-train alight at the edge of our village. It was believed that the train was filled with ammunition but the German driver said that that was not true. He had unhooked the burning carriages and disappeared with the locomotive in the direction of Amersfoort. As the train kept burning for hours and nothing happened, more and more villagers came to have a look. If it had ammunition in it, it would have exploded long ago, they said. Suddenly all hell broke loose when one of the carriages blew up. Incredibly, only five people were killed. Four of them were from the same family living next to the railway. Several other people were badly injured but survived. In April 1945, it was becoming clear that the Germans were losing the war. There was some heavy fighting in our area during those last weeks while the Allies were pushing their troops out of Holland. A farmer, not far from our place was the leader of the ‘Underground’ in our area. At the end of April, a week before the war officially ended on the fifth of May, a German patrol arrived at his farm. While they searched his boerderij one of the six men meeting there must have panicked when he shot two of the Germans soldiers. Suddenly a lot more Germans appeared on the scene. During the fight that followed, five of the underground men got killed. The sixth had been heavily wounded but he had managed to escape to a farm next door. While the Germans searched next door’s boerderij, they ordered the owner and his family out of the house. Because they were unable to find the wounded man, the Germans shot the farmer and two of his sons, in front of his wife and several other children. Then they ordered a visiting neighbour to get a horse and cart. The bodies of the two German soldiers were put in the cart. As there was no horse to be found, the neighbour had to pull the cart himself to a small forest, more than a kilometre away. There he had to dig two graves. When he had buried the two bodies in the first grave, the Germans had shot the neighbour too and dumped him in the other... While all this was happening, we watched a lot of soldiers, wearing different uniforms, come from the direction of Hoogland. Walking close together in a horizontal line, they went from farm to farm, searching every nook and cranny for German soldiers who might have stayed behind. Nobody could understand them, but everyone was happy. Our back yard was full of people, laughing and crying. The soldiers had brought chocolates and cookies for us children and cigarettes for the adults. Susan, the girl who lived in one of our chook-houses, was dancing around showing everybody the silk stockings one of the soldiers had given her. Everyone was laughing and carrying on, calling out to other neighbours who joined us: “They are Canadians!” The Canadians had come at last; Holland was free! Chapter EIGHT

While I was writing about my early childhood for the first time, I had a strange but beautiful experience. During the early hours of that particular morning in October 1990, I was making a list of every little thing that came to my mind, concentrating deeply on my father. He had died two weeks before my sixth birthday and I could not remember much about him when suddenly I became aware that he was standing behind me, a feeling that became very strong. It was so real, so peaceful... Clear memories and anecdotes flooded my mind and I wrote steadily for hours forgetting about the time and everything around me. I always referred to him as ‘my father’ when I thought or spoke about him, but from that moment on I called him ‘Papa’, as I had done when he had still been alive. Early one night when I wrote about his death, I cried uncontrollably. For the first time in my life I felt the loss and sadness of that little girl whose beloved father had left her never uttering a word... The same sad feeling comes over me sometimes when I see how my sons adore their little girls and I say a little prayer: “Please God! Let that experience never happen to any of them!”

My father adored me, Mum always said. He was so happy to have a little girl after the two boys. For some unknown reason, he called me ‘Katchinka’ a Russian name, and he always insisted that I wore only red or black ribbons in my blond hair. According to Mum, I was always around him when he worked in the garden talking non-stop. The first incident that came to my mind must have happened when I was five years old. Our next door neighbours were an old couple with an unmarried daughter who had a child. Although this buurman (neighbour) would not have been much older than fifty he was an old man deeply bent from the waist. It seemed that he was searching the ground all the time. His wife was regarded as a witch. She was a cranky old woman with a hunched back and a sour face. Every child in the neighbourhood was scared of her. We seldom saw their grown-up daughter or her son. I learned later that she had been hidden away for years for the shame she had brought on her parents by having a child without being married. The old folks battled trying to make a living on their tiny farm. Their house, one of the first ones built in the area was hidden from the road by high bushes. Their orchard at the back of the house bordered on a piece of land that my father was clearing. Beautiful apples and pears ripened there that summer. One day my big brothers, Wout and Siem, were talking to our neighbours Johan and Eddy, also seven and six, daring each other to climb over the gate to steal fruit from Ouwe Gart’s yard. Boasting that they were not afraid they argued how to go about it. It was just after midday, time for the old people’s afternoon nap. I was with Papa who was digging a tree stump out of the block he was clearing watching the boys debating how to get over the high fence which was made of thin, rough timber posts and coarse chicken wire. They checked for holes in the wire and decided that the best way to get in was by climbing over the gate. Eddy, the cheekiest of the four went over first and ran from tree to tree. When he said that there was nobody to be seen the others went over, daring me to come too. “Oh, come on; it’s easy!” Johan said, when they were all on the other side. I kicked off my clogs like the boys had done and climbed the gate putting my bare feet in the holes of the chicken wire. The boys were running back and forth with apples and pears, poking them through the wire fence. It took me a while to get over the gate and I had just reached the first pear tree when one of the boys yelled: “Run! Quickly! Ouwe Mette is coming!” They ran off to the gate. I followed as fast as I could. Looking back I saw the old witch come after me waving a long bread knife. I tried to run faster, tripping over my own feet. The boys were already over the gate yelling at me to hurry up. Just as I reached the top, my dress got stuck on a piece of chicken wire. Ouwe Mette came closer and closer. I was very scared thinking that she would cut me to pieces with her knife. My little heart raced and I started to cry. Then, I wet my pants.... Luckily, Papa heard the boys screaming and me crying. He came running and plucked me off the gate, ripping my dress. Ouwe Mette grumbled on the other side of the fence, saying that she would make metworst out of us if she ever got her hands on us. Papa laughed and told us to put the fruit back through the fence into the old witch’s yard. As we walked back with Papa he laughed heartily at the boys’ account of the event, especially at me for piddling my pants. I never had any desire to go stealing fruit again. At that time, a woman would help her husband on the land with whatever he asked, but a man could not be seen with a tea towel in his hands. “Bart did not care about that,” Mum said. “He always did the dishes and swept the heert and he had the children all dressed in their Sunday clothes when I came home from the early Mass on Sunday mornings.” I remember how Papa set the chairs upside-down on the edge of the table and sprinkled wet tea leaves all over the red patterned carpet to settle the dust, then he swept it clean on hands and knees. Next he turned up the edges of the carpet and swept and washed the surrounding, dark red floorboards, often with three of us kids on his back, playing ‘horsie’. “I loved Sundays and so did Bart,” Mum recalled. Unless the roads were covered with snow or ice, Mum always went to church on her pushbike. After Mass she would walk back with an aunt or a friend in the village to have a cup of coffee, usually served with a slice of krentenbrood (fruit-loaf) or a crisp beschuit (rusk) with cheese, jam or sugar. Mum would much rather visit Gartje-meu, Opoe Mijn’s maiden sister, than her mother as Opoe Kleter seldom had anything nice to say to her. Gartje-meu was a tiny woman with a friendly nature, completely different from her bad- tempered sister, Opoe Mijn our other sour grandmother. “I have kept a nice soft beschuitje for you Aaltje!” my toothless aunt would say when Mum walked home with her from church. The idea of a soft rusk made Mum shudder (a rusk had to be firm and crisp), but she loved to chat with Gartje-meu and her batchelor brother Teus about the good old days. How their father distilled liquor illegally in their old farmhouse and Opoe Mijn’s alcoholic brothers went poaching and smuggling. Gartje-meu was the first woman in the village to have a sewing machine. She would get up at four in the morning and walk with the heavy machine in a wheelbarrow to Amersfoort, eight or nine kilometres away, to sew at different people’s places for the day. Then she had to walk back again at night. She still wore the traditional black costume of the area and made traditional, lace knip-mutsen for other women in the district. When I was still a child I watched her making a new, old-fashioned style dress for herself with an intricate design of embroidery with tiny beads and lots of pin-sharp seems at the front. She did it all by hand as her machine had broken down. “It was always such a pleasure to come home after Mass,” Mum said longingly, when she recalled the happiest time of her life. “Bart was so good with the children and the heert was always clean. I did not get much chance to sweep the floor during the week. Bart’s strong strokes with the brush made the carpet much cleaner than I could ever get it.” Mum had to be home in time for my father to go to the Hoogmis (Gregorian Mass with organ and choir) at eleven. While he was away, she bathed and fed the baby and finished cooking the midday meal she had prepared the previous afternoon. “Most men went to the cafe across the road from the church for a drink, a game of cards or biljard (three balls) but Bart seldom joined them,” she said. “Sometimes he talked with Hannes and some other men for a while but he usually came straight home. People liked him a lot. They could always rely on him to lend a helping hand. Once in a while he would go to Gartje-meu to visit his mother but if I did not remind him he would have never gone to see her.” When he came home, Mum would have the midday meal ready and the table set. During the week she cooked very plain meals, usually stamppot (lots of potatoes ‘stamped’ together with onions, brown beans and carrots or cabbage, zuurkool (sauerkraut), raw endive etc. This was topped with gravy left from the Sunday meal or kaantjes (cut up, fried pig fat). On Sundays we usually had soup first, always clear chicken soup with vermicelli, or garden vegetable soup with balletjes (marble-sized -pork- meat-balls, made with egg, rusk or breadcrumbs, salt, pepper and nutmeg). The main meal consisted of lots of potatoes, one cooked vegetable and a gehaktbal (as above but bigger and fried) a piece of chicken or a small piece of pork. If she felt like it she made appelmoes (applesauce) rhubarb dried apples or cucumber in vinegar. Mum also used to cook delicious stoof-peren (cooking-pears) which she simmered for hours until they were deep red. She claimed that I hated those pears when I was little. My father had held me so that she could push them down my throat, while I was kicking and screaming holding my head firmly to prevent me from spitting it all around the room. I find that hard to believe, perhaps she confused the pears with red cabbage... Sometimes, Mum made custard or rice pudding on Saturday afternoon so that it was cold on Sunday. She would turn the special mould upside-down and top it with berries or a sauce made from fresh or preserved fruit. My father was happy to eat the different courses from the same deep plate like every other boer did. Mum shuddered when she saw a sweet served on the same plate as meat and potatoes had been on. Perhaps that’s the reason she always licked her plate; I’m sure she did not learn that habit in the convent! On Sunday afternoon my parents would take a short nap. Mum usually went to bed with the baby, but my father would stretch out on the floor of the living-room so that he could keep an eye on the other children. Then they would walk around the property. In my father’s extensive vegetable garden, his pride and joy, they discussed which vegetables needed to be used or preserved and which patches needed weeding, re-planting or to be prepared for new seed. By four o’clock my father started to feed the pigs while Mum fed the chickens and collected the eggs. While my father milked the cows, Mum prepared the evening meal (usually sandwiches or karnemelkse pap (buttermilk boiled with flour or oats, served with golden syrup) and put the little ones in bed. Every one of the children was in bed by seven, no matter how bright the sun was shining. My parents seldom went visiting. They were content with their simple way of life. Although the work was heavy, my father loved his milk-run. Apart from the extra income, he met a lot of people not only the farmers and their wives on the route but also other milk-riders and the workers at the milk factory at Hoogland. He left at seven-thirty every morning and returned between eleven and noon. Because the factory was closed on Sundays, there was also a run on Saturday evening. My brothers were often allowed to go with him, after their bath, to give Mum a rest. Sometimes he took me too. I loved to sit close to Papa on the seat he had made at the front of the flat cart, giggling about Vos’ big cheeks bobbing up and down while her big, fluffy tail swung back and forth to keep the flies away. Most farmers on his route lived a few hundred metres apart, but some farms were up to a kilometre from the main road. Vos, our old mare, knew the daily route blindfolded. She just walked on, stopping at the right places, going in and out of the long driveways without any comments from Papa, who would whistle and laugh with me, especially when her big tail went high up and those huge droppings started to fall. Walking next to the cart Papa would swing the heavy thirty- and forty-litre milk cans onto the flat tray while I was holding the reins, feeling very important. Ninety thirty-litre milk cans fitted on the platform and there was usually another layer of about thirty on top of those. Some farmers did not fill the cans properly so that the neighbours would think that his cows were producing a lot more milk, with so many cans in their driveway. The factory fascinated me. Four or five other milk carts were usually there waiting in turn to be unloaded. Papa set the cans on a conveyer belt and sometimes, I was allowed to ride with them. Before the cans were emptied into a huge tank, the milk was tested for the fat content. The higher the percentage of fat, the better price the farmer was paid for the milk. I could never get enough of the machines that stirred the milk to make butter and cheese. Papa showed me how some farmers did not clean their cans properly. If there was dirt in the milk, the whole tank full could only be used for feeding calves and pigs. I loved fresh buttermilk, which was left after the butter had been made. Papa had to take a lot of it back to the farmers. Because buttermilk was cheap and healthy, most farmers kept only a little milk at home to be used in coffee and to make pudding for Sunday. Under-milk, the watery substance that was left after cheese had been made, also went back to the farmers to feed pigs and calves. Papa knew exactly which farmer wanted what without writing anything down. The farmers and their wives often came out to have a chat and offered him coffee when he unloaded their milk cans on the way home. One day, early in June 1945, one month after the liberation of Holland, Papa came home from the milk-run lying flat on the cart. He was dizzy with fever and in agony from the pain in his right foot. There was blister on the top of his foot where the edge of his new clog had rubbed. It had burst and became infected and grew more painful each day. Vos, that faithful old horse, had walked home from the factory, calling in at every boerderij waiting until the boer came and took his own cans off the cart. The following day Papa was unable to walk and he had a very sore throat. By the time the doctor came, an angry red line had crept up from his foot to his armpit. The doctor prescribed some pills and ordered him to stay in bed. He had blood poisoning. Mum’s stepfather, Opa Kleter came every morning to do the milk-run and help with the work on the farm. While he sat outside or walked around on crutches, my hot-headed father became very impatient and bad-tempered. He was always up as soon as it got light to work in the garden for a few hours before he milked the cows and did the milk-run. He grew every vegetable suited to the area along with a great variety of berries and fruit trees. Pregnant and with six small children around her, Mum could only try to keep the weeds down for him. In the meantime, Papa’s sore throat worsened. The doctor prescribed other pills but progress was non existent. Instead of one tablet, three times a day, Papa now took three each time. “If one pill helps,” he said, “three must help three times better!” But his throat got so bad that it became impossible for him to swallow and the doctor sent him to the hospital in Amersfoort. Five months pregnant, with one child in front of her and one on the back of her bike, Mum took us in turns to visit him. We all liked going to the big hospital and we soon discovered how to get to Papa’s ward. He was lying in the first bed in a long, narrow dormitory with a single row of high, white iron beds. The beds stood close together, with a white curtain drawn between them when they needed privacy. The other patients, all men, would call us over and give us lollies, which were a real luxury for us. The only sweets we ever got were those that came free with the weekly groceries in a small pointy bag. As they had to be shared with the five of us (fortunately, Jopie was too little to eat them!) there were seldom enough to have two each. Papa had been in hospital for several weeks when it was Siem and my turn to visit him again. We ran off through the hollow sounding passage, ahead of Mum. Because Siem was older, he could run faster than I could and he was the first to reach the door of Papa’s dormitory. As soon as he opened the door, he yelled out: “Mama! Papa is not here!” By that time I had reached the door too. I looked around the corner staring at the empty bed. That moment and the next will be etched in my heart for the rest of my life. We ran back to Mum and said: “He is not here any more Mama! His bed is empty. Papa is gone!” Mum looked worried. She walked into the ward to see for herself. “Bart got worse yesterday morning. They took him away early in the afternoon,” the man in the next bed said. Mum went as white as a sheet. She swayed on her feet. A sister grabbed her and sat her down on a chair. I still see her sitting there, her glasses in her lap, tears streaming down her face. The glass of water the sister had given her trembled in her hands. I was worried that she would spill it on her dress. The sister told her that Papa had been taken to a bigger hospital in Amsterdam. His breathing had become very difficult and he had needed an ‘iron lung’, which the hospital in Amersfoort did not have. “Didn’t you get our message?” the sister asked softly. Apparently, our parish priest should have gone to Mum to tell her about it the previous afternoon, but he had forgotten... That same afternoon Mum travelled by train with Opa Kleter to Amsterdam. She found my father very weak and unable to speak. During the following two weeks Mum could only visit him a couple of times. She only took Wout with her once. The last time she visited him, Papa had lost consciousness. He died the following morning, the 17th of October 1945, without being able to say goodbye to Mum, or any of us. Mum was numb with grief, wondering in despair what would become of us. Everybody who heard what had happened was furious with Pastoor H. for the way he had treated her. On the day before my father was buried, another farmer from our village had died in the hospital in Amersfoort. Mum was terribly hurt when she heard that the pastoor had visited him two, sometimes three times a week, while he had only been to my father twice in the six weeks he had been in the same hospital. This man also had six children and his wife was pregnant with her seventh. But they had a big boerderij while my father was poor... When I asked Mum how a priest could have been so cruel she answered: “Och; he may be a priest but he is only a man.” She would repeat that sentence many times as I grew up... People in the village were shocked; two widows with large families in one week so soon after the war. They said that, with a capital farm such as they had, the other farmer’s widow would have no trouble finding another husband, but there was no hope of another husband for my poor mother. Chapter NINE

Because my father was liked so much, the church was overflowing at his funeral. Mum was held between Ome Hannes and Opa Kleter on the way to the grave, crying uncontrollably. She wanted to be buried with him instead of being left behind with all those little children, she said later. Wout my eldest brother was eight and, as he had done his first Communion, he was considered old enough to see his father in the coffin and attend the funeral. But he was not impressed by all the sadness about Papa. When the bearers let the coffin down into the grave, he came close to have a better look. “Oh, good!” he had said. “Now he can never hit me again!” and walked away. Not long before my father got sick, Wout had picked all the little green apples off a young tree, my father’s pride and joy. Blinded with fury he had taken off his belt and hit him mercilessly. He would have killed Wout if Mum had not intervened, she said. Because Wout was terribly spoilt by Opoe Mijn, my father had treated him harshly, promising that he would knock the nasty ‘streak’ which Opoe had taught him, out of him. Mum had agreed. She had been brought up herself with the dreadful idea that ‘parents who spared the rod hated their children’. “It said so in the Bible,” was a great excuse for some to cool their anger. From the day of my father’s death, Mum always wore black as was customary at the time. During the first six weeks of mourning our grandparents, aunts and uncles and us children, wore a black band around our left upper arm. We were not allowed to run or laugh during that time. It was said that my father’s death was caused by neglected diphtheria, which was somehow connected with the festering wound on his foot. But nobody ever blamed our doctor. The doctor had a huge practice and he was always on call. Just about every child in the area had been delivered with his help. “You could not be in better hands,” Mum said. “He was always so gentle and careful.” He surely did not look gentle or careful to me! My older brother Siem screamed blue murder when he pulled an infected nail from his finger one day. The doctor a tall, solidly built man always came on his big motorbike. You could hear the roar of his heavy BMW kilometres away. He would stride past us kids, wearing his heavy boots and long leather overcoat, taking his helmet off with one hand and carrying his instrument bag in the other. His face was rather plain with a few long, thin strands of hair combed over his balding scalp. “Good afternoon,” he would say formally in his deep voice. “What seems to be the matter?” After my father died, the doctor only came occasionally as we were seldom sick enough for a visit to our house. Boils, cuts, sore throats and any other little ailments were treated at the consultation room at the back of the convent in the village and sometimes we had to ride our bikes to his surgery in Hoogland. The doctor had a big house; he needed a big house too as he had eleven children. Every year during the yearly motor races in Assen, in the north of Holland, our doctor was absent for a couple of days. A keen racer himself, he always supported the now world famous event, taking part in the races as well as supplying medical assistance on the track and behind the scenes. A few years ago the popular doctor was honoured for fifty years’ service to the communities. Seated in an open jeep, surrounded by flowers, he was driven through Hoogland and Hooglanderveen, accompanied by brass bands and marching girls from both villages. Nearly very person whom he had delivered at birth followed the parade on a motorbike, either as a driver or a passenger. Most farmers in our area had outside jobs as their families were too big to be able to live on the meagre income of their small farms, and like my father, they took care of their financial affairs themselves. Shortly after his death, Mum was shocked to see how difficult it was to make ends meet. She relied heavily on the free help of family and neighbours, especially with the daily milk-run. Another big blow came to her six weeks later when the director of the milk-factory told her that she was no longer entitled to child endowment. Those very welcome monthly payments had been made to wage earners for a few years. Although Opa Kleter had taken care of the milk-run that did not make my mother a wage earner, he explained. As a small farmer she now came under the category of self-employed and was therefore not entitled to the family allowance. Opa Kleter went with Mum to the appropriate authorities the following day but it was to no avail. Regulations demanded that she would have to do the job herself. Opa Kleter who would much rather be buying and selling animals than do any manual labour, had soon grown tired of doing the milk-run himself while my father was in hospital. Ome Wim, Mum’s youngest brother and one of a neighbour’s sons had done it for a while but as they were needed at home her stepfather had hired his brother’s son, also called Wim, to do the job. During the weeks that followed Mum often cried as there was no money in the house to pay for pig and chicken feed and credits were run up at the baker and grocer’s shops. But somehow she always managed to have enough coins for the collections during Mass on Sunday. A lot of people were worse off than we were, she always said; some did not even have a roof over their heads. People also felt ashamed if they could not contribute to the collection, which is probably the reason there were so many one-cent coins and buttons in the collection bags. In December, two months after my father died, a boer called Jan, came from Hoogland to see Mum. He had seen her crying at the milk factory that morning, he said when he greeted her and set his pushbike against the hooiberg at the back of our house. Mum told him that her cousin Wim had to go into the army. The director of the milk factory had written to the army authorities for her, asking for dispensation but that had been refused. “I know what it is like to be left behind with a house full of kids Aaltje!” boer Jan said. His wife had died of cancer half a year before my father died, leaving him with eleven children, the youngest barely able to walk. But he was lucky, he said; some of his older children were already working and bringing in some money, and his eldest girl had taken the household over when her mother got sick. “I have a nineteen-year-old son, Anton at home whom you can have,” he said. “No, no, I don’t want any money for him, just his board,” he added, shaking his head and waving his hand when Mum started to protest that she could not afford to pay him. “As far as I’m concerned, you can keep him as long as you want.” Mum invited him in for coffee and they talked for a long time and later that night she had thanked God on her bare knees for so much goodness, she said. It had not taken Anton long to feel at home at our place where he was very happy. But Tante Cor, Mum’s youngest sister, who was of the same age and always around to help Mum, said that she could not stand him. Anton, who shared a double bed on the platform above the cows with two of my brothers, wet the bed frequently and it was her who had to do the ‘disgusting loads of dirty linen’ for him, by hand of course as Mum had no washing machine at that time. There had always been a lot of friction in Anton’s family. Shortly after his parents were married, Anton’s mother wanted to buy baby clothes. His father had become impatient with her, saying that it was far too early to be thinking of baby clothes. But then he suddenly realised that his wife was already pregnant before he married her; a present from the boer she had worked for. Although the priest had said that he could have their marriage annulled, Jan had done the decent thing and stayed with her, but he had found it extremely hard to accept her bastard son. All through their married years, he had been unable to forgive his wife for making him the laughing stock of the village with the shame she had brought to his family and their own children. Anton, the middle child in the large household, was a very sensitive fellow; his father had called him ‘nervous’. After he left school at the age of fourteen, he had worked at home as he could not be hired out like the rest of his brothers and sisters, because of his bed-wetting problem. When his oldest sister got a job at a big farm a year later, she got a job for Anton too; that way she could protect his secret. Anton had been extremely happy to get away from his father with whom he had been at loggerheads as long as he could remember. But after a year his mother got sick and his sister had to return home to look after the family and as she could no longer hide his dirty sheets, Anton had to go home too. Because his father could not understand his son’s neurosis, life at home became unbearable for him as well as for his father and the rest of the family. At our place Mum never mentioned Anton’s handicap. After being a boerenknecht at a big farm, Anton was virtually his own boss at the age of nineteen at our place. As long as he did the milk-run, which he loved as much as my father had done, and kept the farm going Mum was content with him. He had a swarm of younger brothers and sisters at home and was always playing and carrying on with my brothers. But his intense, scrutinising eyes intimidated me; I hardly ever dared to look at him, let alone say something. On the first of January 1946, three months after my father had died my youngest brother was born. He was named after my father: Bartje. (je stands for small). We were told that the ooievaar (stork) had brought him in the middle of the night. Mum had to stay in bed, as she had been bitten on her leg by the ooievaar. She would be unable to walk for at least a week. When she got up ten days later, the nasty wound on her shin had still not healed. The community health sister of the White and Yellow Cross (Catholic health organisation) came every day to change the dressing. It stank something awful when she took the bandage off. Mum’s open vein kept festering for months. After Bartje was born, Tante Annie, Mum’s sister made two new dresses for her; one was black with little flowers, the other was dark blue with coloured polka-dots. But her underwear and stockings were still always black. One day, a salesman came around selling new fashioned, silk underpants. The man showed them to Mum enthusiastically. “Feel them”, he said, pushing the black, slippery knickers into her hands. “You won’t know yourself with such luxury. And that at the price of a pair of kid’s pants!” Mum was unable to resist them and bought four pairs. A few months later I was helping her fold a heap of washing, when Anton picked up one of her new bloomers from between the dry clothes. “What is this?” he asked while he held them up high. “Leave them alone,” Mum laughed. While she tried to grab the big slippery pants, Anton showed them to each of us. Then he crumpled them into a ball, completely covered by his hands. “You see kids”, he grinned, “kilos of bum and only one ounce of knickers!” We all roared. Mum’s tears ran down her face; she could not stop laughing. Her tears turned into real crying, but she said that she had not been so happy for a long time. For months afterwards, we only had to hold up one of those giant pants to make her laugh again. One afternoon when I went with Mum to help her take the dry washing off the line, three of those big bloomers were flapping in the wind, filled to capacity with hay. Mum was in stitches: “That’ll be Anton’s doing again!” she laughed. Every one of us liked Anton and life became unthinkable without him. Only my eldest brother, Wout had ill feelings about him. He was eight when Anton came to live with us. Because it was so easy to get Wout angry and aggressive, he was always teased by Anton and my other brothers, often until he was in tears, a terrible humiliation for a boy of that age. Even though Mum had a lot of free help from relatives and neighbours, she was often very depressed. Money was forever a problem. One day she did not have a penny in the house to put in the collection bag the following Sunday as she had given her last kwartje (a twenty-five cent coin) to a beggar who had been at the door during the week. Pastoor H. never came to Mum to apologise for the shabby way he had treated her when my father was sick. He did not even visit her to see how she had managed after his death. “The man had no idea what it was like to have a house full of children,” Mum said bitterly when she recalled how he had humiliated her in front of a church full of people one day. She had been a widow for about a year, when she was late for Mass that Sunday morning. Little Bartje had pooped himself, just as she was ready to leave home. She could not expect Anton to change his dirty nappy, nor could she let the child wait for an hour and a half till she came back. The priest had stopped the sermon when she came in, and waited while she was seated. While people turned in their seats he spoke harshly: “It’s always the same people who are late!” Mum was fuming. Trying hard to concentrate on the Sunday service, she prayed that God would give her strength to speak up for herself and mothers in similar situations. Encouraged by receiving the Body of Christ in Holy Communion, she waited until the priest had returned to the presbytery. Then she paid him a visit, sufficiently worked up to tell Meneer Pastoor in no uncertain terms that he should be ashamed of himself. “The trouble with you priests is that you are not married!” she said. “You should all have the responsibility for a hovel filled with kids for a year before you could be ordained.” As always when she talked about priests and nuns, Mum finished the story with: “Och; they are only human too.” In June 1947, two years after my father’s death, Pastoor H, our unsympathetic parish priest was sent to nearby Hoogland. He was replaced by Pastoor van R., who was unfortunately not much better. I would remember Mum’s words: “They are only human.” time and again in years to come. One evening when Mum was complaining to Opa Kleter that she could not sleep, Opa said: “You have to take better care of yourself, Aaltje; you do look washed out. Now you listen to me and take that medicine I told you about. Take it every night before you go to bed. Just beat the egg, add a spoonful of sugar and a generous dash of brandy and you’ll sleep all right.” Mum pulled a face. She did not like brandy very much and shuddered at the thought of having to swallow a raw egg. Opa prepared it for her and insisted that she drank it to the last drop before he went home. From then on he made her ‘medicine’ every evening and stayed until she had swallowed it. It was not long before Mum started to like it and drank it happily. And it worked! She soon slept well and felt much better. After a few weeks she began to make double portions, and later still, she had a dose of Opa’s medicine as soon as she woke up in the morning; ‘to cheer herself up before she started the new day’. “It suddenly dawned on me that I had become addicted to it,” Mum laughed later. “I put a stop to that at once!”.

When I was little, we had a beautiful dog, a Belgian shepherd called ‘Caesar’. He was always with my father, picking up the milk from the farmers in the morning and wherever he was working on the land in the afternoon. In May 1945 Caesar was the wolf in the parade that was held during the big celebrations for the liberation of Holland. Sitting beside Little Red Riding- Hood (our fourteen-year-old neighbour) on the decorated milk cart, with his thick, rusty coat, his white belly and his long fluffy tail, he looked like a real wolf. His huge eyes, his sharp white teeth and his long, red tongue hanging out of his mouth, made him the star of the show. Although I was only five years old I remember vividly how we strutted proudly beside him through the crowd afterwards. On the way to the milk factory the dog often disappeared into the bushes beside the sandy road, chasing hares and rabbits. He often brought one home, sometimes a pheasant or a wild duck. Caesar’s speed was incredible. “A hare is similar to a rabbit, but it is longer and faster and does not live in burrows,” our teacher said when we had a lesson about rabbits and hares one day. “Not even a greyhound can catch a hare.” “ Oh nee?” came my brother Siem’s voice from the back of our classroom. “Our Caesar can!” Some of the children in the class said that they had seen our dog in action, but Meester Schoenmaker did not believe it. “How many do you want?’ Siem boasted. One evening Caesar had caught a hare while my father was milking in the paddock behind our house. Happy to have another free meal, Mum skinned and cleaned it immediately and my father buried the evidence. There were a lot of poachers in the area at the time. They were a ‘thorn in the flesh’ of the jager, the local gamekeeper the only hunter in the district with a permit to shoot wildlife. Shortly before my father became ill, Caesar caught a rabbit while the jager, watched from behind some bushes. “I’ve told you time and again to keep your damn dog on a lead,” he shouted. “I’ll shoot it if I ever see him chasing wildlife again!” My father had grabbed the jager by the collar of his jacket, hissing in his face: “If you dare to harm my dog in any way, I’ll give you a thrashing you’ll never forget as long as you live!” Caesar continued to bring the welcome treats home after my father died, but not for very long. Anton and Wout had just gone to the polder to milk the cows one afternoon, when the jager came into the driveway on his pushbike. He strode up to Mum who was preparing to feed the chickens. Scared of the angry looking man with the shotgun we huddled close to Mum, the little ones clutching her skirt. The hunter had warned Mum before to put Caesar on a chain but Mum had refused, saying that my father would turn in his grave if she did that to his beloved dog. “I won’t allow your dog to take my profits away any longer; I have to shoot him,” the jager said angrily. Mum argued that an occasional hare or rabbit would not make much difference to him. There were plenty around anyway, and surely, he would not want to deprive a widow with seven small children of a bit of meat now and then? “Well, you can pay me for the rabbit this time,” the hunter said after a while, “but I warn you; if I catch him again, I’ll shoot him on the spot!” As usual Mum did not have a penny in the house and she knew that it would be only a matter of days before Caesar would bring another animal home. A few weeks earlier he had brought three rabbits home in one week. When Mum told the gamekeeper that she did not have any money to pay for the hare, he was adamant that the dog had to be destroyed. He ordered Mum to take the kids inside, but she refused. “You can’t be so heartless!” she cried in despair. But it was to no avail. The jager took the gun off his shoulder, aimed it at Caesar, who stood near the wire fence of the chook yard, and shot him. Then he got on his bike and rode away without looking back. We were all horrified and in shock. Our lovely dog lay there bleeding; his big eyes still wide open. An occasional spasm ran through his beautiful body. A few hours later, Anton and Wout came back from milking. “That rotten coward!” Anton swore. “The mongrel knew that I wasn’t home. We saw him on the road when we left.” Wout was beside himself with fury. “You stupid woman! You shouldn’t have let him!” he yelled at Mum, stamping his feet, fighting the tears that fell from his eyes. “He had no right to shoot the dog at all,” Anton said angrily. “It would never have happened if I had been home.” Wout and Anton dug a grave in the garden. They buried the body and planted a cross on it. For weeks we picked fresh flowers in the paddock every day and put them on Caesar’s grave, praying and crying about the loss of our beloved dog. Mum said that the callous way the hunter had treated her would do him no good: “He will get his punishment,” she predicted sadly with trembling lips. And he did. News spread quickly through the district and made him loose more of the little respect he had in the area. Mum felt sorry for his poor wife and her numerous children, who would undoubtedly suffer most from the consequences. Chapter TEN

After my father’s death Wout became too much for Mum to handle and he went to live at Opoe Kleter’s place for a couple of months. That way he was removed from the bad influence of Opoe Mijn who spoiled her favourite grandson even more after her only son had died. When he came back three months later, Wout and I were immediately at loggerheads again. He had resented me from the day Mum brought me home after her long stay in the mental hospital. I was very happy when Opa Kleter took me home with him to live at Opoe Jans’s big boerderij for a while. Apart from Mum and Ome Hannes, four of Opoe’s children were still living at home at that time. Ome Hannes, who had postponed his wedding six weeks after my father’s death, lived with his wife’s family. They had a little son but he came home every morning on his pushbike to work on the farm. Tante Jans, Mum’s oldest sister, who was ‘not good in her head’ was thirty-eight, Ome Wim was twenty-six, Tante Annie twenty-three and Tante Cor nineteen. Opoe’s boerderij was enormous and her pronk-kamer was the queen’s palace, to my six-year-old eyes. The zolder (attic), where I slept with my two aunties under the bare thatched roof, seemed huge. When I was in Holland with my husband in 1991, to gather information for my book, we stayed with Ome Hannes. Mum’s two younger sisters Annie and Cor had gone to Canada in 1948 and when Opa Kleter died in 1951, the farm was split between Mum’s two brothers. Ome Wim, then thirty-two was left at the big house with Opoe and Tante Jans, his mentally ill sister. The situation became too much to handle for Ome Wim when Opoe became ill the following year. Opoe then went to live with the nuns at the convent and Tante Jans went into an institution in the south of Holland. Shortly after they left Ome Wim married Tante Toos. Living quarters had been built onto the front of the big shed for Ome Hannes and his family shortly after the war. Tante Cor (his wife) had died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage when the youngest of his eight children was six years old. One of his six daughters now lived in the house built onto the big shed and the pigpens at the back had been made into a comfortable flat for Ome Hannes, who celebrated his eighty-first birthday while we were there. When Ome Wim retired, some years ago, he sold the house to an accountant who lived in Amsterdam and used the farm as a weekend retreat. Lying in our bedroom, a former pigsty, it was a weird feeling that a complete stranger was now living in Opoe Kleter’s beautiful boerderij, only a few metres away from us. I was very excited when Josh, the accountant, offered to show us around the house of which I had so many memories. The moment I stepped into the keuken I was amazed at how small it was. The radio still stood on a shelf in a corner, reminding me instantly of how Ome Wim’s brand-new radio had stopped when I had turned the knob when no one was around during one of my visits. I had feared for my life, quite unnecessarily, as the radio proved perfectly all right. The cosy kachel, which had a plate at the bottom to warm your feet, had been replaced by central heating. Opoe’s beautiful pronk-kamer was made into an ordinary modern lounge-room and it was not big at all. Although the central heating was on high, it was cold in the house. “It’s very hard to get it warm in winter because the walls are only made with single bricks,” Josh explained when I shivered. “Our bedroom is worse; it’s on the northern side of the house where it never gets any sun. When it’s freezing, there is ice on the bedroom window even while the heater is on ‘high’.” “No wonder Opoe suffered badly from rheumatism,” I exclaimed sympathetically. When we climbed the stairs to the attic, I noticed that there was no warmth coming from the big, rectangular chimney, which always came up from the kachel in the living-room below. It had made the attic, now turned into two very small bedrooms, quite warm when I was little. I was thrilled to see that the view from the windows of the former zolder was still unchanged; a long stretch of grassland with the same farmhouses in the distance. Black and white Fresians grazed peacefully, avoiding the yellow paardebloemen (dandelions) and purple Pinkster-bloemen, and there was very little traffic on the otherwise busy road from Amersfoort to Nijkerk, that early Sunday morning. Opoe’s garden, her pride and joy, was overgrown with weeds but I could still see the little woman working there, bending over, pulling out weeds and picking strawberries. For a moment, it seemed as if time stood still. I could picture the double bed where I had slept with Tante Cor, under the bare, thatched roof. Tante Annie’s bed had been on the opposite side of the steep sloping roof. I smiled when I thought about Tante Cor’s vrijer (boyfriend), Ome Jan. Sometimes, late at night, I would wake up when he came up to the zolder and got into bed with us to give Tante Cor a cuddle. He always told me to keep my eyes tightly closed and made me promise before he left, never to tell anyone. I don’t think Ome Jan minds me talking about his secret now. “I’m born fifty years too early,” he said time and again when we stayed with him and Tante Cor in Canada. While I was at Opoe’s place I had to go to bed early like every other child at that time. Bedtime for school-children was seven o’clock, regardless of whether the sun was still shining high in the sky during summer or not. I often sat for hours on the windowsill day-dreaming when I could not sleep, fantasising behind the lace curtains, thinking that nobody could see me from the garden or the driveway, the long dirt track which divided my grandmother’s property from the forest. The zolder extended into the attic above the keuken through an open space in the brick wall. Among the household items stored there, was a square hole in the floor, a vent to let the steam out from the cooking below. Sometimes I lay flat on my belly, peeping through the hole to see what was going on in the keuken. One night, there was a lot of laughter. I hopped out of bed and went quickly to the vent to see what was happening, being careful not to make a sound. Ome Hannes was walking around with a stick, bent far over, complaining about his back. He went to the doctor (Ome Jan, wearing a white housepainter’s coat and a pair of glasses balancing on the tip of his nose). “Doctor, I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” Ome Hannes said. “Please help me!” “And what seems to be the trouble?” Ome Jan stated, imitating our local doctor. “I don’t know doctor,” Ome Hannes answered with a worried look on his face. “I just can’t walk upright any more.” “Let me have a look at you,” the ‘doctor’ replied, trying hard to keep a straight face. “Tell me, when did this happen?” “This morning, doctor when I got dressed to milk the cows,” Ome Hannes croaked. “ And where seems to be the pain?” the doctor asked in a business like manner while he poked the unfortunate patient hard in the back, with his index finger. “That’s the strange thing about it doctor; I have no pain at all. I’m just stiff and have to stay in this terrible position,” Ome Hannes said anxiously. The doctor’s fingers examined the patient some more, tickling him in the sides, then he shouted triumphantly: “Aha! Here’s the problem! You have buttoned your suspenders to your fly instead of to the waistband of your trousers!” Because I could not help laughing aloud, someone noticed me at the vent-hole. Expecting to be told off, I got hastily back into bed. With pounding heart, my head buried deep under the blankets I listened to the footsteps coming up the stairs. I was relieved to hear that it was Tante Annie; and she brought a glass of lemonade for me. She told me that they were learning how to act at the local toneel (theatre) group and Ome Hannes and Ome Jan were practising a sketch for a friend’s wedding. She was not angry at all and I gladly promised her, never to listen into the adults’ conversations again. Tante Cor always did the washing on Monday at Opoe’s place and on Tuesday at ours. During the week, she went early in the morning after the milking to help Mum. Sometimes, when she was late, she took me to school on her push-bike on her way. In the afternoon she helped the men at home on the land or in the stables in her overalls. I never saw Tante Annie in a pair of overalls. She was a real lady, who could do wonders with needle and thread. She ironed and folded the washing and whatever needed mending, she repaired immediately. Every afternoon after school I watched her, fascinated by her treadle machine. She made beautiful patterns with shiny sequins and tiny beads on new dresses often made from old suits and overcoats. Tante Annie was very tidy; she always put every thread she cut off in a neat little pile beside the machine. She showed me how to make a little bag for my knikkers (clay marbles). I wanted to make a doll but I did not dare ask her to help me. Farmers’ daughters didn’t play with dolls; that was only for city girls. I sneaked needles, thread and a pair of scissors and hid them in a shoebox under my bed. The following evening I searched for suitable scraps, which Tante Annie’s kept in cardboard boxes in the attic above the keuken.

Because I was never allowed in the attic during the day, I could hardly wait to be sent to bed in the evening, so that I could work on my doll. The sun still shone until ten at night, but as my aunties always had to get up early in the morning, they seldom went to bed later than nine-thirty. The squeaking of the stairs, all the way to the top, gave me enough time to put everything back into the shoebox if they came up unexpectedly. After I had made a pattern as I had seen Tante Annie do, I cut the head and embroidered the face, giving my doll blue eyes and a very generous mouth. I gave her long, dark brown hair using strands of thick wool, sewn onto the bright pink scalp, apologising whenever I poked the needle into her head, telling her that I’d make her beautiful. Sitting cross-legged on the windowsill or on the bed I worked for hours, my face red with excitement. My aunties would be furious if they knew what I was doing; I was sent to bed to sleep, they would say. Because her legs turned out very long and sloppy, I called my doll Lijsje, meaning ‘maypole’. During the following evenings, I made clothes for her. I was especially proud of her black coat with its red, checked shawl, sewn inside the collar; it was such a pity I could not show anyone. One evening, Tante Cor suddenly came in without me hearing her on the stairs. “What are you doing? You should be sleeping!” she said sternly. I bowed my head clutching Lijsje tightly against my chest as Tante Cor came towards me. “ What are you hiding there? Give it to me!” she ordered and grabbed Lijsje out of my hands. I waited, anxiously holding my breath, looking at her sheepishly expecting the worst. But she just looked from the doll to me and asked: “Did you make this? All by yourself?” She took Lijsje with her to show Tante Annie and Opoe, leaving me to wonder what my punishment would be. Tante Annie told me off for using materials that had been kept for other things, but from then on she let me have all her other scraps. Now that I could sew openly, Lijsje soon had a brother and a sister and plenty of clothes. To get to school in Hooglanderveen, I had to cross the forest. The path twisted around big oak and elm trees, past large bushes and empty spaces where the trees had been destroyed during the war. The cool air was heavenly under the leafy canopy of the old trees with wildflowers everywhere. I felt very much at ease in that part of the forest where only squirrels and rabbits lived and happily skipped through it, even though it was quite dark with the sun hiding behind the clouds. But I would never dare to go in the forest across the road on my own using the shortcut Tante Cor always took to our place. Opa Kleter warned me time and again about the ghosts he had seen there. He said that dead people came out of their graves at night and danced between the trees with the ghosts, who lived in that part of the forest. Taking coffee in the morning and tea in the afternoon to the men who were working on the land was one of the little jobs I had to do after school and during the summer vacation. I carried the hot coffee in a dark blue, enamel milk-can with a tea towel tied around the lid so that it would not spill when I skipped or had a fall. Sometimes the men worked on a clearing, a ten-minute walk through the forest from Opoe’s house. While they were drinking their coffee or tea, Ome Hannes and Ome Wim told me stories about the kabouters (gnomes) and elves living in het kabouterbos (gnome forest), at the back of the clearing. Their stories fascinated me and I went looking for those friendly little creatures one afternoon. My heart beat fast as I walked slowly up the narrow path between two long rows of big old oak trees. Carefully putting my feet on the soft moss, I followed the path to the end. There was the little waterfall my uncles talked about, and there was the bridge. Slowly, step by step, I shuffled on holding my breath so that I would not disturb the elves or gnomes. Suddenly, something rustled in the undergrowth beside me, scaring me out of my wits. I turned and ran back as fast as my legs could carry me. When I dared to look back, my heart thumping furiously against my chest, I saw a rabbit disappearing into the bushes. Opoe wasn’t happy having me, or any of her other grandchildren around and she was always angry with Opa, whenever he was going to our place to help Mum. They were doing more than their Christian duty, letting Tante Cor help her every morning and all day on Saturdays, she grumbled. Sometimes, Tante Cor took one or two of us home with her on her push-bike when she finished her work at midday. That made Opoe furious but Opa Kleter was always happy to bring us home again at night. Nobody seemed to take any notice of Opoe’s bad temper, saying that she could steam in her own fat. Opoe was always angry with Tante Cor anyway. Until she was able to out-run her mother, she had been hit with the pook (poker) regularly. A few months before I came to stay, Opoe had been furious with Tante Cor for wearing her new Sunday coat on a rainy Saturday evening. Tante Cor wanted to impress Ome Jan, with whom she was going out for the first time and she had refused to take it off. When she came home, later on that night, Opoe had been waiting for her behind the door with the iron rod. She had hit Tante Cor hard with it, as soon as she came through the door. “I deserved it,” Tante Cor said, warning me not to disobey orders from any of the adults. I felt sorry for Opoe because Tante Cor often teased her. She would sit unashamedly on Ome Jan’s knee, having great fun when Opoe was fuming. Opoe threatened them with the pook, but they grabbed it off her, doubling up with laughter. Tante Cor was afraid of nothing, not even of the ghosts that lived in the dark forest between our house and Opoe’s place. She always took the shortcut, even after dark. I sat behind her with my eyes closed and my arms tightly clasped around her waist, hoping that the ghosts would not be woken up by the squeaking of the bike or Tante Cor’s voice reminding me time and again to keep my feet stretched out so that they would not get caught between the spokes of the back wheel. Tante Cor could be very rough with us. “ Your mother was always laughing when one of her little stinkers pooped themselves, especially when Jan was waiting for me to finish work so that he could take me home or take me out,” Tante Cor said when I talked to her in Canada in 1991. After so many years, she was still annoyed about it. “I always had to clean them up,” she complained. “Aal would never offer to do it herself. She would say that it was just my bad luck. She had to change them often enough when I was not there.” Tante Cor would grab the little stinker, pull the nappy or pants off with one hand, holding the screaming toddler, who knew what was coming, firmly under her other arm. Ome Jan, who had been treated equally as harshly when he was a child, swung the handle of the pump, while Tante Cor held the offender’s bare bum under the icy-cold water. “I scrubbed the muck off with a brush until it’s kontje was bright red and shining,” she grinned. “ The child might have been blue in the face from screaming but Cor’s anger had cooled considerably by the time she put a clean nappy on the still sobbing child,” Ome Jan laughed. Wout has never been able to forgive Tante Cor for the way she treated him, when he was little. He was four when he set fire to the hooiberg (haystack with thatched roof) at Opoe’s place. On a Sunday afternoon, a neighbour came running yelling that smoke was coming from the hooiberg. Fortunately they had been able to put the fire out but it had been touch and go for quite some time. Wout had been playing with matches behind the hooiberg and had gone into hiding for hours when he realised what he had done. When he finally turned up, just before dark Opa Kleter sent him to bed without food. Children playing with matches were an absolute nightmare for any farmer with all those thatched roofs and that dry hay around. If the hooiberg had burned down, the house would probably have gone up in flames too. The fire could only be fought with buckets of water, carried from the nearest sloot, if it had any water in it. Shortly after Wout had been sent to bed in the attic, Tante Cor had gone upstairs. She gave Wout a terrible thrashing ‘to make sure that the urge to play with matches would be out of his system forever’. “Someone had to teach him a lesson”, she said matter-of-factly later. “Your mother was far to soft with him.” “Sure!” Wout said, his eyes moistening with tears. “And it worked! But she did not have to hit me like that while I was lying in the cot, unable to protect myself.” Wout did not like Opoe much either. She was the most selfish bitch he had ever known. Opoe Kleter was a diabetic but she was a ‘sweet tooth’ and she did not take much notice of her diet. One day when Wout was five she had served white rice boiled in full-cream milk for the evening meal. She had sprinkled a little brown sugar on everybody’s rice, then put a big handful on her own. “ I thought that you were not supposed to have sugar,” Wout had said. Every one of the grown-up aunties and uncles around the table, sniggered. “Children and gekken (crazy people) speak the truth,” Ome Hannes Opoe’s favourite son, laughed. Opoe gave Wout a smack around the ears and yelled: “You little snot-nose! I’ll teach you to keep your big mouth shut!” “ Pick on your own size,” Wout retorted, trying hard not to cry. The adults roared with laugher while Wout ran out of the keuken to avoid another blow. Opoe spent most of her time in the garden at the front of the house, which was surrounded by a narrow hedge. She grew all sorts of flowers, but dahlias were her speciality; she had a great variety of them. Behind the flowerbeds closest to the house were lots of patches with different vegetables, long rows of strawberries and gooseberries, then larger bushes with white and red berries and blackcurrants, just like my father grew. While Opoe was in her garden I sometimes sneaked into the pronk-kamer, which was forbidden territory for me. The light from the two tall windows, which filtered through the lace curtains and reflected on the whitewashed walls, made the room light and spacious. Thick green velvet drapes hung on either side of each window, held open by golden cords with long tassels. A flowering amaryllis in a big, shiny copper pot stood in front of each window. In the middle of the shiny, wooden floor was a red, patterned carpet. Two big oak cupboards stood on either side of the room. One had a big belly, formed by four large drawers. It had two doors with glass panels so that everyone could see Opoe’s shining crystal and silverware. The other cupboard had one big drawer at the bottom and two doors. It was used for bath and tea towels, tablecloths and bed linen, which was always white in those days. Each of those cupboards had short, curved legs and a rounded top, heavily decorated with carved figures and flowering vines. At the back of the room was a highly polished kachel, surrounded by a dark-green wrought-iron screen. I hardly dared to sit on one of the beautiful red mahogany chairs with the rich, dark red upholstery. I would trace the intricate carvings of the heart-shaped backs of the chairs and admire the shiny little roses in the dark velvet, wondering how anybody could make something so perfect. There were six of them and two armchairs with matching footstools, which held hot coal in winter. A big, crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, reflecting in the red mahogany dining table. The extendable, oval table was so shiny that it could be used as a mirror. A crystal bowl with beautiful ripe fruit stood in the middle of the table on a crocheted centrepiece. I had always thought that the fruit was real until I touched it. One day I was so busy dreaming about Queen Juliana and her four princesses Beatrix, Irene, Margriet and Marijke, who would be living in similar rooms, that I did not hear Opoe come in. That was the end of my visits to the palace! I never went into Opoe’s bedroom until I was much older. It was her hiding place; even her own daughters had no business to go there except for cleaning. As time went by, my grandmother became more and more frustrated with Opa Kleter. It was a thorn in her flesh to see her husband, who had been know as a ‘cradle-snatcher’ when she married him, go off to our place to be with my mother, the young widow, especially in the evenings. As Opoe was always cranky Opa spent less and less time at his own home happily leaving the work to Ome Wim and Ome Hannes. If he wasn’t at our place he would be at the markets buying and selling pigs, cows and horses, making little money. Sometimes, when she could not bear it any longer, Opoe would simply go into hiding in her bedroom for days. “ Where is Opoe?” I asked Tante Annie one morning when she hadn’t turned up for breakfast. “Is she sick?” “No, Mother is in a bad mood,” Tante Annie smiled. “She needs to sleep it off.” Every afternoon I hurried home from school to see if she was up. Tante Annie, who was always sewing in front of the window in the keuken, would shake her head: “No, she hasn’t been up all day,” she would say when I got inside. Tante Annie put a tray with food near the door every mealtime, but Opoe hardly touched any of it. Then, after several days she was suddenly there again and everybody acted as if nothing had happened. Tante Jans, Mum’s mentally disturbed sister, was terribly old-fashioned. Shortly before I turned seven and had to go to church on Sundays, she took me to Amersfoort to buy me a hat. There were lots of lovely hats for little girls in the shop, but Tante Jans insisted on buying the ugliest hat in the whole place. It was a horrible old-fashioned, cinnamon coloured bonnet with a big brim at the front. Returning on the back of Tante Jans’ bike, I could not even see sideways; I felt like a horse with blinkers on. No wonder the lady was so happy to get rid of it! Tante Jans’ memory was incredible. She knew the baptismal names (some people had three or four) and birthdays of the most distant relatives as well as a score of other people in the area. She could recall where they were born, what they did for a living and whom they had married. She referred to people by their full first name, Wouterus instead of Wout and Frederikus instead of Frits. Tante Jans loved visiting people and she often took me with her on Sunday afternoons. One day, we went to Protestant neighbours, a large disorganised family, a few hundred metres up the road. The neighbour’s wife gave us a cup of coffee that tasted like dirty dishwater. She offered us a koekje from the cookie-tin while she said in her slow, drawn-out voice: “I can never be sure about the koekjes in the trommel with my lot. Last week, I had the dominee (Protestant minister) to visit. When I offered him a koekje the buggers had eaten them all and replaced them with dried up paarde keutels (horse turds)!” It was too late for me to refuse the delicacy as I had already taken a bite. As I swallowed it, I hoped she had washed the tin before she had put this lot in. Tante Jans also took me to see a family with eleven children near Nijkerk. Reyer, the father, had been Tante Jans’ boyfriend when she was sixteen. Opoe had forbidden her to have anything to do with him because he was only a loose labourer with not a penny to his name. Reyer had later married one of Mum’s school-friends. When I was older, Mum let me sometimes go to their humble cottage on my bike to play with his children. Reyer might have been poorer than Mum but he and his wife seemed always happy, playing with their children. He was the kind of father I would have loved to have for myself... A couple of times a week Tante Jans went off her rocker. When I saw her like that for the first time it frightened me, but later on I tried not to take any notice, just as everybody else in the family ignored it. Without any apparent reason, Tante Jans would became withdrawn, then she’d start whispering to herself, unaware of anything around her. When I asked her something, she would take my arm and push me away. At first I could not understand what she was talking about but then fragments came through. “That Jans Vos is no good,” and: “You have to be wary of that awful woman behind the forest.” She would go on louder and louder: “You can’t trust that Jans Vos; she is a wicked woman! Ask so and so; they will tell you.” She would go on and on, alternately whispering and screaming. I soon understood that Tante Jans was talking about her mother; Vos was short for Voskuilen, Opoe’s maiden name. With her mouth set in a straight line Opoe would take Tante Jans by her arm and push her out through the door as soon as she started to talk to herself. Opoe would then carry on with what she was doing while Tante Jans raved on outside, wringing her hands and shaking her fists. Frothing at the mouth, she cursed Jans Vos and everybody associated with her. In winter, she would go on the path behind the cows, banging her fists against her forehead, occasionally stepping over the ditch filled with cow-dung, to hit a cow on its backside with her fists. The cows did not seem to mind at all; they were used to her. After half an hour or more, Tante Jans would calm down and carry on with her job as if nothing had happened. I was about ten when I went with Tante Jans to visit an old aunt in Hoevelaken. Walking side by side on a narrow path in the paddock, we talked about what I wanted to do when I grew up. Tante Jans suddenly stopped. She took my hand and looked me in the eyes when she said confidentially: “When you are older and the boys want to go out with you, you must never let them touch you above the kouseband.” (an elastic band above the knee to hold up your stockings). Many years later, when we were cuddling in a haystack, I told Fre, my future husband about Tante Jans’ sensible advice. He laughed and asked me to put them around my neck for him. Shortly after my seventh birthday, I went to live at home again. As Opoe’s house was always kept spotlessly clean and they had taught me a lot about housework, I was expected to be a great help to Mum. Chapter ELEVEN

In the spring of 1943 Mum had her fifth child, my brother Wim. Because Henk was still a baby too and I no longer piddled my pants, I was allowed to go with Wout and Siem to the bewaar-school (day-care and pre-school) even though I was only two and a half years old. The school was a fifteen-minute walk away for an adult and housed in the convent. There were up to sixty children with only one teacher in one long, narrow room. As in any other school, we sat two by two in long rows behind each other. The children’s little desks stood against the wall leaving a narrow passage between them. When the Sister was bending over to talk to one of the children, the wide black skirt of her habit pressed against the child’s desk on the opposite side. To be able to play for a while before school began we always wanted to leave home half an hour early, but as Mum seldom managed to get us ready in time, we were often late instead. It was most embarrassing to have to go into the classroom when all the other children were already seated, as the Sister was always angry when we were late. Unless we had permission to pick up something off the floor or we had to go to the toilet we were not allowed to get out of our seats. Because we were not allowed to talk either, it was difficult to attract the Sister’s attention. By the time she finally saw our raised hand with the pointing finger, we could barely make it to the toilet in time especially when we had to climb out of our seats when we sat against the wall. The bathroom had small toilets, one row for boys and one for girls, separated by a low wall in the middle. The Sister was furious when anyone wet his or her pants. Fortunately that never happened to me. One day when I was sitting on the toilet she came in with the new butcher’s son Hans, holding him tightly by his arm. “You dirty boy! You’re old enough to know what you are doing,” she scolded. “I’ll teach you what happens if you wet yourself!” I watched, no doubt with my mouth and eyes wide open, how she smacked Hans around the ears. While Hans screamed blue murder, she stripped his pants off, whacked his bottom and pushed his bare bum into a bucket of icy-cold water. The Sister, who was nearly always on her own in the classroom, seemed to have no trouble keeping us occupied. It was always quiet in her class and I was never bored during the three years I attended pre-school. A lot of time was spent praying, listening to stories from the Bible and learning mostly religious songs. But there was also plenty of time for other things like drawing, colouring-in, weaving mats with strips of colourful paper, folding small paper squares into animals, boats and other shapes and making figures with modelling clay. With a blunt needle, we pricked out old postcards on a thick felt mat, making the holes close together so that the picture could be ripped out easily. I also loved to sort and string beads and sew around stars and other figures with a big needle and thick wool. We didn’t have any of those luxuries at home. When I was at Opoe’s place in 1946, I was six and in Grade One. It was just as far to walk to school from her place as it was from ours, but in the opposite direction. Grades One and Two were also housed in the convent. The St Joseph school across the road had only five classrooms and was not big enough to cope with the fast growing population of the village. There were between thirty-six and forty-two children in every class. Our teacher in Grade One Juffrouw (Miss) Brons, was a skinny, old-fashioned looking woman. She wore her hair in a tight bun at the nape of her neck and her glasses on the tip of her nose. She was very strict and obsessed with our purity; seeing us with our hands under the desk made her furious. “Unless I ask you to get something out of your desk, there is never any reason to have your hands in any other place than on top!” she would yell. The offender had to put his or her hands on the desk so that she could hit them with a ruler. She was beside herself one day when a cheeky boy replied that he needed to scratch himself because he had an itch in his crotch. He had to bend over in front of the class then she hit him hard on his backside with the stick she used to point at the blackboard. Children often had to stand for ages in a corner of the room with their hands up high above their heads or at their backs, depending on the mood Juffrouw Brons was in. One day she asked us how we slept. She said that we should put our hands on top of the blankets to ‘save ourselves from deadly sins against chastity’, whatever that might have been. While I was at my grandmother’s place I saw my brothers every day at school. Siem was in Grade Two and the little ones, Henk and Wim were at the bewaarschool at the time, all at the back of the convent. Wout was in Grade Three, in the big school across the road. Because Siem had to repeat Grade Two, we were always in the same class until he left school when he was fifteen. Both classes, Grades One and Two, marched in a long row of two by two to the big school, to eat our lunches, a sandwich brought from home. When we were a bit older we went home at lunchtime for the hot midday meal. Siem was called after Opoe’s dearly loved first husband Simon but there was no special bond between them. Although Wout did not like Opoe or me he came often to Opoe’s place on Sunday afternoon. Sometimes he had to take Henk and Wim with him to give Mum a few hours of peace or he came with Johan, our neighbour’s eldest son. One day Johan found a black sponge ball in the hooiberg. Tante Jans had given me the ball a few months earlier, but I had lost it. Johan refused to give it back to me. “It’s mine,” he said. “Sinterklaas (Saint Nicolas) gave it to me. I lost it last time I was here,” and he took it home. Next day, when he was playing with it at school during lunchtime, I grabbed it. Next minute we were fighting, pushing and screaming at each other. Juffrouw Brons, who was patrolling the playground, came running and pulled us apart. “What is all this about?” she demanded, holding our arms in an iron grip. “That stupid trut (‘old frump’ is the nearest translation) got my ball and she won’t give it back,” Johan said. “It’s mine!” I said, stamping my foot. Because the headmaster was away, Juffrouw Brons sent us to his deputy, Meester Schoenmaker, who ordered us to wait in his classroom until after the lunch break. Meester Schoenmaker was in his early thirties, a slim, tall man with dark hair and very dark, piercing eyes. He taught Grade Six and half of Seven in his classroom. The brainiest kids of Grade Seven were in with Eight the headmaster’s class. To be able to keep an eye on both classes he had left the door between the two rooms open. He placed me opposite himself in the doorway in full view of some seventy or eighty, much older children. Johan, who was in Wout’s class told him at length that Sinterklaas had given him the spongy black ball in December, several months ago, and that he had played with it the last time he had been at my grandmother’s place. “Tante Jans gave it to me,” I whispered shyly when the Meester asked me why I thought that it was mine. “And where did she get it?” he wanted to know. “ She bought it at the market,” I invented quickly. How would I know where she had it from? “Liar!” Johan hissed between his teeth. “Quiet!” Meester Schoenmaker barked, then to me: “Now, tell me the truth Mientje; whose ball is this?” “It’s mine,” I whispered with my head bowed. The Grade Seven and Sixers had turned in their seats going: “Ohoo!” and: “What a liar!” Towering high above me Meester Schoenmaker lifted my chin with an index finger. “Look me in the eyes when you talk to me Hooft!” he snapped, his sharp, dark brown eyes burning into the bottom of my soul. When he let go he kept on asking me questions. As I did not dare look up into his eyes again, I kept shaking my head for yes or no, sticking to the story that Tante Jans had given the ball to me, and therefore it was mine. The class counted aloud the number of lies I was telling. In the end they had counted fifty. When Meester Schoenmaker reminded me that I was preparing for my first Holy Communion, and that I had to go to confession for the first time the following week, I burst into tears. He said then that he believed that Johan was telling the truth. He had lost the ball in the hooiberg, my disturbed aunt had found it and given it to me. Johan poked his tongue out at me when the teacher gave him the ball. Feeling terribly ashamed, tears still streaming down my face, I went across the road where I faced my own classmates and teacher, with lead in my heart and in my shoes. “And; did you get your ball back?” Juffrouw Brons asked. I shook my head and shuffled back to my seat, my eyes firmly on the floor. The next morning I was tripped by Piet, one of my classmates, in front of the main door of the ‘big’ school. “You stupid liar!” he said. I fell with my knees on the sharp iron grid. “Serves you right!” he said when he saw blood and pus oozing from one of my knees. Like many other children at that time, I had bloed-zweren on my knees (boils said to ‘be caused by dirty blood’). The painful, yellow blisters had burst and made an awful mess. After all those years, I still feel the pain and humiliation I felt that day when I now look at the scars from those boils. While I was preparing for my first Holy Communion, my fifty lies weighed extremely heavily on my conscience and I dreaded the day of my first confession. After the required introductory prayer I told the priest in the dark confession box, that I had given Mum ‘a big mouth’ a couple of times. Then I blurted out that I had lied at least fifty-five times, throwing in a few for the previous years. Meneer Pastoor seemed to know all about it. He said that whatever I said in future should always be true. After I prayed the full rosary as well as a series of ‘Our Father’s and Hail Mary’s’ for penance I left the church happily, knowing that God had forgiven me my sins. From then on I was very careful not to show anyone my fingernails. The white spots on them (zinc deficiency) proved that I was still telling lies, often. Even though I sometimes did not remember telling any, I would say at confession that I had, because of those marks. The morning after confession, I sat glowing with happiness among the children of my class in the front row of the church, in anticipation of my first Holy Communion. Meneer Pastoor’s speech was dragging on a bit, when he suddenly raised his voice. “Take that smirk of your face!” he shouted. I looked around to see who the culprit was, when my eyes met the priests. “Yes! I’m talking to you Hooft!” he said. “You are about to receive a Holy Sacrament, and that is not a laughing matter!” While he continued the service, I felt confused. Biting away my tears I asked God to forgive me. When it was time to go up to the altar to receive Jesus in my little heart for the first time, I wanted to stay in my seat. Feeling unworthy I bowed my head and kept my eyes firmly on the ground when I walked to the front. Tears of shame had replaced my happiness. Our teacher in Grade Three Juffrouw Kuilaars was young and friendly, the complete opposite of Juffrouw Brons. She was slim and wore her long, dark hair in a loose bun on the top of her head, with little ringlets falling out around her pleasantly smiling face. I loved the stylish clothes she wore and, as she made me seem special, I felt more at ease with her than with any other teacher I ever had. At that time, we still had to go to school on Saturday mornings. During the last half-hour of the week Juffrouw Kuilaars read a story to us or we were allowed to play games. Sometimes we asked riddles. The other children in the class always knew lots of them, but I only remembered the one Mum had told us. “ There is only time for one more riddle,” Juffrouw Kuilaars said one day, looking at the clock at the back of the classroom. I plucked up enough courage to put my finger up. Full of confidence I recited: “The King of Egypt Had a thing that ‘whipped’ Between his legs and under his gat (bum) Ra, ra, what was that?” The boys roared. Some of the girls laughed too, others giggled behind their hands. Juffrouw Kuilaars’ face got as red as the beetroot Mum often cooked for the midday meal. When the storm had died down, she asked apprehensively: “Well Mientje, what is it?” “ A horse, of course!” I said most indignantly. Juffrouw Kuilaars let out a big sigh; her colour turned slowly back to normal. When I came home at lunchtime, Siem was already telling Mum. She looked shocked but she had a twinkle in her eyes when she said: “Oh no, you didn’t! Did you?” “You told us yourself!” I yelled at her: “You made me feel stupid.” I ran into the house and fell on my bed, sobbing my heart out. During the following days, Mum told everyone who would listen, what I had done, laughing about it with tears running down her cheeks every time. Several weeks passed before I could laugh about it myself. When I asked Mum later where she had heard the riddle, she thought for a moment, then bust out laughing. “Come on, tell me! I want to know,” I insisted. In between fits of laughter she told me then that one of the novices, from the south of Holland, where Catholics were not as stuffy as we were, told the joke in the reftery (meal and recreation room) when Mum was in the convent. When I was in Grade Five, I let my favourite teacher down in a terrible way. I came to school that morning, late as usual, as Mum always wanted me to do jobs for her before I left home. The bell had already rung and most of the children were standing in line to march into their different classrooms. A few kids, the daredevils of our class, stood talking in front of Juffrouw Kuilaars’ classroom. They called me over. Piet, the fellow who had tripped me held up a dead bird and said: “I bet you don’t dare to put this on Juffrouw Kuilaars’ desk.” I always felt such an old trut (frump) I desperately wanted to be as brave and carefree as they were. The bell rang for the second time; this was my chance to show them what I was made of. Without giving it another thought, I grabbed the stiff bird, raced inside and did what I had been asked, then I ran to my place in the queue where the others were talking excitedly, looking and pointing at me. I was already regretting what I had done. My heart thumped in my throat, as I stole a glance at Juffrouw Kuilaars and marched past her to Meester Schoenmaker’s classroom. By the time we sat behind our desks everybody seemed to know what had happened. Most of the kids looked stunned; they could not believe what I had done. Were they looking at me with admiration or disgust? Before long a little girl from Grade Three came into our class with a note for Meester Schoenmaker. He looked around the classroom with his fiery eyes and thundered: “Which of you has stooped so low as to put a dead bird on Juffrouw Kuilaars’ desk?” With my head down on my chest, I felt everyone’s eyes piercing into my back like hot needles. I wished I could disappear under the floorboards. “You Mien?” Meester Schoenmaker exclaimed, “I don’t believe it!” When he recovered from the shock, he ordered me to go with the little girl to Juffrouw Kuilaars’ classroom. The Grade Three children had stunned looks on their faces when I walked into their classroom. I did not dare look at Juffrouw Kuilaars. Without a word she grabbed my arm and marched me straight out through the door, into the long empty passage. “Mientje! How could you do such a dreadful thing?” she asked angrily. “You of all people! I expect that from anyone else, but never from you.” Her words stung me deeply but a tiny, silent voice inside me said triumphantly: “You did it! You are one of them now!” My bravado was short-lived. Juffrouw Kuilaars talked at length about the great expectations she had had of me, adding that her trust in me had been badly shaken. My shame became unbearable; I started to cry and promised her from the bottom of my heart that I would never, ever do anything so stupid again. Before she sent me back to my own class, Juffrouw Kuilaars asked me to bring her my poezie album (autograph book). Nearly every girl had one of those little books in which family and friends wrote poems and verses, so that she would remember them forever. Every page was decorated with beautiful pictures of angels, elves, gnomes, and lots of flowers. When Juffrouw Kuilaars handed it back to me a few days later, she asked me to learn the poem she had written, by heart. Unfortunately, I have forgotten most of the long verse but the last few lines will stay with me forever:

If you are asked to do something That bears the name ‘down-grading’ Say, whatever will happen and without fear, Frank and free: “I would not dare!”

Johan and Eddy from next door often came to our place to play. For a while they wanted to play house with me, giving me my first lesson in sex education. Because I was the only girl in our neighbourhood apart from my little sister Jopie, I was always the mother. Our ‘house’ in a corner of the pig shed was made with bales of straw, leaving open spaces for a door and two small windows. Old fruit crates were used for a table and chairs. I had made curtains for the windows and always had a jam jar with wildflowers on the table, another bale of straw. Sometimes when we played doctors, the boys wanted the mother to be sick so that the doctor could take her pants down. I would lie there, completely innocent with my hands behind my head, not a care in the world, while the boys had a good look. My brothers soon lost interest but Johan and Eddy did not have any sisters... One day the boys were leaning over the wall above the trough in the pigsty, discussing the way the mother pig had her piglets. Curious, I came closer to hear their conversation. “I can make babies too,” Johan said. Wout grinned, his eyes shining knowingly. “Oh yeah! How?” the two younger ones asked. Johan hopped off the wall. “Come on and I’ll show you,” he said. We followed him to the corner of the shed where our house was. He pulled his pants down and started shaking his piemel while he explained: “If I do this for a long time, some white stuff comes out; you see? When I stick my lul between a girls legs, the white stuff gets inside her and that makes babies grow.” I just stared at him; he must be mad. My Mama would never do a thing like that. I was not sure about the stork bringing babies, but this was disgusting! “What about Queen Juliana?” I thought in horror. When I saw the pictures of our queen and the princesses when they came back from Canada where they had been hiding during the war, I was disappointed that she did not wear a crown. She even had a hole in her stocking when I saw her in Amersfoort one day. Mum said that a queen was just another person. “And yes, she had to go to the toilet too,” she said when I asked her about it. The image of a queen on a toilet was bad enough. Surely, she wouldn’t.... I didn’t dare think any further. For a while I refused to play mother but I liked the fact that Johan and Eddy wanted to play with me instead of with my brothers. When they kept asking, my curiosity got the better of me, and I gave in. One afternoon, when Mum was taking a nap and Anton was working in the paddock, I let them show me how ‘it’ was done. I took my pants off and lay down in the straw. But before Johan had his fly undone, Mum suddenly appeared on the scene. After a second of stunned silence, all hell broke loose. Mum was beside herself with anger; her eldest daughter was growing up to become a slut! She grabbed my arm, yelling that I was a wicked, dirty girl, who knew very well that she was doing something very, very bad and sinful. Johan and Eddy ran away as fast as they could and my brothers disappeared with them. Mum marched me into the house, pinching my arm and spanking my backside with her free hand while I screamed at the top of my lungs, begging her to stop. She tossed me onto the bed as a dirty rag. Saying that she was afraid that she was going to kill me, she marched out of the room, closing the door with a bang. When the boys surfaced at mealtime, they were ordered to destroy our ‘house’ in the shed. Then they were sent to bed without food. I felt terribly ashamed of what I had done; my desire to play mother was gone forever. For a long time afterwards I believed that the stork must have brought babies after all. I could not imagine that any of the neighbours or my aunties would do anything so bad, and surely, Mum would not have been so angry with me if she had been doing the same thing herself... Chapter TWELVE

After my father’s death Mum concentrated more on chickens and eggs to make a living. As she needed every cent she could get, she gave every egg they laid to ouwe Gart, our old neighbour to sell them for her at the market. The people who were living in our chook-houses had returned to their own places as soon as the war was over. After the Hunger Winter of 1944-45, there were not many chickens left and eggs were fetching unrealistically high prices for a long time. The first lot of chickens my father was able to buy had just started to lay the first tiny eggs when he died the following October. From then on early in spring every year, Mum bought one-day-old chicks which were delivered in cardboard boxes that held two or three dozen in each box. You could buy all pullets or ‘unsexed’ chicks, taking a chance on ending up with a lot more roosters than hens. Because they were a lot cheaper Mum always bought mixed ones. She sexed them herself by opening their tiny backsides wide to see inside. When I was a bit older she wanted me to help her but, as I hated such cruelty to the soft little creatures, I always refused. “Don’t be such a rotten coward!” Mum would yell at me. “You’ll never become a goeie boerin!” “I don’t intend to be a farmer’s wife!” I would reply and run off to get myself involved in some other job that needed doing. My refusal did nothing to improve my relationship with Wout, as he usually ended up having to help Mum cursing me no end afterwards as he always had plenty of other work to do. Before the new chickens were delivered in the spring of 1946 Anton divided the chook- house closest to the house into two, to keep roosters and hens separate. Because it is often bitterly cold during springtime in Holland, the lovely soft cheeping yellow balls were kept at a constant temperature under an iron hood with a couple of strong light bulbs for six weeks. By that time they would have feathers to keep them warm and the weather would have improved considerably. Because Mum could not afford to feed the little roosters, they ended up on our dinner table for our Sunday meals as soon as there was a little meat on them. Later, when Mum bought a lot more chickens, the roosters were kept for a few months and sold at the market. The hens were usually kept for three years. By then most of the old chooks had become unproductive and were sold for slaughter. All our hens roamed freely in large enclosures, but they were locked in the chook-houses at night. We had to watch them constantly when they were moulting and lost their feathers. If a hen bled from a small injury or from an egg that was too big to pass, a horde of hens would run after it and would keep on pecking at the bleeding spot. Occasionally a hen would get its neck stuck in the wire fence. If she did not get rescued quickly, her mates would soon peck her to death. We had to paint a bleeding hen’s backside with tar or carbolic which, apart from the healing factor, kept the other hens away because of the awful smell. One rooster was always kept in each yard. They would grow very big and strut proudly amongst their hens. Whenever one of the roosters climbed on top of a hen, Mum would say that he was telling her off. I never trusted the rotten things; I was as scared of them as I was of the geese Opoe Kleter kept as watch-dogs. I was two years old when I was attacked by a big red rooster, my father’s pride and joy. “When Bart came home from the milk-run, he heard you screaming,” Mum recalled. “You were sitting in the yard with the big rooster on your head, furiously scratching and pecking at you. He might have killed you if Bart hadn’t been home in time.” Mum sat staring ahead of her for a while. She told me then about the awful tongue-lashing that my father had given her. On and on he went about his stupid wife who was not even able to keep an eye on a little two-year-old girl. My father had killed his beautiful rooster, hacking it to bits. He had fed its remains to the pigs, refusing to let Mum cook any of it. Had Mum not realised that I had followed her into the chook-yard, I wondered, or had she simply forgotten my existence? Seeing that she had only been home from the mental institution where they experimented with shock therapy and deep-sleep drugs for little more than a year, I think she might have had a lapse of memory. During that time, she had already produced another child too. Feeding the chickens and collecting eggs was part of my job from an early age first helping mum and later alone with one of my younger brothers. At times we had a total of five or six hundred chickens, young hens and old chooks. When we came home from school at four in the afternoon, we had to change immediately into our old clothes and start loading the handcart with a thirty-litre milk-can filled with water, several buckets with wheat pellets, maize and grit, (stamped sea-shells which made the eggshells strong). Then we pulled the heavily laden cart around the four separate chook-yards. Before we could open the gate, one of us threw a few handfuls of pellets at the rooster to keep him and the hungry chickens away from the gate, to enable us to get in. While the rooster and his hens were busy eating, we cleaned the troughs and filled them with pellets, maize and grit. Then we cleaned the droppings out of the drink containers, filled them with fresh water and carted them into the chook-house for the night. The hens laid their eggs in big, specially made cupboards. Each of those cupboards had between forty to sixty small compartments with a handful of straw in the bottom of each nest. We played games with the chooks still sitting on nests, trying to get eggs from underneath them. They were very possessive towards their eggs and pecked viciously at our hands with their sharp beaks. We would throw a bit of feed in a corner of the cubbyhole and quickly grab the eggs. When a hen was not interested in food, we would lift her up with a stick in one hand, making sure that she could not free her head to peck at our fingers while we grabbed the eggs one by one with the other. When a hen was broody, she was locked in a special cage for a couple of days until she behaved normally again. “ Just like Opoe Kleter who stayed in her ‘nest’ when she was broody,” Mum said rather disrespectfully. Nobody ever suggested that Opoe might have been too disillusioned with life to face anyone. At times we collected up to four hundred eggs a day. They had to be sorted into different sizes and packed in large wooden crates with egg-size cardboard compartments, six hundred to a crate and six layers of one hundred each. Several dozen had to be washed before they could be packed for the market. The only eggs we used for ourselves were the broken ones or the wind-eieren. Those eggs had no shell; only a soft skin kept the yolk and the eggwhite together. They had to be handled carefully. If one broke there was an awful mess in the basket! The white of wind-eggs was a lot tougher, and they had to be boiled slowly in water with a lot of salt. I hated handling them and, after an experience with my stepfather some years later, I shuddered whenever I had to touch them. We only ate proper eggs at Easter when we were allowed to eat as many as we liked. We decorated some of them with coloured pencils and kept them for days before we ate them. From the day my father died ouwe Gart, our next door neighbour, had taken and sold our eggs at the poultry market in Nijkerk every Monday. The following spring, a few months after Bartje was born, he asked Mum to go with him and see for herself how he sold her eggs. “You need an outing Aaltje,” he said. “And if you like it, you can sell your own eggs in future.” It did not take much to persuade Mum to go out. Tante Cor her youngest sister did the washing at our place on Monday mornings and she could keep an eye on the children. The following Monday our old neighbour picked the crates of eggs up with his horse and cart at eight-thirty as usual, and Mum followed him an hour later on her bike. A lot of farmers stood talking beside long rows of crates, cardboard boxes and baskets full of eggs, amicably clapping each other’s hands when she walked into the big egg-hall. While ouwe Gart showed her how to get the best price for her eggs, he introduced her to his colleagues and buyers, wholesalers, grocers, restaurant owners and other private entrepreneurs. Mum was hooked; she took an instant liking to the market place and the people there. Tante Cor was not happy with the arrangement, but ouwe Gart was glad to be relieved of the responsibility of trying to get the highest price for the widow’s eggs. As time went by, Mum went to the market earlier in the morning and was often not home until well after midday. “I was glad to get away one morning a week,” she sighed later. “The outing kept me sane. I hated being left with the responsibility of looking after all those kids, day after day.” Mum was the only woman at the market place for a long time, but she soon became known as a hard nut to crack. She would come home radiating with happiness after getting the highest price for her eggs in the entire market. “And don’t think for one moment that they give it to me because I am a widow with a heap of kids,” she would say. “They don’t think that way when it concerns their own pockets; I have to be just as hard as the others.” When my father died, Opa Kleter took care of buying and selling the animals but one day when Opa was sick, Mum gave a hundred old chooks to a neighbouring salesman to sell at the market in Amersfoort. A few days later when the dealer paid Mum a lot less than she had expected, the man was extremely apologetic, saying he was sorry he had been unable to get more for them. “The prices were so low that it would make a grown man cry,” he said. But a couple of days later Mum heard that the neighbour had only given her half of what he had sold them for. As a widow, Mum never had to pay anyone for his or her services. “He will get his punishment,” she said with quivering lips. Again, word spread how the merchant had ripped the widow off and Mum felt sorry for the man’s wife and his eleven children who would suffer the most from her husband’s downturn in his business. When Wout was fourteen Mum allowed him to save the first tiny eggs the young hens lay, and sell them at the market. She told him to take his basket and stand far away from her. “I had to ask fourteen cents each for these tiny eggs,” Wout said later. “The buyers laughed at me. They told me that they were not interested in dove-eggs.” But, at the end of the market, Mum had still managed to sell them for eleven cents each. “Imagine! Eleven cents for an egg the size of a glass marble!” Wout, who had never left the village, laughed. “A boer in Holland these days calls himself lucky if he gets eight cents for the top range,” he said when I checked prices with him in 1991. “But mind you, the same eggs cost thirty cents in the shops!” he added. “Prices were extremely high after the war,” Wout explained. “Later, when more people kept chickens, the price went down, but they were still fairly high for many years. But then, because the price of feed went sky-high too, there wasn’t much profit in later years.” It is unbelievable what the changes in chicken farming have been, in Australia as well as in Holland. Tens of thousands of hens in huge sheds are now fed and watered automatically. The eggs are always clean, collected and sorted via conveyer belts. The stunning fact that the price of eggs is lower now than it was when I grew up, some fifty years ago, is just as well. Could you imagine having to pay two dollars and fifty cents for one egg? When Tante Cor and Tante Annie suddenly immigrated to Canada in 1948, I was nearly nine and considered old enough to look after Bartje, my little brother. It was impossible for Mum to stay home on Monday mornings as there was no one else who could sell her eggs as well as she could and the weekly outing kept her spirits up. My four-year-old sister Jopie went to school with my other brothers while Wout and I took turns in caring for two-and-a-half-year-old Bartje until he was toilet-trained and could go to kindy too. During the long summer vacation Mum would still go to the market, leaving all seven of us at home on our own, saying that our Mother in Heaven would take care of us. Before she left, she always knelt in front of a chair and asked Mother Mary to look after us while she was away, making a living. She never doubted for one moment that her prayers would not be answered and she could therefore forget us completely while she was away... Wout usually went to the milk-factory with Anton, which saved a lot of fighting between us. Sometimes, Mum took one of the other boys with her and she always made sure that we would not be bored. She left plenty of instructions for jobs that had to be done. Apart from many household chores, a chook-house or a pig-pen had to be cleaned, a vegetable patch weeded or the furnace filled with potatoes and boiled for the pigs (raw ones would give them diarrhoea). My brothers often disappeared to their friends in the neighbourhood, leaving me to look after Jopie and Bartje and copping Mum’s anger when she found the jobs had not been done when she came home. Henk and Siem always roamed the neighbourhood together looking for things to do, but Wim, who was three years younger than I, was always willing to help me with the housework. He was a gentle fellow, willing to please everybody. Knowing that Mum was away, sometimes a horde of neighbouring boys came to our place to play. Buurvrouw Bertha, Johan and Eddy’s mother, was always terribly worried when her sons were playing at our house. “ It’s a miracle that there has never been a serious accident with all those little children running around,” she said amidst her usual waterfall of words. “Your mother often forgot to put the lid back on the water-tank when she did the washing, and I shudder to think what would have happened if any of them had fallen in the manure tank. I would often go over with a smoesje (idle story) to see if everything was all right. It used to make me sick with worry,” she said. Both the in-ground rainwater tank and the manure cellar behind the cow stables were often left open for days. Mina, the fish-woman, who came from Bunschoten every Friday morning, selling fish door to door, came to buurvrouw Bertha’s place one day and said: “There is nobody home at Aaltje’s place, but the door is wide open. She left a kerosene stove burning high, without a pot or a pan on it.” As soon as Mina left, buurvrouw Bertha had gone to our house where she found an incredible mess. “It was an absolute miracle that the straw roof had not caught fire,” she said, shaking her head. That morning Mum had gone to an old uncle’s funeral at nine and she had not come home until two o’clock in the afternoon. When buurvrouw Bertha told Mum about the incident, she had laughed, saying: “Yes, Mother Mary always takes care of us!” Mum was always furious when her childlike beliefs were criticised. When buurvrouw Bertha begged her to remember to put the lid on the water-tank as her boys were often at our place too, Mum became very emotional. “You with your shallow faith, you are nervous about everything,” she said with trembling mouth. “‘Throw all your concerns onto the Lord’ it says in the Bible. You would have a much easier life too if you did that, instead of always being such a schijt-huis (shit-house)!” Mum believed that everything that was meant to happen would happen. If a child were to drown, it would drown, regardless of whether there was a lid on the rainwater tank or not. Her unlimited, childlike belief, and her ability to forgive seventy times seven times, helped her to cope. I’m sure they were the forces that made life a lot easier for her than it would have been otherwise; but they did not have the same effect on me... Life on the farm has been far from smooth sailing for Mum but then, nothing ever is when you depend on nature. Three years after my father died, every chicken on the premises had to be destroyed because of the dreaded ‘bird-pest’. The chook-houses had to be sterilised, and could not be used for a whole year. Mum shed many tears during that time and she became very depressed. That was when Opa Kleter came to the rescue with his ‘medicine’ to which Mum became addicted. Chapter THIRTEEN

After the war it was difficult for young farmers to get started in Holland. People were terrified as Communism was taking over in Europe with Russia was threatening. When, in the spring of 1948 a propaganda evening about emigration to Canada was held, the community hall at Hoogland was packed. Mum’s sisters, Tante Annie and Tante Cor were there too with their boyfriends. Ome Jan and Ome Bart were very enthusiastic at the prospect of starting a new life in such a big country where possibilities, especially for young farmers, seemed endless. Emigrating was forever in those days. Once you had taken the big step, there was no chance of going home for a holiday or returning to the motherland, unless of course you struck it rich. Even so, it did not take the fellows long to convince my young aunties to go with them. “There was a shortage of everything and there wasn’t much to do for young people when the war was over,” Ome Jan said when we visited them in Canada in 1991. “During the war, all sorts of people were staying at the farms. Boy, did we meet some funny characters then! The Canadian soldiers, who were in the area at the end of the war, were decent people,” he continued. “Everything seemed ghost-like after they had gone home. You had to make your own fun, which was usually playing cards, and vrijen (petting) naturally!” he added with a cheeky twinkle in his eyes. A few days after the information evening the two couples filled in the application forms and within a few weeks, they went to Den Haag (The Hague, the Dutch Capital) for interviews and medical tests. In the meantime they made arrangements for their weddings. Not only was it sinful and indecent at that time to live together, a marriage certificate was a guarantee that your partner would stay with you, no matter what difficult situations you encountered. Divorce was no option if you were married in the Catholic Church. My aunties were married in an impressive double wedding at the church in Hooglanderveen in June, followed by a party at Opoe Kleter’s boerderij. Tante Annie had made identical dark blue wedding dresses for herself and for Tante Cor. The long, stylish gowns were embroidered at the left shoulder with a flower motif made from blue sequins and tiny beads. Their veils of navy blue tulle were pinned onto their stiffly permed hair with a circlet of roses, also made by Tante Annie from strips of white satin. After the church service the photographer had taken the couple’s statie-portraits in his studio in Nijkerk and in the afternoon he came to Opoe’s place for that special occasion to take pictures of the family which Tante Annie and Tante Cor could take with them to Canada. He first took one of Opa and Opoe Kleter with their whole family. Then one of the six brothers and sisters, Tante Jans, Ome Hannes, Mum, the two brides and Ome Wim with his leg in plaster. He had broken it a few weeks before the wedding when his horse had fallen on his leg when he was trying to teach it to sit at the table and have dinner with him for the coming horse-show in July. Opoe Kleter’s was upset and angry with my aunties for wanting to leave, just as they had become ‘useful’ to them but because they were both over twenty-one, she could not stop them. Even though her mood was at its lowest on the wedding day she did manage a smile for the photo! She had grumbled all day; not only did they have to pay for their daughters’ bruiloft as was customary, they also had to give my aunties their rightful inheritance. When the photographer was finished taking pictures of the adults, he took one of the seven of us standing in a row from the eldest to the youngest; Wout 11, Siem 10, me 9, Henk 7, Wim 5, Jopie 4 and Bartje 3. Two days after the wedding, Mum’s two sisters and their husbands, all in their early twenties, left by boat for the long journey to Canada. Mum went with Ome Hannes and Opa Kleter to the harbour in Rotterdam to see them off but Opoe, who never left her house apart from going to church on Sundays, refused to go. Her farewells had been very cold but Opa Kleter cried freely when he shook his daughters’ hands and he waved good-bye as long as he could see the boat as it slowly disappeared in the mist. It was a terrible shock for Mum to have both her sisters leave so suddenly. Because the parishioners as well as our Protestant neighbours knew their duties to a widow, her prayers for new help were soon answered. But they all had busy households themselves and they would never stay longer than a few hours. Mum missed Tante Cor’s cheerful daily company terribly and she needed a more permanent arrangement. “God was always on my side,” Mum said when we recalled that time. “While I was praying for help He gave me the idea to go to Tante Mina (my father’s first wife’s oldest sister) and ask her to let me have one of her girls.” Tante Mina had two sons and five daughters. Annie the eldest girl helped her mother around the house and worked two days a week at other families’ places at the time. Mina, the second daughter worked as a live-in help in a household of well-to-do people in Amersfoort and Jo was fourteen and in her last year at school. The other two were a little older than I was. Knowing very well that Tante Mina could not refuse, Mum had given thanks to God even before she set out on her bike to visit her sister-in-law that same afternoon. Tante Mina agreed to send Annie to our place every Monday to help with the washing and on Saturday mornings to clean the house. Annie was not impressed with the way Mum treated her. “She took all the help people gave her for granted,” she said. “There was never any talk of pay. I would be lucky if she gave me a guilder at the end of the week.” One bitterly cold Monday afternoon Mum and Anton had spent the entire afternoon sipping coffee, sitting with their feet up near the hot wood stove in the living-room, while Annie slaved away with icy-cold water, which had to be carried from the in-ground rainwater tank beside the old house. While Annie was scrubbing and rinsing the endless piles of washing near the pump at the back of the house, Mum had even forgotten to take her a cup of tea! When Annie complained about it later, Mum had laughed and said: “That’s the privilege of a widow! Someone will do the same for you if you ever become one yourself.” When Jo left school, Annie had refused to go to our place any longer. Jo had taken her place but when Mum re-married in 1951, nearly three years after my aunties left for Canada, she did not want to come any more either. I was eleven at the time and considered old enough to help Mum around the house. Opa Kleter missed his daughters terribly. With the young people gone, there had been no laughter in the house any more and there was no one left with whom he could play cards in the evenings. Tante Cor had always helped him in the stables and on the land and they had always had plenty to talk about. Because the house was like a grave, Opa spent even more time at our place, which irritated Opoe and Ome Wim no end, as they were left to do all the work at their own boerderij. Opa Kleter was a big man with a ruddy complexion. Hundreds of thin, red veins made his face look like a street-map. He wore the traditional, old-fashioned black suit. A thin-striped, dark blue shirt with a band at the neck was barely visible between the big lapels of his jacket, which closed with a double row of shiny gold buttons. Tante Annie used to polish them on Saturday afternoons. She cut a circle from a piece of cardboard in which she made a cut to the centre. Then she slid it underneath the button “so that the jacket did not get polished as well as the buttons,” she used to laugh. Opa always wore clogs, bright yellow ones when he went out and plain, whitewashed ones around the house. A black skipper’s cap covered his white hair. In summer when it was hot, Opa would take off his heavy shirt and thick pants that were made of felt. He worked in his brightly striped thick cotton underwear consisting of a coarse unbleached vest with long sleeves and dark blue underpants with red and white stripes. The story goes that, when he was turning hay close to the road on such a hot day, a passing policeman booked him for ‘indecent exposure’. His wide gathered underpants closed with a band well below his knees over his long socks! One day Mum bought a pair of black silk stockings from a door-to-door salesman. The following afternoon she sat resting her feet on a chair placed in front of her, admiring her new stockings. Sitting beside her Opa stroked her legs, saying how lovely and smooth the silk felt. What a difference from the hand-knitted ones she used to wear, he said. His fingers travelled up higher past her knees to see how far the stockings went saying admiringly: “Yes, they are lovely soft stockings Aaltje!” Mum brushed his hands away laughing: “Och! Go away, you old sod!” Afterwards, Anton roared with laughter. Whenever he saw Opa turn into our driveway on his bike he would call out: “Here comes Opa Kleter to feel your stockings, Moes!” Opa Kleter’s mind was gradually deteriorating. He became forgetful and at times we did not know what he was talking about. He suffered from hardening of the arteries (arteriosclerosis) which affected his brain. As time went on Opoe became more and more isolated and embittered. Tante Jans had become worse over the years, abusing her verbally every day and, with the girls gone, there were seldom any visitors. Apart from being a diabetic her rheumatism worsened and on top of that she suffered badly from bouts of nettle-rash, a nervous allergy. Ever since my father died, Mum had looked at every single man she had met as a possible suitor. With Opa’s condition deteriorating she felt very lonely and desperately longed for a husband. Anton was a great help at the farm but he was too young to share the responsibility for her fast growing rebelling children. As she had never wanted so many (if any at all) they had become a heavy burden to her. They badly needed a father, someone who could keep them in line, she said time and again. At thirteen Wout was bossing everybody around, including her. Because he was the eldest he felt responsible for the farm, even at that early age, as it would one day be his. It irritated him no end when Anton played with Siem and Henk instead of doing the work that waited. Without Opa calling in as often as he used to, the evenings were long for Mum, especially on Saturday and Sunday nights when Anton went out with his friends. Mum loved Anton dearly but at twenty-three, he was still a child too. She felt as responsible for him as if he were one of her own. She could never get to sleep until he came home, usually long after midnight, and slightly drunk. One day Mum saw an advertisement in the Boer en Tuinder, a newspaper for Catholic farmers and market gardeners, which she read out aloud. A middle-aged man in Kockengen, a farmer’s community near Amsterdam was asking for a wife; a widow with children was no objection. Mum wrote to him that same day, inviting him to come for a visit. During the following week, I waited eagerly for the postman, praying for a stepfather who would be as nice as Opa Kleter had been to Mum. Two weeks went by and nothing happened. Mum cried, saying that a man would have to be mad to be bothered with a widow with seven children. When we came home from school for the hot midday meal a few days later, Mum introduced us to a visitor, an old grey-haired man in an old-fashioned black suit. He was already sitting at the table, barely lifting his head to look at us when we said hello. He talked with slurred speech to Anton who looked at Mum with a mocking twinkle in his eyes. Although she must have been terribly disappointed, Mum seemed her normal self when she served the simple meal of coarsely cut lettuce and potatoes with buttermilk sauce and speck-kaantjes (crisp fried pig fat) one of my favourite hot meals. While we were eating silently, Siem kicked my leg under the table. Trying hard not to laugh, Anton was leaning back in his chair, pulling faces at the old man who kept on eating with a drip hanging on his nose! Holding my breath, I watched in horror as the drop got longer and longer. Just when I expected it to fall on to the lettuce on his plate, he sniffed it back in noisily. Afraid that we would all burst out laughing I did not dare look at the others and kept my eyes firmly fixed on my plate. The sound was repeated several times before the man finally took out his hanky and blew his nose. By that time we were all holding our hands over our mouths, sniggering with tears in our eyes, trying hard not to make a sound. The old man did not seem to notice; he just kept eating. We only had half an hour for lunch, then rushed off to school again. When we came home later that afternoon, the man had gone. Mum cried with laughter when Anton asked us what we thought of her new boyfriend. Summer passed and turned into another lonely winter for Mum. Then, in March 1951 an elderly aunt brought a man for a visit; the man who would shake our lives to the core... By that time Opa Kleter had reached the stage where he was suffering from terrible nightmares even during the day. In May, a few weeks after Mum’s hasty marriage, her beloved stepfather was taken to a mental hospital in Amersfoort. During the last weeks of his life Opa was wearing a straitjacket, tied to a chair or on to his bed to protect him from harming himself or the other patients. Mum was always terribly upset when she came home from visiting him. “It’s awful to see him like that,” she cried one afternoon. “He points at the doors of the linen cupboards in the passage and says: “You see those doors? They are ovens. They are soon coming to get me and throw me in. I have to burn in the flames for the rest of my life!” Opa Kleter died on the sixth of July, six weeks after he had been admitted to the hospital. I was eleven at the time. “ I am relieved that God released him from his suffering,” Mum said when she got the message that afternoon. She was grateful that he had been there when she needed him most and she would miss him terribly for a very long time. I know now that Opa Kleter gave Mum what she wanted most; unconditional love with no strings attached. I wasn’t to be so lucky with my stepfather... Chapter FOURTEEN

After Tante Annie had gone to Canada, Marie, Tante Cor’s sister-in-law from Nijkerk, came occasionally to sew for a day and Tante Jans, Mum’s great-aunt, came every couple of weeks to help Mum with her endless piles of mending. Tante Jans was a gentle, softly spoken lady, well into her sixties whom I liked very much. I always hurried home from school when she was there, as I loved helping her. She had run a busy chauffeurs-cafe called “De Tweede Steeg” (‘the second lane’) on the main road to Amersfoort, first with her late husband, and later, during the war, with her eldest son. One day Tante Jans told Mum that she wasn’t coming for a while as she was having a visitor at Easter, a man called Gerrit, who would stay for a week. He was one of many people who had stayed at the cafe during the war, she said. She went on to tell Mum that he was forty-eight and he had never married, he lived in Huissen, a fruit and vegetable growing community across the river Rhine from Arnhem, with his sister Marie who had three children. Tante Jans had visited them there the previous summer and of course, Mum invited her to bring this Gerrit for a visit. Easter was early that year and the weather was beautiful. When we saw Tante Jans and her visitor cycling into our driveway, shortly after two o’clock on Easter Monday, Mum was very excited. With Jopie and my younger brothers, I followed her outside to meet them. As soon as he had set his pushbike against the wall at the back of the house Gerrit took his hat off and shook hands with Mum saying: “So you are Aaltje! Moeke told me a lot about you and I’ve been wanting to meet you ever since.” His manner of speech made us laugh, what a funny accent! We had never heard anyone talk like that before. Gerrit was a short, solidly built man. He wore a dark, pinstriped three-piece suit and shiny black shoes. With his shortcut thick, slightly greying hair, combed neatly to one side with a high wave, his heavy eyebrows closely knit above his dark eyes, and with his clean shaven, double chinned face, he was a good looking man in his Sunday suit. He smoked a thick cigar and smiled continually. Gerrit looked a nice man, but when he laughed loudly, showing his dirty yellow teeth, he frightened me. They stood talking outside for quite a while. Then Gerrit took his big silver watch, which was tied to the button of his vest by a heavy chain, out of his pocket and checked the time; a sign for Mum to take her visitors inside. After a cup of tea Mum showed Gerrit the animals and the garden while I kept ‘Moeke’ company. Well in her seventies Tante Jans loved being called Moeke. “That’s what people in Huissen call their mother,” she laughed. When they came back into the heert Mum asked Gerrit if he would like a borreltje and she looked very happy when he accepted. By the time Moeke and her visitor were leaving it was nearly dark. Mum’s face was bright red and her eyes were shining. Anton and Wout, who had already finished feeding and milking the cows, came into the heert for their evening meal. Wout was furious that the sandwiches weren’t ready. “And what about feeding the chickens instead of wasting your time talking all afternoon,” he yelled at Mum. “Mind oew words!” Gerrit barked at Wout. “That’s no way to speak to oew mowder.” Mum looked shocked. She had completely forgotten about the chickens as well as the evening meal. When Moeke and Gerrit rode away on their bikes, she told me to help Wout load the cart with chicken feed while she made sandwiches for every one. There was no need for Wout to scold me the way he did while we loaded the cart; I already felt terribly ashamed. Of course I should have reminded Mum about the chickens. Gerrit said that he could see what a great help I was to mum; what was he going to think of me now? While I helped Mum feed the hundreds of hungry chickens and collect eggs by the light of a torch, Mum said that it looked as if God had finally answered her prayers and He had sent her a good husband, a farmer as well as a market gardener. She was forty-two and Gerrit was forty- eight. He had never been married but because he was living with his sister, he was used to children. “Wasn’t it wonderful the way Gerrit put Wout in his place when he yelled at me?” she asked. Mum kept on talking about Gerrit. During the battle at the bridge over the River Rhine in September 1944 Arnhem and Huissen had been evacuated. With his father and his youngest sister Marie her husband Knid and two small children Gerrit, had been accommodated at Moeke’s cafe for six weeks. When they had gone home again they had found their boerderij and all their glass-houses destroyed and their animals had all disappeared. Six years had passed since then. They were still living in the draughty shack they had built from the ruins of the bombed house, but work on a grand new farmhouse was ready to start after Easter. Gerrit’s mother had been a marvellous woman. She died before the war and his father, a great man by the sounds of it, had passed on the previous year, aged eighty-two. His sister Marie now had three little boys, aged between five and eleven. Apart from the market garden, they milked a dozen cows, a substantial number for a mixed farm. They also owned two horses and a lot of pigs and calves, and Gerrit sounded a very good salesman. He loved buying and selling cows and horses and he knew how to get the highest price for his fruit and vegetables at the markets, he had said. Wearing a new set of black manchester (rip-cord) work clothes, with a tie, a black cap and brand new yellow clogs, again smoking a thick cigar, Gerrit came back the following morning on the pushbike he had borrowed from Moeke’s son. He wanted to see how Mum was selling her eggs at the market, but she had already left on her bike an hour earlier. Nijkerk was about seven kilometres away via narrow paths through the paddocks. Wout was quite happy to take Gerrit there. They had only been away half an hour when they came back. Wout was soaking wet, shivering and cold to the bone; his curly hair was full of kikkerdril (frog-rit or spawn). The foot pedal of his bike got caught on a post as he crossed a narrow bridge over the ‘Laak’, a fast running creek. He had tumbled with bike and all into the icy-cold water. Gerrit roared with laughter, but Wout never felt so humiliated in all his life. While Wout stuck his head under the pump at the back of the deel and changed into dry clothes, I made a cup of coffee for Gerrit. As soon as Wout was ready they left for the market again. A few hours later Wout came home fuming; Gerrit had told everybody at the market about the ‘funny way Wout had tried to catch frogs’. Even though Wout was just about in tears with embarrassment, Gerrit kept making fun of him in the afternoon, baring his awful teeth when he laughed. Later that same afternoon, I found Mum and Gerrit in one of the chook-houses, holding hands. Although I was very happy at the thought of having a father again, I felt terribly shy when Gerrit spoke to me in his strange accent when he noticed the watch I had drawn on my arm with a ball-point pen. “If oew mowder marries me, I’ll give oe a real watch,” he promised. He went on to say that life would be wonderful. Each of my brothers would get a brand-new watch too and in a few years’ time, he would build a new house for us so that we were no longer cramped in the old krot (hovel). Wout was beside himself when he heard that Mum was seriously thinking of marrying Gerrit. “What for?” he demanded with tears in his eyes. He was nearly fourteen; in another year he would have left school. She did not need a stranger to tell us what to do. He had already shown her that he could throw a thirty-litre milk-can on the cart, hadn’t he? By the time Anton got a girlfriend and wanted to get married he, Wout, would be old enough to do everything our father had done. Because he was the eldest son, the farm was going to be his anyway, and he was prepared to work hard. Yes, Mum knew all of that, but she wasn’t listening any more and continued to praise Gerrit’s virtues. The next day Gerrit was there again, in his new working suit, complete with cap, tie, clogs and his inseparable cigar. Because the nice weather held on, Anton had taken the cows outside before he had gone on the milk-run and, as we wanted to make the most of our school holidays, we had started the spring cleaning that morning. Wout, Siem and Henk had taken the dirty straw and the manure out of the stable at the back of the old house and Mum and I were busy scraping and rinsing the rest of the muck off the walls. Gerrit praised us for doing a good job, telling Mum that there was no need for her to give us a hand. She happily put clean clothes on and went away with Gerrit, introducing him to our neighbours. As she didn’t come home to cook the usual hot meal at midday, I made a heap of sandwiches for everybody. Mum was nowhere to be seen all afternoon either. When they finally came back, Mum told me to make sandwiches for the evening meal too while she and Gerrit would feed the chickens. Coffee, tea and sandwiches were ready when they came back inside. But, without saying a word to us, Mum went into the bedroom looking as if she were in a trance, followed by Gerrit. They stayed for what seemed to be a very long time. Wout’s fury at them disappearing like that was fuelled by Anton’s suggestion that Gerrit would be mad to ‘buy a cat in a bag’. I had no idea what they were talking about, but from Wout’s cursing and yelling abuse, I guessed that they were doing dirty things. Anton’s laughing at me begging Wout to stop shouting infuriated Wout even more. He grabbed one of his clogs from the deel and threw it against the bedroom door, shouting more abuse. As nothing happened, he went back to the deel and grabbed a shovel. The door flew open when he smashed a hole in it. For a moment all was still and silent. Then I heard Gerrit say something about Mum letting Wout go wild followed by Mum crying that she had no hope of controlling him. “He’s been too long without a father,” she sobbed. When Mum came out of the bedroom, followed by Gerrit who comforted her, saying that things would change drastically when he came back to marry her, Wout and Anton had long disappeared. They were sitting with Sam and Henk in the hay, on the platform above the cows, when Gerrit went to the deel to go back to Moeke’s place. Gerrit looked at them with disgust. “Your eyes should fall out of your heads with shame,” he said in his colourful accent, which suddenly did not sound funny any more. “Yeah, you can laugh now,” he sneered; “I’ll show you who’s boss when I get back!” A few days later Gerrit had a heated argument with Anton about milking. Anton, who was sick to death of hearing him telling everybody what to do as well as seeing his future ruined and his home taken away from him, came home at ten that Sunday evening. Gerrit had been waiting for him. He told him that a newly calved cow had to be milked three times a day, as the cow would give more milk that way. In his usual quiet manner Anton said that that was nonsense. There was nobody in the whole of our district doing that. When Gerrit ordered him to milk the cow at that late hour, Anton exploded. He told him to mind his own business, to go back to Huissen and leave us in peace. He (Gerrit) would have milked the bloody cow himself if he had been a man! Well, we soon knew that nobody would ever be allowed to question Gerrit’s manhood! The next minute they pulled and pushed at each other, shouting nasty remarks like a couple of overgrown schoolboys. I had never seen grown men fight and if Mum had not pulled them apart and calmed them down, there would have been an even uglier scene. Peace returned to our household when Gerrit went back to Huissen the following day. Before he left Mum promised him that she would go to Huissen in two weeks time, wanting to see where he came from and meet his sister and her family. Mum left on her pushbike that Sunday morning in the middle of April. She would attend the early Mass in Amersfoort, then take the train to Arnhem. From there she would take a bus to Huissen. Although it was no more then seventy kilometres, the trip took more than three hours, each way. She came home close to midnight. I was still up, eagerly waiting for her return. She was exhausted but happy, full of praise for Gerrit’s youngest sister Marie; such a jolly woman, and her three boys adored their uncle Gerrit. One of his other two sisters, Mieneke the middle one had come to meet Mum too. She was just as nice as Marie but she had not met Anna the eldest. She was a real sourpuss Gerrit and his other sisters had said. Mieneke has a son and a daughter about my age and Anna had two older sons and a daughter Riet, who was twelve, a little older then I was. I would be meeting all my new aunts, uncles and cousins in a few weeks time, Mum said as the wedding day had been set for the ninth of May, only three weeks away. Anton was devastated when he heard the news later that same evening, just before I went to bed. He begged Mum to reconsider her decision saying that she was far too hasty, she did not even know the man, he argued. Mum, who was still angry with him for setting Wout up against Gerrit, said that she had seen how well Gerrit was liked at home. “Wout needs a strong hand. Now!” she said determinedly, “he needs a father before he is completely ruined.” She could not let this chance go by she added, her mouth twisting, as if she were going to cry. I woke up in the middle of the night a couple of days later. I still slept in the double bed with Mum and Jopie, my little sister who would turn seven two days before the planned wedding day. I pretended to be asleep as Mum whispered: “Anton! What on earth is the matter?” I opened my eyes just wide enough to see Anton standing against the stark white wall of the bedroom. He was drunk. I had heard him singing in the night and spew up a couple of times but I had never seen him drunk before. Mum was sitting upright in bed when Anton started to cry. He said that Mum was making a big mistake. He said that life for all of us would become a hell if she married Gerrit. Mum told him not to make a fool of himself, but Anton said he did not care. He got on his knees beside the bed and, with his head on Mum’s lap, he said that he loved her and the kids, begging her to cancel the wedding while she still had a chance, and to marry him, Anton, instead. “Jong toch! Jong toch!” Mum repeated, while she caressed Anton’s head. She reminded him of the big age difference (Mum was forty-two and Anton was twenty-five). He needed a girl of his own age, she said. “When you wake up tomorrow, this will all be a bad dream; you will be sorry you ever asked me,” she said softly. Anton had been dead serious and he had never regretted asking Mum, he told me when I visited him in 1991. Before proposing to her Anton had gone to his father and asked his advice. “Father was strongly against it,” he said. “He thought that I only wanted to secure my own future. But it was more than that. I loved your mother and I wanted to prevent her from the obvious disaster she was getting herself, and all of you, into. When I left my father, I had already made up my mind.” After a short silence, Anton added: “I’m still sure that we would have been happy. It was awful for me to leave your mother like that.” When it became obvious to him that Mum was not going to change her mind, it became impossible for Anton to stay with us until the wedding. Ome Wim, Mum’s youngest brother, took care of the milk-run again, as he had done when my father was sick. And Anton left. Life for him became very difficult. It had broken his heart to leave our place where he had been so happy, knowing in his heart that Mum’s marriage to Gerrit ‘could only be a disaster’. He found live-in work on a large pig farm where he had to clean out pens and spread manure over the land day in, day out a heavy and filthy job. After a year or two, he gave farm work away and became a bricklayer, travelling by train to a ‘day-school’ for mature people in Utrecht. He married our neighbour’s daughter Tiny when they were both well into their thirties, and they had three children. Years later, Mum played cards often with him and his wife Tiny. Anton had developed serious asthma; he looked an old man at a very early age. Whenever I saw Mum and Anton together, I felt sure that they would have had a good life together. The big gap in their ages had completely fallen away. But then, as Mum said, life seems to have to take its course... “You would never have met Fre (my husband), if I had not married Gerrit”, she would say. Neither would I have had my brother, who now lives only a few streets away from me in the centre of Australia. Jopie, my only sister, would not have married her husband, (which would have saved her a lot of heartache) and I might never have emigrated to Australia, etcetera, etc, etc... I could have lived happily without some of the following experiences though. But then, I wonder if I would ever have felt the urge to write this book... Chapter FIFTEEN

The last two weeks before Mum’s wedding were very busy. The spring-cleaning was still not finished and with Gerrit’s family coming for the wedding, Mum wanted to make a good impression. Although the bruiloft was held at ‘CafŽ De Tweede Steeg’ and taken care of by Moeke and her son, Mum was away a lot. She had to make arrangements for the wedding at the council office in Hoogland as well as the church in Hooglanderveen and the photographer in Nijkerk. She had long talks with the pastoor and Betsy, a deaf girl who lived in the village, was making Mum’s black wedding dress. Because there were no telephones, Mum had to go everywhere on her pushbike. Without Anton, Mum had to help Wout with the cows and the pigs. She also looked after the garden, the chickens and went to the market as usual to sell the eggs. During the last week she kept me at home from school. While Annie and Jo, Tante Mina’s daughters took care of the washing and other housework Mum and I wallpapered the heert and whitewashed the front of the house. Then I painted the edge at the bottom of the house black with tar while Mum worked in the garden. Each of the other children also helped as much, excited about the coming wedding. When the ninth of May came around, the old cottage was sparkling inside and out. The garden in front of the old house looked beautiful in the early morning sun. The pear tree in the centre of the neatly trimmed lawn was blossoming, tulips, narcissus and other spring flowers were everywhere and the rose bushes were in full bloom, spreading their lovely perfume. Jopie and I were allowed to be bridesmaids. Mum’s sisters had sent some pretty material, light-blue cotton splashed with tiny flowers, from Canada shortly after they left and Marie, Tante Cor’s sister-in-law, had finally made our dresses the previous year. I was terribly upset because Jopie’s dress had smock-work at the waist while mine had only zigzag as Marie had no time to do the elaborate embroidery on my dress. Jopie was Mum’s favourite; she always looked much prettier than I did! Because Mum wanted our pictures taken to send to Tante Annie and Tante Cor to thank them for the material, Opa Kleter had taken us in his cart to the photographer in Nijkerk. Opoe, wearing her new, colourful apron, also made from Canadian material, decided to go with us at the last minute. She liked to have her picture taken; it was the only time we saw her smile. In the end Mum still had to finish the hems of the dresses herself. Sitting in the cart, I was still angry with Mum, as she had not even bothered to sew the lovely, embroidered Canadian collar on my dress before we went to the photographer. It had just been pinned on with sharp dressmaking pins. Later, when I saw the photos, I was happy to point out that the zigzag at the top of Jopie’s dress was sewn on crookedly, another (rightful) excuse for Mum to call me a ‘nasty cat’ again, like my cantankerous grandmother after whom I was named. As we hadn’t had any occasion to wear them again the Canadian dresses were still new but the pins had rusted in the beautiful collar of my dress. In the week before the wedding Marie sewed it on properly and let the hems down as we had grown a lot since the dresses had been made and Mum put curlers (strips of rags) in our hair the night before the wedding. When the big day finally arrived we felt like real princesses. Gerrit and his family arrived by train early in the morning. The bus from Amersfoort dropped them off at cafe De Tweede Steeg. From there they brought two hire cars, one for the bride and groom and one for the family. Jopie and I were allowed to go with Mum and Gerrit to the registry office at Hoogland, our first ride in a car. Wout, Siem and Henk went to the church on their bikes; Wim and Bartje had to stay home with Annie. The wedding party at the big cafe-restaurant was a happy affair for us children. We soon felt at ease with our new cousins and their funny way of talking. At times we could hardly understand each other but we laughed about everything they were saying and vice versa. The boys became more boisterous as the day went on, sneaking beer and cigarettes from the tables in the cafe. They shared their loot at the back of the huge trucking yard. Some of them, including my brothers, were as sick as dogs by dinnertime when the adults’ party started but Mum was too busy to notice. Gerrit’s three sisters, who were even shorter and fatter than their brother, had too much to talk about to take any notice of their kids either. The adults were having a great time playing games and dancing when we were taken home at eight that evening. Mum had felt anything but happy on her wedding day. “ A cold chill ran down my spine when I walked into the church on Gerrit’s arm,” she recalled. “When we were exchanging our wedding vows, I wanted to scream, and run as far from the scene as I could.” Mum wanted us to call her new husband ‘Papa’, but I felt that he could never take Papa’s place. I used Vader (father) when I talked about him but called him ‘Pa’ at home. Wout and Siem did not want another father; they always referred to him as ‘Dirks’, a shortened version of his surname. Apart from three Sunday suits, several pairs of clogs, shoes, hats, caps, some new work clothes and a suitcase full of thick old-fashioned underwear, Pa brought nothing. Tante Marie owed him a lot of money for the time he had worked at home he said. As soon as that came I would get the watch he had promised me. During the first couple of days Pa strutted around in his new rib-cord work-suit like a fat rooster. Wearing a tie and bright yellow clogs, a big cigar either in his mouth or in his hand, he went with Ome Wim to the milk-factory in the morning. After the midday meal followed by a nap with Mum he visited the neighbours in the afternoon. He was in a good mood but as the days went on, he grew moody and easily lost his temper. With the corners of his mouth hanging down, he criticised everything we did, on the land as well as in the house. His sister Marie ran her household much more easily; she always had time to help the men on the land from early morning until late at night. He would stop complaining and his face lifted instantly when a visitor came around. My father’s meticulous vegetable garden, which Mum had kept going as well as she could, was pathetic in Pa’s eyes. Coming from fruit and vegetable country, he would know how to make the best of the garden, Mum said. But she was not too happy when Pa turned part of the separate vegetable patches into one large block of strawberries, a few weeks after the wedding. “What on earth are we going to do with all those strawberries?” she asked. “We’ll take ‘m to the market and sell ‘m, of course,” Pa said, looking at her as if he had never heard such a stupid question in his life. Mum did not say anything thinking that he would find out soon enough that they needed to grow vegetables for their own use instead of her having to buy them in the village. During the following weeks Pa dug out most of my father’s berry bushes and exotic fruit trees and made the remainder of the garden into large beds of carrots, cauliflower and lettuce, which would be all we had for dinner that summer. Pa occasionally romped around with my brothers and our neighbour’s kids as Anton had done, but these play-fights always ended in one of them crying. Pa would laugh and sneer at them, calling them ‘wimps’ and ‘sissies’. After a few months none of the boys wanted to play with him any more. When the first couple of months had gone by it became clear that Pa did not care much for hard work and he liked his bed, especially in the morning. Mum, who spent a lot more time in bed herself, started to make excuses for him, saying that he never had to work too hard at Tante Marie’s place, as he was not being paid any wages there. By the time Pa got out of bed in the morning, Mum had often already gone to help Wout with the milking. She loved the early mornings; she would much rather milk the cows than prepare breakfast for the family, even if it rained cats and dogs. Before she left she would wake me up so that I, in turn, could get the others out of bed and get them ready for the school Mass, which started at eight in the morning. Ome Wim had shown Pa how to do the milk-run for one week, then he had left him to it. With his father (Opa Kleter) in hospital he had to be at his own farm. Wout stayed happily home from school in the morning to go with Pa until he knew the route and the procedure at the milk factory. Like Opa Kleter, Pa did not like the milk-run. He could not get the hang of swinging the heavy milk-cans onto the platform of the wagon and soon hired a neighbour’s son from Monday to Friday to do the job for him, leaving Pa to do it himself on Saturdays. Because the milk- factory was closed on Sundays, the trip had to be done twice on Saturday. By that time we no longer had to go to school on Saturday mornings and Wout went on his way with Vos, our old horse while Pa came later on his pushbike. The idea was that they would meet at the first boerderij so that Pa could lift the milk-cans onto the flat tray of the cart. This worked well for a while. But by the time Wout turned fourteen in August, he was usually already close to the milk- factory by the time Pa turned up to help him. Wout was extremely proud that he could swing the heavy thirty-litre cans onto the cart, but some farmers had forty-litre cans, which he could not handle. They weighed forty-five kilos when they were full, five kilograms more than Wout himself. As he hated to ask the farmers to help him he was furious with Pa when he did not turn up in time. Some farmers and their wives complained, saying that Wout was far too young for such heavy work; Pa should be ashamed of himself, they said. Wout was only a little fellow. They warned him as well as Pa that the heavy lifting would do irreparable damage to his back. Pa laughed about that; he told the farmers and their nosy wives to mind their own businesses. After a few more months, a policeman came to our house with a summons. Wout was under age. He had to be fifteen before he could work, the policeman said. Being a terrific talker, Pa managed to avoid paying the fine, and several others that followed. He still let Wout lift most of the cans, often more then a hundred per trip. Wout got more and more frustrated with Pa for leaving the work in the stables as well as that on the land to him. He was fuming when he came home from school at four and found that Pa had only just woken up from his afternoon nap. Mum had taken a liking to those long sleeps in the afternoon too. Or were they making a baby, like Wout said? I was eleven when Mum married Pa and, as I was only nine when I had my first period, I had already been a ‘woman’ for quite some time. Shortly before my ninth birthday Mum had given me a stack of neatly trimmed and folded bandages, made from old sheets, and told me all I needed to know at that stage. “ I don’t want you to be as ignorant as I was when it happened to me,” she said with trembling lips. “It was terrible! When I started bleeding for the first time, I thought I was dying, and this was the end of me. After days of agony, I finally plucked up courage and told Jans (Mum’s older sister). She gave me some rags and told me to wash myself properly. She said that I could expect that to happen every month, otherwise I would be in big trouble!” As Mum’s periods were irregular, she had been worried sick about what kind of trouble she could expect for years, too scared to ask her sister any more questions. Because Mum was ten when she had her first period, she wanted me to know what to expect early. She told me how a baby grew inside a woman from the seed of her husband, but I did not dare ask her how it got there. I felt very grown up and had been looking forward to the big event of becoming a ‘real woman’ myself. It soon became a habit for Mum to leave the dishes of the midday meal on the table for me to do after school. If I had not made the beds before I left for Mass in the morning, they were often not made when I came home in the afternoon either. I did not mind; it would be nice if Mum had another baby... Every child at school, who had taken his or her First Communion, was expected to go to Mass before school started. The main street in the village was always alive with the clapping of children’s klompen on the pavement early on weekday mornings. During Mass, the boys’ high capped clogs and the girls’ trip-klompen, (low-cut clogs with a leather strap over the instep) stood in neat, double rows around the edges of the separate halls at the back of the church. Most children wore thin leather slippers inside their clogs in winter as the marble floor of the church was like ice on their stockinged feet. By the time I was twelve, most children wore shoes to school and clogs were only worn at home on the farm. Nearly all pews in church were hired out, men on the right and women on the left side of the aisle. Because the best seats were also the dearest, well-off people sat at the front and the poor at the back. A person, who sat in someone else’s place on Sunday, had to pay even if the owner was not there. My parents’ seats were about six rows from the back, the second seat on either side of the aisle. When I went to church with Mum on Sunday, I had to sit in my father’s seat, between the men, which was quite embarrassing at first. No girl would ever sit between the boys or vice versa during the school Mass, even though every place was then free. Each morning the teacher had to record the children who were in church that morning and the number of times we attended Mass was written in our school report at the end of the year. We were often late, usually through no fault of our own and it was most embarrassing to have to go in when everybody else was already seated. Girls were not allowed in church without having their heads covered by a hat, a cap (berets were in fashion) or a scarf. Even though I hated to have to tell the priest this at confession, I sometimes forgot my beret on purpose, so that I could play for a while before school started. Mum was furious with me when she found out, but the urge to play for a while was too strong for me at times. Pa had his own ideas about the church, priests and nuns, and they were not very flattering. He said it was nonsense for us to have to go to church every morning. Wout and I especially, would do far more good if we helped our parents instead, he complained. But, at least for the first year they were married, Mum insisted that we were to go. As Tante Marie had still not sent him any money, Pa decided to go to Huissen for a visit early in August. Because it was school holidays, and I was his favourite, I was allowed to go with him. Mum looked very disappointed even when Pa promised to take her with him for a couple of days when the Kermis was on in October. I had never been in a train before and I was dying to see my new cousins again. I could hardly wait till it was time to leave, worried sick that she would still go herself at the last minute. But before I could go with him I first had to show my appreciation to Pa, by giving him a kiss. Mum was annoyed with me when I refused. “Don’t be silly; he is your father now. There is no need to be so shy with him,” she said angrily. One day I gave him a quick peck on his prickly cheek and ran out of the house as fast as I could. But Pa was not satisfied. Before we left, I had to give him several, much better kisses, sometimes when Mum was not around... When the morning of our departure finally arrived, the weather was beautiful and I sat proudly on the back of Pa’s pushbike when we left home. Pa left his bike in the shelter at the railway station in Amersfoort before we boarded the nine o’clock train to Arnhem, about sixty kilometres away. The train went incredibly fast until we had to change trains half way. Then we had a slow train that stopped at every station. It seemed to take forever to get there. We had to wait for a while before a big yellow bus took us the last twelve kilometres to Huissen. The minute we stepped out of the bus, people shook Pa’s hand, asking him in their strange accent how he was getting on. Several others stopped working on the land and talked to him on the ten-minute walk to Tante Marie’s place where she was waiting for us with coffee and cake. Pa and his sister both had tears in their eyes when they hugged each other in front of the nood- woning (emergency dwelling). Because the windows were small and the ceiling low it was dark inside, and it smelled like mushrooms. After a drink of lemonade and a fancy little cake, I went outside with my three ‘cousins’. Joe, the eldest was twelve, a little older than I was. He was very quiet and he smiled just like his father. Wim, the second boy was ten; he took after his mother, talking and joking non-stop. I didn’t like his jokes as most of them were rude and they made me blush. He said that he had learned every single one from Pa. Cor, Tante Marie’s youngest son, was seven. He was small for his age and laughed at everything I said, because I talked so funnily. The three of them took me to the new house, which was being built on the foundations of the old house. They showed me the first stone, laid a few weeks before. “How can that be the first stone when the wall was already half a metre high when it was put in?” I laughed. They did not know the answer either. They went on to tell me how the old house had been bombed during the war, as if they had been there themselves when it had happened. In the meantime Tante Marie had cooked a lovely hot dinner; she was really a very good cook, as Pa always said she was. After a deep plate of thick vegetable soup with little meatballs (I liked Mum’s better), she served the tender cooked meat (beef, not pork as we got at home!) separately with little pickled onions and cucumber which was better for your stomach, she said. Then came the main meal of potatoes with cauliflower, peas and carrots and thick gravy, followed by custard with cream and strawberries. I could hardly walk when I left my chair. While the adults sat talking, the boys showed me the rest of the property. A neighbour’s daughter, Annie came over and joined us. She was nearly twelve too, but a lot bigger than I was. She talked slowly in a sort of singing accent and she had dimples in her cheeks when she smiled. I liked her immediately and we would become great friends in later years. I was amazed at the long rows of glass-houses where the biggest strawberries were growing that I had ever seen. We went into one hothouse after another where cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes and tons of peas and green beans were growing, most of them ready to be picked. In the back of the house were stacks of fruit and vegetable crates standing around a large sorting table. Most of them were empty but one stack had beans and another lot was packed with cucumbers. Joe explained that they all had to get up as soon as it was light in the morning and pick whatever was ready. It had all to be sorted and taken to the veiling before eight in the morning to be auctioned off. The beans and cucumbers in the crates had been picked before we arrived and, as soon as Pa and I left, they had to start picking again until dark. Joe and his father also had to feed the pigs and milk a dozen cows that were grazing in a paddock near the Rijn, a twenty- minute ride away by pushbike. Annie was from a similar farm; she had to get up just as early, she said. While we walked to the pig shed, I was very quiet, thinking of all that work. We thought that we were always busy, but we had an easy life compared to those people. The shed was huge and had dozens of strange looking pigs in it. Ours had long bodies and long floppy ears, but these were short with small ears sticking straight up. Some of the pigs had black patches; their babies were really cute. Joe and his father left for milking at four-thirty. Tante Marie insisted on making us a sandwich, saying that we could not travel on empty stomachs. Pa and I protested that we were still full from the midday meal, but Tante Marie said that she would be ashamed of herself if she let us go without anything to eat. Before we left, Pa boasted to Tante Marie about how good I was with needle and thread, and he promised her that I could stay for a couple of weeks next year. “She can do your mending while you teach her how to run the household,” he said. Tante Marie’s fat belly shook with laughter. “There isn’t much to teach about the way I do my household,” she laughed. She was looking forward to having me, warning Pa to keep his promise. And yes! She would get her financial affairs in order as soon as possible she said when she gave Pa a hug, before she waved us off. There were a lot of soldiers on the train back to Amersfoort. Pa sat across from me in front of the window, reading the paper. But, as he had not had an afternoon nap, he was soon soundly asleep. His cigar had gone out and ash spilled over his vest. A young soldier sitting next to me moved closer to me bit by bit. He smiled at me and whispered that I was a beautiful girl. I looked out of the window, blushing at his compliment; nobody had ever said that to me except Pa. I felt the soldier’s hand slowly moving around my back. I stiffened when he held my elbow, but he said that I did not have to be scared of him. I held my breath when he moved his hand, freeing my arm. Unable to move, I felt his hand burning on the side of my belly, then I slowly relaxed as we sat silently. It felt good to have someone as handsome as the soldier caring about me. Maybe he would wait for me to grow up so that I could be his girlfriend, I thought. The train stopped and Pa woke up. He did not seem to notice that the soldier had his arm around me and started a conversation with him. Pa wanted to know what it was like to be in the army and he talked non-stop about the war when the train moved on again. They both seemed to have forgotten that I was there. When the conductor announced that the next stop was Amersfoort, the soldier slowly let go of me. He stretched up to his full length, took his bag out of the rack, said good-bye to Pa and smiled at me. “I had a very pleasant trip,” he said and walked out of the cabin and out of my dreams... “Wasn’t it nice to have that fellows arm around you?” Pa asked, laughing heartily as I blushed. Chapter SIXTEEN

August turned into September without news from Tante Marie’s accountant. Tempers between Pa and Wout flared continuously. Mum always sided with Pa; there was something wrong with his blood (high blood pressure) which made him so irritable, she said, he was not allowed to work hard and needed more rest than other people. It was bad for him to get so angry. Wout was now fourteen and he should be able to control his temper better. When I came home from school one afternoon, Pa was lying in bed, crying. His face was bleeding and his nose was swollen like an over-ripe plum. He had his first fistfight with Wout. “I’ve sacrificed everything to come here and this is what I get for thanks,” Pa sobbed, when I handed him a cup of tea. “I wish I had never set eyes on this godforsaken place.” Wout could not understand why Pa’s face bled so badly. He had only thumped him on the nose he said, as his patience had been tested to the limit with Pa’s never ending criticism. We later learned that the capillaries under the skin of Pa’s face burst spontaneously whenever he was angry. Not long after his fight with Wout, Pa was in bed again when I came home from school. This time he was sobbing his heart out in long, animal-like wails. I felt sorry for him, as I understood that something much worse than a fight with Wout must have caused this kind of devastation. Young as I was, Mum confided in me as to what had happened. Because Pa had done something wrong when he was young, his father had disinherited him. According to the solicitor, Tante Marie did not have to give her brother anything. But, out of the goodness of her heart, she had given him four thousand guilders for all the time he had worked on their farm. “Four thousand lousy guilders for more than thirty-five years of working day and night,” Mum said bitterly. A week’s wages for an average worker was forty-five guilders in 1950, well over two thousand guilders a year. Of course, Pa had had free board and they had also paid for the wedding... “Even if he has taken it easy for the last couple of years, four thousand guilders is peanuts,” Mum said, shaking her head. There were a lot of rumours circulating in the village about Pa. “Why had his youngest sister got the farm when he was the only son?” people asked. As salesmen travelled all around the country, and several people had kept in contact with their evacuees after the war, gossip soon informed us that Pa’s father had disinherited him because he had made a girl pregnant. “A moment of absent-mindedness can make a man cry for the rest of his life,” Pa quoted time and again... It wasn’t until 1991 that I learned that Pa’s bullying father had declared his only son ‘mentally disturbed’ to get out of paying maintenance to the girl’s family. In his will, the old man had left all his possessions to his two youngest daughters, Mieneke and Marie. Because Pa’s oldest sister, Anna had rubbed her father up the wrong way too, she didn’t get anything either. When Pa was twelve, his younger brother, Martinus died of mumps when he was eight years old. Pa talked about him often. “He was such a lovely fellow; I still miss him. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him.” he told me sadly time and again. “Tinus was his father’s favourite,” Mum said. “After his death, Gerrit’s father was furious with God for taking the son he loved instead of Gerrit, the eldest, whom he never liked. His father no longer wanted to have anything to do with the church, and for many years he could not even bear the sight of Gerrit.” After Tinus died Pa had done everything to please his father, but he had never been able to make up for the death of his brother. Pa stayed in bed for several days, crying frequently and refusing to eat. Weeks passed before life returned to normal again and the heated arguments with Wout resumed. A lot of changes were made to the house before the wedding. We had cleared the hay from the open platform above the cow stables so that all seven kids could sleep there, leaving the bedroom to Mum and her new husband. With Anton gone, Wout, Siem and Henk slept in one of the double beds, while I shared the other with Jopie and Wim. Wim often wet the bed and Jopie and me in the process! There was just enough room left for a chair for our clothes and Bartje’s cot between the two beds under the bare sloping roof. Our two-piece mattress made with straw and covered with coarsely woven, checked hessian was rock-hard. Later someone gave us a soft, three-piece kapok mattress to put on top, but it became lumpy and uncomfortable in no time. We always had lots of fleas as they bred in the straw mattresses and in the thatched roof, above our beds. Mum attacked them regularly with D.D.T. but we were still covered in welts when we got up in the morning. I’m sure most families had the same problem, but I always felt deeply ashamed. I insisted that the welts were mosquito bites, even in winter when there were no mozzies around. Head-lice presented another problem. We were regularly inspected at school for nits and crawling things. Although lots of children had them, it was still most embarrassing when a note had to be taken home. (My head itches as I write about those filthy creatures!) Mum combed our hair every evening with a fine toothed iron comb and she washed it regularly with kerosene to get rid of the nits. We far preferred those painful treatments to having our heads shaved, especially us girls. A strong smelling Eau de Cologne, which came on the market at that time, was a godsend, as it soon got rid of the lice in a more pleasant manner. In winter it was a lot warmer on the platform above the cows than it was in Mum’s bedroom, where it was always icy cold often with thick leaf-patterns on the windows. Jopie and Wim were usually already soundly asleep when I went to bed, and I could warm myself on them and I often took a hot water bottle to bed, even though the boys called me a wimp. One day I had not put the cork in the stone bottle properly, and I badly burned my feet. When the first spell of frost came after Mum’s marriage, Pa put a couple of bricks on the kachel each evening. After about half an hour he rolled them in old newspapers and put them in his bed to warm the sheets. The boys laughed at him, but, a couple of days later there was no space left on the kachel for the kettle, as each of them put a brick on it to be heated too. “Siem and I heated our sheets with matches; when Wout was not around, of course,” Henk laughed when we talked about our lives in the ouwe hut recently. Fancy them using an open flame to heat cotton sheets on a straw mattress less then a metre away from a cork-dry thatched roof! Henk also reminded me about the little blue flames that ran along the electrical wiring in the cow-stable below our ‘bedroom’. The iron pipes were always wet with condensation in winter only a few centimetres away from the hay. But then, Mum always said that our Heavenly Mother and our Guardian Angels protected us. They sure must have had a busy time at our place! During Pa’s first summer with us a carpenter made the old bedstee joining onto the square heert into a two by two metre walk-in cupboard. It had a rack for dresses, coats, suits and shirts on one side, and a kapstok (a row of hooks) on the other, with lots of space for shoes underneath and a shelf for hats, caps and handbags on top. At the back of the little room, under the sloping roof, were shelves for bed-sheets, spare blankets and our underwear. When the cupboard was finished, the carpenter made a small bedroom for Jopie, Bartje and me at the deel, opposite the cow stables. The room was built with matchboard and was only big enough for a double bed, a chair and some shelves for our clothes, but I was very excited about it. The roof of the old house came down to about a metre off the ground and I could watch the comings and goings on the road when I lay in bed. I was quite happy to share the bed with Jopie and Bartje too. I was allowed to stay up an hour longer at that time to help Mum with the mending and they were usually asleep and warm when I went to bed. One evening, when I was getting undressed, Jopie was praying a Hail Mary in her sleep. Half way through, Jopie stopped and Bartje, sound asleep beside her, continued where she had left off, completing the whole prayer. While our bedroom was being completed, Pa bought a heap of large wooden glass-crates at an auction in Amersfoort to make the platform above the cows, into a bedroom for the boys. Jan, Tante Mina’s youngest who was a carpenter, was none too happy at having to use them. The rough timber wall he made from it had a narrow door in the middle but no windows. As the little window in the back wall could not be opened, he had to make another one in the roof to let in some air. Then he lined the steep sloping roof with raw timber, which touched the back of the beds. Although it was rough, the room was a big improvement from the open platform as the beds were now hidden from view and not always covered with hay and chaff. From then on until they left home, Henk and Siem slept together and Wout shared the other bed with Wim. It was not easy for Wout to control his temper when Wim wet the bed -and him! Like Anton Wim couldn’t help it that he had a weak bladder, Mum said, and, if Wout kept calm about it, he would soon grow out of it. Wim was eight at that time and twelve when he had his last accident, which I will always remember... Although not much fuss was made of our birthdays, they were never forgotten, until Mum remarried. We were allowed to wear our Sunday clothes to school and she gave us a bag of sweets to share with the children in our classroom. While we went around with the delicacies, usually saved from the sweets that came free with the weekly groceries, the whole class sang a birthday song, which made the jarige feel very special. Sometimes Mum bought us a present, usually a piece of clothing. When I went to bed one evening in July, Henk was sobbing his eyes out. At first he did not want to tell me what was the matter, but as I kept probing he stammered: “It was my birthday today; and nobody even noticed.” I felt dreadful. It was all right for Mum to forget; she had so much on her mind, but I should have remembered that it was Henk’s ninth birthday that day. I promised to make it up to him somehow and I would make sure that my own birthday at the end of October would not be forgotten. Envy never failed to hit my stomach when I read about people, especially authors, who have been able to read as much as they wanted to when they were growing up. Until fairly recently, I still felt guilty when I was caught reading during the day. Mum never read anything except the Catholic newspapers and the Sunday missal. Apart from a few popular children’s books Sinterklaas brought, there were no books in our house. Because Catholics were not encouraged to read the Bible as they wouldn’t be able to understand the meaning of the stories without the explanation of a priest, we did not have one at home either. Mum always insisted that nothing good came out of books and she did not allow herself to enjoy reading until she was well into her sixties. One day, I found some old romantic fiction books in the attic above the living-room; books which had belonged to my father’s first wife. The zolder was forbidden to us as the wooden floor was rotting away. Among half a dozen dusty books were a silver hairbrush, a comb and a thick plait of Tante Wijm’s long blonde hair. A cold shiver ran down my spine, and goose bumps appeared on my arms when I held the plait, connecting for the first time with human death. I took one of the books with me and hid it under the bed. Later that night, I started to read by the light of Pa’s torch, which we had under our pillow in case we had to go outside to the plee during the night. Terrified that someone would discover what I was doing, I buried my head deep under the blankets and switched the torch off before I lifted the heavy layer of blankets to breathe fresh air and wipe away my tears. With my face burning from excitement and lack of air I read the sad story of a forester and a young girl, who had run away from home to be with her lover, hiding in the dark forest. One morning, Bartje found me reading and I was worried sick for days that he would tell Mum, but he never did. Pa always sold cows, pigs, chickens, eggs and even the over-supply of potatoes in the same, hand-clapping fashion. “I want three hundred and fifty guilders for that cow,” he would say with a hard slap on the prospective buyer’s hand. “Don’t be ridiculous, two hundred is all she is worth,” the buyer would reply, slapping Pa’s hand. “If you start as low as that, you might as well go home,” (clap) Pa would say, praising the virtues of the animal. “Maybe two-ten” (clap). “No way! Three hundred and not a cent less!” (clap). It could go on like that for quite a while, interrupted by talking about market prices, politics and all sorts of other topics. Then Pa would bring the salesman inside for coffee or a drink. Mum admired Pa’s skill and Wout’s eyes shone when he watched him. Enjoying the attention, he would get more lively telling risque jokes and boasting of former victories. The handclapping continued while he assured the buyer that he was going to get what he wanted, no matter how long it took. When they got to a point where they could not get closer to an agreement, Pa would pour the salesman another drink, saying: “Well, you can take it or leave it; we can still be friends.” “People say that you are a hard nut to crack, but you are worse than a Jew,” the buyer would say. (Jews were regarded as the best salesmen in the country). “Yeah! And a Catholic Jew at that!” Pa would say, roaring with laugher. “Why did you start at such a ridiculously low price, if you knew what I was like?” he would chuckle. More clapping and holding hands. When the salesman wanted to leave without buying the animal, Pa would say: “You’ve already wasted so much time that you might as well pay me the full price.” Before the buyer left, they had usually split the difference, which was close to what Pa had wanted in the first place. But, as time went on, salesmen began to avoid him, as they could not make the profit they needed for their businesses to be worthwhile. At the beginning of November, Pa’s three sisters and their husbands were coming for his forty-ninth birthday. The terrible hurt they had caused him a few months earlier had never been mentioned again and all seemed forgiven and forgotten. The house was cleaned and the yard raked as if Queen Juliana herself was coming to visit. Pa was as excited as a child becoming more nervous as his birthday came closer. With his bottom lip dropping further, he berated us for leaving the work to the last minute and he kept on asking Mum if she had this, that and the other in the house. Mum said he wanted to show his sisters that he was doing all right for himself, without their money. We were growing up fast and it wouldn’t be long before we were all working. Then the money would roll in and he would be able to build a grand new house. Mum had given me a watch for my twelfth birthday at the end of October, so that I could show it to Pa’s sisters when they came. It was Tante Wijm, my father’s first wife’s old watch. She had worn it on a chain but a jeweller in Amersfoort had made it into a wristwatch by putting it on a black leather band for me. It was a beautiful watch with large Roman numbers, and I was only allowed to wear it to church on Sundays and on special occasions. Winter came early that year. A thin layer of snow covered the garden when we woke up on Pa’s birthday, the 8th of November, a lovely clear frosty morning. The headmaster had given me permission to stay home from school to help Mum with the special occasion. I went happily on my bike to the bus stop on the main road, to meet the important visitors and walked with them through the village on the way back. No doubt the villagers would have pushed each other aside behind the curtains to have a better look at that strange, laughing group of people dressed in their old-fashioned Sunday best on an ordinary weekday. Pa’s sisters were no taller than one metre-fifty, and as round as bier-tonnetjes (beer-kegs). Theo, Tante Anna’s husband, had a hunched back and looked old, while Toon, Tante Mieneke’s husband was tall with a big belly. Ome Knid, Tante Marie’s husband, felt ill at ease in his Sunday clothes. He was a slightly built, energetic man who walked as if he had spent his whole life at sea. His nicotine stained teeth stood wide apart and far forward, which gave his face a friendly look. “This is something different from always working,” he laughed. They seldom went further from home then the church in Huissen and the market in Arnhem, and this was the second time in one year they had ventured so far away. They wondered how on earth the old bachelor had found his way to the widow he was destined to marry. Pa had apparently been to a fortune-teller at the kermis (yearly fair) in Huissen, when he was a young man. When the gipsy woman read his cards, she predicted that he would marry a widow with seven children. “That’s probably why Pa is convinced that you can never escape from what lies in store for you, no matter how hard you try,” I suggested. Pa’s brother-in-law laughed. “Maybe he has been looking for such a widow ever since the gipsy told him; unconsciously of course!” he grinned. Mum had coffee ready when we got home, and Ome Willem, the baker, had brought the best of his gebakjes as Pa had ordered. There was even one for each of us kids! Mum had spent a lot of time preparing the best midday meal she could cook. The delicious smell of fresh vegetable soup filled our nostrils when we reached our house. A generous amount of pork was simmering away in rich gravy with bay leaves on the freshly blackened stove. Every year Gijs, the slaughterer came to kill a pig in the last week of November, but that year he came early so that Mum could serve the best cuts of meat to the ‘Royal’ visitors, on Pa’s birthday. It would be beautifully tender when the meal was served at midday, providing we did not forget to add a little water now and again to prevent it from burning. Making sweets was a nightmare for Mum but she had excelled herself. She made individual little puddings with stewed cherries on top for everybody. While Pa sipped liqueur with his family he kept reminding Mum and me to keep an eye on the food. The dinner went extremely well, and I glowed with pride when Pa’s sisters said what a splendid little helper I was. So much so, that I did the dishes single handed while Mum went with Pa to show the visitors over the farm. When they came back in again my face was bright red from polishing the kachel and licking the left over advokaat and alcohol-soaked sugar out of the liqueur glasses before I washed them. While Mum poured the tea, Tante Marie and Pa fell asleep. They both had had a sleepless night they said, and were exhausted from the unusual, hectic day. Everybody kept quiet as they lay back snoring in their chairs with their mouths wide open. Ome Toon asked for the salt shaker. When he sprinkled a little on each of the snorer’s tongues, they pulled the funniest faces. Then he dropped a generous amount in Pa’s mouth. He awoke startled, his eyes shot fire. But when he saw that Ome Toon had played a joke on him, he laughed like a boer with a sore tooth. Mum made a fresh pot of coffee at five o’clock, a sign for me to go to the cellar to get the basket full of fancy bread rolls with real butter, ham and cheese, which we had prepared early that morning. A neighbour, who owned one of the few cars in the village, took Pa’s relatives to the train station in Amersfoort an hour later. It had been a very happy day, they said. Before they left, his sisters and their husbands told Pa what a lucky man he was to have such a lovely wife and such capable children. They were extremely impressed by the way Wout handled the feeding and milking with the help of Siem and Henk that afternoon. I felt very excited when Tante Marie reminded Pa of his promise to send me to Huissen the following summer. “If my sisters only knew what goes on behind the scene!” Pa groaned when we waved them off. He bore his two sisters no grudges. I don’t think they ever knew how deeply hurt their brother was when they stuck to their father’s cruel and unreasonable decision that cheated him out of his rightful inheritance. All because of a moment of absent-mindedness... That birthday, Tante Marie had given Pa the best present she could have possibly given him, he said; a set of old, framed photographs of his parents. With tears in his eyes he thanked her for it. I looked eagerly over Mum’s shoulder, when he passed them on to her. The arrogant face of Pa’s father gave me instant goosebumps and the picture of his mother made me giggle. She was nearly bursting out of her dress and had only one, big tooth in her mouth. But the look on Pa’s face made me stop laughing instantly. It wasn’t a tooth but a mole, he snapped. From that day on, the angry eyes of Pa’s father followed me around the house continuously as the ugly portraits had to have the best place on the wall of our living-room. Pa was livid when anyone asked us how we could bear to look at those horrible pictures. I must have been fourteen when I came to realise how much Pa admired his father. I had just finished wallpapering the heert and I hated having to put the repulsive photographs back on the wall. Pa’s mother was all right, but when I put his father’s ugly face next to it I took it straight down again. I stuck a picture of a bunch of flowers on the back and put it on the wall, back to front. All hell broke loose when Pa came inside. I thought he was going to kill me. He could not bear anybody saying anything negative about his father. He still believed the man had been perfect in every way. Nobody would ever cross him or they would be very sorry, Pa always said. Whenever he had an argument with Wout, Pa yelled that his father would have nailed him to the door with a pitchfork. He would have broken every bone in his body, or strung him up on the highest tree he could find if he (Pa) had spoken to his father as Wout dared to do to him. Pa used the most dreadful language when he was angry. He felt a coward and a sissy, regretting bitterly that he could not be more like his powerful father. “ Gerrit takes after our mother,” Tante Mieneke had said, and the others agreed wholeheartedly. “We should all thank God for that on our bare knees,” Mum often sighed. Like every farming family we always had several cats as they kept the mice out of the house. I loved their soft, purring bodies curling up on my lap and they warmed my feet in winter, as they lay either on top, or under the blankets. The little ones were lovely to play with and we never grew tired of their antics. I could not see why Pa called them dirty as the big cats licked themselves as well as their offspring, perfectly clean. Of course it was a nuisance when they piddled somewhere in the house when they were accidentally locked in, and it was impossible to get rid of the smell. One day we were all in stitches when a thin stream trickled through the badly deteriorating floorboards of the zolder above the table, and the cat pee spattered into Ome Wim’s dinner. Mum was horrified and Ome Wim, who had come to help with the hay, swore he would kill that rotten so and so cat if he only could lay his hands on it. Pa did not like dogs and he hated cats. While we were milking, we had to chase them away a hundred times. They always balanced on the edge of the sieve, on top of the milk-can, licking from the fresh foam. Because they had a new litter once, often twice a year, the kittens had to be drowned as soon as they were born, which was usually Mum’s job. I hated seeing her going to the wetering (wide stream) at the back of our property with the wriggling hessian bag, made heavy by a brick. It broke our hearts hearing the mother cat cry for days, looking everywhere for her kittens. We often tried to hide the kittens so that Mum could not find them, but the silly mother cat seemed to want to show them off. She always brought them back, one be one, dangling from her mouth, usually with disastrous consequences. Wout did not like cats either, which made it more difficult for us to hide them. Occasionally one or two of a litter survived but, as everybody in the neighbourhood had the same problem, it was usually impossible to find a home for them. We occasionally lost a cat when it got caught in a mole or rabbit trap, or was shot by the hunter. For many years we had two ‘lapjes-katten’ with coats of beautiful rich autumn colours. Both cats had fluffy tails and white bellies and feet. It was mother and son, or so we thought. When the mother had four kittens one summer, we hid them in a cardboard box under our bed. The ‘son’ became a nuisance, wanting to get into the box with the mother and her babies. The mother cat snarled and fought, making a lot of noise and when we came home from school next day, the kittens were gone. A few days later, I woke up during the night as something was crawling up my legs. I woke Jopie, who slept beside me in the double bed. By the light of the torch, we saw what had happened. The ‘son’ had given birth to three kittens at the bottom of our bed. As it was the summer vacation we were able to save all three of them. We watched them open their eyes and start to play. They were the most gorgeous kittens we had ever seen and so cute to watch! When they were six weeks old they were racing each other through the house, chasing our marbles, making a mess of Mum’s ball of knitting wool, and annoying the hell out of Wout and Pa. Whenever they got in front of Pa’s feet, he kicked them away, threatening to kill them, cursing us for wasting our time, playing with them. One day he was angry with a salesman who had cheated on him. He banged his fist on the table, swearing that he would teach that dirty so and so that he could not get away with treating him, Gerrit, like that! While he raved on, he tripped over one of the kittens. Something snapped; he suddenly became a madman. He grabbed the nearest kitten by its back legs, and whacked it on the back of a chair, killing it instantly. Our hysterical yelling and screaming made him even more furious. He did not rest until all three kittens were dead. We buried the kitten’s broken bodies between the rose bushes in the front garden and put a cross on the grave. We cried for hours and neither of us spoke to Pa for days.

Mum acted as a spoilt child when I nursed her in 1987, shortly before she died. I again hear her voice coming from her bed on the other side of the room while I sat talking with my brother Bart and his wife Janny one evening: “Pity Pa did not grab your legs and bash you over the chair; he should have killed you at the time instead of those innocent kittens...” Tears are still filling my eyes while I recall this awful event even though I now accept that her brain might have been affected. But then, I wonder. Mum was angry with me at the time. She felt that I was bossing her around as her mother-in law, after whom I was named, had done in the past. The following morning she said that she had not lost her mind as I had obviously thought she had; she was just being honest with me, she said and she still meant every word she had said the previous evening. A year earlier Mum had upset me terribly with a similar callous remark. More than a dozen relatives had arrived from Holland as well as from interstate for our second son’s wedding and I had been run of my feet organising accommodation, meals and outings for them. In the meantime I was running our picture framing shop and finishing our daughter-in-laws wedding- dress as well my own. At one stage my sister-in-law Robin, Henk’s wife who had come from Victoria, insisted I had a break. But when I sat down to have a cup of coffee with the family Mum berated me. “You should be ashamed of yourself to sit here on your lazy bum and letting Robin do the work!” she said, her lips trembling the way I hated so much. I wonder if the memory of those incidences will always hurt me, because of the immense agony they caused me at the time. Forgiving and forgetting are two different things. How do we learn if we forget what happened? I read somewhere recently that loss of feeling of compassion towards other people, is often one of the first signs of Altzheimer Disease. The thought that Mum was probably not responsible for her actions softens the pain considerably. Giving people the ‘benefits of the doubt’ in any circumstance has helped me since to cope with a great variety of situations, especially in my dealings with elderly people. Chapter SEVENTEEN

As in most farmers’ families we learned to play cards at an early age, as that was our main form of entertainment. As soon as the days grew short and the evenings long at the end of October, we played a game or two before we went to bed. (Except for learning the Catachism by heart, we never had to take any school-work home). On Sunday afternoons there were often two or three groups playing cards, as neighbouring boys joined the happy gatherings. The little ones would play snap or ‘joker’ or they built castles with old cards. The others played ‘twenty-one’, ‘thirty-one’ or ‘chasing hearts’, but schut-jassen, (a sort of bridge), was the main game in our area. Mum was particularly keen on it and because the game needed four players, Wout, Siem and I were often allowed to stay up late on Saturday nights to play with her. When Anton stayed home, Siem and I took turns. Siem did not like playing cards and, because I was often yelled at me for making silly mistakes, I rather did something else too. Pa soon learned the complicated game. He too cursed my stupidity and, because he always said he liked me best that made me feel even more inadequate. However, they had little choice; they either played with me or they had no game. Sometimes, when I made good guesses, I enjoyed myself too and Pa would say: “See; you can do it all right!” Mum was fanatical about playing cards and she took every game seriously. If there weren’t anyone around to play with she would play for hours against herself with invisible people, playing each hand honestly. She kept the interest up until her death. During the last months of her life, she often fainted and was too weak to walk unaided. But when Ome Hannes came to pick her up for a game of cards, there was suddenly nothing the matter with her any more. One night they had played until two o’clock in the morning with the help of a few borreltjes of course. “She even won the game, without us letting her win,” Ome Hannes laughed when he brought her home one night. Mum was still bright and lively at that late hour, but the following morning she could barely get out of bed again. She would be angry if we said that she had fainted, saying that she had just dozed off for a moment. Mum never was a good loser. She would say that we had cheated even if we hadn’t. Sometimes she threw her cards angrily over the table and sulked for hours. But if she won, her day was made. We all knew how to make the most of her good humour! December is the gezelligste (cosiest is the nearest translation) time of year in Holland. By the end of November the days are very short and around Christmas the lights are on all day. The KRO (the Catholic Radio Station), the only one Catholics were allowed to listen to, provided few programs suitable for children, and there was no television at the time. But, as we had little free time we were never bored. Apart from playing cards, we played other games like Dominoes and Ganzebord, a popular board game with geese. Sinterklaas sometimes brought a new game on the sixth of December. There are many different legends of Saint Nicolas, dating as far back as the middle ages, but at school we learned that this bishop lived in Spain and distributed food to the poor on his birthday. For a hundred years or more, he had come to Holland with his own steamboat, doing the same thing. He brought his black helper Zwarte Piet and his white horse, called ‘Schimmel’ with him. Schimmel was a wonderful horse who could jump from house to house and run over the roofs in the cities even when they were covered with a thick layer of snow. Sinterklaas still wears bishop’s clothing, a long white dress with a deep red velvet cape. He had a snow-white beard and a golden mitre on his long white hair. Zwarte Piet was as black as soot. He had a big mop of black curly hair and big, black eyes, which moved quickly and missed nothing. Because the whites of his eyes were very bright, he could see extremely well in the dark. When living conditions improved clothing and toys slowly replaced the gifts of food. To be able to cope with the rapidly increasing number of children in Holland, Sinterklaas had to bring a lot more Pieten. Their costumes were made from striped velvet, gold and green or dark red, a tight fitting jacket with puffy sleeves and a white frill around the neck. They wore short, ballooning pants, black stockings, pointed shoes, and fluffy feathers in their matching berets. Every Zwarte Piet carried a roe (a bundle of twigs) with which to hit naughty children. Their hessian bags full of presents were also used to put naughty children in to be taken to Spain to work in the toy factory for a year. Unfortunately, none of the bullies of our school were ever taken! In the weeks before the Saint’s birthday the black Pieten went out at night to see if the children were behaving. They listened in the chimneys and told Sinterklaas what they had heard. The ‘Good-Holy-Man’ wrote everything in his big book. Every night we put our clogs near the kachel filled with hay and carrots for Sinterklaas’ horse. The food was always taken but unlike at our neighbours’ places there was seldom any gift left in return. “ Zwarte Piet probably ran out of sweets,” Mum would say. During the night before Sinterklaas’ birthday, the Pieten brought to every child what each deserved. Somehow poor children like us always got a lot less than the rich ones in our class. Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet never came to Opoe’s boerderij in the polder when Mum was a child and I had only seen them in picture books until they came to visit our school one day when I was nine and not so sure about them any more. Mum and Anton had both gone out on a Saturday evening, shortly after my birthday. The three of us, Wout, Siem and I were allowed to stay up until Mum came home. While we played cards Wout said that Sinterklaas was a fake, he was just an ordinary man dressed in bishop’s clothes. Mum bought everything herself, he said. I threw my cards on the table and, yelling that this could not be true, I stamped my feet as tears filled my eyes. Wout scolded me. “Don’t be so stupid! Come on; I’ll show you if you don’t believe me. Mum has bought the presents already and I know where they are hidden.” I looked helplessly at Siem, hoping he would say that Wout was lying, but he said it was true. “The Zwarte Pieten make themselves black with coal, and most of them are girls,” he said. “Look for yourself if you don’t believe me. They have boobs.” Filled with apprehension I followed my brothers into the old bedstee, which had not been used to sleep in for years and only bits of old furniture were kept in that damp dark cupboard. “Mum said yesterday that she had seen rats in the bedstee!” I warned. Wout laughed, saying that she only wanted to scare me off. I was not scared of mice or spiders, but I shivered at the thought of rats; they had killed a piglet in the shed only a couple of weeks earlier. Wout took matches from the high ledge of the chimney and lit a candle. Determined to show him that I was not afraid, I stepped into the cupboard behind him. Nothing stirred. While Siem held the candle, Wout climbed over the back wall onto the narrow platform under the sloping roof. I climbed onto a chair and with my heart pounding in my chest I peeped over the back wall. “Here! Do you believe me now?” Wout said triumphantly as I stared in disbelief at the bags and boxes in that perfect hiding place. “How can Mum possibly afford to buy all those things?” I whispered. “She never has any money!” Maybe Zwarte Piet had put them there so he didn’t have to carry them so far on the fifth of December, I thought. We played ‘snakes and ladders’ until it was dangerously close to the time Mum would be coming home. When Mum was working in the garden the following week, I had another look at the treasures. My curiosity was obviously stronger than my fear of rats. On the sixth of December we got up at an ungodly hour as usual to see who had been given the marbles, the ball, or that nice game we played. When we told Mum later, she said she had been wondering why the head and some legs of our sugar animals were missing and how the mice had got into the closed boxes of our chocolate letters. Mum, (pardon, Zwarte Piet) always set seven chairs in a row, from the eldest to the youngest, with the same for every child; the first letter of our name in chocolate, a sugar animal, a speculaas pop (a spicy, baked doll) and a shiny orange, all the way from Spain. Because it is far too cold for oranges to grow in Holland, we only got one in December (from Sinterklaas) and one at school on the thirtieth of April, Queen Juliana’s birthday, as she represented the House of Orange. For several years running, Mum gave us a book to share about Arendsoog (Eagle-eye) and his Indian friend White Feather, who helped missionaries in trouble. A thinner book of adventures of Puk and Muk, two gnomes who forever got into trouble, was for the younger children. There was a piece of clothing, a small toy each and a game to share. It was a wonderful time for us, but when Pa came, everything changed. In his eyes Sinterklaas was all nonsense, a waste of money. With Christmas only three weeks away, the saint was always soon forgotten. Not wanting to be thanked, the bishop and his black helpers fled back to Spain, unnoticed, before the sun rose in the morning. Shop windows changed overnight and Christmas carols were played on the radio instead of Sinterklaas songs the following morning. Now that everything is so commercialised, St. Nicolas has fierce competition from Santa Claus. When I was a child, Christmas was entirely focused on the birth of Jesus, who brought hope into the darkness of the world. Only heathens had a Christmas tree, Mum always said. She never allowed those frivolous decorations into our house until every other Catholic family in the village already had one. When I was nine or ten, Mum bought a set of Christmas figures and a sheet of thick paper, painted like grey rocks for the stable, saying with trembling voice that she had never had anything like that in her young days either. Without her interfering in any way, we made a display of the Christmas scene on a small table in a corner of the heert. We wrinkled the paper and made a cave, put a handful of straw on the floor and made a golden star with a long ‘tail’, on the top of the cave. Shepherds were waiting with the ox and the sheep, one week before Mary and Joseph arrived with the donkey. Then, on Christmas night, Baby Jesus was placed in the cradle. On the sixth of January the Three Wise Kings came with their camels and it was all packed away the following day. The display got bigger every year. Instead of a Christmas tree, we set a pine tree in a bucket of sand, behind the stable. Cardboard angels hung on the branches between the live candles, representing the stars shining in the holy night. We made snow from cotton wool and a row of candles around the edge of the table completed the scene. Sometimes we burned our eyebrows and the front of our hair as we hung over the candles to look into the stable. A bucket of water was kept under the table in case of an emergency. One year, we had the shock of our lives when the dry needles of the tree caught fire and the flames leaped immediately into the top of the tree. With the low, wooden ceiling and thatched roof we were extremely lucky to be able to douse the flames before the fire got out of hand. Ours would not have been the first boerderij to go up in flames at Christmas. The following year Mum bought a set of electric candles, which were a lot safer. Like people everywhere else in the world we were busy cooking and cleaning during the week before Christmas. By noon on Christmas Eve the shops were all closed. Even though the baker and the grocer were still delivering goods until late at night, it was forbidden by law for them to have their shops open after hours, and it was most embarrassing to have to go to the back door, if you had forgotten something. The Advent (four weeks of fasting in preparation for the birth of the Messiah) came to an end at noon on Christmas Eve. We then could finally eat the sweets we had saved during the Advent and we could have a fresh bread-roll from Ome Willem’s bakery. Before we went to midnight Mass at eleven in the evening, we covered the plastic tablecloth with a white bed-sheet and set the table. Next to each person’s plate we put a small candle, set in a half a potato which we had covered with silver paper and decorated with pieces of pine and holly which stayed fresh as they absorbed the moisture of the potato. Three big candles in a deep plate of damp sand, surrounded with branches of pine, holly and fake mushrooms, formed the centrepiece. Unlike during the last few decades, there was often snow at Christmas when I grew up. As the church always filled to capacity, we went early and sang Christmas carols with the choir before Mass started. On the fifteen-minute walk to church, we caught up with neighbours, while the happy sounds of the church-bells filled the night. After the midnight Mass we hurried to our cosy home where an elaborate breakfast awaited us at one in the morning. Mum and I took turns in staying home with the little ones. If it was my turn I listened to the Gregorian Mass and Christmas carols on the radio, while I arranged the fancy breads, rusks, different cheeses, meat delicacies and sweets, on the festive looking table. I kept the fire going and made sure the kettle was boiling when the others returned. The smell of pine, wood-fire, burning candles, fresh bread, the carols on the radio and the flickering flames of the candles, lighting up the faces around the table, made midnight breakfast one of the highlights of the year for all of us. Pa was usually in a bad mood at that time of year, complaining about the expenditure, which he could ill afford. The way we squandered money, we would never get a new house! He often went to bed at nine his normal time, telling us to turn the radio down or go to bed. Sometimes he came out again for a drink, reminding us that the cows had to be milked in the morning as usual. But we managed to keep the tradition up, at least until I left home. As was the custom in Holland, Mum fried tons of oliebollen on Old-Year’s-Day (New- Year’s-Eve). A smooth batter was made with beer or yeast (now we use self-raising flour), milk, sultanas, currants and lots of chopped apples. It was usually made early in the morning or the day before, so that the fruit absorbed the moisture. A spoonful of the thick batter, dropped into hot oil, formed into a bol immediately. The oliebollen were dusted with icing sugar to represent the snow, at that time of year. Children were sent with a plateful to neighbours and old people who could not make their own, with best wishes for the New Year. We could eat as many as we liked during the afternoon and all night. They were shared with anyone who came round during the night or on New-Year’s-Day. Now that families are small in Holland, the tradition has changed. The oliebollen are bought at the local bakery and sporting clubs are selling them as a fund-raiser. Watching television has replaced playing games. The population of sixteen million people spent an incredible seventy million guilders on fireworks last year! On New-Years-Eve we played cards and other games all evening. After the fireworks at midnight, the adults visited each other in the neighbourhood, often ending up playing another game of cards at someone’s place. Pa could not appreciate our New-Year’s celebrations either. I did not blame him as the homemade fireworks got more dangerous every year. I was the only girl among lots of boys in our neighbourhood and they always seemed to congregate at our place. We counted thirty-four boys one Sunday. They often came to play soccer on Sunday afternoons or they simply hung around talking, waiting for Pa to finish his nap as he would tell them dirty jokes in his saucy language if he was in a good mood. But he was often in a foul mood especially when they played soccer. They kicked the ball through the window of the shed a couple of times and he could not sleep for the noise. He complained continuously that they flattened the grass and scared the chooks in their adjoining enclosure, as there were always fewer eggs the next day. The boys laughed at him and teased him until he blew his top, cursing them in the most dreadful language. When Anton was still at our place, he had taught my brothers how to make fireworks with carbide, as there were none for sale in the village. Pa hated fireworks. It reminded him of the war, he said. The fellows took little notice of him, and felt free to experiment. From Boxing Day on, scores of boys came around, making bigger and better devices each year, no matter how much Pa complained. An accident was bound to happen... Chapter EIGHTEEN

True to his word, Pa took Mum to the three-day Kermis in Huissen in October as well as to the Carnaval (festivities before the six-week fast before Easter), in February 1952. Mum had never seen anything like it she said when she came back from the Kermis. She could see now why the novices who came from the south were such carefree girls. People in Huissen didn’t live as stifling a life as we did and they didn’t seem to take their Sunday obligations too seriously either. People in the middle of Holland (above the river Rijn) had a much more sober nature than those in the south but further to the north of us, where nearly everybody was Protestant, life was extremely strict and sombre compared to ours. Nearly the entire population of the southern part of Holland, was Catholic. “The closer to Rome, the worse the Catholics,” was the saying. Because no festivities were allowed during the six-weeks fast before Easter, people in the south feasted for three days, non-stop, before the deprivations started after the carnival. Every town had a big parade and a huge sideshow toured from place to place. Like the kermis, the carnival was for most people also a feast of continuous eating, drinking and merriment, ending with a huge party. And, sad to say, several unwanted pregnancies. I could hardly wait to go to Huissen in the summer vacation, as Pa had promised Tante Marie. I had grown a lot during the five months after my twelfth birthday. Siem was a year older than I was but I was half a head taller than he was and, as my breasts were already showing I felt like a real woman. Pa often commented on them, which made me blush happily. He was always nice to me. It did not matter to me that he never gave me the watch and other things he had promised me. I could understand that he needed every penny to build our new house. He always wanted me to kiss him but, because he had a heavy beard, I did not like to do so. “He is your father for goodness sake; he deserves a kiss now and then,” Mum would say, time and again. Pa always wanted me to feel how smooth his face was after he had shaved himself and encouraged by Mum, I slowly became more relaxed with him. One afternoon he asked me for a kiss while Mum was away, and when I did, he wanted to feel my breasts; ‘so that I can tell if they are growing properly’ he said. He started to come more often into the house when I was alone. I did not like him touching my breasts as it hurt sometimes but as he promised to tell me what the boys would say and do when I was older I became curious and let him. He showed me how they would hold me in their arms and make me feel comfortable and happy, like Gradus did, he said. Gradus was Siem’s best friend. He was seventeen and I planned to marry him when I was old enough. He was tall, quiet and polite with thick lips and beautiful soft eyes. After the fireworks on New-Years-Eve, I sat on the bar of his pushbike after everybody else had already gone to bed. With his arms around me we talked about the year ahead and other things, such as the long icicles which were hanging down from the roof of the old house, nearly reaching the ground. We stood there a long time, and I wanted it to last forever. But we both got cold, so he went home and I went to bed. I often sat on his lap while he played cards with my brothers, which made them say that I was boy-crazy. I just felt that we would be always together. One day in the spring I was cleaning the walk-in closet, when Pa came in. I had just hung the winter-coats and dresses back on the rack after they had been outside to air. He chatted for a while saying that my ‘flowers’ (breasts), which he said, were ‘the most beautiful things God had given a woman’ were coming on nicely. Then he said that he needed to feel if I was growing hair on my pussy. He pushed me between the thick overcoats and put his hand in my panties. “Yes! I thought you would!” he laughed. “Now let me feel if you are getting wet between your legs.” I was scared and started to sweat when his thick fingers felt for my soft spot. He spoke softly, reassuring me that there was nothing wrong with a father touching his daughter, and I should enjoy it. Mum called him from the deel. Telling me to stay where I was for a while, Pa let me go and he left the closet. My heart was racing and it felt as if my head were on fire. I was relieved that there was nobody in the heert when I came out. Mum looked at me curiously when she came in from the deel, but she did not say anything. A few weeks later, the same thing happened. Pa asked me to get his coat for him then he followed me into the dark cupboard. This time he pushed his thick finger in while he kissed me on my mouth. The bulge in his pants scared me but I was curious at the same time. He unbuttoned his fly, took my hand and made me touch his penis. Then he wanted me to rub it softly so that I could see what would happen if I did. I told him that I did not like it and begged him to let me go. But he held me tight whispering that everything was all right. “I would never hurt you or do anything wrong,” he said. “You know that you are my little angel, don’t you?” The following Monday when Mum had gone to the market, he pushed me into the closet again. I told him that I was scared, I did not like it and wanted him to stop. But he ignored my protests, saying that I would become an old maid, who was so scared of what a man would do to her, that she would not dare get married. “Moes likes it. Don’t you see how she loves it when I hold her breasts?” he asked. He held and shook Mum’s breasts often, no matter who was around and Mum seemed to love it. She always laughed when his hands went inside her dress on top as well as under her skirts, taking no notice of me, when I was around. When he pushed me between the coats and kissed me, he stuck his big fat tongue in my mouth while his hand went in my pants. I nearly choked on it. It was awful! “I’ll tell Mum!” I hissed when he let go of my mouth. “No, don’t tell your mother!” he said. “I’ll never give you anything any more if you do.” He had occasionally given me some money for my piggybank. While he spoke, he had unbuttoned his fly and made me hold his testicles. “Oh that feels nice!” he sighed while he licked his lips and closed his eyes as if he felt in heaven, as he did when he held Mum. Before he let go of me, Pa threatened never to let me go out with Greetje, my new girlfriend, if I told anyone about what had happened and he would write to Tante Marie to tell her that I no longer wanted to go to Huissen. A few weeks later he tried to get me in the closet again, but I managed to escape. I desperately wanted to tell Mum, but I worried that she would not believe me and she had enough on her plate with the problems between Wout and Pa, who were at loggerheads all the time. I felt ashamed and dirty for letting Pa touch me like that, only because I had been curious. Being inquisitive like that was a big sin. When Gradus came the following Saturday, I could not look him in his lovely eyes any more. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like me any more?” he asked when I refused to sit on his lap that evening. I blushed, shrugged my shoulders and walked away. Later that night I cried myself to sleep because of my shame, and for losing my best friend. Before I went to Huissen, I summoned up enough courage to tell the priest at confession what had happened. I had been putting it off for a couple of weeks, but this time I was determined to have my terrible sin forgiven, so that I could feel clean again. I was very nervous and prayed for a long time, letting other people go before me until I was the last one left. When I had said the formal introduction, I blurted out that I had sinned against chastity. Being inquisitive, I had encouraged Pa to touch me between my legs. The priest asked a few questions, then he got angry and cut me short. “The man would never do a thing like that,” he said angrily. “You are making it all up. It’s a big sin to tell lies like that.” He went on to say what a good man Pa was to take on a widow with seven children, but I was not listening any more as my face started to burn. Everybody knew that I was good at making up stories at school. Meneer Pastoor would still remember my first confession when I was seven, when I had told him that I had lied fifty-five times... My eyes filled with tears and I never heard what penance he gave me... Pa was greatly admired for taking us on, not only by the priest but also by the teachers and many other people in the village. I felt humiliated and vowed that I would never give Pa a chance to lay his hands on me, ever again. I avoided him as much as I could and refused to be in the house alone with him. Pa’s friendliness to me changed drastically. When Mum noticed, I told her that he was always wanting to feel my breasts, and to show me what the boys would do to me when I grew up. She looked sad. “I had the feeling that something was going on,” she said, her mouth quivering. I wanted to tell her about my confession, but the shame of it was too great. We sat silent for a while, then Mum confided to me. “ Gerrit is having a difficult time. He wants me to have a baby but so far nothing’s happened.” She let out a big sigh. “I pray to God every day that I may become pregnant. He may get rid of his fantasies then, and leave me alone too...” Mum gave Jopie, who is four years younger than me, the green light to protect herself from Pa’s sweet-talk, at a very early age. She advised her to kick him in the groin if he ever tried to touch her. He had tried a couple of times, she said but he didn’t get far with her, which undoubtedly saved her a lot of problems, later in life... When I avoided being alone with Pa, I was no longer his ‘lovely girl’ or his ‘beautiful angel’ any more, and his daily grouches were now addressed to me too. More and more he saw what a nasty cat I was, answering back like my older brothers, and showing him no respect. According to his own upbringing, there was only one way you could expect respect from kids, especially teenagers; discipline! Keeping them short (of money and free time), and a good hiding if they didn’t do as they were told. “The parent who spares the rod, hates his sons,” was one of Pa’s favourite quotations too. Mum agreed, and so did most people who came to our house, at least when they were talking to Pa. Pa never tried to become friends with any of my brothers. Anton had played soccer with them, looked for kiviet’s eggs, caught rats, moles and rabbits and taught them how to skate. One day he had taken Henk and Siem skating for a whole day, going over the frozen sloten all the way to the polder. In the evening he had left them with his father, as they had been too exhausted to get home. They didn’t mind helping Anton with the work as there was usually time to play afterwards, but Pa demanded them to work all the time. Wout hated to be told what to do, he usually knew better than Pa what had to be done anyway. Because the farm would one day be Wout’s he always worked hard but no matter how much work he did, he could never do enough. It was no wonder they always rubbed each other up the wrong way. Henk and Siem often rebelled too. They loved stirring Pa up by ignoring his demands, saying that they did not feel like work or they had better things to do. While Pa was fuming in the house, they would go off and do the tasks anyway. It was around that time that my then eight-year-old brother Wim got into trouble. Wim was a softie, always willing to help but that day he had done something wrong. Pa ran after him to give him a hiding, but Wim was a lot faster. Encouraged by my other brothers and me, he disappeared to the neighbours. “I’ll get him, don’t you worry!” Pa said, shaking his fist at us. When Wim came home a few hours later, Pa was cutting wood behind the house. He seemed to have forgotten his anger. Talking to Wim as if nothing had happened, he went inside. Not quite trusting his luck, Wim waited near the hooiberg. When Pa came outside, followed by Mum, he held a closed hand out to Wim. “Come; I’ve got something for you. I’ll show you that I’m not angry any more,” he said. Siem and Henk warned Wim not to take any chances, to stay where he was until Pa had opened his hand and had shown him what was in it. Pa shouted to them to keep out of it. “I can’t show you. It would spoil the surprise,” he said to Wim, not taking his eyes off my uncertain brother. Encouraged by Mum, Wim came slowly closer, while we all kept warning him not to trust Pa. My heart seemed to stop for a moment when Pa grabbed Wim with his free hand and a belt unrolled from his other. Too shocked to scream, I watched how my little brother got a terrible beating. Siem’s fists were clenched and his face turned white. “You vuile klootzak (dirty bastard), you’ll be sorry for this!” he hissed between his teeth. “I’ll never forgive you as long as I live.” Wout, who was working in the pigshed, yelled some awful abuse at Pa when he came to see why Wim was screaming. He swore that he would kill him with his own hands, as soon as he was strong enough to bash his head in. As had become the norm, Mum took sides with Pa. When I asked her later how she could have been so cruel, she said with trembling lips: “How else do you expect Pa to get such a fast little bugger? Wim deserved a hiding. At the same time, it was a good lesson for every one of you to respect Gerrit as a father, and not cross him all the time.” Looking back at the way Mum had been treated when she was a child, that would make sense to her, I guess. The incident was the start of a rapid deterioration of trust in Mum as well as in Pa. His continuous criticising stopped the minute anyone came into the driveway. Then he would be all friendliness and even pay us compliments. “I don’t want them to know the truth,” he would say. “People will only feel sorry for me.” At times he regretted bitterly that he had married Mum. If he had only known what it would be like... “A moment of absent-mindedness can make a man cry for the rest of his life,” he often said. I wonder if he ever felt like that for what he did to me. Chapter NINETEEN

When the summer vacation came round, Wout took me to Huissen first on the back of his bike to Amersfoort, then the train to Arnhem and the bus to Huissen-Zand. Wout went back the same day, but I was allowed to stay for three whole weeks. Tante Marie’s new house was finished and looked fantastic. The front door opened into a passage, leading to her bedroom, the lounge and the living-room and at the end of the passage were the stairs to the second floor. Upstairs under the steep, tiled roof were three more bedrooms. Beside the lounge and living-room, which were divided by sliding doors, was a large kitchen with modern comforts such as a sink, a hot water boiler and a gas-stove. What a difference from our old cottage! The deel between the cow-stables at the back of the house was huge. Because it was summer the whole area was used for sorting and packing fruit and vegetables. I soon learned what was so good about Tante Marie’s way of housekeeping. She did not care about anything in the house at all! Whenever she was needed on the land that’s where she would be. Their three boys were trained to get themselves ready for school in the morning, and they swept the floors and washed the dishes when they came home at night. A huge pile of foul smelling clothes lay in a corner of the scullery beside the kitchen, some of it black with mould. Tante Marie only did the washing once in six or seven weeks. “This time it might be eight weeks. I’ve waited until you got here to give me a hand,” Tante Marie chuckled. She usually waited for a nice day like this, she said, explaining that they could not afford to change their clothes too often. “Oh! That’s why we are lucky if we can get Pa’s dirty underwear off him once a week,” I laughed. While the old machine was going, I helped Tante Marie change the beds, which were always left until last she said, which explained the state they were in. White underwear, tea-towels pillowslips and sheets all needed to be bleached for ages to get them clean. When I mentioned that we had no hope of getting through all that washing in one day, Tante Marie laughed. “Don’t worry about that! It usually takes me a week or more,” she said. Whenever Ome Knid needed her, she simply dropped what she was doing and stayed away for hours. Pleased with her and Ome Knid’s compliments, I kept working and folded what was dry on the line. Nearly everything needed mending, but Tante Marie wanted me to enjoy myself first. I loved to read but there weren’t any books in their house either. Joe, the eldest son shrugged his shoulders. “We would never have time to read them anyway,” he said in his slow accent. Joe was great to be with, but Wim, the second one, was a pest. He continuously wanted to pinch my boobs and try to look under my skirt, when Tante Marie was not around. One day, after he had pulled my pants down, I barricaded myself in the dining-room. Hours later, when Joe came back from helping on the land, he rescued me. Annie, their neighbour’s daughter whom I had met when I had visited with Pa the previous year, introduced me to Ria, who also lived nearby. Ria’s father worked at the fruit factory. She and Annie were close friends, but they were very different. Annie was quiet and shy while Ria talked enough for both of them. She was a year older knew every boy in the area and loved to fantasise about them. Because she had several, much older sisters, she seldom had to help at home. As I came from a different part of Holland and spoke with a strange accent, I was popular with both of them. Because Annie had to help her parents in the house as well as in their hothouses, I spent a lot of time with Ria. Tante Marie did not like her very much. She warned me not to believe everything she told me, especially not if she talked about Pa. Tante Marie was happy with whatever I did for her. “I’m happy to have a girl around instead of always being surrounded by men,” she said one day. “I’ll ask Gerrit to send you every year in the holidays.” But sometimes, Tante Marie was in a terrible mood and she whinged all day just like Pa. Tante Mieneke, Pa’s other sister, lived a few streets away. She was my favourite. She was as short and round as Tante Marie, but she had dark curly hair instead of blond, and she was more ladylike. She and Ome Toon had two children, a boy and a girl, a little younger than I was. She also helped with the picking, sorting and packing of fruit and vegetables but, as they did not have pigs or milking cows, their life was a lot easier. Tante Mieneke’s house was spotless and she had more time to talk. “I could never live like our Marie,” she said, shaking her head. “It would kill me!” I also went to Doorneburg, about ten kilometres away, to stay with Pa’s oldest sister Anna for a couple of days. Pa did not want me to go there and Tante Marie was not happy with it either, but, as I was keen to see my new cousin Riet again, she did not stop me. I would find out soon enough what they were like, she said. At fifty-three Tante Anna looked like an old woman. She whinged most of the time about everything and everybody and she kept on asking me questions about Pa and her two sisters. Her father had dealt her a terrible hand, and she had not had much in her life to be happy about, she said. She seldom laughed, but when she did, her whole body shook. Riet gave her mother lots of cheek and fought with her two older brothers all the time. She was as free as a bird, and did exactly what she felt like doing. We had a ball roaming around the village, especially in the ruins of the nearby castle, the first castle I had ever seen. It had been bombed during the war but much of it was still standing, and there was never anyone else around. We fantasised for hours about the knights in shining armour who came to rescue the princess, who had been locked up for years in the tower. It fascinated me that every wing ended in a ‘thunderbox’, resembling a little ornamental tower from the outside. Taking turns to look through the round hole in the seat, we commented on the black and white swans and the ducks swimming in the moat below, limp with laughter, as only young girls could be. When I came back from Doorneburg, there was only one week of my holiday left. As soon as we had finished the housework in the morning, I started on the pile of mending for Tante Marie. Hoping desperately to be asked to come back, I picked out the easy jobs and had a big pile done by the time I went home. Tante Marie was happy to pay Pa back the train fare, and promised to ask him to send me again when the ‘Carnaval’ was on in February, the following year. Life at home was very depressing after my holiday. Nothing I did seemed to be appreciated by either of my parents. I hated Pa’s dirty insinuations about my friendship with Joe and Tante Anna’s sons. One evening in autumn I started to cry when Mum scolded me. She said that I was ungrateful; the holiday had spoilt me, and she would never let me go again. For some reason Mum could never cope with my tears. Feeling desperately unhappy and unloved, I ran away from home. It was pitch black and raining. I had not bothered to put my coat on and I just kept running in blind despair. Sitting on a tree stump at the edge of the forest, I came to my senses. At first I did not know where I was, then I realised that I was on my way to Opoe Kleter’s boerderij. The thought that I never wanted to go home again brought a new flood of tears. Cold to the bone and scared stiff of being alone near the dark forest, I tried to think of what to do, when I noticed that the rain had stopped. I decided to go to Ome Hannes, my favourite uncle, who became our guardian after my father had died. The thought of Papa brought another flood of tears. Why did he have to die? I had been so happy to have a new father but now that I did not let Pa have his way with me any more, he did not like me any more either. A sudden rustling in the trees scared the living daylights out of me and I ran through the forest, where the restless souls of the ghosts danced between the trees at night, as if the devil himself was after me. A few minutes later I sat on Ome Hannes’ doorstep, my head on my arms, bawling my eyes out. Until his own house had been built in front of the shed next to Opoe’s house, Ome Hannes had lived with his wife’s family. He seldom came to our place but, when I saw him in church on Sundays, he always said ‘Hello’ to me. He now had several children but I had seen Tante Cor, his wife, only a few times. I was ill at ease with her, as she was a real lady like the headmaster’s wife. Mum always said that she looked down on us. Tante Cor looked shocked when she opened the door. “Oh, my goodness; Hannes!” she called out. Ome Hannes picked me up in his strong arms, and sat me on a chair near the warme kachel in the kitchen. While he rubbed my arms and legs, Tante Cor handed me a glass of hot milk. My teeth clattered against the glass when I tried to drink. I could hardly swallow, as my throat was swollen and sore. Unable to talk, I shook my head when Ome Hannes asked if Mum had given me a hiding. No, she hadn’t. I wanted to tell him that nobody liked me and that I could not do any good in the sight of either of my parents, and that Pa wasn’t the nice man he seemed to be when Ome Hannes had been to visit us. But, I could not speak. Tante Cor gave me a nightie, miles too big for me. She told me to take my wet clothes off and hang them on the rail around the kachel to dry while she and Ome Hannes made a bed for me. A little later, Ome Hannes showed me the bed on the floor in their icy-cold bedroom and gave me a hot-water bottle. Still shivering, I crept under the blankets. “Mum doesn’t want me; I can never go home again,” I sobbed. “ Don’t worry; I’ll go and have a talk with her in the morning,” Ome Hannes promised, patting me on my back. Feeling terribly sorry for myself, I cried in the dark unfamiliar room and soon fell into a deep sleep. The next morning at half past nine Ome Hannes took me home on his pushbike. The kids were already at school when we left. My heart was beating fast and a lump stuck in my throat when we came closer to our house. As soon as Ome Hannes set his bike against the hooiberg, Mum came out of the back door, followed by Pa. She was furious with Ome Hannes for not having brought me back immediately. She had been out of her mind with worry all night, she said. “I could not possibly bring her back in the state she was in,” Ome Hannes said calmly. “I thought it better to let you cool down a bit first.” “Then you should have come to let me know that she was with you,” Mum said angrily, her lips trembling. Then Pa had a go at Ome Hannes. He was angry because Mum had made him go on his pushbike in the rain to look for me in the village. While they were arguing, I sneaked into my bedroom at the deel. Lying on the bed I listened to their conversation in the heert. “ A good hiding with a belt is what she deserves for making her mother so worried,” Pa grumbled. “She kept me from sleep all night too.” “Good job!” I thought, and started crying again. Pa went outside, still grouching about the dreadful youth of today, predicting that nothing good could ever come from any of us. I had heard it all a hundred times before. I smelled fresh coffee and strained to hear the soft conversation between Mum and her brother. Ome Hannes did not believe there was ever any need to use the strap on children. “Just wait until yours are a bit bigger,” Mum warned him, “they take the blood from under your nails!” I put my head under the blankets not wanting to listen to any more and soon fell asleep. When I woke up all was quiet in the house. The cows were lying in the stable ruminating contentedly, occasionally rattling a chain when they moved. I went across to Mina, the old white cow, which I milked sometimes, and scratched her between her horns. Then I went into the heert where Mum sat knitting in front of the window. She ignored me for a while then she looked up and said with quivering mouth: “Nice of you to run off to Ome Hannes like that.” Tears flooded my eyes again. “I never wanted to come back; you don’t want me anyway,” I blurted out. Mum dropped her knitting in her lap. She took her glasses off and put her hands in front of her eyes. When I noticed that she was crying too, I went to her and crawled into her arms. She rocked me, holding me so tight that I nearly choked on her big bosom. “I always thought that I treated each of you equally,” Mum said, when she let go of me. “But Anton said that there was one child I could not stand. ‘Mientje is never good enough, no matter how hard she tries’ he often said.” After a pause Mum continued thoughtfully, as if talking to herself; “When I came home from hospital you were just given to me. I never fed you from my breasts; that’s why I feel no bonding with you.” She clenched her teeth when she added: “You remind me constantly of Bart’s mother, that ouwe kreng of a woman!” Looking at me she let out a big sigh, then she put her arms around me again. “You can’t help taking after ouwe Mijn, can you?” she asked softly. “I’ll do my best to be more attentive in future.” We cried together for a moment, then she let me go. I dried my tears, happy and relieved, I loved my mother and she loved me. Everything would be all right. A few minutes later I left for school on my pushbike. Leaning on his shovel, Pa stood talking to buurvrouw Besseltje across the road each in their own garden just outside our driveway. “Ha! Here comes our runaway!” he shouted and laughed loudly: “Ha! Ha! Ha!” My face went as red as a peony-rose. “ Good to see you back Mientje!” the buurvrouw said, when I passed between them. Standing on the pedals of my bike, I rode off as fast as I could. When I got to school, Pa’s awful laugh was still ringing in my ears. I took a deep breath before I went in to face Meester Schoenmaker and the children of Grade Six, my class, who would already know from my brothers that I had run away from home... There was no need for me to worry. The meester acted as if I had been to the doctor when I walked into my classroom. I slipped into my place and class resumed as if nothing had happened. Chapter TWENTY

As time went on, Mum and I became a lot closer. She talked to me often about her frustrations at not getting pregnant. We prayed together every day for her wish to come through, but nothing happened. Shortly after his birthday in November 1953, Pa took his sister’s advice and hired Wout out as a boerenknecht, which put an end to their almost daily fights. A year later, when Siem turned fifteen, on the third of November he too was hired out to a nearby farmer. The yearly contract of a boerenknecht in our district went from the first of November until the eighteenth of October of the following year, when the total sum agreed for the year was paid. During the two weeks holiday following that day, the publicans in the area always did a roaring trade! Pa negotiated the year’s pay for my brothers by the same hand-clapping manner he sold a cow or a pig. In my brothers’ cases, the amount agreed upon was paid to Pa in two installments one at Easter and one at the end of the year. In addition to that, the boer paid ten guilders a week (two days pay) in pocket money. The workers were supposed to buy their own clothes, but the money was usually spent on grog and cigarettes. ‘He who could not hold his drink and did not smoke, was no man’ was a popular saying. Siem drank like a fish but he never smoked, as he did not like it. From the money he saved he bought an old motorbike, well before he was old enough to have a license. After Wout left, Pa hired a neighbour’s eighteen-year-old son to do the milk-run. He then started to grow carrots, beans, cauliflower, cucumbers and tomatoes for the market needing Mum more and more outside. Because she was always much rather outside than doing housework, she loved him for it. By the time I was fourteen I was virtually running the household as well as going to school. Despite the constant teasing I loved school, and I was among the best four in our class in most subjects. I desperately hoped to be allowed to continue after my fifteenth birthday, but like most girls in the village, I got the same message: “It’s no use for a girl to study. She has to bring in money before her parents have to fork out for her wedding day.” Even the headmaster’s plea on my behalf, fell on deaf ears. I wanted to help people; become a nurse and, when I was old enough, a social worker. But one day when I mentioned it to Mum, she had her own interpretation of my ideals. “You want to help others out of the stront and push us in!” she said angrily in her usual colourful language. I hated the way Mum’s mouth trembled when she said things like that. It made me feel guilty for wanting anything for myself. “God has given people a free will,” the priest told us time and again at catechisms, which always made me very angry. “What free will?” I wanted to shout at him, but of course, no one would ever say anything like that as a child! We just sat there like dummies, wishing the pastoor’s boring lesson would finish. I wonder how many times pastoor v. R explained to us that Piet, who murdered his mother, committed a bigger sin than Jan who killed a stranger. He often stuttered and never looked at us when he instructed us with those pathetic examples, playing with his pen he sat looking at the ceiling most of the time. Only when he asked us a question, did he look at us briefly. Our free will was only to test us, he always said. If we went against God’s Will, which also included the church’s, the teacher’s and our parent’s wishes, we had to pay the consequences which could mean burning in hell for eternity. “What kind of free will was that?” I wanted to know. Since I had told him that I had ‘lied’ fifty-five times at my first confession when I was seven, and shortly after in one of his lessons when he said that lying went easily from bad to worse, I tried hard to write only true stories. That was very difficult for me as I much preferred to make them up. Meester Schoenmaker always said that a ‘ten’ was for God, the Creator of everything, a ‘nine’ was for the teachers, who were near perfect, and an ‘eight’ was for the best in his class. However, he still gave me often a ‘nine-minus’ for my stories; I would be very disappointed if I had only had an eight. “Lying is always a sin,” the pastoor had said again when I told him about Pa. Although I had only told him the truth, I tried even harder to write and talk about things that were one hundred percent true. Perhaps it was all a preparation for writing only the truth now... Although I was among the best in our class, I always looked upon myself as an ouwe trut and, after what had happened between Pa and me, I felt a dirty and unworthy girl as well. Because my breasts had started to develop early, I was teased a lot at school as well as at home. The boys of Grade Eight, the highest class, said that I had done ‘it’ with our dog; Joepie’s puppies were my babies and they grew so fast because I was feeding them from my breasts. Their teasing got so bad that I deliberately arrived late at school every morning and stayed behind in class until everyone had gone home. I often cried myself to sleep at night, thinking of having to face the relentless pestering again the following morning. I still shudder when I hear anybody say to their cat or dog: “Come, sit with Mummy,” or: “Mummy will give you some food.” Wout could have had no idea what the impact on me was when he called me a slet (slut) whenever he was angry with me. It made me cringe inside, especially when other boys were around. Because my brothers knew that something ‘dirty’ had happened between Pa and me, I somehow believed that I deserved that awful title. Whenever the weather was good, my parents went out for a bike-ride on Sunday afternoons, to the polder to see how the grass was growing, or just visiting people. They usually went to Mass together in the morning, took an afternoon nap and went out again until milking time. Because I had to stay at home to look after the place, I seldom managed to keep a friend longer than a few months. One of those friends was Tiny, the middle child of a lovely family of fourteen children. Several of her brothers and sisters were married and she was already an aunt of four children some of whom were older than her younger brothers. Her father, brothers and brothers-in-law later formed their own soccer team in the village. Tiny lived on the edge of the village, next to the railway. Her father was the local smith. I often watched him or his oldest sons, change a shoe on a horse which always reminded me of Papa and Vos, our old horse. I could not understand that it did not hurt when the smith cleaned between the horse’s hoofs and nailed the hot irons under his feet, but Vos did not mind. He even seemed to like it. Poor Vos! Half a year after Mum married Pa he had sold Vos to be slaughtered. He was too old to pull the milk-cart, he said. The new black horse he bought was young and could not be trusted. Pa hit him regularly with the reins or with a stick to make him stand still, which of course had the opposite effect. I felt ashamed to take Tiny home in case Pa made rude comments to her, and I felt very sad when we drifted apart after only a few weeks. I had lunch at her place a couple of times and we had a lovely time, going for a ride on our bikes after church one Sunday evening when it was still light. Sometimes she came home with me after school. She would come in briefly for a drink, but she could never stay long as I had jobs to do after school. Another friend was Greetje, who was two years younger than I was. She lived about two kilometres further up the road from us, the eldest girl after three boys. There were eleven in her family, eight boys and three girls. Her older brothers were often among the crowd at our place, and I was scared of one of them. That was probably why that friendship did not last either. Then I was briefly friends with Gerda, Greetje’s neighbour but she already had a close friend. There were twelve children in her family, six boys and six girls. At that time, my parents were often out on Saturday evenings as well as on Sunday afternoon. Because I was not allowed out in the evening anyway, I did not mind staying at home with the little ones. We often had great fun playing cards or pretending to go somewhere in a train made by a row of chairs. We played cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians, shooting each other with peas, blown from a rolled up newspaper. Sometimes Henk and I were horses, carrying a younger child on our backs, or we were just rolling over the ground tickling each other. With Pa gone we could make as much noise as we wanted. Mum was always worried when I was out, even if I only went to Greetje or Gerda’s place a few farms up from ours, because of their older brothers. Whether my parents were home or not, there was always a swarm of boys at our place but that did not seem to worry Mum at all. “You have your brothers around you to protect you,” she would say. Protesting that my older brothers would not stay home had no effect. She insisted that nothing would happen to me with the little ones around, so long as I stayed inside. One Saturday evening in the summer of 1953, a large group of boys were at our place, debating whether or not to have a game of soccer. Before my parents went out Pa warned them to forget about it. It would upset the chickens already gone to roost. After hanging around for ages, the group decided to go to the village, to see what was happening there. My three older brothers rode off with them in the dusk, leaving me alone with my three younger siblings, Wim, Jopie and Bartje. A little later three older fellows came back into the driveway. As I was scared of them, we quickly locked the back door. They kept knocking, asking me to open the door. They wanted to have some fun with me, they said but I did not trust them and refused. They walked away and it was quiet for a while. I just thought that they had gone, when they knocked at the window of the heert, asking me to open the curtains. They had something to show me, they said. When I did I gasped and quickly closed them again! Each had his fly open, pointing their stiff dicks at me! My head spun and my heart thumped in my throat, as I tried to get a hold on my nerves. Jopie, Wim and Bartje helped me barricade the three doors of the heert. We switched the lights off so that they could not see us through the keyhole and sat shivering under the table listening the guys climbing through the side window of Mum’s bedroom and trying to open the door. Then they went to the geut on the other side of the heert and did the same. With my heart thumping heavily in my chest, I listened to them talking. “I’m hungry,” one said. “Let’s forget about the stupid trut.” Dozens of glass jars of preserves were stored in long rows on the platform above the cellar. They decided to open a jar with appelmoes and one with kersen (cherries), which we had preserved that week. Holding my breath I heard them climb through the little window at the front and jump on the gravel path outside, laughing. Taking turns, we watched them through a gap between the curtains. It was full moon. We could see them sitting on their bikes, close to the road eating cherries, challenging each other as to who could spit the pips the furthest. One of them dropped a large jar of appelmoes, which crashed onto the pavement. The others cursed him as it splashed over their Sunday suits and shoes. When they had eaten enough of the fruit, they decided to open the two other jars and spread the contents over the road, roaring with laughter in anticipation of Pa slipping on it. The stupid guys obviously did not think that Mum could have a nasty fall instead, I hissed angrily, planning to sweep the road as soon as they had gone. They were still spilling the lovely cherries and applesauce over the driveway and the road when one of the fellows warned: “Quick! Someone is coming!” They threw the jars away instantly, hopped on their bikes and, without switching the lights on they rode off quickly. It was Wout cursing when he skidded on the slippery fruit but he did not fall. After we told him what had happened, he helped me clean up the mess. The incident did not stop Mum from going out in the evenings even though I told her that I was really scared. She still believed that I was in no danger as long as Jopie and my two younger brothers were with me. Although some of the boys in our neighbourhood scared me, I dreamt of having a nice husband and a house full of children of my own, from a very early age. At fourteen, I had a vivid picture in my mind of me and Evert surrounded by at least a dozen children. Evert was nineteen and lived nearby on the road towards the village. He was in the army for his compulsory eighteen months. I tried to get a glimpse of him whenever he was home on the weekend. He looked so handsome in his uniform. At the time Catholics were encouraged to go to church twice on Sundays. Like every other teenager, I loved going to the service at seven in the evening as it was an ideal meeting place for the youngsters in the village, especially in winter, when it was dark at that time. Mum did not try to stop me from going as Pa did, but she always warned me to come straight home after the service. As my parents were often home late on Saturday night, and out again on Sunday afternoon, Pa never attended the service and Mum seldom went herself. They usually went early to bed on Sunday and expected us to do the same. Sometimes Evert would say ‘Hello’ but most of the time he hardly noticed me even when he came to our place to do some carpentry for Pa. But one day, when I was feeding the pigs, we were alone in the shed. My heart pumped wildly when he said: “You are starting to look quite good, you know? What about going out with me one day?” Overjoyed I agreed to walk with him to the end of our driveway. It was already dark and nobody could see us from the house when Evert took me in his arms. He kissed me hard on my mouth while his free hand went straight under my skirt and between my legs. Horrified I struggled to get free. When I threatened to scratch his face he let me go, calling after me: “Jeez! You are hopelessly green, you know! I thought that you knew where Abraham got his mustard!” My ‘love’ for Evert vanished instantly and I never set eyes on him again. He never married. “The girls don’t want me,” he complained to me when he was well in his fifties. “I wonder why?” I asked. Should I have told him? Half a year after the incident, I had a similar experience with Ruud, a very handsome looking fellow a few years older than I was. He was the youngest of five boys his only sister had died after a short illness the year before. Ruud was at the Mulo (higher education) in Amersfoort and his father was a well-known business man in the village, I felt very privileged when he rode up to me after the evening service, asking if he could take me home. Here I was, this shy, old fashioned girl (trut) riding hand in hand in the moonlight on a lovely evening, with one of the most popular fellows in the whole area! I could not believe my luck and took the long way home, around the Duust. About halfway we stopped, got off our bikes and talked, leaning against each other and our bikes. Ruud was so tall and handsome and he smelled deliciously from an expensive after-shave lotion. My alarm bells started ringing when he held me tight and started to feel my breasts. When he pressed the bulge in his pants against me, I begged him to stop, but instead he held me even tighter and kissed me on my mouth. Fighting to break loose, I tore my dress on one of the bikes. I panicked and scratched his face with my rough fingernails. When he let go of me, to grab his bleeding face, I fell over my bike, ripping my expensive new nylons in the process. I was shocked to see the blood dripping from Ruud’s hand. While he got his hankie out of his pocket to wipe his face, I grabbed my bike and raced off as fast as I could, not taking any notice of the twist in my front wheel. Lucky for me, he did not follow. “You horrible prudish witch!” he shouted, among other unflattering things, which seemed to follow me until I stormed into our driveway. Everyone was already in bed, but Mum was waiting for me. Her angry look changed when she saw my torn clothes and my red, crying face. I let myself fall into her arms and, with my arms around her neck, I sobbed my heart out. When I calmed down, we looked at my ruined dress and my bleeding knees through the holes in my new stockings. Pa came out of bed to see what my crying was all about. He laughed his horrible laugh when he heard what happened, while Mum said angrily: Well! Now you know why I want you to come home straight after church instead of hanging around the boys like a slut!” In church the following Sunday, I saw Ruud again with big scars on his face. “Serves him right!” I thought but I felt awfully confused, wondering what he would have told his family and friends. Someone surely would have asked him which ‘cat’ had scratched him like that. Was I really such a prude? Did other girls let boys touch them the way Pa said they would? Mum was very proud of what I had done to Ruud. Not taking any notice that I felt terribly embarrassed, she told every visitor in glowing terms about it. For a while I did not want to have anything to do with boys, ever again. I became very devout, going to church to pray at every possible opportunity I promised God that I would do whatever He wanted me to. I loved the peaceful church, especially when the organist was practicing and there was no one else around. I thought briefly of becoming a nun, but that idea did not appeal to me very long; I had heard enough from Mum to know what that was like. Then, one day, I made up my mind; I was going to be the housekeeper for the pastoor! The more I thought about it, the more the idea appealed to me. Meneer Pastoor always walked slowly around the empty church, praying his breviary. He never seemed to notice me. Although the housekeeper of a parish priest was usually not married, I never doubted for a moment that I would have a lot of children and I prayed every day that at least one of them would become a priest. Some of my prayers were answered; I did get a lot of children. But my three sons are happily married; they never had any ambition in that direction at all. Of all the boys in the neighbourhood, Gert, who was a few months older than I, was the only one I really liked. He lived in an old boerderijtje a few doors up from ours, towards the village. He was in my class and often waited for me on my way to school. Gert’s father worked at the local grain factory. There was only a little land around their house and the animals were cared for by Ouwe Luuk a live-in uncle of Gert’s mother. He was a cranky old man, whom we avoided as much as we could. But Mum said that he had healing powers. Gert’s father was a quiet man with the same ‘gift’ as Ouwe Luuk. A lot of people called on him but I never knew about it at the time. “His gift was a mixed blessing,” Gert’s mother told me later. “He was often called away at night and he had to go to work the following morning, regardless of whether he had only had a few hours of sleep.” Being the only breadwinner in his fast growing family, there was never enough money to provide for their ever-increasing needs. Because his healing powers were a gift from God, he could not ask money or accept anything in return. Life was very difficult for Gert’s mother, as her cranky uncle was near to being impossible to live with. But she was always smiling and there was a happy atmosphere in their rough and disorganised household. Gert was the oldest of several children. His mother seemed always pregnant. Even if she wasn’t, she still looked it. The eldest three were boys; then came Lena, my sister Jopie’s bosom friend from the day they went to pre-school. I often envied them their closeness. When I went to Gert’s place for the first time, I had to fetch Jopie, who had sneaked out to Lena’s place when it was time for her weekly bath one Saturday afternoon. When I walked into their heert, Gert’s brother Joop, who was nine at the time, was sitting in a galvanised iron tub, while the others were playing or crawling around in various stages of undress. Sitting on her knees beside the tub, his mother told Joop to sit still while she was soaping him. Suddenly she grabbed his penis. Here! I’ve got hold of Joop’s mouse!” she said, laughing at the shocked expression on my face. Mum would barely look at our genitals let alone mention them! A boy’s piemel was no different from any other appendage, an ear, a nose or an arm, Gert’s mother said. Gert spoke softly and I always felt comfortable with him. In his free time, of which he had plenty, he often came to our place to help me with the household chores and he pulled the heavy cart around the chook-yards with me in the evening. When we were older he asked me to be his girlfriend, but I wanted him just to be a friend. It made me furious when Pa said that he was following me ‘like a dog on heat’ but Gert took it all in his stride. He never seemed to get upset about anything. When I visited his mother a few years ago, I met up with Gert again after thirty-five years, a quiet, dependable husband and a dedicated father of four children, with a dry sense of humor. A ‘postie’ in the village since he left school at the age of fifteen, he is a great asset to the community always ready to help out. My life would have been quite different if I had married him. I would certainly not be writing a book about immigrating to Central Australia with six small children! I would probably never even have left our village. Chapter TWENTY-ONE

From the time I was six, secretly making dolls and dolls’ clothes at Opoe’s place, I had a natural flair for sewing. I watched and copied Tante Annie doing repairs as well as designing her own patterns and embroidering the most intricate patterns. Later, when Marie or Moeke came to help Mum with the mending, I stayed around as much as I could, helping them. Darning and knitting were taught early at school. In grade four we learned crocheting and different types of embroidery stitches, which I loved. As I could hold needles before I could hold a pen, it was no wonder I was the best in my class when sewing, Apart from learning the catechism by heart we were never given any other homework but I made Mum believe that I had to practise the new stitches I had learned at school that day. (Which explains some of the white spots on my fingernails!) “A woman’s hands and a horse’s teeth should never be still,” was one of Mum’s frequent sayings. In the evenings, when the dishes were done, I gladly helped her doing some of the never-ending pile of mending staying up as late as I wanted. Because Mum spent most of the day working outside, she usually fell asleep with knitting or darning on her lap soon after we started. In Grades Seven and Eight the headmaster prepared the boys for the Mulo or trade-school while girls learned domestic duties. The Household School was held in a room at the back of the convent and our teacher was a nun. Sister Adriane-Marie came from Brabant, a province in the south of Holland. She was characteristic of the people from the south, warm-hearted fun-loving and easy going. Her bubbly nature and her funny southern accent made her very popular. We girls, had a lot of fun guessing the colour of her hair which was hidden under her tightly fitting, heart-shaped cap. Occasionally a few dark hairs escaped and, when any one came close to inspect them she would quickly push them back under her cap. One day, she took the whole class for a bike ride, which was very exciting; we had never seen a nun on a bike before. (Today, more then forty years later, Sister Adriane-Marie is still in Hooglanderveen. The village is fighting hard to keep its character as it is being engulfed by the city of Amersfoort. The convent was replaced by a home for elderly people in 1965. “St. Joseph” now has fifty permanent tenants and a day-centre for respite care. Sister Adriane-Marie is as popular as ever, organising parties and activities in the close-knit community). Because we were poor my self-esteem was never very high. I felt inadequate in just about every way, except when sewing. But one day, that superior feeling crashed too. Sister Adriane- Marie taught us how to make ‘coupe’ in ladies clothing; darts in the right places for breasts, hips and shoulders. We had to make a full petticoat from fine cotton material. I chose a pretty light blue and set out happily about the task. A couple of days later, I finished the project ahead of everyone else, and handed it proudly to Sister Adriane-Marie for inspection. She held it up in class and said: “I don’t think you understood the exercise, Mientje; you made underarm darts at the back as well as at the front!” Tears were filling my eyes, wishing I could sink into the floor as the whole class roared with laughter. “Have you ever seen anyone with boobs on the back?” the girls shouted and: “You thought you were so smart eh!” With a hot burning face I ran out of the class and locked myself in the toilet, bawling my eyes out. After a while, Sister Adriane-Marie came to talk to me. “But Mientje toch!” she said while she stroked my back. “There is no reason to be so upset. Making mistakes is nothing to be ashamed of, it’s by far the quickest way to learn.” When my tears had dried, I was able to laugh at my silly mistake too, and she led me back to the class. But my confidence in sewing had a setback that affected me for a long time. Saturday was ‘house-cleaning’ day for me. I would make a long list of what had to be done, starting with checking the jars of preserves in the cellar right through to making the beds, sweeping and mopping floors, dusting and polishing furniture. A long row of shoes had to be polished and the windows washed every week just as the neighbours did. Jopie, who was ten at the time, was supposed to help me. She was a good little worker when she felt like it, but she often just messed about, wanting to sneak away to play with her Lena. If we worked hard, we would finish by four in the afternoon, but when we did not feel like working it would take all day. Sometimes we were in stiches, calling each other ‘Mie’ and ‘Pie’, but at other times, I would get cranky and tell her to hoepel op (get lost); I would rather do the work by myself, or with Wim, if Pa did not need him. I liked working by myself when I was in the right mood, crossing one task after another off the list. It was nice to see the house clean again. I always left polishing shoes until last; some sixteen to twenty pairs. If I did not get them done before bath-time in the afternoon, I had to clean them at night. Everyone had a pair for school and a pair for church on Sunday. Because it often rained for days on end, they were usually all caked with dry mud. Mum was very particular about the edges; a left over habit from the convent, she said. She was very angry with me when I had polished them without first scraping the dirt off them properly. The space between the soles and the heels had to shine as much as the top leather, as that is what people looked at when you are kneeling down in church. Pa was the same. His shoes had to shine like mirrors. But he wasn’t half as fussy about his shoes as his vicious father had been, he said. Sometimes Mum would help me, but she was usually too busy helping Pa. She also fed the chickens and the pigs on Saturdays and often helped with the milking. Bath-time was at four-thirty on Saturday afternoon. While I listened to the ‘Introduction of the Gregorian Mass’ on the radio, I washed the little ones, Bartje, Jopie and Wim, adding a bit of hot water from the kettle on the stove before the next one went into the tub. Henk, who was nearly two years younger than I, became embarrassed by the time he was twelve about me washing him. He then washed himself under the pump at the back of the house like his older brothers. But, as the water was icy-cold in winter, that was often no more than face and hands. When it got too bad, Mum would grab a face-washer, put a thick layer of soap (or something stronger) on it and, under strong protest from Henk scrubbed his neck clean. When I had finished bathing my younger siblings, I cut up a high loaf of pure white bread, and put a thick layer of butter and white sugar on it, one slice for each and two thick ones for me if the others weren’t looking. Whenever I hear a church organ and a choir, singing a Gregorian hymn, it takes me instantly back to bath-time in my teens. Like Mum, I took a kettle of hot water into her bedroom on Saturday evening when the little ones were in bed and washed myself in a dish on the ‘wash-stand’, or on a hot day at the pump like the boys. As there was little or no privacy in our old house, we never undressed completely. Strict regulations to keep the Sundays ‘holy’ were still observed when I was fourteen. Even knitting and embroidering were not permitted before Pa came to live with us. Being Catholics, we had always been allowed to ride our bikes, which was forbidden for our Protestant neighbours. It was said that one of our Protestant neighbours was so strict, that he shut his rooster in a separate cage on Saturday evening, and did not let him out until Monday morning! No work other than what was strictly necessary was done in our neighbourhood on Sundays but that changed in our household when Mum re-married. “Where I come from, they don’t take any notice; they always work, Sunday or no Sunday,” Pa grumbled whenever he wanted us to turn the hay, or boil another lot of potatoes for the pigs. Before Pa came, we always put the washing in big galvanised tubs to soak on Saturday evenings, but now I often had to take out the boiled potatoes and clean the furnace-pot on Sunday afternoon, to prepare for wash day on Monday. The Sunday meal was no longer prepared on Saturday afternoon either. By the time the chores were done it was usually time to feed the chickens and prepare the evening meal, with little or no time left for me to knit or embroider. Being in my last year of school, I was often kept home on Monday to do the washing, when Mum was not well or too busy. Sometimes she could not move for weeks with ‘spit’ when her back suddenly ‘went out’. She also had some nasty attacks of gallstones, gasping for breath, standing on her head in bed, from the pain. The doctor gave her pills or an injection, which fixed the problem until the next attack. After Mum re-married our eggs were picked up by truck and taken to the market in Amersfoort on Thursday. Later, when Wout was home again and did the milk-run, Pa went with her on Friday morning to sell them. It was their ‘weekly outing’ for many years. One day shortly after my fourteenth birthday, Jans, our neighbour across the road came over in tears, asking Mum whether I could do the washing at their place on Mondays as her unmarried sister Mietje, had had a stroke. As was customary for an unmarried woman, Mietje, looking old even though she was only in her early fifties, had been taken in by her brother-in-law ‘earning her keep’ by helping on the farm. She did all the heavy work for her sister in the house as well as feeding pigs, looking after the chickens, milking and helping on the land. Without Mietje Jans who was very slow in her manners as well as her speech, sat with her ‘hands in her hair’ so to speak. With five children, four girls and a boy aged two to ten, she had her hands more than full in the house, and now she had to care for her invalid sister as well as helping her husband. Mum went to the headmaster to ask permission to keep me at home on a permanent basis on Mondays to do the washing for our unfortunate neighbours and, if necessary, on Tuesdays to help her with the washing at home. As it had been clear to me for some time that there was no hope of me continuing school in Amersfoort I looked forward to having my first job outside our own house. It was a shock to see the tiny, white figure of Mietje lying in her bed, the following Sunday afternoon only barely resembling the always hasty, quickly walking and talking little woman, I knew. The left side of her body was completely paralysed, her face was twisted and she had lost her speech. Crying continuously, Jans took me to the shed beside their brand-new house and showed me where the washing was done. With the help of Bart, her husband, she had already put the clothes in the tubs to soak overnight. The furnace to boil white linens and underwear was in a separate lean-to, made from corrugated iron, joined onto the front of the big pig-shed where the washing machine was kept. Bart had brought a bundle of twigs for the fire and she would ask him to fill the fornuispot with water from the tap in the shed before I came the following morning. When I got there at seven in the morning, the whites were already boiling. Jans was still crying. “Mietje always started much earlier,” she sobbed. “You will never be able to finish if you come so late. The clothes have to be on the line by midday if there is any chance of getting them dry.” Jans left me to it. She had to get the older children ready for school and help the community health sister with Mietje. I soon found my way. The washing machine was similar to the one we had at home, a round wooden tub with a slow agitator, and an electric wringer with two big rollers. The rollers kept on going unless the material you fed through them was too thick. Then they flew apart with a big bang, which scared the living daylights out of me ever since the day my fingers got caught. I was lucky that Mum was with me when it happened. She had quickly turned the knob which made the rollers go in the opposite direction before my whole hand went through the rollers. Apart from the normal weekly amount of washing for a family of three adults and five children, there were a lot of extra sheets and towels from Mietje, who was incontinent. At ten I was allowed to go into the kitchen for a quick cup of coffee. I could not stay away longer than a few minutes, as a new load had to go into the machine. The washing machine went non-stop until three-thirty in the afternoon. By the time I had everything on the line and cleaned up, another hour had passed before I could go home. I was exhausted from carrying what seemed to be a hundred buckets of water from the tap for bleaching and rinsing, and taking numerous buckets full of still quite wet washing to the line in the backyard, some fifty metres away. I felt sorry for Jans, who had to take it all off and fold it herself, which was not part of the agreement with my parents. I promised to come earlier the following Monday so that everything would be on the line by midday, as Mietje had always done. When I came home, Mum happily announced that she had already put our washing in the tubs, with washing soda to soak. I had not had the time to think about our own washing all day and let out a sigh of relief when Mum said: “Don’t look so shocked! You can go to school tomorrow; I’ll do it myself.” She added that she had not had a chance to make the beds, and the men folk would be in for the evening meal at six. There was no time to rest. During the first year I did our neighbour’s washing, both Jans and Mietje were often crying about the terrible turn their lives had taken. I admired Jans for the way she cared for her sister, and as time went on, they seemed to cope much better. After a while Mietje recovered enough to sit in the living-room during the day. Her left hand was useless but the community health nurse of the Catholic White and Yellow Cross, who came every day to bath her, taught her to use her badly affected right hand. Progress was agonisingly slow, but in time Mietje learned to speak a few words and to feed herself. She learned to peel potatoes and knit simple pieces with one hand and lived for another thirty years, most of them in the local nursing home. Like most women in the area, Jans could sew very well. She was terribly old-fashioned and dressed her children accordingly; I could not believe my eyes when I saw that she had fully lined the girls’ summer dresses with plain cotton. They always had to wear their thick homemade underwear, even if it was stinking hot. Although the work was heavy, I loved doing the neighbours washing, which I did for nearly four years. I was a strong girl and proud of it. When the weather was good, I would sing and whistle all day, even though this was considered bad manners for a girl. The saying was that girls who whistled would marry boys with lots of money. Thinking that could be true, I whistled whenever I felt like it, ignoring the second line which said that girls who did, had no decency... When I started to do the neighbour’s washing little Ellie was just three. With her hands at her back she chatted non-stop. I loved her company, but Jans never let her stay long. Saying that I could not work and listen to Ellie’s stories at the same time she would take the child inside with her. In summer I started as early as five or six o’clock but in winter I usually did not get there before seven. Doing the washing at the neighbours’ place in winter was no picnic! The wood was often wet and the fire would smoke something terrible. A big gush of icy cold wind would take my breath away every time I opened the big door of the pig-shed to get the boiled linens from the furnace-pot in the lean-to. My fingers would freeze instantly onto the iron door handle when I touched it with wet hands. The first time it happened I was lucky. I had hot washing in the bucket, which I could use to defrost them. The second time I had to yell out for someone to rescue me by pouring hot water over my hand. It was an exceptionally cold winter with temperatures of twenty or more degrees below zero, and it was impossible to wear gloves while washing. I felt most embarrassed when Bart, Jans’ husband, told me off for being so careless. But, in my hurry to get inside I forgot to take a dry cloth with me again the following Monday. As I felt too ashamed to call out for help, I blew on my fingers and pulled them off, leaving a bit of skin behind on the door handle. The pain was awful and the day had only just started. I felt very sorry for myself, especially because I could not tell anyone. It was another lesson learned the hard way; I never forgot the cloth again! Washing at home was a lot easier. I could stay in the shed beside the furnace to do the job and go inside to help myself to a hot drink whenever I wanted. Mum let me hang everything around the kachel on racks and on the lines my father had made around the ceiling of the heert. Jans made me hang it all outside no matter how cold it was and when it was raining or snowing I had to hang it all in the big hay-shed. With a heavy bucket of wet washing on one hand, I climbed three metres high on the narrow wobbly ladder, which stood against the hay. By the time I reached the lines, the washing was often frozen solid in the bucket, especially if I had to scrape off a layer of snow from my klompen before I dared to get onto the ladder. I wonder now how Jans got it all down. Maybe Bart did it for her. The hay-shed was an ideal place for the washing to dry as the wind was always howling through the wooden slats, which were about two inches wide and two inches apart. Stiff from the cold and my heavy clothing, I struggled to pin the items on the line as quickly as possible. They looked like ghosts in a forest on the line but there was no time to linger as my fingers froze in the process. It was impossible to wear gloves, as they would freeze instantly to the clothes too. Jans always wanted me to stay longer, asking me to take the dry washing off the line in summer and help her fold the sheets, before I went home. After a while I became annoyed with her stinginess. Bart was considered a well-to-do farmer. They had just finished building their double storey house when Mietje had her stroke. My coffee break was strictly limited to ten minutes, and the time it took to eat the simple hot meal she served was kept as short as possible. Jans knew that I had to give the money I earned to Mum, but she never gave me a penny more to keep for myself. Five guilders seemed a pittance for the work I did, but it was probably a large amount for a young girl like me, in Jans’ eyes. A fifteen-year-old live-in boerenknecht was only paid five guilders a day, which often went from four in the morning until ten at night. I felt terrible when I had to ask for a guilder more after I had been there for two years. Jans expected me to stay longer in return but I always left as soon as the clothes were on the line even though I knew that there was more hard work waiting for me when I got home. In April that year (1954) Mum was sick every morning. Pa started to bring her a cup of tea and a beschuit in bed before she could get up without vomiting. The idea that she might be pregnant kept our hopes up but, as she had just turned forty-five and had missed a period before, we had to wait for weeks to be sure she had not started her menopause. At that time, most women still did not go to the doctor to confirm a pregnancy. When she ‘missed’ for the second time, Mum felt sure that our prayers had been answered and I was going to have a little brother. She said that she always knew what she was going to have and she had never been wrong. No need to say that I was very happy with the prospect of having a baby in the house. It also meant that I no longer had to wash Mum’s foul smelling rags as well as my own, a job I hated. After I mentioned that I wanted to become a nurse, Mum insisted that I had no reason whatsoever to refuse to wash them. While summer turned to autumn, I was looking forward to leaving school for good when I would turn fifteen at the end of October. The thought of holding a baby in my arms by Christmas made me forget my disappointment at not being allowed to become a nurse. Chapter TWENTY-TWO

Before Mum married my father, she ironed everything, bath and tea towels, sheets and even underwear. During her time in the convent, she had learned to do the job properly. The Dutch word for ironing is strijken, which also means ‘stroking’ or ‘caressing’. Tears of laughter were rolling down Mum’s face whenever she demonstrated how my father had taken a neatly ironed and folded hankie from the pile shaken it out and wrinkled it into a ball. He had then put it in his pocket, saying: “I’d rather that you strijkt my blote kont (bare bum) than waste your time on those!” We still ironed hankies anyway, along with dresses, skirts, aprons, trousers and shirts, but the rest was all neatly folded. Nothing was drip-dry in those days and, as there were always up to twenty shirts from the boys alone, it took ages to get through the weekly stack of ironing. The starched shirts, aprons and dresses were taken off the line before they were completely dry, sprinkled lightly with water and put on top of one another. Rolled up tightly they were left until the dampness was evenly spread so that they could be ironed properly. If the damp roll was left too long the dreaded black mildew would get into the clothes, making it almost impossible to get them clean again. “Praise yourself lucky you have an electric iron instead of the old coal-filled ones I had to use when I was young!” Mum would say with trembling lips whenever I complained about the time consuming job. When she got pregnant, she stayed in the house a lot more and did most of the ironing herself. Because Pa stayed in the house (or in bed) to look after Mum when she suffered from morning sickness, I had to help Wout most mornings with milking and later also in the evenings. After doing the milk-run for a year, the neighbour’s son had left in the spring of ‘53 while Pa was depressed and too tired to do the job himself. Siem loved his boss’s young family, where everything was bigger and better than at home. He only came home occasionally on the weekend, looking for his friends. There was no way he would work for Pa ever again but Wout had been quite happy to work at his ‘own’ farm again. He had to break the contract with the farmer at the busiest time of year, which caused a lot of trouble. Wout had calmed down considerably during the eighteen months he had been away. Whenever his fists itched, he would now put them in his pockets and cooled his frustration by working twice as hard in the stables or outside on the land. So far I had only milked Mina, our old white cow, but when Mum became pregnant I learned to milk properly. Pulling the hand-cart loaded with milk-cans and buckets between us, I felt terribly proud when I rode my bike beside Wout, or Pa, to the paddock near the village, or all the way to the polder. Mum had inherited a piece of land there when the boerderij was divided between her brothers shortly after Opa Kleter died and Opoe had gone to live in the convent. The road to the village was paved with bricks during the war, but it was very narrow. One day I was so frightened by a fodder truck that I let go of the cart, and landed in the sloot beside the road. Unable to hold the cart on his own, Pa scolded me about the spilled milk, but he roared with laughter when I crawled out of the ditch, covered with mud and frog-rid. It took weeks, maybe months, before I could milk two cows while Wout or Pa did the other five. I’m sure I would have learned more quickly if I had not felt so intimidated when they scolded me for being so slow. Sitting on a wobbly, one-legged stool, I was scared of every one of our cows, other than Mina. They would kick the bucket over even though their back legs were tied together, and their tails would hit the milker’s face continuously while they brushed the thousands of flies away. When there wasn’t enough grass close to home, the cows were taken to the polder, seven kilometres away; a lovely ride on our bikes when the weather was nice. We could not believe our eyes when all seven cows came home on their own one afternoon, old Mina leading the way. They had broken through the gate during a bad thunderstorm and decided to go home. Because the land was flat and close to the IJselmeer, thunderstorms were often terrifying in the polder. Wanting to finish raking the land after the hay was stacked, Wout and I got caught one day. To keep the hay off the ground, it was stacked on wooden structures, the size of a wagon-wheel. We had just crawled under one of those two metre tall domes when the heavens opened and all hell broke loose. Lightning and thunder followed each other quickly. I sat with my eyes closed, holding on to Wout when one mighty bang shook the haystack. I had never been so frightened in my life! When the rain stopped temporarily, we got up, stiff and shivering, soaked to the bone. We stood nailed to the spot when we saw a haystack on fire, only a few hundred metres away from us. We watched it burn down to the ground, speechless. Bad thunderstorms were a nightmare for every farmer, as many a boerderij burned down to the ground after being struck by lightning. Cows were often struck in the fields, especially when electric fences became popular. Hooibroei also took its toll on farms. The hay had to be as dry as cork before it could be put away in the attic, in the hooiberg or in the schuur (shed). A close eye was kept on the temperature of the hay for weeks. When it got too hot, it was taken out and spread over the yard to cool it down; a terrible hot and heavy job. A spontaneous fire has destroyed many a winter’s supply and often the whole boerderij in the process because of hooi-broei. Making hay was a busy time, which I enjoyed tremendously, especially after I had left school, glad to have an excuse to get out of the house and work in the paddocks when the sun was shining. Because there was usually someone helping, there was seldom any friction between Pa and my brothers when we were making hay. When the long grass was dry, it was raked in rows from one end of the field to the other. While we turned it, working behind each other with a long-handled pitchfork, the men told stories and jokes and, because I was usually the only girl in the group, I got plenty of attention. We would often roll in the hay when one of the younger helpers wanted to see if I was ticklish; but it wasn’t always fun and laughter. One day when we were drinking coffee, one of the boys caught a big green kikker (frog), which he threatened to put in my pants. Encouraged by the men, two of the boys chased me all over the paddock, playing ‘catch’ with the frog. They caught me in a pile of loose hay. One of the guys held me down while the other pulled my skirt up. Although my eyes must have been wild with fear as I kicked and screamed while they tucked the slimy frog into my pants, none of the men took any notice. I cried and jumped up and down, desperately trying to grab hold of the ghastly creature, which crawled below my belly. I hated the men, including a neighbour I had always been fond of, for slapping themselves on their thighs with laughter. How could they do that to me? To them it was just a bit of fun. They could not understand why I was so upset. They had no idea that their bit of fun would cause me endless nightmares. Another thing they thought was funny was tickling me until I was crying. A lot of women (and men) can identify with that one, I think! Autumn was another busy time as fruit and vegies had to be preserved and a pig was killed for the following year’s supply of meat. Most of the vegetables such as peas, beans and cauliflower were pre-cooked before they were put in glass jars. A rubber ring went between the jar and the lid and secured with a metal clamp. Then the jars went in a kettle, especially designed for the purpose of preservation. The kettle or tank was filled up to three-quarters with water, slowly brought to the boil and left to simmer for up to two hours. By that time the air had evaporated from the jars and, providing the edges of the glass were clean and without even the slightest imperfection, the jars would stay closed for some years. The size of the jars varied between a half up to two litres and they could be stacked on top of each other in the kettle. Up to a dozen two-litre jars could be preserved at the same time. As soon as they had cooled down enough to take them out, the kettle was re-filled again. Rhubarb, apple-sauce, strawberries, cherries, plums, pears, and other fruit was preserved in the same way. There were always hundreds of jars on the platform above the cellar when winter started. White cabbage was made into zuurkool (sauerkraut) by cutting it finely, salting it and pressing it down in big earthen pots. A heavy stone on a round, wooden board pressed the air out of the vegetables. The dirty water that came to the top was scooped off every couple of days until the cabbage had matured into sauerkraut. Because we always had too many green beans to go in jars, we salted them in the same fashion. I hated them, as they always tasted slightly off. Sitting around the table in the evenings, we peeled tons of apples, cut them into eighths and took the cores out. With large darning needles we strung the pieces onto lengths of string to hang them in the sun or above the kachel to dry. Later, we took them to Ome Willem who hung them in front of the oven in his bakery for Mum, without charge. As nothing was ever wasted, we cooked the cores and the peels of the appels, put them through a fine sieve, stirred in sugar and cinnamon and were rewarded with a big dish of lovely appelmoes. By the time I turned fifteen at the end of October, I still went to school for sewing classes, two afternoons a week but, six weeks before Mum’s baby was due, I had to stay at home. I felt sad about leaving school but I soon forgot about it, as there was plenty to keep me busy. Early in November, Gijs the slaughterer came to kill the pig that had been fattened up for our own use that summer. So far I had never been at home when the pig was killed. Listening to it’s squealing gave me goosebumps. Because Mum was too heavy to help Gijs, she sent me outside with a dish to catch the blood to make bloedworst (black pudding). The pig was shot and, as it did not move any more, I was not at all prepared to see Gijs cut its throat the moment I handed him the dish. As the blood was gushing out with force, it was a wonder I did not faint on the spot. The scene haunted me for years and I have never been able to understand how anyone could do such a dreadful job. To think that some people even enjoy killing a defenceless animal still makes me shudder. I often wondered how Mum got so tough. In her eyes I was a hopeless wimp, and I guess I still am. One day when I was about twelve, Mum was furious with me when I was unwilling to help her when a cow was calving in the stable. Pa had put ropes on the calf’s front legs and pulled with all his strength, sweat pouring off his face, while Mum put warm water over the cows opening to relax the muscles. The poor cow was lying down bellowing in agony; her eyes bulged with fright. Mum shouted at me to fetch more hot water and to bring it to them. Afraid that I would faint, I hesitated, jealous of Jopie who ran away to Lena’s as soon as the cow had started her contractions. I felt trapped. Pa swore and Mum yelled: “Pull yourself together, you stupid girl! The cow will die if I you don’t do as you’re told instantly!” Of course, Mum was right. But the experience did not harden me, maybe because my feelings were not taken into consideration at such a tender age. I was thrilled to bits when my daughter-in-law, Jackie, asked me recently to be with her for the birth of her second child, my eleventh grandchild. I dearly want to take her up on the offer. But I was scared. Scared of what? I wondered. Fainting? I am extremely grateful now that I was able to pluck up the necessary courage to see my beautiful new grand-daughter being born. Seeing a perfect human being come into the world has been the most beautiful experience in my life, apart from giving birth to my own children. And yes! I nearly did faint! Having given birth six times myself I knew exactly what my courageous daughter-in-law was going through... Back to the slaughtering of the pig! I had to pour boiling hot water over the pig continuously while Gijs scraped the skin clean, but while it was split open and the intestines were being removed, I stayed inside. The carcass was tied onto a ladder and set against the wall to ‘bleed out’. Gijs cleaned the intestines by turning them inside out. Then he put them in salt water where they would stay until we were ready to use them for making wurst. The whole job would only have taken him a couple of hours. Before he went to his next job, Gijs had a couple of drinks with Pa. Before he left, they carried the heavy pig inside and put it against the wall at the back of the deel. It was a scary sight when we came out of our bedroom to go outside to the plee (toilet, pronounce ‘play’) in the middle of the night, especially if we had forgotten that it was there. The meat inspector came early the following morning, putting blue stamps all over the carcass. Then Gijs came back to cut it up with his long, razor-sharp knives. Because there were no freezers or fridges, we had to work quickly. The pig had a layer of white speck, five or six centimetres thick which was cut into four large slabs. A layer of salt was put at the bottom of the koelbak (a rectangular, concrete box, normally filled with water to keep the milk cool in summer until it went to the factory). Then the slabs of white fat went in with a layer of salt between them, followed by the legs and the hocks, which were used for pea-soup. For the next ten days every thing was taken out daily, cleaned and put back in with a new layer of salt. After it had been pickled for six weeks, the pieces were hung on a rod in the chimney to be smoked for a couple of days. Nothing was wasted. The heart and the kidneys were cooked and eaten on bread with salt and pepper and the liver was made into liverwurst. Before Mum made arrangements with Gijs to kill the pig, she had worked out when I was expected to have my period. It was a ‘proven fact’ that the meat would go off a lot quicker when a women who was menstruating, handled it. We also had to keep our breath fresh with sips of jenever according to tradition, which made working with meat a happy affair. Although Jonge jenever has forty percent alcohol it never gave me a headache and I became more cheerful as the day went on. The pig’s blood was made into bloedworst by adding flour, salt, spices and lots of square cubes of white speck, which had been kept aside from the previous year. The head was boiled with onions and spices until all the meat had fallen off. After the bones were removed, gelatine was stirred in and the mixture was left to set in a cool place. I liked ‘black-pudding’ but I detested hoofdkaas (head-cheese). I still shudder while I write about it. After Mum married Pa, he made us eat the fatty black-pudding and head-cheese at breakfast as well as for the evening meal, without any bread. We were young and healthy, so we could eat any amount of fat, he always said. He told the baker not to come for a couple of weeks except on Saturdays, to save expenses. Because of her gallstones, Mum never ate anything other than a couple of rusks with butter and sugar in the morning, and Pa had to eat rusks with the dripping wurst because of high blood pressure. Oh! How we looked forward to Friday, a meat-free day for Catholics, at that time. Pa went to the priest to ask for dispensation, but he did not get it. When he came back, he raved on about those stupid regulations of the Catholic Church, while we laughed and thanked God for them. After a while we could not bear the thought of having to eat another piece of wurst on our empty stomachs in the morning. We would rather go to school without anything, picking a carrot or a blue turnip from a paddock on our way to school. Life returned to normal when the remainder of the blood-wurst and head-cheese had gone off and it was fed to the pigs under strong protest from Pa. Making (and eating) metworst was a pleasure. Small pieces of pork were cut up and put through a coarse mincer. After pepper and salt were mixed in, the cleaned and salted intestines were tightly filled with the raw meat via the mincer, pricked everywhere to let trapped air out, cut in lengths of about half a metre and the ends tight together in a ring. They were hung on the ceiling next to the kachel for a couple of weeks to dry, before being smoked together with the ham and sides of speck. Pa insisted that only oak gave the best taste to speck and mettwurst. He made a little shed especially for the purpose and got a bag full of oak-shavings from a timber-mill. It was an awful job that made his eyes red and watering something terrible. The sad thing was that we did not taste any difference from those hanging in the chimney and those smoked with oak shavings. Chops and ribs from the pig were salted and meatballs were made with salt, pepper, nutmeg, an egg and breadcrumbs. They went into the cellar until they could be fried in the big fornuis-pot later that day. When they were fried, they went into jars and were preserved the same way as fruit and vegetables. As they had to last a whole year, only one was opened on Sundays. Once, when the weather had been unusually warm for the time of year, the jars kept on popping open. At that time we were also experimenting with a new method of sterilising. After the jars were filled with freshly boiled fruit or vegetables, a special solution was poured onto the lid, which was then set alight. The lid had to be put onto the jar with the rubber ring and held firmly into place for a minute. It worked well with fruit and vegies but obviously not for the meat. We boiled the chops and meatballs and sterilise the jars all over again in the proven way. The meat smelt off but we had to eat it anyway, as there was nothing else. Brrr, that was awful! My parents were right though. It did not kill any of us, probably because it was boiled for half an hour again before it was eaten. Nearly everybody in the village killed a pig in November or December and most Catholics took fresh meat to the pastorie (Presbytery) for Meneer Pastoor. No matter how poor Mum was, even when she was a widow, she always took a plate with the best pieces of meat and a fresh metworst to the priest. Apart from the collections on Sundays, and the donations the parishioners gave him for weddings, baptisms and funerals, the priest had no income at the time. Mum regarded taking the meat to the pastoor as an offering to God. She would have been terribly hurt if the priest had refused her gift, or he had given it to someone else. Because there were no freezers, the pastoor and his housekeeper could not possibly eat it all, or preserve it in time. It was just as well that Mum did not know at the time that many gifts went bad, and were used as compost by the gardener. As Pa was keen to make a good impression on Meneer Pastoor he always insisted going with Mum to the pastorie to take the carefully selected goods. They usually had ‘a good talk’ with the pastoor, while the housekeeper served coffee and a borreltje. Pa was often in an exceptionally happy mood when they came back several hours later, boasting that he had managed to get at least three thick cigars out of the priest. When I was twelve, Wout made a foekepot from the pig’s bladder he had cut open and left it to dry stretched onto a board for weeks. Then he tied a smooth stick into the middle of the dry bladder and stretched it over an empty conserve tin. By pulling the stick up and down (after spitting in your hand first) it makes a peculiar sound like “fooke-fu, fooke fu”. Dressed up in sheets, and made unrecognisable by a mask, Wout and I went singing around the neighbourhood with the foekepot on the evening before Lent, the forty-day fast before Easter, as was customary. We sang a special ‘thank-you’ song when people rewarded us with sweets, or a small coin, if you were that lucky. But, when we did not get anything, we would sing a song about the ‘scroodge’ that lived in that particular house. Something like ‘trick or treat’, but with singing only. Wout was not too happy about me wearing the high-heels, which Tante Annie had left behind when she had gone to Canada. They slowed us down on the long distances between the farms; but I insisted on wearing them. At one of the farms the boer sent his dog after us, a vicious mongrel that was normally chained up when Wout went there with the milk-run. Terrified, I turned to run after Wout, when one of my high heels got stuck between the cobblestones on the long driveway. While Wout swore at me I kept running in the dark with my shoes in my hand, even when the dog had stopped barking. Wout was furious with the boer who was normally a decent fellow. When we came home Pa doubled up with laughter, which infuriated Wout even more. “Oh! I wish I could have been there to see it!” Pa roared. I started to cry and went to my room, scolded by Mum for being so sensitive. I heard Wout argue that it had been very frightening for me. “That rotten mongrel could have ripped her apart!” he said. Pa kept laughing until Mum got angry with him too. Perhaps this incident marked the beginning of a better relationship between Wout and me as we got older. Chapter TWENTY-THREE

When it was clear that Mum was pregnant Pa became a different person, extremely proud of the evidence that he wasn’t ‘past it’. Although Mum reminded him time and again that it wasn’t entirely his doing, he was often in an exceptionally good mood and a lot more tolerant with us. He still argued with Wout every day but he seemed to have lost the bitter resentment of what he said his lot had dealt him. Pa had always scolded me when I had the radio on, singing along with popular songs while I was working. My happiness did not go well with his anger and frustration, I guess. But now I could turn it up high and, whenever there was a Vienna waltz or a quick-step we would put the chairs aside and swirled through the heert together. He had taught me the steps, standing on the tip of his toes, when he first came, but he had not been in the mood for dancing lately. I loved dancing and, as I blamed myself for what had happened between us, I felt in heaven whenever I swirled around the room with him. Because Mum hated having to stay in her seat while others were dancing at a wedding, she promised me that I could have dancing lessons as soon as I was sixteen.

“Because my mother wasn’t allowed to dance, she saw no reason to let me learn either,” she said, adding with quivering mouth: “I don’t want that to happen to you,” “It’s never too late to learn; I can teach you,” I offered. “ No! It’s too late now,” she laughed. “I’ll just bob along whenever I’m at a wedding or anniversary.” Feeling sorry for Mum, and grateful that she had treated me differently, I hugged her awkwardly. (Hugging each other was something we seldom did. Old habits die hard. I’m fine with my daughters and daughters-in-law but I still feel a little awkward when I want to hug some of my sons spontaneously, other than at Christmas and their birthdays. It’s rather strange that it is much easier for most people to hug a friend, either male or female, than a close relative.) Pa was extremely concerned for Mum, who was carrying ‘his son’, and Mum lapped his attention up. She laughed at his worries about the pending birth. “You’re lucky you don’t have to bring it into the world,” she said. “I’m not afraid of a bit of pain as you are!” Most men were considered whimps when it came to pain. If they had to bear children there would never have been a problem with over-population! Pa had no tolerance of pain whatsoever. He behaved just like a little child when the slightest thing was wrong with him. He was afraid of any pain but toothache was the worst punishment God had invented for men, he always said. At one stage, he had plenty of it. Because he was terrified of the dentist, he tried other remedies first. Rinsing with gin or brandy and swallowing lots of aspirin, was a start. In summer we were sent to the paddock to pick lots of chamomile flowers which were dried and later used for Pa’s recurring bouts of toothache. He would kneel in front of a chair his short body bent over a dish of boiling hot water and chamomile petals with a towel over his head. He often sat there for hours, crying; “Ohoo! Ohooo!” The smell was terrible! We would look at each other, pulling faces, giggling at the funny sight. Pa would curse us and wail even louder: “Ahaaa!” and “Ohooo!” He could not believe the unfairness of it all. His mighty father had not lost a single tooth in his entire life, and he had all this trouble. Day after day we made a fresh dish with the foul smelling flowers before he finally plucked up courage to go to the dentist, accompanied by Mum to have the offending tooth pulled out. To have a filling would be a waste of pain and money to him. The tooth would have to come out eventually anyway, he said. We were never encouraged to brush our teeth or have regular checkups. Pa called them ‘city nonsense’ and Mum agreed with him. I was thirteen when I had a terrible toothache for days. Following Pa’s example I tried the brandy, but I did not like it. I found another bottle of liquor in the kelder that was not so bad. It had ‘Lemon Jenever’ on the label. At first I rinsed my sore tooth with the sharp liquor quickly, and spat it out. I liked the burning sensation on my tooth and it deadened the pain for a while. Next time I swallowed the liquor, and liked the taste. During the following days I tried other brands with a high content of alcohol going down to the cellar several times a day. I became quite cheerful, despite the aching tooth. By the time Mum realised what I was up to, the contents of the bottles had gone down considerably. She sent me to the dentist right away. At fourteen I was allowed to have a borreltje when we had visitors too and thought nothing of it. I liked them all: advocaat, lemon gin, orange gin, cognac and jonge jenever with plenty sugar, which apparently doubles the content of alcohol. But boerejonges and advokaat with sweetened whipped cream were my favourite for a long time. Wout was fourteen when Opa Kleter gave him a bottle of stout (brown beer) and a cigarette, insisting that he was no man until he could smoke and hold his drink. Although my brothers were already drunk regularly when they were still wearing shorts, none of them drank excessively later in life. Because Mum was forty-five and she had suffered from gallstones she had to take it easy while she was pregnant. Apart from cooking the hot midday meal, doing the dishes and making sandwiches in the evening, she spent her time happily reading the local paper, knitting, mending and ironing (sitting down). Going to Amersfoort on her pushbike to sell eggs and an occasional trip to the village to visit or do some shopping, was the only exercise she had. Mum and I became closer than ever before, that summer. I was proud to be able to run the household for her and could hardly wait for my fifteenth birthday so that I could stay at home for good. She let me feel the movements of the growing life in her belly from the moment she could feel it herself while she talked about nature and the wonderful way God lets new life grow from a tiny seed. When I finally left school at the end of October she was very big and still had another six weeks, the baby was expected at the beginning of December. November went quickly as I was very busy. We moved back from the deel, where we lived in summer to the heert as the cows were brought into their winter stables. The fattened pig was slaughtered and preserved, which took another two weeks. Then I cleaned the whole house, which brought us to December. Several of my siblings were born earlier than expected but that was not happening this time. Mum had become so heavy, she could hardly move. Although she knew that the birth was not going to be easy, she didn’t worry about it. “The only time I had an easy birth was when I lost you, and I had to pay a heavy price for it afterwards,” she reminded me. Mum did not remember much of those nine months she spent in the mental hospital, except that it was awful. Because it was nine years since she had her last child, Pa was extremely worried that things could go wrong, as it had done when I was born. The thought of having to be with us on his own must have been an absolute nightmare for him! As Mum’s due date came closer, the wait seemed never ending. I would hurry through the weekly washing at the neighbours and race home on my pushbike whenever I had been shopping in the village. Getting home, panting breathlessly, I would find Mum still sitting in front of the window knitting yet another sock. As it was believed to be tempting fate to buy or make too many clothes before a baby was born, we only had the basic necessities, six homemade singlets and long-sleeved tops, a dozen lightweight nappies and some flannel wrappers. A neighbour gave Mum a rattan cradle for which I made pretty curtains from soft, multi-coloured material. I also made two sets of sheets and pillowslips, which Mum embroidered. As time went by, Pa became more nervous. Leaving the work up to Wout and my younger brothers, he stayed in the house all day driving us up the wall with his moaning and groaning. Then, in the early morning of the eleventh of December, Mum’s time had come. She had lost some blood and her cramps were increasing steadily. She sent me to Buurvrouw Bertha, our next door neighbour, the first and only one in our area who had a telephone, to ask her to ring the doctor. When he came an hour later, he said that it would take a while yet. Mum was not allowed out of bed any more and he would come back again in the afternoon. In the meantime, the buurvrouw had phoned the community health sister, who arrived on a pushbike a little later. The sister washed Mum, put a rubber sheet in the bed and prepared the narrow bedroom for the approaching birth. Pa and I helped her to set the double bed on blocks so that the doctor could reach Mum more easily. With no more than half a metre of space on one side of the bed, there was hardly room to move at all. I was six when my youngest brother Bartje was born totally unaware of what was happening, but this time I was the only one in the house with Pa. “It’s a good chance for you to see what you can expect when you get married,” Mum said, when she decided not to ask anybody else to help her. After telling Mum to try to get some sleep, the sister left. It was terrible to hear Mum groaning with pain. Pa walked around like a chook who couldn’t get rid of her egg, continuously wiping the sweat off his face. We were both relieved when we heard the doctor’s BMW roaring up the driveway again, shortly after midday. But after examining Mum, he left again. While he put his helmet and his big leather gloves back on, he told Pa that he needed soap and towels and plenty of boiling water. He would be back in a couple of hours. We were stunned, surely he would not leave Mum like that! She was gasping for breath at times and, although she did not scream, I could see that her pain was unbearable, when she had a contraction. Pa looked awfully pale. He could not bear to see Mum in so much agony for much longer, he said. While he went outside for some fresh air, I wiped the sweat off her forehead with a cold facecloth, just as Pa had done when she had yet another contraction. When one very long contraction subsided, Mum asked me to change her rags. Sanitary pads had not been invented at the time, or if they were, we had never seen them. As I had never seen Mum nude, I had an awful shock when I lifted the blankets. “Don’t just stand there gaping!” she yelled. “Take it away! Quickly! Hurry up!” Another contraction made her cringe while I pulled the bloodstained rags away, trying hard not to look. A gulf of sickly smelling fluid nearly went over my hands. “What are you doing?” a stern female voice came from the doorway. It was the community health sister. The doctor had told her to go to our place as soon as she could, as he had to attend another woman in labour. “Come! I’ll do that,” the sister said a little friendlier: “You are far too young for this kind of thing.” As the day went on, Pa had had quite a few brandies to steady his nerves, but they had little effect. Looking as white as a sheet, he walked around like a distressed bear in a cage. Every time he went into the bedroom, the sister sent him away, saying that he was upsetting Mum. Pa protested helplessly, saying that Mum said she liked him to wipe her face with a cold cloth, but she did not budge. When the doctor came back, there was no space for Pa in the tiny bedroom. “Everything is going fine,” the sister assured us, when she came out half an hour later. “It won’t be long now.” Mum sounded anything but fine. Her moaning and groaning often interrupted by muffled screams sent cold shivers down my spine. It was awful not being able to help her in any way. I felt sorry for Pa and handed him another brandy, taking little sips of my own glass while I worked my way through a big pile of ironing. When Jopie and Bartje came home from school, I sent them to their friends, promising to fetch them as soon as the baby was born. Henk and Wim had to help Wout with feeding and milking. Another hour passed. Then we heard the baby cry. Pa went into the bedroom immediately, leaving me on my own, trying desperately to hear what was being said. A moment later Pa came back with the biggest smile on his face I had ever seen, wiping his forehead with his already dripping hankie. “ It’s a boy!” he yelled. “Hear him scream! The old bull has done a fantastic job!” he boasted, grinning broadly. He shuddered when we hugged each other. “Poor Mum! What a misery to have to go through. I had no idea....” he stammered softly with tears in his eyes. I was dying to ask him about his other son, the one who had been born in 1927, nearly thirty years before. The son he could never mention let alone boast about... But of course that was unthinkable! I handed him the rest of his brandy instead, smiling happily: “To my little brother!” A few minutes later, the doctor came out of the bedroom with his helmet already on his head. He shook hands with Pa, congratulating him briefly, nodded to me and turned on his heels. “Good afternoon!” he said in his formal way, bending his head as he went through the low door to the deel. While the heavy motorbike roared past the house on his way to his other patient, who was having her baby that same afternoon, the sister called out. “Come and meet your little brother Mientje!” She did not have to call me twice. This was the moment I had been waiting for, for so long! Mum was praying when I came in, thanking God that her ordeal was finally over and she had such a beautiful, healthy baby. She looked very pale. She was completely worn out, she said. My heart overflowed with love when I took my tiny brother in my arms and looked at his rosy little face. Oh! I loved him so much already! I just about burst with pride, and relief, when I told the neighbours about him on my way to get Jopie and Bartje at Gert’s place. Ever since Mum became pregnant, we knew that the baby would be named after Pa’s brother Martinus, who died of the mumps when he was eight years old. ‘Martien’ for a boy or ‘Martina’ if Mum’s premonition would be wrong and it was a girl. He weighed nearly eight Dutch pounds (four kilos) but he was so tiny! Before the sister went home, I changed his nappy for the first time under her watchful eyes. Martientje (‘tje’ for little) was so beautiful with his perfect soft skin, his dark hair and tiny nose. My fingers were trembling from excitement when I secured the safety pins on his nappy. The sister warned me not to touch the band around his little belly which kept the navel cord in place, until it would fall off by itself on the tenth day. During those ten days, she would come every morning to wash Mum who had to stay in bed and bath my little brother while I would look after both of them for the rest of the time. When Martientje opened his dark little eyes the following morning he seemed so wise! He looked into the depths of my soul as if he had known me for a very long time. With all this talk about re-incarnation these days, we might well have known each other in a former life... When Wout returned from the milk-run that day, he said that someone on the route had a pram for sale. As Martientje had to be baptised that same afternoon, I went with him to buy the pram as soon as we had finished the midday meal. It was a hideous, old-fashioned looking thing; a deep olive-green basin with small wheels and a low hood, but it was clean and in good condition. The farmer and his wife could have had eleven children but only three had survived one boy and two girls. Tony, the eldest girl was a year younger than I was. (She would later become my sister-in-law by marrying Wout.) Her only brother was mentally retarded and had a hole in his heart. He did not have long to live either, his mother said. (He died when he was twenty-one). The poor woman had had several miscarriages and three still born babies. The others had died before their fourth birthday from various diseases. I felt terribly sorry for all the heartache those people must have had. But, on the way home on our push-bikes pulling the funny looking pram between us, I soon felt happy and excited again. I changed Martientje’s nappy before I put him in the pram. It sounds incredible to me now, to think that a fifteen and a ten-year-old would take their twenty-four-hour old baby brother to church to be baptised, on a bitterly cold winter day. But that was exactly what happened on that cold but sunny day in December 1954. Glowing with pride, Jopie and I pushed the old pram to the church in the village that afternoon, followed by Pa and some of my brothers on their bikes. I had written his names on a slip of paper to give to the priest. Every one of us had two names but Martien had four; Martinus, for Pa’s brother, Wilhelmus, for Pa’s father, Simon, for Mum’s father and Maria because Mum dedicated him to Mother Mary, to whom she always prayed so much. As expected, the villagers watched us from behind the curtains, waving to us. Some came outside and several people got off their bikes to admire our little brother. By the time we came back, it was four o’clock and already getting dark. Mum was relieved to have Martientje back in her arms again, now with a clean soul, free from inherited sin. She had prayed continuously while we were away not worried for a moment, knowing that our Heavenly Mother looked after us. The doctor called in every day, as Mum was weak. At first I found it embarrassing to put the bedpan under her, and shuddered when I saw the huge blood-clots she was losing, but I soon got used to cleaning her up. Visitors came every day to admire the baby and to bring a present, nearly always a little suit or socks. While I served them coffee or tea with the traditional beschuit met muisjes (buttered rusks with coloured aniseed) Pa entertained the visitors. Helped along by a borreltje to toast the health and happiness of mother and child, he boasted of producing such a beautiful son. He was cut short time and again by Mum, who reminded him that without God, he would not have achieved anything at all. There was no end to the pile of dishes that had to be washed on the table in the living-room as there was no sink in the old house. When the doctor came on the seventh day, I felt extremely tired. I was doing the breakfast dishes, while the midday meal was boiling over on the kachel. The room was filled with damp washing, hanging on racks from the doors and around the stove, as well as on triple lines around the ceiling. When the doctor came out of the bedroom he looked at me, then he turned to Pa and asked: “Is this girl doing the household on her own?” Pa laughed. “Yes! And what a fine job she does!” he said proudly. I blushed from Pa’s compliment in front of the doctor, but the doctor was angry. “She is far to young to handle a responsibility like that,” he said. “Make sure you get some other help. Can’t you see she needs a rest!” Then he turned on his heels, said his usual: “Good afternoon”, and left. There did not seem to be anyone Pa could ask, and besides, in another couple of days Mum would be up again. She was very proud of me and with the admiration of the visitors I could handle it all right. At times I was dragging my feet but after an early night, I felt refreshed again the following morning. After ten days in bed, flat on her back as was required, Mum still felt like a wet dishcloth, when she got up. The first couple of days she was of little help to me, but she could keep an eye on things, do some dishes and make tea and rusks for the visitors. Because I was needed at home, I had not been able to do the washing at our neighbour’s place. Jans had washed the most necessary items herself during those two weeks but there was an enormous pile waiting for me when I went there the following Monday morning. It was freezing. Before I could put the whites into the furnace-pot to boil them, I had to take the ice off the top of the soaking tubs. By the time I had finished our own weekly load on Tuesday, I was truly worn out. I lay in bed feeling exhausted, shivering for ages from cold, regardless of the hot-water bottles I had put in the bed before I got in myself. All I remembered of the next couple of days was Mum’s tired face, as she held me up and made me drink hot milk, before I gratefully returned to oblivion again. Chapter TWENTY-FOUR

After taking it easy for a week I was my usual cheerful self again, delighted with my tiny brother. Helping Mum had been a terrific experience I would not have wanted to miss for anything in the world. ‘ Tiesje’ (Martientje was such a long name for the little fellow) was a contented baby, probably due to Mum’s attitude to breast feeding him whenever he was hungry, regardless of what time of day or night it was. She did not take any notice of anyone warning her that she would spoil him rotten by allowing me to carry him around whenever he was upset during the day either. Because she knew the rewards, she persisted with breastfeeding when she struggled with terribly sore nipples. The milk was always ready and at the right temperature and she loved the close contact with her baby. On top of that she could rest, sitting or lying down with him several times a day while she fed him. There wasn’t anything I would rather do at the time than bath my tiny brother, sway around the room or sit on the swing at the deel with him, singing sweet lullabies. As fresh air was good for a baby I often walked with the hideous old pram to the village. A ‘forgotten’ item of the weekly grocery order, was a great excuse. I called in regularly to visit Opoe Kleter in her miserable little room at the back of the convent; the only room there was available for her at the time. Until Tante Annie and Tante Cor left for Canada, Opoe had been able to do the housework with the help of Tante Jans, but her rheumatism became worse during the following three years. During that time, life was very difficult for Ome Wim, Mum’s youngest brother, who was in his early thirties. Apart from his mother’s ill health and bad humour, he had to cope with his father’s mental deterioration and his mentally disturbed sister, Tante Jans, as well as working the farm. Ome Hannes, who lived next door on the shared boerderij, helped him on the land as much as he could, but his wife, Tante Cor had her hands too full with her own fast growing household, to help Opoe. Mum, too, had her work cut out from early morning to late at night; I don’t remember her ever going to Opoe’s place to help her family out. Shortly after Opa Kleter died in July 1951, two months after Mum re-married, my unfortunate grandmother developed a bad case of shingles as well as a recurring bout of nettle- rash. One day I went with Mum to visit her and saw the band of awful sores amidst the angry red nettle rash, which covered her midriff. Opoe sent me out of the room so that Mum could put the foul smelling lotion the doctor had prescribed on her itching body. The poor woman had not been able to sleep for days with the dreadful pain and itch. When Ome Wim was unable to cope any longer, arrangements were made for Opoe to live with the nuns in the village. The farm was split between Mum’s two brothers and Tante Jans went to an institution in the far south of Holland, where her attacks were kept under control with drugs. As she was not violent, Tante Jans later helped a family with small children, who lived close to the institution. Although she felt cheated out of her home, she seemed more contented as time went by and put on a lot of weight. I was thirteen and appalled when I visited Opoe for the first time in the convent, sitting in the bare recreation room amongst another dozen ‘homeless’ people, all in various states of mental and physical deterioration. As soon as she saw me, Opoe got up and took me to her room, where the others would not be able to listen in on our conversation. She moved slowly with the aid of a walking frame, into the passage then, via double doors into another passage where people were normally waiting for the doctor when he held his clinic in the village. Thinking that she had lost her orientation, I followed her into the doctor’s consulting room. Her room was at the back of the doctor’s room, a former storeroom. It had only one small window that overlooked a huge heap of black coal against a blank brick wall. The room was no more than two metres wide, just enough for a small table with her old rattan armchair in front of the window, and a single bed and a commode at the dark end behind the door. From where she sat, she could just see a little corner of grey sky above the red brick wall and the heap of coal. Not a blade of green was to be seen anywhere. The contrast with the wide, open polder where she had grown up must have been unbearable for her. Twice a week, when the doctor held his clinic, she could neither go into or out of her room all afternoon, often until past mealtime in the evening. The idea was that Opoe only slept in her room and spent the day with the rest of the inmates in the recreation room, where people sat staring at each other and into space. Others fidgeted, and shuffled around the room, making incoherent comments, oblivious to the world. She seemed to be the only ‘normal’ person there. Although her cell felt like a prison, Opoe preferred to be alone, especially with her sporadic visitors and it must have been a tremendous relief for her not to be scolded by Tante Jans every day. Mum seldom went to see her mother and when she did, it was only for a brief visit as it was ‘too depressing’. When the dreadful shingles finally healed, after months of suffering, Opoe begged Mum to take her home, when she and Pa visited her after church one Sunday morning. A street- photographer took a picture of them in the main street; Opoe arm-in-arm between Mum and Pa, who wheeled their bikes on their other sides, Opoe trudged the uneven road again managing to produce a smile for the camera. At that time, I attended the huishoud-school, also held in a room at the convent, and I visited Opoe regularly. She always listened patiently to my cheerful chatter and she never complained. Most of the time she just sat there, praying her rosary in front of a statue of the Cross standing on the table before her, asking God to take her out of her miserable existence. After Tiesje was born, visiting Opoe was a terrific excuse to go for a walk with him. Whenever I put him on her lap, she said that she had never liked kids, but she always caressed his tiny fingers while I chatted to both of them non-stop. When Mum’s recuperating time of six weeks had passed, she helped with feeding and milking again and when springtime came, she was more with Pa on the land than in the house as before. I felt as if Tiesje was my baby, but when someone suggested that he was I felt rather upset about it. As Mum was busy on the land, I always took Tiesje for his checkups and injections at the newly established local health centre in the village. I loved the attention we were both getting from the doctor and the sister as well as from villagers and passers-by on the twenty-minute walk. At the beginning of summer when Tiesje was five months old, a group of men was working on a new, automatic crossing of the railway line on the edge of the village. One of them was a very handsome young man in sparkling white overalls. He was in his early twenties, tall with dark eyes and black curly hair. He looked like one of the movie stars on the cigarette pictures I had saved at school the previous year. Every time I passed, the men called out smart remarks. I’d blush, smile at them briefly and walk on, barely daring to look up. “Here comes your girlfriend again, Peter!” one of them called one day. My heart went berserk whenever Peter said ‘Hello’ or waved to me. The powerful emotion made me think of excuses to go to the village a couple of times a day, either on my pushbike or walking with the pram. One day I heard one of the men telling Peter how good a shy village girl like me would be in bed. A couple of days later Peter came up to me when I crossed the railway. While I tried hard to control the pounding of my heart, he looked at my sleeping little brother in the old pram, asking if it was a boy or a girl. “He is as beautiful as his mother,” he said. When I said rather indignantly that he was my brother, he laughed and, saying that he did not believe me, he walked away. Tears welled up in my eyes as I walked home. When I came past our neighbour’s house, where an unmarried mother lived with her elderly parents, I became suddenly aware that that could have happened to me too if I had not stopped Pa. Maybe Mum’s praying had something to do with it too... Mum must have wondered why I suddenly wasn’t going to the village any more, but she didn’t ask any questions. The scoffing twinkle in Peter’s eyes when he said that I was lying haunted me for a long time. Other remarks I heard as time went by, made me think that people knew about Pa and me which made me feel very uncomfortable. By the end of summer Tiesje started to crawl. He was as quick on his knees as a toddler was who could walk. Thinking that he was with Mum, I had the shock of my life one afternoon, when I saw Mum in the garden without him. We looked everywhere, relieved that Pa was not home. In the end we found him at the back of the lean-to where the milk-cart was kept. Tears of relief rolled down our faces when he smiled at us from the top of a heap of egg-shaped coal, as black as Zwarte Piet, offering us a piece of black coal which he had obviously enjoyed eating. It was even more difficult to keep an eye on Tiesje when he could walk as we could never be sure with whom he was. We really panicked one day when nobody had seen him for over an hour. Pa was beside himself, scolding us something terrible for not having been able to take care of a little, one-year-old child. We had searched every nook and cranny in and around the house, in the garden, the sheds and even in the chook-yards, when we spotted him, behind the pig-shed, sitting on the manure-heap. “Just like Job in the Bible story!” Mum laughed, when Pa climbed to the top of the slippery mixture of straw and manure to get him down. We all laughed, but I felt terrible; the little fellow would have drowned if he had slipped down and fallen in the deep, open pit of pig urine at the back of the heap. Wout was away on the milk-run and the others were at school. I should have known that he was not with Mum or Pa. I deserved the terrible tongue-lashings I got from both of them as well as from Wout and the others as soon as they heard what had happened. A worse accident happened when Tiesje was two years old. He was probably looking for me when I was doing the washing at the neighbour’s that Monday morning. A woman, who came past on her way back from the village, thought she heard a child’s cry from the ditch beside the road in front of our house. She got off her bike, which was heavily loaded with bags of shopping. As she turned and walked back with the bike, she heard it again. Without hesitation, she dropped the bike onto the ground, as soon as she realised that the cry had come from the sloot. Lying on her belly in the high grass, she pulled our little Tiesje out of the water, covered from head to toe in mud and weeds. His lips were blue and he shivered in his dripping wet clothes, coughing and sneezing while the lady carried him inside. My younger siblings were home from school when it happened but nobody in the family had missed him. Even though I was away at the time, I felt responsible for what had happened; I should have told Jopie, who was twelve, not to let him out of her sight. Pa really went to town this time, screaming at the top of his lungs about what a lot of irresponsible no-hopers we were. When I was fifteen, I often had a sore back which Mum blamed on the fact that I was growing so fast and not sitting up straight when I was sewing. When a door-to-door salesman came around with corsets, Mum bought one for me too. While Mum fitted the old fashioned corset over my summer dress, Pa and the salesman watched, commenting on my budding figure and the pleasures of being young. “Oh! To be young and having your whole life before you!” the salesman said wistfully. “ Yeh! If I only knew then what I know now!” Pa replied. The pink, cotton garment reached from my bra to below my hips. Six, flexible strips, made from whalebone and sewn in length-wise would keep me from slouching. It was laced at the back as well as at the front to pull the body in tightly. Hoping nobody would come around the corner, I felt a real fool standing there outside on the pavement behind the house with a corset over my dress. The merchant pulled the laces so tight that I could hardly breath. Then he knotted them at the waist. That way it did not need any adjustment when I wore it over my hemd (chemise) he said, adding how silly it was that a lot of woman in the stad no longer wanted to wear them. I liked my harness; it kept me upright and it squeaked nicely when I bent over to pick up my felt cushion in church, just as it did for the grown-up women around me. A few months later, the same salesman came around with the latest invention in corsets. They were made from five-millimetre thick rubber with holes in them; the stuff some bathmats are made of. “ They don’t have those stiff strips which stick into your skin,” the salesman said and he convinced us that the rubber was breathing adequately through the holes. Mum bought one for herself and one for me. The first time I took it off, I had a good old scratch. My hemd was wet from sweat even though it was winter. The finely knitted stitches of the fabric had left their imprint on my skin, especially where it had bulged through the holes. Mum did not like hers either. As I hated being without my corset when it was being washed she sent me to the village to buy a second one a few weeks later. Co, the owner of our local haberdashery shop, was horrified. “But Mientje, you are far too young to wear a corset; that was only done years ago!” she exclaimed. Because I insisted that I liked wearing them, Co grudgingly let me take one home. But I did not wear them longer than a year; when I was sixteen I discarded them immediately when my new boyfriend, who came from the city, said he hated to put his arms around a ‘wooden doll’s’ waist. Although I loved being at home with the new baby, I started to miss going to school, the following summer. Getting out of the house one morning a week to do the washing at our neighbours’ was no longer enough for me. After begging Mum for a while, she allowed me to go to the advanced sewing classes in the village twice a week for a couple of hours. I liked school but progress was agonisingly slow. When I saw an advertisement for learning to sew by correspondence, I showed it to Mum who agreed that the lessons might be better for me. I sent away for more information and waited eagerly for their answer, which came the following week. The entire course for advanced sewing was seventy-five guilders, two weeks wages for a grown man. The idea was that I would cover one lesson a week, then send it off to be corrected and marked. I could not send another lesson until the marked one had come back. Mum was prepared to let me do that instead of going to school and paid the deposit on the course. I set out eagerly on the first lesson: “Make a full-figure petticoat to scale from the paper that has been included.” That was easy, as it was precisely the exercise that had left me so humiliated in Sister Adriane-Marie’s class, the previous year. “Haven’t you got anything better to do than pre-school work?” Pa grumbled when I was sewing the little petticoat by hand the following evening. It all seemed to be a waste of time in Mum’s eyes too. After a few weeks, I got sick of waiting for the lessons to return before I could send the next, and gladly took Pa up on his offer to pay the balance of the course and let the whole lot come at once. I would forget about making the patterns to scale and learn whatever I needed to know in my own time. But, as Pa was annoyed with me whenever he saw me with my nose in the lessons and whenever I wanted to try something out, Mum needed me to do a job for her, I soon used the course only as reference. As the growing tension between Wout and Pa got on my nerves, I felt trapped and looked for a way to get out of the house again. When I told Mum that I wanted to go to people’s homes to help them with their sewing, like Tante Annie, Marie and Moeke had done, she wasn’t too happy. She reminded me again that I would make life more difficult for her while helping others out. The following day she talked to Ard, a travelling salesman who came every week to take an order for fodder, about my wish to spread my wings. Ard had eleven children. His wife Miep was six months pregnant and always complaining that she could not cope with the household as well as the mending, he said and he was looking for someone to help her. When Pa heard how much money I would get, he soon talked Mum into letting me go, one day per week. I could hardly believe my luck and eagerly agreed to make sure the beds were made and the dishes done, before I left on my bike at a quarter past eight in the morning. Ard and Miep lived not far from Moeke’s trucker’s cafe off the main road to Amersfoort. Despite the streaming rain, I felt as free as a bird when I went there the following Thursday morning. As it was school holidays, a swarm of small children was watching me when Miep welcomed me into the warm living-room of their two storey house. She was a big soft-spoken woman, more than twice the size of her scrawny husband. “I get pregnant whenever Ard looks at me,” she sighed when I asked her if they were all her own children. Like Mum, she had another child every year. As she had a set of twins, her eldest son was only eleven, while she was pregnant with her twelfth child. Miep was a lovely lady and, as she treated me as an adult, we soon became the best of friends. As time went on, I heard a lot about her struggles to keep the peace between her chauvinistic husband and her rapidly expanding family. From an experience I had with her husband, I drew my own conclusions about her troubles in the bedroom, which she sometimes hinted at. After a few weeks, I baby-sat for Miep so that she could go with Ard to a wedding. She was eight months pregnant and did not expect it to be a late evening but I told her to enjoy herself and not to worry about the time, as there were plenty of books in the cupboard to keep me occupied. Ard had picked me up and was going to take me home on his brommer (a light motorbike which has to travel on the footpaths). It was a lovely warm evening. The moon was shining and I looked forward to the ride home on the back of Ard’s brommer. Ard had been coming round to our place for years, and I did not hesitate to put my arms around him and hold tight when he asked me to do so. While we drove along the highway at two in the morning, he suddenly held my knee. I brushed his hand away telling him to keep his hands on the handle bar of the bike instead. “I only wanted to feel if you were still there,” he said. A little outside our village, he tried again, but this time his hand went under my skirt. When I told him to stop, he did just that; he stopped the brommer! I was terrified when I realised that he had driven into a dark side street. “No need to be alarmed,” he said when I jumped off the bike: “All I want is a kiss and a bit of a cuddle.” I was furious! “Fancy having a wife and a house full of children and behaving like a schoolboy,” I thought. But, instead of speaking my mind, I said: “You take me home and go to Miep for a kiss and a cuddle.” “Oh! Come on!” Ard said impatiently. “Giving me a bit of a cuddle wouldn’t do you any harm.” “I’ll walk home and tell my mother about you,” I warned, sounding a lot braver then I felt, and walked away. Ard started the motor and, stopping beside me a little later, he grumbled: “Hop on! I’d better take you home.” Still apprehensive, I held onto the back of my seat, riding home in silence. As if nothing had happened he dropped me off, said goodbye and went home. I decided not to tell Mum as she might stop me from going to Ard’s place, especially now that Miep was about to have her baby. I was horrified one afternoon, a few weeks later when I walked into the pig-shed and found Ard with his arms around my mother; and she was laughing! I slipped out of the shed, utterly bewildered at the scene. After the baby was born, I looked after Miep’s children regularly, always staying the night, ‘because the children beg me to’, I told Mum. After what I had seen in the shed, I could not possibly tell her my real reason for not wanting Ard to take me home. I kept my eyes and ears wide open whenever Ard came around for the weekly orders, but there was never any indication of a relationship with my mother, other than doing business. Maybe an extra marital kiss and cuddle was what married people needed once in a while, I thought. But seeing my own mother like that scared the living hell out of me! Father forgive them. Men like Pa, Peter and Ard don’t know what they are doing to an innocent girl like me... Chapter TWENTY-FIVE

On my way home from sewing at Miep’s place, I called in regularly at Moeke’s house. Because Pa was eternally grateful to Moeke for what she had done for him and his family during the war, he never begrudged me going there. As there was no telephone, I told Mum before I left in the morning that I might not be home until late in the evening, so that she did not worry. Since Moeke had left the cafe to her eldest son, she lived a few hundred metres down the road towards Miep’s house, at her son Hannes’ farm. The big boerderij was only a few years old; the best I had ever seen inside. Moeke lived separately from Hannes’ family. She had her own driveway, but she could go to her son’s side via the deel. Her daughter-in-law, Annie, a large cheerful lady and as lovely to talk to as Moeke and Miep, had three little children. Moeke had two other sons. The youngest, Hendrik had been killed in Indonesia in 1948, when the former Dutch colony became independent and thousands of Indonesian people had escaped to Holland. “Hendrik was always a bit of an adventurer,” Moeke laughed when she told me about him. She had not been ‘too surprised’ when she got a letter after his death, to say that he had a son to an Indonesian girl, called ‘Sootchini’, or something like that. Moeke could not pronounce the name properly and introduced her to me as ‘Tante Tootsy’. It had been quite a shock to the family, when Tante Tootsy suddenly turned up with her gorgeous five-year-old, dark-skinned son, Henkie, named after his father. They lived in a little, wooden house, on the edge of the family’s property, close to Ard and Miep’s place. Tante Tootsy was the first dark lady I had ever met. She was quite young, shy and very petite. Her clothes were stylish and fitted perfectly. Her pitch-black hair was pinned in a loose bun at the back of her head. When she smiled she had dimples in her cheeks and she had beautiful white teeth. Her little house painted dark green, looked like a cottage from fairyland with its lacy curtains and pretty garden beside a fast running beek (brook or creek). ‘Tante’ Tootsy tried hard to speak Dutch properly with her strange accent, which often had me in stitches. She made me aware of the existence of sunnier places than Holland as she was always shivering, even when the sun was quite warm in summer. At times I felt deeply sorry for her, living so isolated without her own family, especially in winter when snow and the icy cold wind kept her indoors for weeks. Many years later when we lived in Central Australia, I would remember her shivering whenever I thought about the long cold winters in Holland. Brrr..

One Sunday afternoon when Mum came back from a bike-ride with Pa, she told me about their visit to her cousin Hannes at Hoogland. They had not seen each other for years. “Hannes looks terrible; there is something wrong with his blood,” she said shuddering. “He is still as unlucky in business as he has always been. He sold a perfectly good cow last week and bought a sick one in return. Poor Alie! She is having child after child and nothing ever goes right for her.” Mum’s two cousins Hannes and Simon, had been at loggerheads with each other from the day they were born. When their father, Mum’s father’s brother Hendrik re-married after his first wife had died, his bossy new wife and his two fighting sons, who spent every penny they earned on grog, made life sheer hell for him. Unable to cope with it any longer Uncle Hendrik became very depressed and he had hanged himself between the cows in the stable at the back of the house. Unfortunately Ome Hendrik’s horrible death had done nothing to improve the relationship between the two brothers. When Simon married, the property was divided; Simon stayed with his stepmother in the old house and a new house was built for Hannes in the paddock next to it, about a hundred metres apart. “ They are still not on speaking terms and were continuously spying on each other from behind the curtains,” Mum said, shaking her head. Mum had promised Alie to send me to help her with the mending the following Wednesday. Overjoyed to have another day away from home, I went on my way at eight-thirty that wet and freezing-cold morning, early in autumn. It had rained for days. The low-lying road to Hoogland was under water at several places. Standing on the pedals of my pushbike, I pedalled as fast as I could, then put my legs up high as I went through the huge puddles. Although Mum had warned me that neither Hannes nor Alie was a pretty sight, I had a terrible shock when I walked through the side door of their boerderij, where Alie was scrubbing a pair of overalls using a hard laundry brush on a ribbed, galvanised-iron wash-board, beside the pump. Her tiny body was as round as a keg of beer. With her stooped shoulders, her square, protruding chin, her skinny, black stockinged legs sticking out of a pair of old clogs, wearing her oldest clothes and with her hair sticking out on all sides, she looked like a witch. Alie greeted me with a big smile, showing her badly neglected teeth. Drying her hands on her apron, she said that they had never had enough money to buy a washing machine. She was doing a bit everyday now that the baby was due. I shuddered when she showed me her hands. Her fingers were raw from the icy cold water from the pump, the hard soap, washing soda and the bleach she worked with. “They are pretty good now,” she said in a slow voice with a singing, city-like accent: “You should see what they’re like in winter! I get big blisters which burst and sores that don’t heal up until I can dry them in the sun when summer starts.” She laughed again. “Come! Let’s have a cup of coffee first; the washing can wait,” she said while her bony fingers stroked my arm. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am to your mother for sending you. I thought that God couldn’t be bothered with me any more, but you are the answer to all my prayers.” Alie’s two eldest boys were at school; another three small children were playing in the kitchen-cum-living-room, which she called the ‘keuken’, making a terrible mess. One of them stank something awful! Annie, aged five, was the only girl so far and Alie hoped desperately to have another girl this time. While we sipped our coffee, she talked about her miserable life. “Ach! Ach! So much happened to me!” she would say time and again, shaking her head. Alie came from a small farming community, close to Amsterdam. Her mother, to whom she had been very close, had died when Alie was eight years old. Her father died when she was in her early teens. When the war broke out, she was well into her thirties and still single. Terrified to have to be a doormat for her brother and his nasty wife, for the rest of her life, she had answered an advertisement from a farmer who was looking for a wife. She shook her head again. “Ach! Ach! I’ll never forget the day Hannes came for me! I had to make up my mind that same day. He could not afford to come back, except for the wedding, he said.” Because her mother had warned her never to trust a bald man, Alie was petrified when Hannes kept his cap on, even when they said their prayers before the midday meal. “I just had to know,” she laughed, then serious again: “Ach! Ach! You can imagine how nervous I was. While I served Hannes his soup, I could not help myself, and knocked his cap off his head. I was absolutely horrified! He had no hair at all. His head was as smooth as a billiard- ball. My brother and his wife were furious with me for being so rude, but I had to know. Ach! Ach! So many terrible things have happened to me.” Because Alie was desperate to get away from her miserable existence at her brother’s place, she had agreed to marry Hannes before he left that evening. “ My wedding day and the following night were an absolute nightmare,” she assured me. “I’ll tell you about it one day.” While Alie was showing me her old sewing machine and the heap of overalls and trousers she wanted me to repair that day, Mum’s cousin came in. I tried hard not to stare at him. Hannes was a big man; his bald head was puffed up like a balloon, ready to burst. He had no eyebrows and his badly swollen lips nose and ears were always blue, as if he was very cold. When he shook hands with me, my hand disappeared completely in his. They were enormous! While he slurped his coffee with his thick, blue lips, he stroked his head with his free hand. His fat fingers reminded me of the liverwursts we had made the previous week. I felt exhausted by the family’s misery when I left, but happily promised to come back in two weeks, as Mum said I could. It was the start of a life long friendship with Alie, whom I greatly admired. No matter how bad things were, she managed to keep her spirits high between bouts of tears and laughter. She insisted on making the best meal she could afford, repeating time and again that our days together were the highlight in her dreary existence, and they kept her sane. I did not have to be paid, but she was terribly offended if I refused to accept the guilder she always put in my hand before I left. Despite their hardships, there was a lot of love in their household, which would become an antidote to me for the mounting troubles we were having at home. Unfortunately, after half a year, I was only allowed to go to Alie’s place once a month, as my sewing skills became more in demand and I could earn a lot of money somewhere else. The marriage of Hannes and Alie and their survival during the war is an incredible story. But, as Alie did not tell me the full story until I visited her in 1995, I’ll write about it later, perhaps in a book of short stories. On alternating Wednesdays, I went to Alie and a family in Amersfoort. Meneer van Montfoort came occasionally to buy fresh eggs and he gave us his German Shepherd, called ‘Joepie’, when she got pregnant. Her first litter of puppies had caused me so much heartache, when I was still at school. Meneer van Montfoort was a sergeant in the army, stationed in one of the three kazernes around Amersfoort. In his uniform he was a big, overpowering looking man, but he was a real softie underneath. His wife seemed always nervous about something or other. She was tall, skinny and untidy, and she had no control whatsoever over her four rowdy children. Come to think of it, neither of them had. With her pale blue eyes, her wispy reddish hair and sickly grey skin, she looked a-sociaal (very common). I always called her ‘Mevrouw’, no matter how often she asked me to call her by her first name. I somehow felt that I did not want to get too familiar with her; maybe because she and her husband were constantly quarrelling, and she never paid me at the end of the day as the others did, which caused me great trouble at home. Because Mevrouw had ‘a hole in her hand’ shortage of money was usually the reason for bitter arguments between her and her husband. The family had just moved into a brand-new house in one of the new areas of the rapid growing stad. Their house was in one of rows upon rows of identical, joined houses. Each house had a little garden at the front and a tiny yard with a small shed, at the back. According to Dutch tradition, the toilet was in the hall, conveniently next to the front door and underneath the staircase, which led to the three bedrooms and the douche-cel (shower) on the second floor. Next to the toilet, also under the staircase, was a low door to a tiny cellar, across from the kapstok (coat-rack). At the end the tiny hall was a narrow, rectangular kitchen and another door to the combined lounge and dining-room, where I was sewing, usually in front of the back window, overlooking their tiny, square garden. The room was about seven metres long and three and a half wide with one large window at each end. When the curtains were left open in the evening, which most people did, you could see straight through the house across the road, what people in the following street were doing. Nearly every family had the same; white lacy curtains and pot plants in front of the windows, a lounge-suite at the front, a dining-room table at the back of the room and a Dutch clock on the wall, next to the chimney. Only the quality of the furniture and the pictures on the walls were different, showing people’s interests and pride in their homes, or the lack of it. The van Montfoorts had five children, four girls and a boy. The sixth one, another girl, was expected the following year. Betty, the eldest, was six and looked a lot like her mother,pale and sickly. Loesje was a dark-eyed, solid girl of five and Ria a skinny little girl of four, with fierce burning eyes had long, streaky blond hair. The first time I was there, she poked her tongue out at me, spat at me and kicked my legs, telling me that she did not want me there. But, as time went on, we became the best of friends. Their three-year-old, blue-eyed brother Leo had beautiful blond, curly hair. He had the same name as his father and was obviously his parent’s favourite from the day he was born, which was hard on the girls, especially on Ria. I liked going there too. Meneer and Mevrouw van Montfoort thought the world of me, and they had a shower I could use. I had never seen a shower before and happily rode the seven kilometres (fourteen return) to Amersfoort on my pushbike for my weekly bath. In return and to earn a little pocket money, I often baby-sat for them. Their home became my refuge when things became too difficult for me at home. I always started sewing at nine in the morning and finished at six in the evening and I usually had a hot midday meal with the family and sandwiches before I went home. Pa always warned us to eat as often as we could at someone else’s place, as that saved money and we were not to leave any ‘good stuff’ behind, meaning: ‘use the plee at home, to save the manure for the garden’. As he promised, Pa let me go to Huissen for a couple of weeks every year to help his sister with her mending, mainly to please her, I guess. Tante Marie never gave me anything apart from a few guilders pocket money and the train-fare home. I usually went in May when the cows were out of the house, the spring-cleaning was done and it was too early for the haymaking, which started at the beginning of June, depending on the weather. The ‘outing’ was regarded as my yearly holiday. Tante Marie always had tons of repairs. Everything was mended until it literally fell apart. Before Martien was born, I had been to Huissen when the famous kermis was on in October, and I had a great time. But my best kermis was in Doornenburg with Riet, Tante Anna’s daughter, because we were free to go whenever and wherever we wanted. We tried every attraction of the huge sideshow as Riet had plenty of money. I did not care much for the scary ride in a little train through a dark tunnel where skeletons, monsters and ghosts lit up at every turn and I was as sick as a dog when I came off the Ferris-wheel. But I just about piddled in my pants with laughter at the distorting mirrors reflecting us in ridiculously funny shapes. In the fun parlour, called ‘cake-walk’ I was nervous on the conveyer belt, now common at every airport and bigger shopping complexes, even though a friendly young attendant was eager to put his arms around me. He often followed us onto the huge air mattress where a large group of youngsters rolled over each other, groping and laughing while a barrel-organ was going full blast. But my favourite at the show was the huge swings, shaped like boats and beautifully decorated with dragon and flower patterns. Alone, or with two in one ‘boat’ holding tightly onto the iron rods and singing with the popular music of the big barrel-organ at the back of the swings, we would fly up and down over the heads of the watching crowd. A group of young fellows, whistling and shouting as our wide skirts billowed in the wind, was eager to go on the swings with us. As they always paid for us we kept swinging for hours. Mum shuddered at the freedom Tante Anna gave us. The following year, when I was nearly sixteen, I had to take Jopie with me. Having a chaperone spoiled a lot of our fun. In May (1956) I went to Tante Marie in Huissen again, this time for three weeks. When Wout suggested he would take me there by pushbike, I took him up on the offer immediately. That way I had my bike there and would be able to go for a ride with Annie and Ria or Joe. Hoping that the weather would not spoil the plan, arrangements were made to leave the following Sunday after the early Mass. (We would never dream of skipping Mass, which was as big a sin as killing someone.) Gert came with us for the ride and Buurvrouw Bertha’s son Johan would ride with Wout while I rode with Gert. On Saturday evening we packed our bikes, ready for the seventy-kilometre trip. Wout and I got up early the following morning milked the cows, changed and went to church where we met up with Gert and Johan. The weather was perfect. I had never been so far on my pushbike before and could hardly wait for Mass to finish. When the pastoor gave his final blessing, we signalled to each other not to wait for the closing hymn and were on our bikes before anyone else got out of the church. The road wound through the beautiful ‘Veluwe’, a big nature area of hilly country where purple heather and yellow brem (broom) were just starting to bloom. About half way into the park we stopped to watch a shepherd and his dog with a flock of sheep near an over a hundred- year-old schaapskooi (sheep-pen). The thatched roof of the big old barn reached over the low, timber walls and nearly touched the ground. As there were only a couple of these kuddes left in Holland, we were lucky the shepherd was there when we came past. It was incredible that the barn was still standing, as there had been some heavy fighting in the open area during the war. We ate a sandwich and drank some of the lemonade we had with us before we went on our way to Arnhem where we stopped again. I had only seen the railway and bus-station there and we took the time to look round for a while. Arnhem was a beautiful stad, quite different from Amersfoort, which had a ring wall and a moat around the inner city. After an hour or so we got on our bikes for the last stretch of twelve kilometres, over the famous bridge that had been destroyed during the war and via the dyke along the Rhine to Huissen, where we arrived at three in the afternoon. My legs were stiff and my backside hurt but the trip was worth it! The boys stayed for the evening meal, then they left for the ride back. They would be home by midnight. I was glad not to have to go with them, as I could not possibly have spent another four hours in the saddle. But the boys were used to it as they often went for long rides on Sunday afternoon. The three weeks at Tante Marie’s place flew. I was mighty proud of the piles of underwear, bed linen, shirts and dresses, work trousers and overalls I had mended by the time I went home. When we said good-bye on Sunday evening, Annie, Ria and Joe promised to ride to Hooglanderveen in a couple of weeks. Ria, who was a seamstress in an atelier, close to the railway station, would ride with me to the station the following morning. The bike ride through Arnhem on that windy Monday morning, early in June 1956 would change my life, and that of my family, forever. Chapter TWENTY-SIX

A strong wind was blowing when Ria and I rode our bikes over the high dyke along the Rhine on the twelve-kilometre ride to the train-station in Arnhem. Ria had to be at work at a quarter to nine but my train did not go until ten-thirty and I was happy with her company. With our wide summer dresses billowing behind us, we laughed and giggled while we pedalled against the wind which put a fresh colour on our cheeks by the time we reached the outskirts of Arnhem, where two sailors were waiting at the first bus stop. “Hello beauties!” they called simultaneously as we rode past. I laughed shyly and said ‘Hi!’ but looking back a little further Ria and I waved enthusiastically to them. “Gee, that tall one looks great!” Ria said. “I wouldn’t mind going out with him!” It was the first time I had seen a sailor other than in a picture and agreed they looked stunning in their uniforms. It was not long before the bus overtook us. Sitting in the back, the sailors waved again. Feeling safe and as free as the birds, we waved back laughing and giggling until the bus disappeared around a corner. A little later the bus stopped and we went flying past waving and joking again, knowing that they could not hear us anyway. Ria even blew them a kiss! When we went through an underpass for fietsers the bus passed over the top with the sailors waving from the back. It then took a different route.

Close to the station Ria had to turn into a side street. We stood talking on the corner for a while when the same bus passed again. Ria’s words alarmed me: “You lucky thing! They are going to the station!” she exclaimed. I should have known! Where else would sailors go on a Monday morning? Ria envied me, but I would happily have changed places with her when we said good-bye. On my way to the station, I worried about what I was going to say if they spoke to me? My knees trembled when I saw them standing near the entrance. “Where is your bravery now?” I wondered, trying to steady my wildly beating heart. The shorter of the two waved to me before they disappeared into the station. I bought my ticket and wheeled my bike into the transport depot. There was no sign of the sailors on the nearly empty platform. Taking a deep breath I looked at the timetables when I noticed the short one coming towards me. “Hello again!” he said. “Where are you going?” “Amersfoort, “ I answered softly, hardly daring to look at him. “Then you have plenty of time to join us for a cup of coffee,” he said. “Okay?” He had already picked up my old suitcase and, smiling reassuringly he walked away with it. Not knowing what to say, I had nodded and followed him to the restaurant where his tall friend was waiting. He had already ordered coffee for me too, the friend said, hardly looking at me when we came in. But he stood up and shook hands with me when the short one introduced us. “I am Fre and this is Theo,” he said. “We are both on the same boat, heading for Den Helder where we go on board. Our train goes via Utrecht, a little later than yours.” I felt relieved they would not be on my train, at the same time cursing myself for being so shy. Ria would have known exactly what to say! Fre asked me my name and where I lived. Hardly audible I told him, adding that I had been to Huissen to help my aunty with her sewing. “What happened to your friend?” Theo asked. “She had to go to work,” I answered, fumbling in my pocket for a hankie to wipe the sweat off my forehead. The coffee was served and the two sailors struck up a conversation about their free weekend and what they could expect when they got on board, not knowing whether they would stay in the harbour or being sent off to sea. Fre asked me an occasional question, which I answered shyly but Theo, the better-looking, tall one, seemed bored with my company from the start. When it was time for me to go, Fre lit up another cigarette. He tore the top off the ‘Miss Blanche’ cigarette box, wrote on it and gave it to me. “This is my address,” he said. “Write to me if you feel like it. We always look forward to getting letters, especially when we are away at sea.” They both walked me to the train, shook hands with me before I boarded, and waved when the train left. Feeling stunned I let out a big sigh as I sat down in an empty compartment. I could not believe what had happened to me! Me, sitting there in the restaurant, sipping coffee with two complete strangers! Strangers? Sailors! Mum would have a fit if she found out! Sailors had a bad reputation. I could not believe how polite they had been. One day Pa said that they were always hanging around in the ‘red-light-district’ in Amsterdam, visiting the prostitutes. He was furious with Wout, telling him to keep his big mouth shut, when Wout asked him if he had been there himself so often, as he seemed to know so much about them. I did not tell anyone about my meeting at the station until Tante Lena and Ome Albert from The Hague came to stay with us, two weeks later. We had not heard from them at all while Mum was a widow. But, since she had re-married, they had stayed with us every summer for a couple of weeks. Tante Lena was lovely. She was always happily pottering around the house, cooking and cleaning and she had the cutest laugh. I had been to their place in Den Haag once for a couple of days, when I was twelve or thirteen. I could not understand how people could live in those three storey high cubicles, having to share the same entrance of their house with several neighbours. Ome Albert was a cranky and sarcastic man and so fat that he could hardly walk. He was a retired baker, terribly fussy about everything he ate. He even criticised Ome Willem’s bread, which was regarded as the best in the whole district. He was always arguing, which made him a good match for Pa. Mum always prayed for him to change his dangerous, communistic ideas. I liked their eldest son, Appie whose soft laughing eyes, magnified by his dark-rimmed glasses, disturbed me. He was Wout’s age, two years older than I was. But, as I could not imagine being married to a city bloke like him, I did not want to be his girlfriend. His only brother Louis was a handsome looking fellow, and he knew it. He was arrogant, not interested in anyone but himself and I did not trust him. He was sixteen, and already engaged. Tiny, his fiancee was the same age and came with them on holiday this time. They were real city people; dressed in the latest fashion and speaking like royals. Tiny was worldly-wise and she wore a lot of make-up, which Mum hated. I liked her immediately and within a couple of days, we became great friends. When I told Tiny about the sailors and showed her Fre’s address on the narrow slip of cardboard, she said: “Write to him! It will be great fun to get letters and postcards from all over the world.” Because Fre was not the handsome looking Theo, I was not in a hurry to write but, as I had promised Tiny, I wrote a short letter that same evening. In it I thanked him formally for the coffee, told him a bit about my family and lied about my age. I wrote that I was born on 30th of October 1938, which made me seventeen, instead of a baby of sixteen. Because my birthday was only half a year away, I had come to think about myself as being seventeen; especially after I placed an advertisement for more sewing in the newspaper. After I gave the letter to Tiny to mail the following morning, I told Mum about my meeting with the sailors, adding that I had written to one of them. Tante Lena laughed at Mum’s worried expression. “There’s no harm in writing letters,” she smiled with a twinkle in her eyes. “No, but from one thing comes another,” Mum replied with trembling lips. “I’d rather she keeps away from boys for a few years yet. She is much too young for verkering (courting).” Talking about Louis and Tiny, Tante Lena argued that no one could stop young people from falling in love anyway. In the end, Mum gave me permission to write to Fre, as long as she could read his letters too. A week later Frits, the postman, delivered a letter (dated 19 June 1956) with a picture of a marine ship on the left corner of the envelope, addressed to me. With trembling hands, I studied the picture before I opened the letter: “Hr. Ma. (Her Majesty) The Seven Provinces” it said. A deep red coloured my cheeks when I took the two closely filled pages from the envelope, overwhelmed by the beautiful artistic handwriting in front of me. Fre’s writing was so mature! What would he be thinking of my big, childish hanepoten (rooster-claws), written with a cheap ball-pen on a page ripped out of an exercise book? Looking at the long, forward curls of his writing, I also felt that he was quite a show-off. With Mum reading over my shoulder, I learned that Fre was born on the 19th of November 1930, which made him twenty-six. So old! ‘Fre’ was a nickname for Frits, he said, given to him by his sister Bep, with whom he spent the weekends when he was home from the navy. Bep’s husband, Bert, was a policeman and they had four children, three girls and a little boy. Fre was one of six in his family, two girls and four boys. His mother had died suddenly in February, three months ago, while he was on a navy exercise in the Mediterranean. His two, much older sisters and two older brothers were married and they all had children. Another, younger brother, a seaman on a coastal merchant ship, was engaged. “ It’s no pleasure always being away from home, although other people may see that differently,” he wrote. He had been to the land of the ‘head-hunters’ (New Guinea) for eighteen months, from April ‘53 until October ‘55, and he was relieved that his six-year contract with the Dutch Royal Navy would end on the first of October, just over three months away. Before he had joined the navy, he had worked as a glazenier, making and repairing church windows, a job he loved and he hoped to get back into when he left the navy. “An artist, making leadlight windows! What kind of job was that?” I expected Mum to say, but she did not comment on it at all. She was more excited than I was when I finished reading the letter. I was rather disappointed, mainly because he was so much older than I was. Nine years! “He certainly did not look that old to me,” I said, when I gave the letter to Tiny to read. “And so much for getting letters and postcards from all over the world! He is leaving the navy in three months.” “He sounds nice though,” Tiny said, when she finished reading. “You’ll write again, won’t you?” “I always wanted a tall man like Theo, the other sailor,” I protested. “I’d even be taller than he is when I wear high heels.” “ Good looks aren’t everything you know,” Tiny reminded me softly. She was terribly disappointed in Louis, planning to break up with him when they got back to Den Haag the following week. Before the family left, Tiny made me promise to write to Fre that same evening. She broke her engagement with Louis, but we kept in contact with each other for another ten years or more. In my letter to Fre, I did not mention my disappointment about his age. I told him that he looked a lot younger, which was apparently no compliment either. I wrote a lengthy account about Ria and Annie, who had come for a visit on their pushbikes from Huissen, the previous Sunday. They were soaking wet when they arrived and had to go back the same day; a return trip of a hundred and forty kilometres! We had great fun and the day had flown. After the evening meal, Jopie and I had gone with them on our bikes for more than twenty kilometres. A downpour during a terrible thunderstorm, half way home had soaked us to the bone too, but it had not dampened our enthusiasm at all. I wrote that our visitors from The Hague had taken a lot of photos and I generously offered him one, when they were ready. The nerve of me! Making photos was very expensive at the time. They had taken an entire film of twelve (black and white) pictures and kept them all for themselves, naturally. Before I closed the letter, I said that everybody was looking forward to hearing from him again and ended with kind regards from the whole family, including Pa. There was no need to tell him that Pa walked around with a sour face all day, telling Mum not to be so stupid as to show any interest in someone as low as a sailor. They were the scum of the earth, he said. When Fre’s second letter came a week later, Mum had already read it when I came home from sewing, which made me angry. It was spoiling my fun. Surely she could let me read it first! With trembling mouth, Mum told me that I was lucky she had given it to me at all. The passport photo, which fell out of the envelope, was not a flattering one. On it Fre looked even older than he was. With Tiesje on my lap, and Henk, Wim, Joke and Bartje sitting on the floor beside me, hanging onto every word, I read the letter out to them. Fre wrote that he was leaving for Stavanger in Norway the following day for a ‘courtesy’ visit. He would be back on the eighth of July, in time for his sister Bep’s birthday on the fourteenth. While he was writing, one of the younger sailors had fallen overboard, screaming like a pig. “Luckily, they were able to fish him out of the icy cold water before he was swept away on the waves,” Fre wrote. “Wouldn’t everybody?” I interrupted sarcastically. In the following line, Fre admitted that he would probably have done the same, if he had been the one in the water. With a shock I read that he was thinking of coming to see me on his motorbike on his next weekend off. I did not want him to see where and how I lived at all! I felt relieved when he said in the following sentence, that he would not be free for a while yet. He went on to describe how they were sleeping in narrow, hard beds, three above each other, and again how he longed to see the end of his travelling life. “I have been to nearly every country in the world, including America and Australia, and look forward to enjoying the peaceful life in Holland, which is still the most beautiful country in the world,” he wrote. Mum smiled but Pa grumbled, warning her to stop us getting attached before it was too late. It would be her fault if things went wrong, he said. Mum said that she did not want to spoil my fun. As long as I let her read Fre’s letters as well as what I wrote to him in return, she had no objection to our correspondence. Chapter TWENTY-SEVEN

Compared to Fre’s letters, mine were awfully short and boring as my life centred around never ending housework, hay making, weeding endless rows of carrots and beets, picking cucumbers and strawberries for the market and sewing at a few people’s places, one or two days a week. I blushed when Fre wrote “Beste (dear) Mini” above his third letter. Since I had left school a lot of people called me ‘Mien’, instead of the sweeter sounding ‘Mientje’, but nobody had ever called me ‘Mini’ before. He probably found Mien too old-fashioned, I thought. There were six hundred men aboard the cruiser and work was easy, Fre wrote. He was a radar-operator, registering any vessels or aeroplanes entering the area in which they operated. The job was interesting enough but there were many, empty hours to fill between each ‘watch’. Every time they came back in the harbour, they had to unload every bit of ammunition that was on board the ship and carry it into the depot. Because each grenade weighed up to fifty kilos, it was an exhausting job but, as loading and unloading them was often the only exercise they got for weeks, he did not mind, he said. Jopie and the boys were sitting at my feet again while I read aloud. They doubled up laughing when Fre wrote about some of his funny adventures such as when he went to Papua New Guinea in April 1953, and flew for the first time. He had been very nervous when he left Schiphol, Amsterdam airport, at eleven o’clock at night, and wondered why the plane was flying continuously around a green light on an advertisement-pillar. After an hour or so he had plucked up enough courage to ask a flight attendant what was happening. “You can imagine how embarrassed I was when the steward told me that I was looking at the flickering green light on the tip of the plane’s wing,” Fre wrote. “How could I have been so stupid not to think of that!” Fre’s frank admission made him more likeable. So did his account of New Guinea where the indigenous people were still running around naked and the navy camp was very primitive. As there was not much work for them around the camp, reading books and watching movies in an open-air theatre was their main way of coping with boredom. “When it was full moon you could hardly see the picture and there were always millions of mosquitoes about in the hot and humid nights,” Fre wrote. They were sitting on sawn-off oil drums, close to the screen to be able to hear what was being said, while the Papuans watched from behind a wire fence, laughing and shouting at them and the film, in their rapid language. They were chewing some sort of plant, which they spat out, often showering the sailors in their bright white tropen-uniform in the process. “Pigs are extremely valuable to them” he went on. “The Papuans fatten them up with the best food they can lay their hands on and they are allowed to walk freely through the houses. When the family’s pig is big enough, it’s a gift to the eldest son to buy himself a wife.” After a lot of laughter and comments from my family about the value of a woman, I continued the letter. “One of the women was feeding a little pig and her own child from each breast at the same time.” More laughter and pulling faces, urging me to read on. “I wanted to take a picture of her but she saw me and ran away. They are scared of having their picture taken as they believe it robs them of their spirit.” “ Even though the Papuans are scared to death of snakes, they always walk in bare feet through the high grass,” Fre wrote. He then explained how he had injected a three-foot, live snake which was held down by one of his mates, scale by scale, with a formula which turned it into stone. He had rolled the snake up in a natural coil, and taken it home where it had scared the living daylights out of his sister. I was horrified at such cruelty but my brothers thought it was very brave. The snake would have died with the first injection anyway, they argued. It seemed to me that all boys and men were cruel to animals. Even my own brothers thought it great fun to blow up helpless frogs and let them dry (and die) on a barbed wire fence. Pa’s madman’s laugh, when he castrated newborn piglets gave me goosebumps every time I heard them scream. One day, shortly after Mum remarried, I had walked into the shed, not knowing what was going on. He had just bitten off a little pig’s testicles and spat them in front of my feet. With blood dripping from the corner of his mouth, he grinned at me saying that he was taking the pig’s ‘happiness’ away; then he laughed his terrifying laugh. I could not understand for the life of me, how Mum could help him with this operation. She later explained that she had been as horrified as I had been at Pa’s old-fashioned way of castrating the piglets. Before he came, the vet always came to do the job, which cost a lot of money. By helping him, Mum made sure it was done the same way as the vet had done it. They now made a small incision with a razorblade, using Lysol, a strong burning disinfectant. According to my Pears Medical Encyclopaedia Lysol is a soapy solution of cresol, once almost as popular in suicidal attempts as it was a general disinfectant for cleaning, frequently used in the home. As a caustic it is a very unpleasant way of suicide, producing burning wherever it touches, the article says. Writing this reminded me of how we had nearly lost my little brother that same week Fre’s letter arrived. When I came home from sewing that Wednesday evening, I found my family terribly upset. Eighteen-months-old Tiesje had drunk from the bottle of Lysol which my parents used when they castrated the piglets. Blisters had appeared immediately on his little lips. Luckily, the doctor was at home when buurvrouw Bertha rang him shortly after it happened that afternoon. He would be there as soon as possible. In the mean time Mum had to give the toddler as much milk as he would take and try to make him vomit. Tiesje screamed at the top of his lungs and refused to drink any of the milk Mum tried to give him. Within minutes, the doctor roared into our driveway on his heavy motorbike. Before he even took his helmet off, he grabbed the little fellow and, holding him upside down he beat him hard on his little back to make him vomit. Then he put a tube down his throat and pumped his stomach empty. It seems that my darling little brother had only put the bottle on his mouth and had not swallowed any of the dangerous, burning poison. After a week the blisters were healed. The doctor’s anger at Mum for being so careless was surpassed tenfold by Pa’s fury. In turn it was passed on to me, quite unnecessarily as I already scolded myself for not putting the bottle in a safer place when I had seen it on a low shelf a few days earlier.

Back to Fre stories of New Guinea. Fre wrote that he had ‘bought’ a dozen different, handcrafted and beautifully decorated spears by swapping tobacco, cigarettes, food and mirrors. Because it was unbearably hot, and there was little to do around the camp, the days were dragging on, he said. They lived mainly on canned food. He had lost twelve kilograms during the eighteen months he was there. He weighed only fifty-four kilos when he came back, but he was now back to his normal sixty kilos again. During his time in New Guinea, they had made a frightening trip to Australia in a landing craft, which needed an overhaul. The trip was supposed to take six weeks; two weeks at sea, two weeks in Brisbane, then back again. But nearly half a year had passed before they were back in New Guinea. When they got to the Coral Sea, one of the two motors of the boat failed. They could stay afloat but they made little progress. While the weather was good, it felt like a holiday for the twenty-four crew-members aboard who spent their time playing cards, drinking beer and fishing. While they waited for help, the sailors caught a huge shark. Sick of eating tinned meat, they were happy to try the big fish, but when the cook prepared some of it, nobody ate it. The shark was fed to its mates and the men were back to eating tinned meat again. They had been drifting back and forth for four days when a passing Australian cruiser towed them through the currents of Cook’s Passage to Cairns where the motor was repaired. From there they could go on under their own steam to Brisbane, or so the commander thought. But, due to bad weather near McKay, the motor failed again as water seeped into the fuel. They later discovered that the tanks had rusted through. For three days, the vessel drifted in rough waters, before it struck a reef, in the middle of the night. The sailors asked the commander’s permission to get stuck into their supply of beer, saying that it wouldn’t do anybody any good, if the ship sunk to the ‘cellar’. The vessel came loose at high tide the following morning. It had a hole in the bottom and another SOS was sent out. The Australian Navy responded immediately but it took a while before they could reach the ship, which was filling with water as quickly as it was hosed out. More than a month overdue, the landing craft was finally towed into the harbour at Brisbane, where a big welcome awaited the crew. “A lot of fuss was made in the papers about the ‘brave Dutch sailors’, who said that it was no big deal,” Fre wrote. “But, because most us were drunk, we were hardly aware of our peculiar situation.” It took four months for the landing craft to be repaired. During that time, Fre had a great time, going into the city with some of his friends, fitting hats and pretending to buy bras for their girlfriends at home. They had a good look around the city and were entertained by many Dutch- born people of whom hundreds lived in and around Brisbane. Fre was not impressed by the immigrants’ poor existence. “The climate is great,” he wrote. “But I would never want to live there.” Little did he know what the future held in store for him! Two dozen head of cattle accompanied the sailors on their way back to New Guinea, a gift for a missionary there. As they had been roaming around freely in the bush, they were quite wild. Fre got the job of helping a sailor who came from a farm in the south of Holland to look after the animals during the two-week journey. Two postcards arrived during the next two weeks, one from Stockholm in Sweden and one from Kopenhagen in Denmark, followed by a long letter. He had hoped to be able to stay in Holland after he came back from New Guinea, shortly before I met him but instead of celebrating his sister’s birthday, Fre had left that day for a visit to Russia. He had not received my letter and, as they were not permitted to send postcards or letters until they were well away from Russian waters, he wrote to me on the way back from Leningrad to Stockholm. He had not looked forward to the trip, but as the mariners were well looked after, he had enjoyed the visit very much. “ It was a privilege for the Royal Dutch Navy to be invited to Russia; the first time in history,” he wrote. “We were instructed to be on our best behaviour and to leave a good impression on the Russians. They are very nice people. We had some interesting conversations, speaking English, German and a little Russian, which we picked up during the trip. We could take as many photographs as we wanted in the city and the parks, but military objects were strictly forbidden.” “The Russians feel sorry for us,” Fre continued. “The reason that there is hardly anything in the shops in Russia, is because people buy everything that is for sale as soon as it appears in the shop windows. They think that people in Holland have no money; that’s why our shops stay so full.” He went on to say that the newspapers pitied ‘those nice men for having to go back to the oppression of the Americans’. “Everything is very expensive in Russia. When you see the people in their poor clothing, you think you are back in the time of the German occupation,” he wrote. “The average person can not afford to buy dresses or shoes; the girls had never heard of nylon stockings. Most people wear shoes made from strengthened hessian, with wooden slats under it, like we used to during the war. It’s normal for women to sweep the streets, lay bricks or work as mechanics.” Fre and one of his navy friends had been invited by two girls to meet their families. Their houses were bare and neglected, the paint flaking off the walls everywhere. The girls had shown them the magnificent city and the beautiful parks where not a blade of grass was out of place and the streets were immaculately clean. “Throwing away the butt of a cigarette, could land you in jail for months,” he wrote, adding that they should do that in Holland too. Thousands of people had waved them farewell when the ‘Seven Provinces’ left the Russian harbour at two o’clock in the morning. Accompanied by the marine band, the sailors sang their entire repertoire of popular songs, while the Russians were yelling: “Daswidanja! Auf Wedersihen! Good-bye,” and in Dutch: “Vaarwel” and “Tot Ziens!” Fre had mailed his letter in Stockholm, another beautiful city. He had been there often for exercises in the magnificent fjords. Fre’s letters entertained my whole family, including Pa, even though he would never admit it. Mum looked forward to them as much as I did and, in August, a little over two months after we met, she allowed him to come for a visit. But before that happened, I first had to find out if he was a Catholic. If he wasn’t, there was no way we could go on with our growing relationship. Any friendship with the opposite sex was automatically thought of as a marriage possibility. Being of the same religion would save the couple in question, as well as their parents and siblings endless heartache. The old saying that ‘the devil himself slept between two people of different religions’, made good sense to me. How could you possibly bring up your children properly if you had different beliefs and went to different churches? Therefore it was irresponsible of me to invite Fre to meet my family before I knew what his religion was. Without asking Mum first, I had already asked him to come during his holiday in September, in a letter I had written while I was baby-sitting at Miep’s place. Miep said it was ridiculous that Mum had to read my letters; no matter that I was only sixteen. “Fre’s visit is no different from that of all those boys who are always hanging around at your place,” she said. But it was! Every single one of them was Catholic. A mixed marriage, and getting pregnant before you were married, were the biggest disasters you could bring on your family. Tante Mina’s eldest daughter, who came to help Mum when my aunties left for Canada, had brought such shame to her family the previous year. Because Mum had been away in hospital so long after I was born, Tante Mina’s children did not know any better than that Wout, Siem and I were their cousins, their mother’s sister Wijm’s children, of my father’s first marriage. I often called in on my way to school to walk up with my ‘cousins’, but one morning I found the house empty. I could not understand what was wrong as Tante Mina was always home. A few days later Mum told me that the whole family had been to Amersfoort where Annie married her boyfriend, who was an atheist, which Mum regarded to be far worse than a Protestant. Annie married in complete secret and there had been no party for them. Even though her husband was not treated any differently from the other girls’ friends at Tante Mina’s place, they kept the shame of a ‘mixed marriage’ restricted to their own household. Mum wanted me to ask Fre straight out but afraid that his answer would be negative, I kept putting it off. With the feast of the Holy Mary’s Visitation, a Sunday for Catholics, was coming up on the fifteenth of August, I asked Fre if he had the day off too, and waited anxiously for his reply. Fre had understood the question perfectly and made a joke out of it. “You asked if I was Proteliek or Cahtastant,” he wrote. “Yes I had the day off too as I am a Catholic.” Mum’s relief seemed even greater than mine was. Because our guests from Den Haag had not left us any pictures, I went to a photographer in Amersfoort and had a passport photo made to send to Fre. But, as I had not asked Mum’s permission, it was very difficult for me to find an opportunity to pick it up when it was ready. Two agonising weeks went past before a neighbour finally collected it for me. It was an awful photo but, as it had cost me every penny I had saved up from baby-sitting money, I sent it to him anyway, anxiously waiting for his reply. Praying that Mum would not get the letter first, I waited for Frits, the postman on my way to sewing. Fre had been appalled when he received the picture. “It’s not how I remember you at all,” he wrote, promising to bring his camera when he came for his visit. As I felt terribly self-conscious about our family and the old cottage we lived in, I prepared him carefully. I warned him not to expect a big boerderij: “Our old cottage is ready to be demolished,” I wrote. I did not tell him that Pa was furious with Mum, and himself, for giving permission for him to come. It had taken me a lot of persuading and ‘being nice’ to him, which meant doing extra jobs and emptying his overflowing bedpan without complaining about the dirty job. In winter I could throw it behind the cows at the back of the house, but in summer I had to carry it all the way to the plee, some fifty metres away. My father had planted a big liguster hedge, he had trimmed meticulously twice a year, for privacy as well as a wind-break, but Pa had taken it away, saying that it was too much trouble. Everybody who came over the road could see me, walking carefully with the foul smelling po, trying to avoid spilling its contents over the edges. Mum had as much fun as Pa did in teasing me for wanting to become a nurse. They seldom failed to fill it to capacity so that the lid of the bedpan was usually floating on the top in the morning. Like making the beds, if I left the job undone in the morning it was usually still waiting for me when I came back from sewing or washing at the neighbours. With every letter Fre wrote I felt more attracted to him. He obviously loved children. His sister’s little ones were always looking forward to him coming ‘home’ when he had a weekend off, even if it was only for the chocolate he always brought for them. He seemed to have such an easy life. Fancy being able to play billiards or go to the movies every night! Apart from a few ‘Laurel and Hardy’ films at school, I had never seen a movie and it was unlikely I would get to the cinema in the near future either, as Mum said that films were even more evil than books. Drawing pictures and dancing were Fre’s main hobbies, he wrote. He had not had much opportunity to dance since ‘53 when he had given dancing lessons to the boys aboard the ‘Tromp’, the ship he was on at the time, offering to teach me too. He filled his spare time, of which he seemed to have plenty, with reading a good book and working on his photo albums and he developed his own black and white pictures aboard, under the supervision of a friend who was a navy photographer. I answered his question about my interests by saying that I loved riding my bike, reading, dancing and sewing. I did not mention that the only time I could read was when I was baby- sitting, or sometimes on Sunday afternoons when the ‘old folk’, a term Pa detested, were taking a nap. And that I always had to repair endless stacks of underwear, overalls and other work clothing before I could make anything new. Riding my bike to work in winter, and in a wet summer like the one we were having that year, was not much fun either. I told him that Pa had taught me the Vienna Waltz and the Foxtrot and I was going to dancing lessons in September. Fre’s letters made me feel that I was missing out on a lot of fun but, as most girls I knew had to work just as hard, I soon felt good about my life again. Two weeks before Fre’s visit he transferred from the ‘Seven Provinces’ to the ‘Neptune’ where ‘the food was a bit better’. Most fellow sailors, who were about to leave the navy, were sent to the ‘Marva’ (navy women), he wrote. While the girls cleaned and restored the inside of their ship, the men painted the outside, sitting on a narrow board, which was lowered by cables above the dark, swirling water. Fre was not keen on the job, he said, because he could not swim. My brothers thought that was a great joke, a sailor who could not swim! Fre told us later that he had had his paper signed by a ‘mate’ without doing the required test. “I had to pay for it,” he said; “I was scared stiff of the job, all those years I was in the navy.” One day it had nearly cost him his life, when he fell into the harbour. Thinking that he had jumped in for a swim his mates had not bothered about him until they realised, just in time, that he was in trouble. Hoping that Pa would not miss the postcard size family photograph, that always stood on the dressoir (sideboard), I send it to Fre, asking him to return it in his next letter, as it was the only one we had. The photo had been taken the previous year by a professional photographer to be sent to Mum’s two sisters in Canada and Pa’s three sisters in Huissen and Doornenburg. It was a good photo of everybody and a flattering picture of me with little Tiesje, an inquisitive-looking eight-month-old baby sitting on his proud father’s lap. From his letters, Fre sounded terribly fussy about food. The corners of Mum’s mouth turned down when she read that he often bought a meal in a restaurant, as he did not like the monotonous dinners on board. “What a stadse fratsen (silly city fusspot)!” she said disgustedly. “When he comes here, he just has to eat whatever I dish up for everyone!” In the week before Fre’s visit on Sunday the ninth of September, I cleaned the whole house, which helped to steady my nerves. Pa had become more cantankerous with every passing day, bemoaning his mistake and trying to persuade Mum to stop Fre from visiting. But Mum said she had given her word and there was no way she would take it back, sternly warning me time and again, not to do anything I would be ashamed of later. Knowing that Pa was always on his best behaviour when we had company, I did not expect him to make any trouble. But I agonised about dinner as Mum refused to tell me what she was planning to cook that Sunday. Chapter TWENTY-EIGHT

The weather was terrible in 1956. Rain, rain and more rain had ruined the hay-making in June. Some farmers had burned their winter supply because it was so black with mould, that it could not even be used in the pigs’ pens. Carrots, beets and potatoes were rotting in the ground. The sun was shining on the morning of the ninth of September when Fre, my sailor friend, was due to arrive for his first visit. Over three months had passed since we had met and I had learned a lot about him. I told him in a letter to take the bus to Nijkerk from the station in Amersfoort, and to get off at the only stop on the highway for Hooglanderveen, warning him that the next stop was several kilometres further on. One of my brothers would probably meet him with a pushbike, as it was another twenty-five minute walk from there to our house. Because Mum still had to read everything I wrote to him, I could not tell him that I would try to meet him there myself. I did manage to get permission at the last minute, as long as I took Jopie with me and waited anxiously for the bus, feeling excited and nervous. As planned, Fre had been to the early Mass in Arnhem before he took the train to Amersfoort and arrived at the bus stop at a quarter past eleven. My heart beat in my throat when the nearly empty bus came around the bend and I saw him talking to the driver. Next minute he came towards us in his smart-looking uniform, shook hands with me briefly, then turned to Jopie, who stood in awe of him. “And you are Jopie, aren’t you?” he said, shaking her hand too. While he strapped his bag on the back of my old bike, talking to Jopie in his soft, southern accent, I watched him. He looked very handsome in his spotlessly clean freshly pressed uniform with the open neck, the square collar with white lines around the edges, and his white cap which had two ribbons hanging from the back. The black suit accentuated his slim body. He even seemed a little taller than I remembered him and I had forgotten his quick, friendly smile. To avoid being stared at by the locals, I took the back road home painfully aware that the narrow, muddy path was ruining Fre’s perfectly shining shoes. Heads turned and curtains moved when we got onto our street, walking with Jopie and the bike between us. “I don’t think they have ever seen a sailor before,” I said when Fre commented on it. Closer to home, people opened the curtains and waved; some children ran outside to have a closer look at the man from the sea. Henk, Wim and Bartje were waiting for us at our neighbour’s driveway with Gert and a few other boys. None of them had ever seen the North Sea, let alone a navy ship or a sailor! They all followed us to our house. “It looks lovely!” Fre said when I pointed to our old, white house with the thatched roof in the distance. The previous day Jopie and I had cleaned and polished until late in the evening, and I had put fresh flowers on the table before we left that morning. The windows were sparkling in the sun and even the flowers in the garden seemed to smile at me, as we walked into our driveway. I had not warned Fre that Pa was not happy about his visit and nervously opened the back door, the only entrance to the house where Pa was trying to fix the front light of his pushbike, getting annoyed with it. “This is Fre, Pa,” I said as casually as I could. While they shook hands, Fre offered to have a look at the lamp, saying that he always fixed his own bike. He had it going in no time, which broke the ice between them. In the meantime, Mum came out to the deel with eighteen-month-old Tiesje in tow who came to me immediately. In her usual happy way, Mum welcomed Fre to our house. “I guess it is about time you saw what kind of fellow is writing to your daughter,” Fre said, when he shook hands with her. Mum fell in love with Fre at first sight, she told me later, but I think she had already been in love with him before he came, just from reading his letters. Tiesje’s brand new Sunday suit was already stained. While I wiped the dribbles off his mouth, he stared at Fre with his dark, inquisitive eyes as if he remembered all the secrets I had told him. Mum laughed while Fre fussed about him, sending me to the heert to set the table. Dinner would be ready soon, she said. The smell of chicken soup, softly simmering pork, teak- oil and flowers was ruined by the strong odour of salted beans, the worst thing she could have chosen for this special day! Fre had followed me with Tiesje on his shoulder, offering to help. I apologised about our simple way of eating using the same deep plate and spoon for soup and sweets and only a fork for the main course, hoping that Mum would not lick her plate. “We never use a knife as the meat is always cooked until it falls apart and we use our fingers when we eat chicken,” I said apologetically. “Don’t worry about it,” Fre laughed. “I’ve been at a boerderij before and we don’t eat with fork and knife at home either.” While Mum busied herself with the meal, Fre told us that he had been sent to a farm in Brabant after the war ‘to fatten up a bit’. He was fourteen at the time and as skinny as a rake. His family had always been poor, he said. His father’s meagre wages from the brick factory where he worked during the depression was never enough to support his family, and there was often nothing to eat during the war. “During the last years of the war we had to eat potato peelings to stay alive,” he said. Then he told us how devastated he had been when his mother had died suddenly of thrombosis after a successful ‘prolapse’ operation in February. He was on exercises in the Mediterranean at the time and desperately tried to get home. But a bad storm had prevented him from leaving the ship. “The sea was very rough and the commander refused to put the lives of his crew at risk,” Fre explained. “I would have been too late for the funeral anyway, but it took the aalmoezenier (navy padre) a long time to calm me down.” Fre’s father was a diabetic. He had been inconsolable and, because he was suffering from dizzy spells, he still lived with Ap, Fre’s married brother. “Father is not allowed to go home until his ‘sugar’ is stabilised again,” Fre said. “He is a lovely man.” Because his father (Fre’s grandfather) had been a heavy drinker, he was a member of the ‘Blue Button’, an organisation which cared for alcoholics and their families. “ Most members of the Blue Button are tee-totallers, but Father loves a borreltje,” Fre chuckled with a twinkle in his eyes and twitching mouth. “Because he had had a few drinks between the council office and the church when I was born, I’m registered as ‘Frederikus’ at the council, and ‘Franciscus’ in the church. They call me Frits or Fre at home.” While Fre was talking, Wout came home from church at Hoogland, where he had a girlfriend. Siem, who still worked at a nearby boerderij, came in a few minutes later. When everyone was seated, Fre next to me, Mum dished up the chicken soup, which was supposed to be clear, but as it had been on the stove far too long, the vermicelli had turned into a gluey mess. Fre looked horrified when he saw the thick pieces of fat chicken-skin swimming in his plate. Afraid that he would not like Mum’s cooking, I kept my eyes firmly on my own plate, not wanting to notice his growing discomfort as he struggled to get through the generous portion she had given him. Out of the corners of my eyes I watched him picking at the main course of green beans, a piece of soft pork with apple-sauce and lots of potatoes with sju (gravy). As the salted beans always tasted slightly off, I felt sorry for him. After a little while Fre became as white as a sheet, he excused himself and left the table. “ City whimp! Can’t even hold his food!” Pa scolded, followed by an outburst of loud laughter and other smart comments from Wout and my other brothers. “He is probably not used to the layers of fat we are eating here,” I growled angrily, and went looking for him. Mum’s chicken soup always had at least a half centimetre thick layer of fat on top. This time she had used the skin of an extra large and fat bird. Like most farmers’ wives, she never added any water to the sju either, the gravy that was poured over the potatoes on each plate, was usually pure fat. I found Fre outside behind the hooiberg, still retching. It was most embarrassing for both of us to go back inside and ‘face the music’, so to speak. “Jong toch! Such a nice piece of meat!” Wout laughed with glistening eyes. “And such lovely sju! You would lick your plate to get the last trace of it!” “No wonder you’re so skinny!” Pa chuckled. “You should come and work here for a while. You’d soon build up an appetite! Ha! ha! ha!” Fre recovered quickly and was soon laughing and joking with them. Although he still looked very pale, he tucked into the custard pudding with fresh cherries Mum had made especially for him. When we had finished eating, Fre took two boxes of rum-filled chocolates out of his bag. He gave the biggest one to Mum, to share with Pa, and a smaller one to me. He had also brought a chocolate bar for every one of my siblings, including a small one for Tiesje. After the meal Pa went to bed calling out for Mum to join him as usual. After a while she left us reluctantly. My older brothers laughed when Fre picked up the tea towel to help me with the dishes while Jopie could put them away. “When you are in the navy, you get used to doing everything, including your own mending, even darning your own socks!” he laughed. “You can’t take them home to your mother or your girlfriend when you are at sea for months.” When we had finished the dishes, I took Fre outside. He looked shocked when he saw the usual horde of boys playing soccer in the paddock. I had not seen the need to tell him that they were always hanging around at our place on Sunday afternoons. Knowing that my ‘sailor friend’ was coming that day, they were all there, more than thirty of them, varying in age from eight to eighteen. “Hey sailor! Can you play soccer? Come and join us!” they shouted when they spotted us. “I’d love to, but I’m wearing my uniform,” Fre called back. The boys yelled to me to get him a pair of overalls. “You can borrow my clogs,” Wout joked, which made the others double up with laughter. Fre laughed uneasily, thanking them for the offer. The fellows lost interest in the game and came over to talk to Fre, completely surrounding him. Some of them, including Wout, were about to be called up for army service. Although Fre was terrified, he patiently answered their questions about life in the navy. He told them that he learned karate and judo and several other forms of fighting. When the boys asked him to show them some of the techniques, he declined, saying that he was wearing his best suit and he might hurt them. Some of the older fellows, who were half a head taller than Fre, insisted on a demonstration. “It’s part of our training for combat; we are not permitted to use it outside the navy,” Fre said. I stood aside listening to it all, when Gert joined me. “ What do you think?” I asked. Gert pulled up his shoulders. “He seems a nice enough bloke,” he said in his, usual thoughtful manner. “A bit of a swaggerer though!” The boys were getting louder. The older guys weren’t happy with Fre’s answers. They wanted to see some action, they said. I held my breath, wondering what Fre would do. He put up his hands in a calming way, promising them to bring his photo albums next time he came. Then he walked away, a little pale around the nose. Obviously relieved at getting to Gert and me, he took his hankie out of his pocket and wiped the sweat off his forehead. “I thought for a minute they would not take ‘no’ for an answer,” he said, brushing some specks of grass off his spotless trousers. Time flew. Before the evening meal, Fre took a series of pictures; Tiesje, wearing Fre’s navy cap and several of me with Tiesje, which pleased Pa enormously; one of a group of boys with Siem on the old motorbike he had bought that week, and a couple of me on my own. Before it was time to leave, he took one of Pa and Mum reading the paper and one of everyone there. He then set his camera on automatic to take a picture of the two of us together but his film was full. Chaperoned by Jopie and Wim, I was allowed to take Fre to the bus stop. This time we walked through the village, as it was nearly dark anyway. As soon as we left the main street, Jopie and Wim ran ahead of us. Holding hands in the dark, we talked non-stop. Fre had had a marvellous day he said and hoped I would be allowed to come to Arnhem to meet his sister and her family the following Sunday. He was going with Bep and her husband to Valkenburg, a major holiday centre in the most southern point of Holland, the following day. He had written about the trip before he came and he asked Mum if I could go with them. But, of course, that was out of the question. “She is only sixteen Fre! You understand that it would be irresponsible of me to let her go, don’t you?” she asked. Fre nodded. “My sister said the same thing,” he smiled. “She would not let her daughter go with strangers either. I’ll wait until you’ve had a chance to know me better.” Fre knew there wasn’t much chance that I would be allowed to go to Arnhem the following week either, but I promised to do my best. As expected Pa had shown Fre his best side all day, talking as if they were old friends, but I had a fair idea what he would be saying about him tomorrow. Walking close together, Fre squeezed my hand and kissed me softly just below my ear. The delicious feeling gave me goose-bumps and made me shiver involuntarily. “Didn’t you like that?” he asked, his big white teeth glistening in the dark. “Oh! Yes! I did!” I stuttered. We walked further in silence for a while, then talked again about Fre’s holiday and other ‘safe’ subjects. As we were too early, we left Jopie and Wim at the bus stop and went for a walk along the highway, our arms around each other. It was now quite dark and there were hardly any cars on the road. We stopped walking as Fre kissed me again, this time seeking my mouth. I had never been held so tenderly by anyone before and felt myself floating on the clouds. I soon kissed him back, forgetting about Jopie and Wim, as well as the bus. By the time I had come down to earth, and we returned to the bus stop, the bus to Nijkerk, in the opposite direction, came past. Fre checked his watch. “Twenty-five past eight,” he said. A few cars came past, then the traffic died down completely. “They usually pass each other at this point,” I said. “Maybe it’s already gone.” “It couldn’t be!” Fre said, not sounding very convincing. Jopie and Wim had not seen the bus to Amersfoort either, but they were probably too busy guessing what Fre and I were doing in the dark. Time went on and no bus came. We waited for another fifteen minutes, then I had to get home; Mum would be very worried if I stayed away any longer. Fre shook hands with Jopie and Wim and kissed me briefly on my cheek. Holding my hands in a tight grip, he said that he would write before he went to South Limburg on Tuesday morning. Even though I felt terrible at leaving him there on his own, I objected strongly when he suggested going back with us. I had no choice. Pa would be furious! We ran all the way home as Mum would be angry with me for being back so late. Before we got home, I made Jopie and Wim promise, with their hands on their hearts, not to tell Mum or anyone else, that Fre had kissed me, and that we had gone for a walk in the dark. But that did not stop me worrying whether they could keep their promises if Mum would interrogate them... Chapter TWENTY-NINE

The lights were out and everybody had already gone to bed when we got home from the bus stop. But as soon as I turned the light on at the deel Mum called from her bedroom. “Are you there Mien? Where have you been so long?” I had no choice but to go inside. Through the locked bedroom door, I told her that the bus had not arrived and we had left Fre at the bus stop on his own. Pa laughed loudly, insinuating that we were too busy cuddling instead of looking for a bus. Mum shut him up, reminding him that Jopie and Wim were with me. “ You’d better get into bed immediately and get some sleep. The alarm goes off at five tomorrow morning; washing day at Jans’ place!” she warned, quite unnecessarily. “Better get it over and done with as quick as you can,” Pa grumbled. “I need your help picking beans; lots of them are ready for the market.” As promised, Fre wrote to me that Monday evening. I was busy with the washing at home when I saw the postman turn into our driveway on Tuesday afternoon. I ran out to meet him but Mum had beaten me to it. Pa was furious with her ‘behaving like an idiot’ when we read the letter together. Fre thanked her and Pa for the pleasant day he had had and he passed on his sister’s invitation for me to visit them the following weekend. “It would have been better if I had gone back with you last night,” he wrote. “The bus didn’t come until twenty past eleven.” He had missed the last train to Arnhem and had to stay in a hotel in Amersfoort for the night. He enclosed a photograph of his family and his sister Bep and her children, so that they would not be strangers to me when I met them the following Sunday. The family photo had been taken the previous year when Ineke, Fre’s adopted sister, was confirmed. Fre told us how his parents had taken the little girl in at the end of the war, while they were already struggling to feed their own children. Ineke was now fifteen, a year younger than I was. Since his mother’s death in February she was living with Fre’s eldest brother Henk and his wife Gijsje. Pa had forbidden Mum to give me permission to visit Fre, but when he had left the room, she winked at me. “Just be nice to him,” she said. “I’ll do what I can for you.” On Wednesday Tante Lena and Ome Albert came for an unexpected visit. Mum gave me the choice between going with them to The Hague for a couple of days or to Arnhem on Sunday. She hoped I would go with Tante Lena, but I much preferred to see Fre again. “ He sounds a nice fellow” Tante Lena said, when I walked with her to the bus stop that evening. “Your mother likes him, but you’ll have a hard time getting past Gerrit.” A little later she added softly: “Aaltje doesn’t have an easy life with your stepfather and she is terrified that you will end up a mental wreck like her sister Jans, if she forbids you to see your friend again.” On Thursday morning I went to the hairdresser and had my hair permed. As Pa was in a good mood that evening, I tried again to get his permission to go to Arnhem at the weekend. As usual, he argued that, if he gave me a finger I would take the whole hand, soon wanting to see each other every weekend. But after I assured him that we would just be penfriends, he said: “Well, I do a lot for a kiss, you know!” I had not kissed him for years, but as it seemed a small price to pay for a trip to Fre, I gave him a peck on his cheek. “Oh! No! I want a better one than that!” he protested loudly. But Mum insisted that it was good enough. I could go early on Sunday morning, provided I would be back by eight at night. I quickly wrote to Fre, telling him that I could only come if the weather were nice, otherwise I’d rather leave it until later. Mum approved of the letter and, even though it was past bedtime, she allowed me to mail it in the village. I did not sleep much that night, and not only from excitement; I had to have another wisdom tooth pulled out the following morning, and I was terrified of the dentist. When he had pulled the first two out the previous week, the local anaesthetic had not worked properly. I nearly went through the roof! Fre said that I should go to another dentist in Amersfoort, but I did not have the nerve to cancel my appointment for fear of having to pay twice and being regarded a whimp. It was raining pijpestelen (meaning ‘cats and dogs’) when I left home on my bike that morning, and I got soaked again on my way home. The treatment was nothing compared to the previous one but I felt sick and sore all day. In the evening I ran a temperature, and prayed that I would not get the flu. By Saturday afternoon, the pain in my mouth had all but disappeared and the rain had stopped. Singing happily I did the housework, pretending that I did not feel sick any more. To make the most of my day with Fre, I went on my bike at six-thirty to the earliest Mass in Amersfoort. As soon as the service was finished, I pedalled to the railway station, where I stored my bike for the day. I had no idea what time the trains were going, but I did not have long to wait. At nine-thirty, I arrived in Arnhem, hoping that Fre had received my letter and he would be there to meet me. When I arrived at the station my legs felt like jelly. Would he be there? What would it be like to see him again? What if he didn’t get my letter? I looked anxiously for a sailor’s uniform, but did not see any. Fre was nowhere to be seen when I stepped onto the platform either. But the next minute, he was walking beside me; wearing a ‘combination’ suit, plain dark green trousers, a chequered jacket, white shirt and a matching butterfly (bow-tie). I tried hard not to show my disappointment; he looked so different without his uniform. He took my arm and kissed me briefly on my cheek, saying that he was very happy I had been able to come. While we walked with his arm around my waist out of the station where his brommer was waiting, he told me how beautiful south Limburg was. Valkenburg was a wonderful place and he promised to take me there one day. When I asked him why he was not wearing his uniform, he laughed: “They are my work-clothes! I never wear my uniform when I’m off-duty. I can hardly wait to take it off for good when I leave the navy in three weeks time,” he added. “What about last Sunday?” I reminded him. “I only wore it to your place to make a good impression,” he grinned, while he squeezed my waist. “And I’m glad I did. You have no idea how terrified I was when I saw all those boys in the backyard!” “Why?” I asked. “One of the guys aboard the Neptune came from Amersfoort,” he said. “He warned me that the boys were very possessive of their girls in your dorp.” A few days before his visit, this fellow sailor had delivered my letter. Seeing the address on the back, he had asked: “You’ve got a girlfriend in Hooglanderveen? Have you been there?” When Fre told him that he was going to visit me for the first time the following weekend, he said: “You’d better take the necessary precautions. The guys will string you on a knife if you touch their girls!” “They’re not as bad as that!” I protested. “He probably meant Nijkerkerveen; they are very quick with the knife there, people say.” “It has happened to me before, “ Fre smiled. “I laugh about it now but it was quite scary at the time, I can tell you. I was with a mate at a carnival in a small dorp on the German border a few years ago. While we danced, the guys kept an eye on us all the time, shouting abuse when we asked the same girl twice. Afterwards, a group of heavy built local fellows ordered the girls to keep away from us. With a lot of pushing and pulling they made sure we got on the next train.” “Poor Fre!” I laughed when I got on the back of his brommer. “You don’t have to worry; the boys liked you and they know that I don’t want any of them anyway.” The weather was perfect, we could not have wished for better. With the wind through my hair we flew via the new bridge over the Rhine into Arnhem-South, to the last row of houses in the newly built-up area where Bep, Fre’s much older sister lived. “We’ve been looking forward so much to meeting you!” she said, when she shook my hand. Bep was a charming lady, dressed in a fashionable grey and white striped, two-piece suit. She wore a pearl necklace, earrings and a matching brooch, bright-red lipstick and the same colour nail polish. With her soft curly hair, and a colourful shawl loosely buttoned around her neck, she was even better looking than in the black and white photographs Fre had sent me. It made me painfully conscious of my plain face, my old-fashioned, tight perm and my rough hands with short, ragged nails. In my plain, black skirt, simple white cotton blouse and grey speckled jacket, I looked insignificant beside her. Although she was no ‘professional dressmaker like me’ Bep made all her clothes herself, she said, and she would be happy if I could give her some advice. My face flushed an even deeper red. “I’m no professional!” I protested. “I just like sewing, that’s all.” Fre introduced me to the girls, who were watching me from behind their mother’s skirt, as ‘Tante Mientje’, which made me feel a real adult. All three had the same dark hair, big eyes and lovely names, Renee, Edith and Jose. Fre lifted their three-year-old brother Robert, a heavy child with a thick bunch of dark curls and the biggest deep blue eyes I had ever seen, to shake hands with me. They obviously loved their ‘Ome Fre’ and their exciting chatter soon put me at ease. Bep had just served coffee when husband Bert called in, as he was on duty in the area. I must have gaped at him; he was the most stunning looking man I had ever seen. Tall and slim in his black police uniform, with his dark hair combed to the back in natural waves, he looked like a film star. Fre only reached to his shoulders. I could barely keep my eyes off him while I sipped my coffee. He had the sweetest laugh and a soft, gentle way of talking; not my idea of a policeman at all. Fre must have guessed my thoughts when he laughed: “Bert is known to get more confessions out of criminals than any other policeman, who is overbearing and rude to his clients.” Bert could only stay for a few minutes, but he came back an hour later, for the midday meal; bread-rolls with ham and cheese or sweets such as jam, chocolate hail or peanut butter. When the dishes were done in the tiny kitchen, Bep showed me some of her sewing. Everything was made perfectly and seemingly without any effort. Fre showed me his navy album and some family shots, then took me for a ride on his brommer. After a tour around the stad, he took me to an Italian ice-cream parlour called ‘Trio’, named after the young owners who were triplets, two girls and a boy. As I did not know what to choose, Fre ordered a ‘banana-split’ for each of us; I had no idea that such beautiful treats existed! We sat talking outside on the terrace for quite a while, when Fre suggested we go for a walk in a well-known park at the edge of the city. ‘Sonsbeek’ is a lovely big park with a rapid flowing, natural creek. It had large patches and borders of autumn flowers, arranged in patterns of beautifully matching colours, in and around a large, lush-green oval. The leaves of the big oak and elm trees were already starting to show their brilliant autumn colours and huge weeping willows were reflected in a large pond around a stately old mansion. We watched city children feeding bread to black and white swans, ducks and all kinds of other birds, competing for the crumbs with the goldfish in the murky water. A group of older children was trying to catch tadpoles, completely ignoring their frantic mothers who warned them not to get their Sunday clothes dirty. Being one of the few nice days that summer, there were lots of people in the park, many of them young couples, very much in love. As the day went on, I felt more and more at ease with Fre. He had put his arm around me while we were walking and he spread his jacket on the grass for me to sit down on the oval. I told him that Pa did not want us to see each other, as I was much too young. “I’ll be seventeen soon. Maybe he’ll allow me more freedom then,” I sighed. “How can you be sixteen when you were born in 1938?” Fre asked. “I’m born in ‘39,” I replied. “Why do you think it was ‘38?” A deep red crept up and coloured my face when Fre said: “That’s what you told me in your first letter; I checked it as soon as I came home last week as your mother said you were sixteen.” He took me in his arms and kissed me. “Don’t look so upset!” he said. “I’ll wait! I’ve got plenty of patience!” “I did not do that on purpose, honestly!” I said while tears filled my eyes. “Lucky for me you didn’t ask Mum about it.” Fre tickled me until I smiled again. “Come, let’s go and get something to eat,” he said, pulling me up from the grass. Sitting on the back of the brommer with my arms tightly around his waist and my head against his back, we rode back to Bep and Bert’s place, where an elaborate bread-meal with freshly made vegetable soup with balletjes was waiting for us. Bert came home late, which was nothing unusual, Bep assured me. As I had to be home no later than eight-thirty, we hurried through the meal, but by the time we got to the station the train had already gone; the following train went an hour later. The hour passed quickly; first by walking up and down the empty platform and later by kissing in a sheltered spot. As Pa was dead set against our relationship, I had no idea when I would see him again, but Fre did not see things so sombrely. “If he only gives himself half a chance to get to know me”, he said. Scolding myself for getting home late after my first visit, I waved until Fre was out of sight, hoping things would work out. For a while I managed to shake off the depressing thoughts, concentrating on the splendid day I had. We loved each other and, as far as I was concerned nothing could come between us. I would soon find out differently. Because I was an hour late, Henk was not at the station to meet me. Until recently, I had thought nothing of riding my bike home from Amersfoort alone, no matter what time of night and how dark it was. I often took the back way, a path that went over a big boerderij between the house and a huge shed. But one evening, a young man had suddenly appeared in the light from my bike. I swung around him, pedalling as if the devil himself was at my heels. The guy ran after me and, for one terrifying moment, I thought he would grab the rack at the back of my bike, but I was faster than he was. I had recognised him later as the retarded boerenknecht, who had been known to scare off girls in the area, taking their handbags from them. He would probably not have done me any harm but he scared me to death, and I had asked one of my brothers to ride with me ever since. I raced home, trying not to think of deranged boys and robbers, arriving in record time, no doubt with sparkling eyes and a head as red as beetroot. As soon as I opened the door of the heert I realised that something was terribly wrong. Pa did not look up from his paper; a dead cigar was hanging form his bottom lip, ashes spilled on the front of his Sunday suit. The corners of Mum’s mouth were as far down as they could go, her eyes sparked fire at me -or was it hatred- and her lips trembled. It was past their usual bedtime; none of the others were around. “Hi! Where is everybody?” I asked nonchalantly. “How dare you pretend you’ve forgotten what time you had to be home!” Mum barked at me, waking Pa. They both told me in no uncertain terms that there was no way they would allow me to have anything to do with Fre ever again. I had ‘thrown a rock through my own windows’ by coming home late, Mum said. I was behaving like a slut and there was no way they could ever trust me again, etcetera, etc. “I must have been out of my mind!” she raved on. “A snot-nose of sixteen with a feller ten years older!” “Nine!” I said indignantly. “And you like him very much; you said so yourself!” (Until her death Mum insisted that I was fifteen when I met Fre, which confused me time and again.) My protest that I had missed the train because Bert had been home late for dinner, only made things worse. “You do as you are told!” Pa yelled angrily. “I’ll show you who’s the boss here!” After airing many more accumulated grouches, he went to bed. When he had disappeared into the bedroom, Mum told me that Moeke had been for a visit that afternoon. Pa had gone on and on about me and Fre, saying that everybody in our family, including Mum, did as they pleased and never took any notice of him. Moeke had said that there was no way she would have let her daughter go off with a sailor like that. “We all know what that is leading to!” she had said. “But Moeke doesn’t know Fre like you do,” I argued to deafened ears. “You write to him tomorrow and tell him that you are too young. Tell him that you don’t want to have any contact with him any more,” Mum ordered. “That would be lying! I don’t want to stop writing at all,” I protested. “Do as you’re told!” Mum shouted beside herself again. “A big mouth is not going to help you!” I stormed out of the room, fell on my bed and cried bitterly, feeling terribly sorry for myself. How could my beautiful day have ended in such a rotten way? By two a.m. I had finally written a letter to Fre which I could show Mum in the morning. Feeling completely exhausted I soon fell into a dreamless sleep. Chapter THIRTY

“Soup is never eaten as hot as it is served”, was one of Mum’s frequent sayings. It would have saved me a lot of heartache if I had taken better notice, shrugged my shoulders and had not worried about things so much. Things are always different the following day anyway. Help came from where I least suspected it. On the morning after my visit to Fre I had to get up at five-thirty as usual. Normally I had no trouble getting up early but this morning I dragged myself out of bed. My eyes were swollen and tears filled them again when I went into the heert where Mum was lighting the kachel. “Stop that nonsense!” she growled at me. “Tears are not going to help you!” “What’s she blubbering about now?” Wout asked when he came in with Pa from milking. Mum told him that I had come home late the previous evening and, because I was not feeling well when I left in the morning, she had been worried that I was sick and would stay away for days. “No doubt, having to listen to plenty of dirty insinuations from Pa,” I thought wryly. “I’m not allowed to see Fre any more,” I sobbed. “Why don’t you leave the girl alone,” Wout said. “Fre seems a decent chap.” “You stay out of it!” Pa barked. “It’s between your mother and me and it’s none of your business! She is only a snot-nose. If he was a decent chap, he’d stay away from her!” “I’m seventeen in a couple of weeks,” I snottered. “And all I want is to write to him.” Grateful to have an ally in Wout, my tears soon dried. My relationship with him had improved a lot since he had been away working as a boerenknecht for over a year. He got into a heated argument with Pa about Pa’s jealous and dirty mind. Unable to stand any more, I grabbed something to eat and went across the road to do the washing for the neighbours, hoping that Wout would be able to put his fists in his pockets and get stuck into the work outside, to cool down as he had done so far. At the end of November he had to go into the army for the compulsory term of eighteen months but Pa was doing his utmost to get his military obligation cancelled on the grounds that Wout was the breadwinner in the family as Pa was not well. But so far, his pleas had been refused. It was still dark and I felt relieved to slip into the neighbour’s shed unnoticed. By the time Jans came to say that coffee was ready, I felt my normal self again but Jans said that I still was a little quiet and looked a rather pale around my nose. News travelled fast in the neighbourhood and Jans liked to keep up with the latest gossip. She already knew that I had been to meet Fre’s family. Siding with my parents, she said that I had plenty of time to get attached to someone. Later in the afternoon, when I was picking beans with Pa, he was in a much better mood. Laughing and joking, he tried to get me to tell him that we had kissed and cuddled, somewhere in a forest instead of having spent the day with Fre’s sister. Ignoring his insinuations, I talked about Arnhem and Fre’s lovely family. By the time evening came, I went happily to my first dancing lesson in Amersfoort with Gert, meeting up with Siem and other boys from our neighbourhood. Because I was shy I was not very popular but, as boys outnumbered girls and Gert and my brother were there, I was never without a partner. Wout was also taking lessons but on a different evening. He had told me how the boys and girls stood along opposite walls when the lessons started. We had been in stitches when he demonstrated how the boys had to walk slowly ‘in a dignified manner’ to the girl of his choice, bow to her, take her hand and bring her into the middle of the floor. As Wout said, it was comical to see those stiff farmers’ boys and girls bowing to each other and trying to get the steps right with their wooden legs, and I could hardly wait for the next lesson to come around. On my way home with Gert I came back down to earth, suddenly realising that I had another appointment with the dentist next morning. I had to have my last wisdom tooth out as well as two other molars. There was no room in my mouth for them, the dentist said. Talking to Gert about the trouble I had with my wisdom teeth, I wondered what on earth people did about the pain in their mouths a hundred years ago. Gert did not know either. “Suffer I suppose!” he said in his normal matter-of-fact way. (Again I had worried unnecessarily. The old dentist was on holiday and a much younger man, who had taken his place, pulled them out without any pain at all.) As Fre had promised, there was a letter from him the following afternoon with the black and white photographs he had taken on his visit to our place the previous week. One by one Mum looked at the photos and passed them to me. The pictures of me with Tiesje were lovely, and the one he took of Mum and Pa, reading the paper, was also very good. “When I took the picture of the whole family, your father looked as if he wanted to tear me apart,” Fre said when I took him to the bus stop that Sunday evening. Mum cracked up laughing when she saw the photograph and read aloud what Fre had written on the back: “Don’t you dare touch my daughter!” She gave the picture to Pa who laughed noisily about it too, saying that Fre had obviously understood his message. By nightfall that same Tuesday Pa allowed me to write to Fre again, providing we were not trying to see each other. They had to read all in- and out-going correspondence as before and I had to promise not to cheat on them. Thinking that he would change his mind when I turned seventeen at the end of October, I happily agreed. I still had not sent the letter I had written when I was so distressed on Sunday night and tore it up. I replaced it with a more optimistic one I showed to Mum before I posted it. When I was baby-sitting at Miep’s place a few days later, I wrote an uncensored letter to him, asking him not to write so often as that would. I begged him to be careful not to let on that we felt more than friendship for each other, as that would be the end of our relationship. Before the end of the week I was in trouble again. Mum had gone visiting Ome Wim, her youngest brother with Pa on Friday evening. His wife, Tante Toos was a very conservative woman, well into her thirties when she married my uncle. She had just had her second baby, another little girl. Tante Toos had been aghast when she heard that Mum had allowed me to go off with a sailor. Poor Mum! She copped it from all sides and had no choice but pass it on to me, so I thought. While they were away, Wout, Henk, Wim, Jopie, Bartje and I had been rolling over the floor with little Tiesje, chasing and tickling each other. I was still cleaning up the mess, when my parents came home. Pa kept on and on about their stupidity at not putting a stop to my verkering. When he had gone to bed, Mum begged me to stop writing to Fre, as she could not cope with his nagging any longer. I took Fre’s letters to bed with me and read them over and over again by the light of a torch, crying until I fell asleep. There was no way I could stop writing to him, no matter what happened. The following day, I was cleaning the windows when Frits, the postman, turned into our driveway. My hands were shaking when he handed me a letter from Fre. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Aren’t you happy to hear from your vrijer?” I was still telling him what had happened, when Mum came around the corner. While she talked to Frits about the problems of having growing up daughters, I walked away and ripped the envelope open, thanking God that Fre had even gone back to ‘Beste Mientje’ instead of his usual ‘Dear Mini’. It was his last week in the navy and he had extra watch duties. “They always do that when they know that someone is leaving,” he wrote. “But they won’t get me angry; I’m too happy to leave the service next week!” While he was on his two weeks holiday, Fre had looked after the glass-in-lood (leadlight) workshop for his former boss, Wim, who had been to the south of Holland, trying to get an order for a large church in Tilburg. Wim had been impressed with the amount of work Fre had done while he was away. The prospect was looking good; if Wim got the order, he would have work for Fre for at least three months, Fre said when we were together. Fre had started his apprenticeship with Wim, his brother-in-law Bert’s brother, when he left primary school at the age of fifteen. By the time he was nineteen and he had to go into the military, his boss had ran out of work for him. Most windows in war-damaged churches had been repaired or replaced with plain glass, and leadlight for houses had gone out of fashion. That’s why Fre had signed up with the navy for six years. A few days before he went back to Den Helder for his last week of duty, Wim had told him that the deal with the church had fallen through which meant that he could not offer Fre his old job back. Because he had no other trade, Fre was very concerned about his future; he had even contemplated staying in the navy. Then, on the last evening of his leave, Fre visited his brother Henk, who lived above a clothing shop owned by his wife Gijsje’s father. Meneer Lamers came out of his shop just as Fre arrived and, after talking for a while, he had offered to train him as manager of his shop. The three girls he had working for him did not do much during the day, he said. They needed a man around to keep them on their toes. Gijsje’s father was known as the ‘biggest Jew’ in Arnhem, which he took as the greatest compliment people could give him. He had started at an early age, buying seconds from factories and selling them door to door and later at the markets for as much as he could get. With two fair- sized shops he was regarded to be a millionaire. He was also the proud owner of several buildings in and around Arnhem, which he rented out. During the first three months, while Meneer Lamers was teaching him the trade, Fre would work for little pay. Getting a diploma for the retail industry and doing a course in textiles, in his own time and at his own expense, was also part of the deal. Both courses had already started, but Fre could still join them when he left the navy on the first of October. Fre was happy to start on his new future and was prepared to work hard at it, he wrote. I smiled as I was already learning to read between the lines knowing that he was talking about ‘our’ future. “I have now someone to work for!” he said happily before we parted the previous Sunday. In my letter at the beginning of October, I told Fre that Henk and Wim were learning English at school. They did not like it much but that afternoon they had had a lot of fun with a new sentence they had learned: “The dogs play with the boxes of my sister.” I knew what ‘play’ was and ‘boxes’ in Dutch was a slang word for underpants. We all roared with laugher, including Mum, who needed a hankie to wipe the tears off her face. Because Fre knew English I was keen to learn it too and asked him to include some when he wrote again. Ep, our next door neighbour, a railway worker, was learning English by correspondence as a hobby. He often came over to play cards with Wout and my parents in the evenings. He had just finished the first couple of lessons and brought them the following day for us to have a look at. When Fre’s answer came the following week we set out eagerly to translate the English sentences he had included. Because we had no dictionary and the boys did not get any paperwork to take home, we had to find the answers in Ep’s lessons. In his next letter Fre wrote a short letter in English on a separate page I proudly showed it to Ep when he came to play cards that evening. Lying on the floor with Jopie, Wim and Henk we set out to translate it. Fre wrote: “Dear Mini.

Here is than the answer of my. I was very glad to hear somthing of you, because I have not heard something, one week ago from you. I hope so that you are very well. This mondt, the 30th of October is your Birthday. Mine is on November 19th. How is anything on the farm and with your mother and your daddy? I am working now in a shop in the city. It is a nice work what I have to do. Next week I will written some more in the English language. I hope you have many fun to translate this letter!”

“Gee! He is good!” my brothers said admiringly. “Not bad at all!” Ep agreed. “There is something on the bottom I can’t work out,” I said, puzzled what it could be. “Ep? Do you know what ‘always’ means?” I asked. Ep threw a card on the table and, with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, he asked: “In what sentence is it used?” “For always yours,” I replied. Ep threw another card on the table, took his cigarette out of his mouth and said: “Oh! That means ‘I belong to you forever.’ “ A dead silence followed. Pa had dropped the newspaper he had been reading and took the cigar out of his mouth. If looks could have killed, I would never have been able to get up from the floor! With her mouth trembling the way I hated so much, Mum threw her cards on the table. “You rot meid!” she scolded me. “I knew that something was going on when you started this nonsense!” “It’s not that bad!” Ep said, in a bid to calm her down. He knew why I wanted to learn English and he realised that he should have thought before he had spoken. But the harm had been done and it would be the end of my short-lived English lessons. “From now on, you’ll only write in plain Dutch or you won’t write at all!” Mum warned me while she picked up her cards again. Jopie and the boys protested loudly and, because Ep promised to translate every word Fre wrote Mum gave us permission to go on with our English lessons before Jopie and my brothers went to bed. Ep winked at me when they continued playing. I smiled back at him, happy to have another ally. Not being allowed to write freely was taking a lot of fun out of our letters, but at least, I had not been forbidden to write. Pa kept nagging me every time there was a letter, but I tried not to take any notice. One day, he was furious when Mum laughed about something funny Fre had written. “You should be ashamed of yourself!” he yelled at her. A few days later, Pa was drinking coffee with a salesman, when the man remarked that I was growing into a nice young woman. “ You’ll have to keep an eye on her; the boys will soon be after her,” he warned. Pa grumbled and said that I already had a guy. “A sailor!” he said with disgust. During the next half an hour or more the salesman told him story after story about sailors which made me feel sick in the stomach. They were all the same he said, a girlfriend in every city or port, no matter if they were married or not. Most of them came home with a deadly disease, infecting their spouses or innocent girls like me. He warned Pa, needlessly, that I would end up pregnant and left to fend for myself. Pa heartily agreed with everything the man said, adding plenty of ‘hearsay’ stories himself. They agreed that, like kermis-folk and gipsies, sailors had no shame at all. As time went on, I had to guess if Fre still felt the same about me, and vice versa and, because Fre was not at sea any more, his letters started to loose their former excitement. Nothing interesting was happening at home to write about either and I got heartily sick of the continuous earbashings I was getting. The only fun to look forward to were my weekly dancing lessons, but, even if I was able to write to Fre freely, I could hardly write to him about what was going on there either... Chapter THIRTY-ONE

Dancing was a normal way of entertainment for young people in the south of Holland, below the river Rhine, when I was growing up. After the war it became slowly acceptable for Catholics in the north too, but it was, and still is in some areas, strictly forbidden for Protestants. Because many girls in the area were not allowed to learn, I considered myself very lucky that Mum had found it important for me to go to classes. But she warned me from the start that I could not go to the free dances that were held regularly on Saturday evenings, as they were ‘pools of sin’. At first the lessons were in Amersfoort on Monday evenings, washing day. Although I had to ride my bike seven kilometres to get there, I was never too tired to go, no matter how bad the weather was. People came on their bikes from as far away as Nijkerk and Baarn, twenty kilometres or more, and thought nothing of it. After the first few weeks the same dance-school gave lessons on Thursdays at Hoogland which was the same distance away, but I did not have to go to the stad which put Mum’s mind at rest.

At first I felt stiff and awkward, especially when I danced with a boy I did not know, but I soon relaxed and learned the steps quickly. After the lessons, the boys took their favourite girl home but, as I had Fre, I always went home with Gert, who was still my best friend. But one day when Kees (pronounced ‘Case’) a nice guy with whom I often danced asked to take me home, I took him up on the offer. Kees was tall and blond. He had dimples in his cheeks when he laughed and he was a very good dancer. After a couple of weeks, he became more interested in me and I felt attracted to him. That evening, two weeks before my seventeenth birthday, he held me close when we danced the last waltz, asking if he could take me home. As I felt very much at ease with him, and there had been another terrible row with Pa when the postman delivered a letter from Fre that afternoon, I had not hesitated. I had felt guilty for a moment, but Fre seemed so far away... Kees had a big motorbike. The cold wind of the autumn evening felt great on my burning face when I held onto his shoulder while he pulled me along on my push-bike. About a hundred metres before we got to our house we stopped and, leaning against his bike, holding hands, we talked for a while. I roared with laughter when Kees let go of me and imitated the stiff way some people in our group danced. After half an hour, we said goodbye with a hug before he pulled me the last metres home. I let go of his shoulder and swung into our driveway, while he beeped the horn and went on to Hoogland, where he lived with his parents. The following Thursday night was much the same. Standing close together in the moonlight, holding his left hand, I asked: “How come you have a finger missing?” “It was cut off by a band-saw at woodwork classes, just before I finished trade school two years ago,” Kees said seriously, then he laughed: “ My class-mates made a coffin with a carved lid for it. They even lined the inside with white silk!” I was in stitches when he said that they had made a white dress of the same white silk for his finger, with the nail showing like a face. After they had buried it under a rosebush in his mother’s garden, complete with flowers and a cross, they had a big party. We held each other close and kissed shyly, before I went home, feeling very happy. Fre was slipping further and further away... I wrote another of my official, censored letters to him the following day, but my heart was not in it. The following dancing lesson was on the night before my birthday. It was very cold and when I left the dancehall, Kees did not follow me as he had done the previous evenings. As Gert was sick, I felt empty and deserted but my spirits lifted when the familiar sound of Kees’s motorbike came roaring up behind me, close to home. When we got off our bikes, Kees put his arms around me, apologising for letting me ride all that way on my own. While he held me in his arms he said: “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’m ready for a girlfriend. I like my freedom and my motorbike too much. I don’t want to be tied down yet.” Tears were pricking my eyes and I shivered. “Don’t take it so hard!” he said. “We are still young; we’ve got plenty of time!” By then I was crying and sobbed: “It’s my birthday tomorrow and I was so happy to have a friend like you!” Kees took me in his arms again and rocked me gently. “Oh! I’m so sorry,” he said. “If I had known, I would have waited till next week; I don’t want to spoil you birthday.” “It’s done now!” I stuttered indignantly, embarrassed by my tears. I pulled myself away from him, grabbed my bike and rode home. I chucked the bike against the hooiberg, ran inside and flung myself on the bed, crying uncontrollably with long, noisy howls. The next minute Mum came looking for me. “What on earth has happened to you this time?” she asked. “Nothing is working out for me,” I cried from under the blanket. “I’m not allowed to see Fre and now that I had another friend, he’s dropped me, just before my birthday.” “Oh! Is that all!” Mum smiled relieved. “I thought something nasty had happened as it did some years ago.” She sat at the end of the bed, no doubt shaking her head as she said: “Kind toch! Don’t upset yourself so much; you’ll wake Jopie! You’d better save your tears for later, when you really need them.” The next moment she left our tiny bedroom and closed the door behind her. “How could I possibly need tears more than now?” I thought, wanting to die! I had to get up early as usual the following morning. Nobody congratulated me on my birthday. Pa laughed at my sad face. “Come on! Cheer up! Crying about a boy!” he mocked. “There’s not a hand full but a land full out there!” There was a small packet from Fre in the mail that afternoon. I blushed when I saw the beautiful, maroon leather nail-care set. I could not help it that I had such rotten nails! But then I realised that he would not have meant to offend me. It was just what I needed to clean my nails before I went sewing, especially now that I had put another advertisement in the Amersfoortse Courant for new clients in the stad. Mum was angry with Fre for sending me the present. “It only gives obligations,” she said. “You’ll have to send it back immediately.” “I can’t send it back!” I yelled. “That would be most embarrassing!” After a few more harsh words back and forth, I was allowed to keep the set, providing I did not tell Pa about it. Fre’s birthday was in three weeks. He had a record player and I wanted to buy him a record. As I had to pay every penny from my sewing to Mum, I racked my brains how I would be able to save enough money and how I could find a way to send it to him. At that point in time, I was lucky when Mum gave me two guilders pocket money every week, and I earned a little from baby-sitting. Help came when I talked to our neighbour Aaltje, Ep’s wife. Her mother, Mett (the old witch, who came after me with a knife when I was little) needed a new dress and, because she was bent far forward at the waist, Aaltje could not get anything to fit her. “What if you do it in the evenings?” she suggested. It was a splendid idea; that way I could keep the money myself. I liked to have kissed my neighbour but Aaltje would probably have died of shock. After I worked out how much material I needed, we made arrangements to take her mother’s measurements the following evening. From the lessons Pa had bought for me, I had a fair idea of how to extend and alter a pattern and looked forward to the challenge. Because they were very private people, I had never been inside the Protestant neighbour’s house before. I occasionally talked to Ouwe Gart when he was outside with his crooked body, but I had not seen Ouwe Mett for years. When I came into their dark living-room they were sitting on opposite sides of the kachel, with their stockinged feet on the hotplate at the bottom of the heater. Ep sat at the table, smoking a cigarette while he read a magazine about tropical birds, of which he had several in a cage at the back of the house. An old-fashioned, crystal-beaded lamp, hanging close above the table, spread an eerie light on the religious verses and quotations, framed in heavy, dark frames that were hanging everywhere on the dark walls. I had not seen Ep and Aaltje’s eight-month-old baby son sitting on the floor when I came in. When I said ‘Hello’ to him, he looked at me briefly with his quick, dark eyes then raced off to a corner on hands and knees. Like many old men, Ouwe Gart chewed tobacco. He carefully selected a little ball from a long row he kept at the edge of the hot kachel. He chewed one for a while, then exchanged it for a warm one. At regular intervals he spat at an earthen flowerpot beside him, missing it time and again. Aaltje scolded him, but her father just grinned and did not take any notice of her. “He always does that to me,” she said, in her slow, Nijkerk’s accent. “I think he misses on purpose. He refuses to let me get another, bigger pot, without a hole in the bottom.” I felt sorry for Aaltje for having to clean up the terrible, slimy mess on the wooden floor. Ouwe Mett growled impatiently from her rattan armchair, indicating that she wanted us to stop talking. While Aaltje got me a stack of old newspapers to make the pattern, I wrote down what measurements I needed. Together we pulled Mett out of her chair, which seemed to be glued onto her broad behind. For one chilling moment I caught the look of hatred she gave her only daughter, who had had a child without being married. Aaltje was in her mid twenties, and did not have a clue as to where babies came from, when someone was ‘sweet’ to her and had given her this ‘present’ during the war. Her son was sixteen and had already left home. She and Ep were both well into their forties when they married two years ago. Aaltje had not expected to be able to have another child at her age and she had a terrible time having him. She could have done without the additional trouble of having to look after a noisy child as well as her difficult parents, she said. While I measured the old woman, I tried hard to concentrate, keeping my nose closed to the awful smell of her big, awkward body. Ouwe Mett stood up in the same shape as she was sitting in her chair and she looked and sounded as cranky as ever. While I called out the number of centimetres of the length and width of her unyielding body, Ep wrote them on my list. Aaltje was reading my thoughts when she told me how she and Ep struggled with her every evening to get her into bed. “Sometimes she is so cranky, that we just let her sit there all night,” Ep said ruefully. I liked the soft, dark blue cotton material with tiny flower patterns Aaltje had bought for the dress. Ep sniggered and Aaltje tried hard not to laugh when I told Mett that she would look great in it. Mett growled something at them, but I could not understand a word of what she was saying. I didn’t know that she had lost her speech several years ago when she had a stroke, which was just as well, Aaltje said, as nothing nice had ever come out of her mother’s mouth. Before I went home, I had cut the dress out. As Aaltje did not have a sewing machine, I put the dress together at home then did the hand-sewing at their place a few days later. Although she was unable to manage even a glimmer of a smile, the old woman seemed happy with it and she got used to me being there. She was less obstinate, when I was around, Aaltje said later when she told me about the miserable life she had had with her parents. Mett had been in her late forties when Aaltje was born and, when she was a little girl her mother had tied her with thick ropes between the cows in the stable for hours while they were working on the land. While she was growing up, her parents had hidden her whenever somebody came around and at times they had given her more beatings than food, she said. Aaltje had not known a moment of peace in her entire life with her parents overbearing demands. It was their moral duty to look after the parents, no matter what they had done to her. She and Ep would be stuck with them until the day they died. Before I went to bed that night, I thanked God profusely for my easy life. Apart from my thank-you letter to Fre, for my birthday present, I had not written to him for two weeks, when buurvrouw Bertha came on Saturday morning, pretending that she had run out of sugar. (Buurvrouw Bertha never ran short of anything; it was always we borrowing things from her.) When I walked outside with her, she told me that Fre had phoned her, because he was worried about me. I had introduced him to her on the day he had visited and she knew that I was not allowed to meet him again. Fre was going to ring again between three and four that afternoon. He had asked if I could come over to talk to him, which annoyed me. Things were already bad enough without him bothering the neighbours. Now I had to find an excuse to go there while I was in the midst of cleaning the house with Jopie, and I had never used a telephone before. I had heard that some women put a clean apron on before they used the phone and I was tempted to do so myself. It seemed very strange to me that people could hear but not see the person who was calling. As soon as I heard Fre’s melodious voice, my heart melted again. “No, there is nothing the matter, I’m okay,” I said softly. “You shouldn’t have rung. You know that our neighbour’s house is at least two hundred metres away from ours.” “ I had to know how you were; I couldn’t think of any other way to contact you,” Fre apologised, then softer: “You still love me, don’t you?” I got a lump in my throat and could not speak. With the buurvrouw listening to our conversation I didn’t know what to say and I could not tell him over the phone anyway. I came to my senses when Fre asked if I was still there. I promised to write to him that Saturday night, when my parents would be out as usual. “What if I come over and see you?’ Fre asked. “Oh! No! Don’t do that!” I said, horrified by the idea. “I’ll write a real letter to you tonight and explain everything. I’ll mail it before Mum comes home, so that it’ll be there on Monday morning,” I promised. My face burned when I said goodbye and hung up. The phone call had disturbed Fre more than I would ever know as it had prepared him for my letter. Not knowing how to begin, I ripped up my first attempts. I was so confused! Why couldn’t I be in love with two fellows at the same time? I wanted to be honest with Fre; let him know that he was not the only one I loved. I could not bear to lose him either, even though our relationship had given me nothing but trouble. Kees said that he was happy to see me laugh again when he had danced with me briefly the previous Thursday. Because he was tall, I felt like a feather when we swirled around the floor. I kept on hoping he would come for me often, as he had done before, envying the other girls he danced with. Earlier that week, my parents had been in Doornenburg for the funeral of Tante Anna’s eldest son Theo, who had been killed by a drunken man on a motorbike. Annie and Ria had begged them to let me go to the kermis in Huissen, but as Pa had been (rightly) convinced that I would go to Fre on my way, he had refused to let me go. If he knew how we felt about each other, he would never have let me out of his sight for a moment. In a highly emotional letter I told Fre about my dilemma, saying that I wasn’t worthy of his love, as there was someone else I cared for too. I told him that I did not want to hurt him for all the money in the world. If he did not want to have anything to do with me any more, I would understand, and I wished him the very, very best. Then I asked him to keep writing to me as a friend. I told him that I had bought a birthday present for him, which I would send in the mail the following week, leaving it up to him to keep in touch. “I’m in trouble as it is!” I wrote. “I have to write a letter which I can show Mum, then rip it up and put this one in the envelope before I sent it off to you. What a cheat I have become! I hate going behind Mum’s back like this!” Before I signed off, I begged him not to desert me. While I was sewing at van Montfoort’s place in Amersfoort, Mevrouw let me take time off to buy Fre’s present, a record of Winnifred Atwell which was often played on the radio. I packed it carefully, and took it to the mail, two days before his birthday. I had to baby-sit several evenings to make up for the lost time to pay Mum for the full day. Afraid that Fre’s answer to my letter would give away our feelings for each other, I waited for Frits, the postman on my way to work, praying Mum would not get the letter first. But no letter came until a week later. He thanked me for the lovely record. It was exactly the type of music he liked and Bep’s children could not get enough of it, I read, as my face started to burn. How stupid of me to forget to ask Fre not to mention the record! Aware that Mum was watching me curiously, I read on: “Bep gave me a school-bag for my study books and the others gave me a total of seven- hundred cigarettes. What more could I wish for?” He apologised for not answering my last letter, saying that he had wanted to ring me, but, with the busy time before Sinterklaas and his studies, which took a lot of his time, he had been unable to find an opportunity to do so. After thanking my parents and Jopie for their best wishes for his birthday, he asked if I still enjoyed my dancing classes. Then he signed off as usual with: “Kind regards to all, your penfriend Fre.” Reluctantly I gave the letter to Mum and waited for the storm to break loose. “What’s this about a record?” she asked sternly. “I sent it to him to pay my obligations,” I said, as calmly as I could. A hurtful look came over Mum’s face as the corners of her mouth went down. “You should have asked instead of going behind my back,” she snapped at me. “You’d better put that letter away before Pa gets to hear about it.” Stunned that nothing more was said about it, I put Fre’s letter under my mattress where the others were kept, and I did not write to him for several days. The weather had turned into an early winter with snow, ice and rain, which made the roads dangerous. Some people were in hospital with broken limbs, but that did not deter anybody from going to work as usual. There was a special dance evening for students the following Sunday and, as I desperately wanted to go I was on my best behaviour. Gert asked Mum, if I could go with him and Wout and Siem argued that they needed me to practise the dances. Reluctantly, and at the very last minute, Mum gave in. As Kees asked me to dance several times, it was a marvellous evening, but he did not offer to take me home. Gert, my faithful friend, was waiting for me instead. I often wondered why Gert never stirred my emotional feelings like Fre and Kees did. He was like a dependable brother to me. Fre’s next letter he had written on the second of December, brought more trouble. He wrote about the busy time before Saint Nicolas on the sixth and recounted happy childhood memories. Then he described how he had climbed on a rubbish bin at the back of Bep’s house, pretending that he was Zwarte Piet, throwing hands full of pepernoten (little ginger biscuits) through a tiny window in the living-room. He had worn black gloves and he had made his face black with charcoal, but six-year-old Ineke swore she had seen him. While he was writing, my Winnifred Atwell record had been turned on full blast and the kids were dancing around him. He went on to say that his father had gone back to his own, empty house in Velp, where he and his siblings were all born. They all went there every Tuesday evening, to cheer him up, he said. The evenings were always gezellig. “I’ve become a real huis-mus (stay-at-home),” he wrote. “With the shop open every day until nine at night and all day Saturdays, classes twice a week and studying on Sundays, there is no time left for other pleasures.” “He should go home and live with his father instead of being with his sister,” Mum said, while she folded the letter. Pa put the paper down and looked at her angrily. “Men living alone don’t last; he’ll be here in a flash, wanting to get married!” he said. “I told you to stop them before it’s too late.” Before I realised what was happening, he banged his fist on the table, yelling that he would put a stop to it, if she didn’t. Thinking of running away brought tears to my eyes, which made him even more angry and aggressive. “I’ll kill him with my own bare hands, if he ever dares to set foot on the property!” he yelled among other threats. That night I cried a bucketful. Who did I think I was anyway? A dirty girl who had let her stepfather touch her in places which were reserved for a husband; I wasn’t worthy of a nice guy like Fre or Kees at all. The idea of having to be honest and telling my future husband what had happened, made me shudder and brought a new flood of tears. When the pain had subsided the following day, I knew that I could not take any more of the fighting and the turmoil in my heart. I needed a break. “If Fre is meant to marry you, he’ll wait,” Mum had said time and again, adding that I should have more trust in God as He has it all planned out for me. I thought about the way Mum had married my father. How my father had married Tante Wijm and Mum had gone to the convent, as she was not interested in anyone else. Feeling terribly sad, I wrote to Fre that same evening, asking him to stop writing, as I needed time to sort myself out. Mum was right; I was too young to have vaste verkering (be going steady). I slipped out of the house and rode my bike through the clear, frosty night to mail the letter in the village and took a deep breath when I dropped it in the mailbox. Then I looked at the stars. It had been six months since we had met at the station in Arnhem. Was it really only three months since I had taken Fre to the bus stop and he had kissed me for the first time? It seemed years ago. The stars were shining then too... Fre was nine years older than I was. I could not expect him to wait for me to grow up. Maybe we were meant for each other, as Mum said, but I could also be meant for Kees. I shrugged my shoulders, blinked away my tears and got on my bike, knowing that I had done the right thing. What I needed was a long sleep. It was after midnight. I had to get up early in the morning as usual; the neighbour’s weekly washing would be waiting there for me. Oh! How I wished I could lock myself in my bedroom and hibernate for a couple of days, as Opoe always had done when she could not cope with life... Chapter THIRTY-TW0

The alarm went off at six, the usual time in winter. For a moment I did not know where I was. My eyelids were heavy and I could not open my eyes, no matter how hard I tried. Pa’s voice was calling out from the deel. He was already feeding the cows, in a bad mood as usual. He hated to get up early but, since Wout was in the army, he had no choice but to do the job himself. Pa’s pleas to get Wout’s military obligation cancelled were refused and Wout had left for the army barracks in Bergen-Op-Zoom in the south of Holland at the end of November. Pa had vowed to move heaven and earth to get him out, which meant more trips to the council office, the doctor and other authorities, so far without result. Because he had also been unable to find anyone to do the milk-run for him his temper flared up worse than ever. “Kom vort Mien!” Pa shouted again. I pulled the blankets over my head, pretending that I had already gone to the neighbours, to do the washing for them. Then I remembered why I could not open my eyes; I had cried myself to sleep the previous evening. Thinking about Fre, brought tears to my eyes again but I managed to blink them away. “Get up Mien!” Pa yelled, banging his fist on the timber wall of our tiny bedroom. “Get your lazy bum out of your nest and give your mother a hand!” Mum came to see what was going on. She was not used to me lingering on in the morning. She reminded me that I was late; Jans was expecting me at seven. When I walked into the heert a few minutes later, she looked at my tired face for a moment, but she did not ask any questions. After Pa’s outburst the previous night, she knew very well what was bothering me. Mum always said that my face was an open book and that I was carrying my heart on my sleeve. Perhaps I should not tell her everything, as I had in the past, I thought. I made myself a cup of coffee and drank it while I buttered a piece of bread, sprinkled sugar on it and folded it in half. After a few bites and several gulps of coffee I put my cup on the table, said “aju” and left the house. “Phoo, what a sour face!” Pa laughed sarcastically when I brushed past him at the deel. I gave him an angry look and opened the back door. Glad to feel the cold air on my burning face, I stepped into the dark winter’s morning, took a deep breath and walked quickly across the road. The heavy work always helped me get rid of my anger. While I took the icy cold linens out of the tub in the big shed where it had soaked in soda overnight, and carted it to the furnace in the adjoining lean-to to be boiled, I had time to think. Why didn’t they leave us alone? Our relationship would have had a chance to develop naturally if we could have written without having to omit the feelings we had for each other. The problem was that Fre would want to get married while I was still very young, just as I had started to bring in good money. Sometime that morning he would get my letter... It would have been impossible for me to have kept going; letting Fre believe that he was the most important person in the world to me, while I was in love with Kees too. Being in love with two men at the same time was confusing and very immature. Just imagine if that would happen after a couple was already married! Fre would be terribly hurt when he got my letter, but I had no choice. I had to try to put them both out of my mind. As Mum said if I was meant to marry either of them, it would happen. By the time the neighbour’s washing was on the line late in the afternoon, I was ready to tell Mum that I had broken up with Fre, and that I had posted the letter during the night. She let out a big sigh, saying that it was probably for the best. During the weeks that followed, it became clear to me that Kees was not going to change his mind. After New Year he did not come to dancing lessons any more and I never saw him again. When my chips were down in later years, I often wondered if Kees would have waited for me if I had not been so impatient. A few years ago, when Siem, who escaped to Australia in 1961, was back in Holland, he met up with Kees. Not knowing that Siem was my brother, he had asked him if he knew what had happened to me. When Siem told me about it later, my ‘little’ brother Ties, who also lives in Alice Springs since 1981, was stunned; Kees had been his woodwork teacher at trade school; he was a marvellous fellow, he said. Without Kees, the weekly outing lost its glamour, but as I loved dancing, I kept going, usually with Gert. Before long I had another admirer, Rooie Gijs. He was tall and called the rooie because of his bright red, curly hair. He was another nice fellow, a true friend like Gert, who never stirred my emotions or made my heart miss a beat like Fre or Kees did. But to Pa they were all ‘dogs on heat’, eager to make me pregnant. Instead of writing to Fre, I now wrote every week to Wout in the army. Writing to him helped to improve our relationship further. He stayed away for six weeks, which included Christmas, then he came home in his uniform for a couple of days, shortly after New Year. In April Siem had left the boerderij where he had worked for two and a half years and went with our neighbour Johan to a re-schooling program in Utrecht, twenty-five kilometres away, to become a bricklayer. He always left home early in the morning to catch the train and returned at night in time for the evening meal. At the end of November, when Wout had gone into the army, Pa wanted him to do the milk-run but Siem liked his new job. There was no future in farming, he said. Because the boer always gave Pa the money he had earned during the last two and a half years, he reckoned that he had paid enough board up to the time he too had to go into the army, at the end of the year. Siem’s refusal to do the milk-run and pay board led to lots of heated arguments between him and Pa. Shortly before his eighteenth birthday in November, Siem got his summons for service and he passed his medical tests, a few weeks later. Only three brothers from any one family had to go into any of the services; the others had what was called ‘broeder-dienst’. Henk, who had turned fifteen the previous summer, always hated school. He went to trade- school in Amersfoort when he was fourteen but left after the first year. Because he was at loggerheads with our dominating stepfather all the time too, we were glad when Pa hired him out as a boerenknecht, on the first of November, the customary day for those transactions. Henk did not like the long days of hard, dirty work, which usually lasted from five in the morning until eight or nine at night, and in spring and summer even longer than that. One afternoon, he had been so tired that he had fallen asleep on the manure cart when he was spreading the sloppy muck over the land. Thinking that the job was finished, the horse took him all the way back to the farm, several kilometres away. Like his older brothers and other youngsters in the area, Henk had soon learned to drink and smoke, helped along by the generous amount of weekly pocket money the boer gave him, conveniently forgetting that that money was also meant to be used to replace his clothing. He had terrible trouble waking up on normal days when he had not been drinking, but on Sunday morning, when the cows had to be milked and the pigs fed as usual, it was near to impossible for his boss to get him out of bed. His boss would start the milking, leaving it up to his wife to get Henk out of his ‘nest’. A couple of times she had used a bucket of cold water ‘to wake him up properly’, when he was finally on his legs. Wim was now fourteen and at trade school, wanting to become a carpenter. Jopie would be thirteen in May and Bartje turned ten on New-Year’s-day. They were the only ones left at primary school. Little Tiesje turned two in December. He was the cutest little fellow, never getting enough of my hugs and kisses, which was just as well... “ Lekker smoeltje (little cutie), hey?” he would say, his dark eyes twinkling whenever I kissed him, making everybody laugh, especially his proud father. Even though it was winter and very cold I loved going out sewing, but I usually had to stay home on Tuesday to do our own washing, and on Friday, when I looked after Tiesje when Mum went with Pa to the market. In the beginning I had only been allowed to go out sewing one day a week. But as I was now the only one bringing in money apart from Henk, who did not get paid til the end of the year, I could go every day as far as Pa was concerned. Mum agreed. As long as I kept our own repairs under control, made the beds and did the dishes before I left in the morning, I could go sewing whenever I wanted. As Jopie was quite capable of doing the housework on her own, I could even go on Saturdays when I was needed to help somewhere else. Fre was never far from my mind but, because I wanted my parents to believe that I had forgotten about him, I was careful not to talk about him when they were around. Mum mentioned him occasionally; he had obviously made a big impression on her. It must have been hard for her to believe that I had not heard from him since I had sent him my last letter, more than two months ago. Although I had not expected Fre to respond, I felt very disappointed that he had not tried to contact me in any way. As January turned into February I started to think about Fre continually, wondering what he was doing. Would he still be working in the men’s clothing shop and studying for his business management diploma? Where would he live now? Did he stay with Bep and her film-star-like policeman or would he have moved in with his father? By the time February turned into March, I had to find a way to go to Arnhem; I just had to see him again! The best I could think of was asking if I could go to Huissen early that year to help Tante Marie with her sewing. While I waited for Pa to be in a good mood, I made sure that all the sewing and darning at home was up to date. As spring was in the air, I became desperate to get out of the house other than for work. I loved browsing at the big market in Amersfoort on Friday mornings where everything from underwear to shoes and buttons was sold, but I was seldom allowed to go there. Mum could not understand that I needed a break; she regarded going out sewing - doing what I wanted to do most - as holidays. She always brought whatever I needed back for me from the market, after she had sold the eggs. One Friday morning, when it was cold and drizzling, Mum stayed at home and I saw a chance of going in her place. But whatever I said I wanted to buy, Pa said that he would bring it back for me, even when I said that I needed a new bra. When he returned with the item several hours later he asked triumphantly: “What do you think?” I inspected the bra reluctantly, as I was still angry with him for having to stay at home. But I could not help laughing when he told us how the on-lookers had been in stitches when the saleswoman had asked what size he wanted. “What did you say?” Mum asked, with tears running down her face. Roaring with laughter Pa said: “I showed her my fist and said that that was about the size I needed.” The following Thursday evening, when Pa was reading the paper, he suddenly said: “I wonder how Marie and Mieneke are getting on. We haven’t heard from them for quite a while. I’ve been thinking of sending Mien to see if they’re all right.” I held my breath, seeing my hopes drop the next minute when Mum replied: “Why don’t you go yourself for a couple of days?” Pa grumbled something about it being too cold and his sisters not bothering to come and see him any more. After the first couple of years, when it seemed as if the Queen herself came to visit on Pa’s birthday, they had not been to our place again. Hoping that I could go on my own, I tried not to show too much enthusiasm. That same Thursday evening, my parents decided that I could go the following Saturday afternoon, when the work was all done. I was to go alone as one train fare was expensive enough. If Jans agreed that I could do her washing on Tuesday, I could return on Monday afternoon. Up until the last minute I was worried stiff that they would change their minds; that Mum would go herself or that I would have to take one of my younger siblings. The housework was done in record time that Saturday and I left at three o’clock for the railway station in Amersfoort from where I would take the train. “Don’t you go to Arnhem first!” Mum warned when she saw me off on my bike. I laughed and waved. Arnhem (Fre) was where I was heading for, and she knew it! Chapter THIRTY-THREE

Doubts came flooding into my mind as I pedalled to the railway station in Amersfoort. I didn’t have a clue where to look for the clothing-shop in Arnhem. Fre could easily have left the job, as he did not like it much. What if nobody was home at Bep’s place? What if he had moved in with his father or if he had another girlfriend? While I stared at the landscape, rushing past my window in the train, the last year flashed past. A shy sixteen-year-old, drinking coffee with two sailors at the railway station in Arnhem; my siblings on the floor around me, hanging onto every word as I read out Fre’s letters, in which he recalled his adventures in the navy. I smiled as I pictured him at our table on his first and only visit in September, picking at his food and throwing up behind the hooiberg. Then I pictured him surrounded by the horde of boys who were always hanging around at our place. He had worn his uniform when he visited that day, to make an impression; I had no idea how terrified he had been of them. The older fellows were now all in the army. I remembered how disappointed I had been when I saw Fre a week later in ‘civilian’ clothes and that silly bow tie... A shudder ran through my body when I remembered how Fre had kissed me at the bus stop that evening. A week later I had met his sister Bep and her family and Fre had taken me Sonsbeek, that magnificent park where we walked hand-in-hand. We had been so happy! The whole world was smiling upon us; nothing could ever keep us apart! I had cried when I confessed to him that I had lied about my age, but he had laughed about it, saying he would wait for me no matter how long it took. Unable to cope with the turmoil in my heart I had cut him off. By the time the train turned into the station in Arnhem I was full of confidence again; Fre would be waiting for me with open arms... It was just after five when I sat in the bus to Arnhem-south where Bep lived. The bus was chock-a-block with shoppers; I was lucky to have a window seat so that I could see where I had to get off. Suddenly I heard my name called and I looked into the stunned face of Riet, Pa’s eldest sister’s daughter, who lived in Doornenburg. “What are you doing on this bus?” she asked with her sharp, catty voice. “You’re on the wrong one if you are going to Huissen!” Painfully aware that everyone in the bus was looking at me, I stammered: “I’m going to see a friend first.” Riet laughed loudly. “You mean the sailor? Does your mother know about that?” As people around me laughed knowingly, I wished the floor of the bus would open up and swallow me. More people came in, making me feel like sardines, packed in a tin. Riet was pushed to the back and I did not see her any more. I got off at the last stop of the route, the same spot where I had seen Fre and his navy friend Theo for the first time, waiting in their uniforms, on that Monday morning in May, nearly a year ago. I soon found the address I was looking for; number 63 in a long row of new council houses, small, three-bedroom homes with the toilet next to the front door, lounge-dining-room and kitchen downstairs and three bedrooms and a shower-cubicle upstairs, under the pointed, tiled roof. There was a two-metre strip of garden at the front of the houses and a little shed at the back with a tiny lawn and some small bushes and a few trees. As it was early in the season, the gardens still looked bare but here and there the tulips, narcissus and crocuses were flowering between the budding bushes. My heart thumped loudly in my chest as I pressed the bell-button next to the front door. I could hear the three little girls squealing and calling out: “Mama! It’s Tante Mientje!” I shall never forget the frozen look on Bep’s face when she opened the door. “What’s that then?” she asked when she found her voice. “You did come back!” Taking my hand she added: “Come in! Take your coat off! Fre is not home yet; he doesn’t finish until six o’clock on Saturdays, then he still has to make up the kassa, to make sure the money is right. He is usually home by half past six.” “Oh! I can’t wait that long!” I stammered. “I’ll be too late in Huissen.” “There is no way I’ll let you go until Fre has seen you!” Bep assured me. “You have no idea how miserable my dear brother has been these last months.” “Ome Fre will be very happy to see Tante Mientje, won’t he Mama?” little Jose asked. “I can’t wait to see his face,” Bep answered with a smile in my direction. “I just hope that you don’t hurt him like that again,” she warned before she disappeared into the kitchen to get me a cup of the delicious vegetable soup she made every Saturday afternoon. It seemed to take ages for the long hand of the beautiful Friese staart-klok to reach six-thirty while I played games with little Robert and his pretty sisters. Renee, the eldest girl, was eleven, very serious and quiet. Edith, nine, was an exceptionally beautiful girl and seven-year-old Jose, the youngest of the three, was a real little chatterbox. Three-year-old Robert, a solid little boy, sat on my lap for a while, which was a privilege, Bep said. I looked at their picture books, drawings (they were very artistic) and old family photographs and talked with Bep about the weather and other trivial things until we heard Fre’s brommer roaring behind the house. Bep ordered us all into the lounge and told us to be quiet. I felt sick in my stomach when I heard the outside door of the kitchen open and close. The girls were giggling as the door opened and Fre came in. He stopped rubbing his hands instantly and stood staring at me for what seemed a very long time, as if he did not really believe his eyes. The kids looked from the one to the other, expecting their favourite uncle to be smiling instead of just standing there as if he had seen a ghost. Fre looked awfully pale; his eyes were red from the cold wind and his hands felt like blocks of ice when he finally took mine. “I’m glad to see you,” he said softly. “I had to see you; I’m on my way to Huissen,” I explained shyly. Bep put the soup-tureen on the table, telling Fre that she had refused to let me go before he had come home. Fre offered to take me to Huissen on his brommer, as soon as we had eaten. The temperature was below zero and it was snowing. A thin layer of snow had already made the country look like fairyland. It would be freezing cold on the motorbike along the Rhine, as there was always a strong wind blowing on the dijk. But, with Bep’s fur-coat over my jacket and my feet in her boots which came to my knees, I would be all right on the back of Fre’s bike, they assured me. Halfway through the meal, Bep’s husband Bert, the good-looking police inspector, came home. He wasn’t surprised at all to see me there he said when he shook hands with me. “Bert always said that it was only a matter of time before you would show up,” Bep laughed. After the marvellous vegetable soup with balletjes and fresh bread-rolls with cheese and raw ham, Bep dressed me up to the hilt in her fur coat, leather gloves over my woollen ones and a thick, woollen shawl around my head so that only my eyes were visible. We had hardly had a chance to talk to each other by the time I hopped awkwardly onto the back of Fre’s bike. Promising to come back one day soon, we drove off in the direction of Huissen, ten kilometres away. A few hundred metres from Bep’s place I put my arms around Fre’s waist. Fre loosened one hand and squeezed mine, which were clasped together in front of his belly. I could not hear what he was saying, but an overwhelming love for him engulfed me, which brought tears to my eyes. Then we swung onto the high dyke where the icy wind took our breath away. A few hundred metres before we got to Tante Marie’s place, we got off the bike and talked for a while, oblivious of the freezing cold and the layer of snow on the road. Fre told me how happy he was that I had come before he kissed me shyly, not sure how to interpret my visit. While I wrote this last sentence I suddenly had a sickly feeling in my stomach, thinking of how different Fre had been from some of the other men who had taken me home. The nauseating feeling of choking made me remember a meeting I had completely forgotten about. I must have been thirteen or fourteen when I had accepted a lift from a grown man, to bring me home to Tante Marie’s place one evening. When he said goodbye to me, at the same spot where I stood with Fre, he had kissed me, putting his big tongue as far into my mouth as he could. When the man let go of me, he too had said that other girls loved that sort of thing, just as Pa had done when I was twelve years old. While Fre tied Bep’s coat to the back rack of his brommer, we arranged to meet at the bus stop on the outskirts of Arnhem early on Monday morning, Fre’s morning off. When he got on the bike he noticed that the back tyre was flat. Because I did not have the guts to take him to Tante Marie’s place where he could have repaired the tyre and warmed himself before he went home, I just left him standing there in the cold night... Poor Fre! He had had no choice but to walk all the way back to Arnhem-south wheeling the bike through the snow, where he finally arrived well after midnight. He had not expected anything else he told me later; he had only been concerned for me having to face Tante Marie at that late hour. It was nearly nine when I rang the bell at Pa’s youngest sister’s boerderij. Tante Marie was very surprised to see me. “I was just preparing to go to bed,” she said in her usual, cheerful way. Her husband, Ome Knid, lay snoring in a lounge chair, and their sons were already in bed, including Joe, the eldest who was my age. Early spring was a busy time for people in the fruit and vegetable growing community. Because they had to get up at an ungodly hour, preparing the hothouses as well as the ‘cold soil’ for the new season, they went to bed early. Although she looked at me curiously, Tante Marie readily accepted my explanation that I had to finish work at home before I could leave and, as she had been to our place a couple of times, she knew that the trip took three hours, longer if you missed a connection. At church the next morning, I caught up with my pen-friends Ria and Annie who wanted to know all about my relationship with Fre, and I let Tante Marie, who was with me, in on my secret. I was planning to tell Mum about meeting up with him when I would get home anyway, and I would not let Pa split us up again either... As arranged Fre picked me up from the bus stop on Monday morning, and took me back to Bep’s place for coffee. Bert called in for a few minutes as he was in the area. Before he left for work again, Fre took some photos in their tiny backyard, including one of me ‘on the arm of the strong arm’ and Bert took a photo of Fre and me. Because I had missed the train after my first visit, which had caused me terrible trouble, I made sure I was early this time. After the coffee Fre took me to the stad on his bike where we ate a broodje-croquette at the Rutex, a very popular restaurant, before he took me to the railway station. He still had an hour before he had to go back to work and decided to come with me to Ede/Wageningen where I had to change trains. We had so much to catch up on! In an empty carriage we talked about the problems we were about to face, and the patience we would need. While we kissed passionately, we promised each other everlasting love, no matter what difficulties came our way. “Together we can handle anything,” Fre smiled optimistically. “I’ll blow away any clouds that cover the sky! And if they are getting too thick, we can blow very hard together!” We were going to need a hell of a lot of air... When I came home in the afternoon, earlier than Mum had expected, I told her enthusiastically about my stay at Tante Marie’s place, and meeting up with Annie and Ria. “Tante Marie wants to know when I can come to sew for a couple of weeks again,” I said. Then, after a pause, I told her that I also had been to see Fre.”I knew you would go there,” she said calmly, and kept on knitting. When I showed her the postcard size studio photo Fre had given me, she let out a big sigh. “ I can’t for the life of me understand what a nice fellow like Fre sees in you,” she said slowly. “Surely he can get something better!” I looked at the charming fellow in his black suit, his homely jumper over his white shirt and his black ‘butterfly’ bow-tie, a serious, inquisitive look on his face, and I agreed with her whole- heartedly. Fre was a nice, handsome fellow; any girl could love him. I silently vowed that I would do anything in my power to make him happy. When Pa came in he greeted me happily, but when he saw Fre’s picture in my hand, he turned as a leaf on a tree. “I sent you to Huissen, not to Arnhem!” he barked. “I liked Huissen, but Arnhem appealed more to me,” I retorted cheekily and walked away. Nothing more was said about it and I did not talk about Fre for a couple of days either, not to my parents that is. Nearly a week passed before I had a chance to write a short letter to Fre. I gave him the address of the van Montfoorts in Amersfoort where I was going to sew every Thursday for the next couple of weeks. The sergeant-major and his wife were like loving parents to me. I had asked Mum’s permission to let us write to each other again, but she had refused; it would only cause endless trouble again, she said. There was enough fighting going on in our household as it was without pouring oil onto the flames. I hated going behind my parents’ backs, but this way Mum would not have to read our letters and we could write exactly what we wanted to say, so that we knew where we stood with each other. When I arrived at my ‘second family’ the following Thursday, I found Mevrouw in bed with high fever. Later in the afternoon she asked if I would stay the night to look after her five rowdy children, while her husband was at work. As there were no telephones, Meneer went on his push- bike to our place and got permission for me to stay until Saturday morning which suited me fine as I was expecting a letter from Fre and it had not arrived that day. It came on Saturday morning with the black and white photos that were taken during my visit the previous Monday. I had not expected them to be ready so soon as it usually took ten days to have a film developed. I was thrilled to see the pictures, which brought back such happy memories handing them one by one to Mevrouw van Montfoort who lay on the sofa in the living-room. “You’re right; this Bert is gorgeous but Fre is not bad looking either,” she said. “I always wanted a tall man,” I said wistfully. Sinking back onto the pillows she sighed: “Don’t bother about good looks too much Mien; they don’t last anyway. Have a look at our wedding photo and see what has become of us.” The handsome, tall sergeant-major had lost most of his hair and he had put on a lot of weight. Mevrouw van Montfoort had not been particularly pretty when she was young, and she had not improved either. She did not seem to care what she looked like. “I’m married now anyway,” she would say. When I came home that afternoon, I told Mum that I had given Fre the van Montfoort’s address. At first she was angry with me, but when I told her that I loved him, and would not let him go again no matter what, she calmed down. After I showed her some of the photos Fre had included in his letter, she said that exchanging letters with him at van Montfoort’s place was all right with her. At least it kept the peace at home but, a moment later, she asked if I would let her read his letters again. I asked Fre to write personal things on a separate piece of paper so that Mum could read the rest, which kept her happy. I avoided her asking me to read what I had written to Fre by writing when I was babysitting or waiting until my parents had gone to bed. As the weeks went by, we longed more and more to see each other, but we had to be patient; things were improving slowly. In hindsight, I don’t know where I got the cheek to put the handsome photograph of Fre, which I had put in a narrow silver frame, on the dressoir in the living-room for everyone to see. Pa slowly became used to seeing Fre’s friendly face. The first week he pretended that it wasn’t there, then one day, when he was in an exceptionally good mood, he asked if I was seeing the ‘violist’ sometimes. I laughed at his remark as Fre looked just like a violinist with his silly bow tie. “Not since I went to Huissen, but I hope to see him soon,” I answered truthfully, turning my attention to my cute little brother on my lap, Pa’s pride and joy. In April, just before Easter Meneer van Montfoort bought an old car and invited me to go with them on Easter Sunday to a village near Eindhoven in the south of Holland, where their eldest daughter Betsie was on a health-farm. Betsie was a very nervous child and awfully thin. As I had given up hope of persuading Mum to allow Fre to visit at Easter, I looked forward to the trip, as I had not been in a car since Mum’s wedding. The strange thing is that I don’t remember ever going with the van Montfoorts anywhere. Maybe they did not go; it was not unusual for them to realise at the last moment that they had no money to pay for their plans. During the six weeks of ‘Lent’ before Easter, we were expected to forgo all pleasures and were supposed to have only one full meal a day to prepare ourselves for the death and resurrection of Christ. The money we saved that way was to be put in a box for the poor, but Pa argued that he was one of the poorest of all, with so many mouths to feed. Apart from not being allowed to eat meat on any Friday, on Good Friday Mum would have us starve all day. Going without food for a day would teach us what it was like to have nothing to eat at all, she always said. But in Huissen, where Pa came from, the Catholics did not take things as seriously as we did, they ate krentenbrood (fruit-loaf) and as much as they liked on Good Friday! (When we came to Australia in 1971, we were amazed to see that everything was closed on Good Friday. In Holland only Catholics were free that day as it was a Sunday for them.) During the week before Easter we went to church every evening to listen to a ‘cleansing’ sermon by a Jesuit or Dominican pater (padre), who came especially for the occasion. The church was always packed, as those paters were famous for their preaching. You could hear a pin drop when they spoke, softly leading up to the thunder that was sure to follow. While the priest spoke softly one evening, my mind wandered off, thinking of Fre and what it would be like to see him again. I dreamed that I lay in his arms when the pater suddenly roared about sin and punishment. Feeling terribly guilty about the sinful stirring even the thought about Fre’s kisses gave me, a deep red spread over my face, when I realised what the pater was talking about. A young couple, who had gone into the forest, was hit by lightning at the very moment of their sin, he shouted. The thunder - God’s anger Ð had filled the sky while their half-naked bodies blackened instantly from the lightning that had stuck them down. I remembered the preacher’s words every time this terrifying urge stirred within me, until we were safely married and we could do as we pleased, or so I thought... Thinking about those sermons now makes me angry. The priests must have had a lot of fun preparing the text for them, anticipating the faces of the stomme boeren (gullible or stupid farmers) lapping it all up. Or were they as naive as we were? Would-be priests were separated from their families at the tender age of twelve and lived from then on in a world of men only. How could they possibly understand people, especially women and children who had to live in the real world? Because they served on God’s altar day after day, I expected them to be closer to God than ordinary people. But they were obviously only human after all. Although I had some very upsetting experiences with our local priest and later in Australia with a church minister, I know that there are also many excellent priests around. Unfortunately for us, the most difficult ones were sent to small villages ‘where they could do less damage’, I was told. When Fre asked in his next letter, if he could come and see me the Sunday after Easter, my longing for him got the better of me. As it was too late to write back to him, I plucked up courage and went to our neighbour to ring him. I still had only used the phone a few times and I felt very nervous when I heard Fre’s soothing voice with the pleasant southern accent. With my knees going to jelly and my heart beating in my throat, I told him that I was sure that Mum would be happy to see him if he turned up on Sunday afternoon. “What about your father?” Fre asked. “Don’t worry about him,” I said, a lot more confidently than I felt; “He never makes any trouble when strangers are around.” Chapter THIRTY-FOUR

With only two more days until Sunday, I still had to find a way to tell Mum that Fre was coming. I had kept saying that I was not interested in going steady until I was at least twenty and hoped she believed that we were still only friends. In his letter that week Fre wrote that everybody could see that he was head-over-heels in love, and it would be impossible for him to hide it when he came to see me. I just hoped - against knowing better - that I could have both my parent’s blessing for his visit. Playing with Tiesje on my lap one afternoon I said as nonchalantly as I could to Mum: “Fre wants to come on Sunday.” While we drank coffee a little later, Mum asked Pa. “If it was up to me you would never see him again but your mother seems to like him,” he grumbled. I instantly forgot to restrain my happiness and gave him a peck on his cheek spontaneously, something I had never done before. To hide my embarrassment I picked up my little brother and danced with him through the room, telling him that Fre was coming on his motorbike the next day. “Ho! Ho! Who is talking about tomorrow?” Pa asked. I only hesitated for a moment, then said quickly: “I promised to ring him if he wasn’t allowed to come.” What a liar I had become! Even if he had wanted to stop Fre seeing me, Pa could never disappoint his little son. I tried hard not to show how nervous I was the following morning. The old house was spotlessly clean. It was sunny but the wind was very cold and rain was predicted for the evening. I was relieved to see my parents disappear into the bedroom for their usual nap after the midday meal. Hoping that Fre would arrive before they got up again, I waited anxiously for the sound of his brommer. Jopie and my younger brothers were just about as excited as I was. They were waiting for him at the entrance to our driveway. Shortly after two o’clock, Wim came running inside as they had heard a brommer in the distance. I stumbled after him, nearly falling over my own feet. I hardly recognised Fre when he got stiffly off the bike and wheeled it behind the house. His face was awfully white; his lips were blue and his eyes were red and watery. The trip had taken him a lot longer than he had expected, as he had not known the way, he said. Before we went inside, he kissed me briefly on my cheek when I locked his icy cold hands under my armpits to warm them. The kachel was soon burning high again and a hot cup of coffee brought some colour back into his cheeks but, because he was no longer at sea and worked indoors all the time, he still looked awfully pale to me. As soon as we got inside, Mum came out of the bedroom. She shook both Fre’s hands enthusiastically while Fre said that he could not believe how much Tiesje had grown in the eight months since his first visit. He was wheeling my lovely little brother around the back yard on the tank of his motorbike, when Pa got up. He could not have chosen a better moment; anyone who made his son happy, melted Pa’s heart. He greeted Fre like a lost friend. Later on, when he did some jobs for Pa, Fre thought that all our troubles were over but, as I was used to my stepfather’s jovial habits when visitors were around, I tempered his enthusiasm a little. When my older brothers came home with a horde of neighbours and friends, Fre was the centre of their attention again. He patiently answered their questions about the navy and soon felt at ease with them. Later in the afternoon, Fre helped me feed the chickens, which was still my job on Sundays. With Tiesje on top of a bag of pellets, we pulled the heavily loaded hand-cart around the four chooks-yards, we played funny games with the possessive hens who did not want to part with their eggs and talked non-stop. After feeding the two hundred baby chickens, we kissed while Tiesje played with the cute yellow-feathered balls. As I expected, Mum invited Fre to stay for the evening meal of left over soup (this time I had made sure that the fat had been taken off!) and sandwiches. When Pa came in from milking he told me to fry some eggs for Fre because he had fixed his big, electrical saw. When I came out of the cellar with a dish full of ‘wind-eieren’, Pa said impatiently: “Not those! Give him proper eggs!” I pulled a face at Fre. “You are privileged!” I laughed. (One hot summer day when I was fourteen, I was cleaning windows when I saw Pa lying on his bed, without underpants on, his back towards me. His swollen scrotum reminded me instantly of ‘wind-eggs’. I realised then that those eggs gave me the creeps because Pa had made me touch his testicles, when I had been a little girl.) The rain held off but thick clouds covered the sky when Fre was leaving at eight that evening. He had borrowed a raincoat from Wout and promised, with a wink in my direction, to return it the following weekend. As everything had gone so well and Fre would be back next Saturday, I felt very happy when I watched the red light of his bike disappear around a bend in the road. But, when I came inside, Pa’s bottom lip had dropped again, grouching about the prospect of having ‘a stranger over the floor’ every weekend. “ He doesn’t have to come every weekend,” I protested cheekily. “I’m happy to go to Arnhem instead!” Before I had finished the sentence I was already sorry. A flood of accusations about going behind my parent’s backs and us being lovers, which I steadily denied, followed. “Oh, come on! We are not blind!” Mum said. Her bottom lip was trembling, which somehow always gave me the feeling that she was jealous. I felt sorry for her, as she had not had much fun in her youth. Later in the evening I had a heated argument with Pa about our writing to van Montfoort’s address. Mum said that the van Montfoorts should be ashamed of themselves for encouraging me to go behind my parents’ backs. “They reckon that it’s ridiculously old-fashioned that you have to read my letters” I protested loudly. “I’m seventeen, I’m not a child any more!” “Keep your big mouth shut!” Pa shouted while he banged his fist on the table. “Even if you were twenty-five, you are still a snot-nose! Your mother is far too soft with you; it’s time you knew who’s the boss here!” Pa looked like a real madman when he was angry. Mum always said that his high blood pressure and the pills he had to take for this condition made him so cranky; his shouting was just his way to get rid of his frustration. I was often sent to the doctor - on my bike - to get more pills for him, sometimes even in the middle of the night. At the end of our argument Pa grudgingly agreed that Fre could write to me at home again. In return, I promised to ask the ‘sergeant-major’ to take Pa with him when he went to pick up his daughter from the health-farm in Reuzel, the following Sunday. Pa was still trying to get Wout out of the army and, as Meneer van Montfoort now had an auto, he saw his chance to see Wout’s commander personally. The army barracks where Wout was stationed was not far from Reuzel and, accompanied by a sergeant-major Pa could take his plea directly to the ‘top brass’. When Fre came again the following Sunday morning, Pa had already left with Meneer van Montfoort. It was lovely to have Mum to ourselves and, as she warmed to Fre’s charming ways, we relaxed. He soon called her Moe, Moes or Mama like the rest of us. This was only his third visit but he already seemed part of our family. As on his previous visits, Fre dried the dishes while I washed them on the dining-room table after the midday meal. Resting her feet on another chair, Mum asked him about his family and she wanted to know all about his father. Fre’s father had been a diabetic for a long time and, since his mother died in February the previous year, he had been suffering of and on from dizzy spells and blackouts. He was still living with Fre’s older brother Ap, who was married and had one little girl. Henny, Ap’s wife, was pregnant with their second child. Because Fre was at work all day and there would be no one around if his father had a blackout during the day, he was staying with Bep until his father was well enough to go home. “Things are getting better,” he said. “Father’s attacks are not coming on as often any more. As soon as the doctor gives his permission he is going back to the council house. Then, of course, I’ll go home again too.” A cloud came over Mum’s face; I knew very well what she was thinking... Mum asked about Ingrid, Fre’s adopted sister who was now fifteen. He had already told me that she was not happy at his eldest brother Henk’s place but the adoptive authorities would not allow her to be alone with his father, in case of trouble. “I feel sorry for her,” Fre said sympathetically. “When Mother died, Ingrid was not allowed to live alone with Father; that way she lost Father as well as Mother.” Mum looked angry. “How ridiculous!” she said with trembling lips. Fre shrugged his shoulders. “People always talk,” he said. A hot flush coloured my face while I listened to their conversation; had Mum really not seen what was going on between Pa and me a few years ago...? Fre went on telling Mum that Henk’s wife Gijsje was expecting her second child in June, in six weeks’ time. Ingrid had to share a tiny room with one-year-old Patrick, which meant that she could not get into her room whenever the toddler was asleep, and she could not listen to her radio, or have the light on in the evening to read a book. What a different kind of life a girl had in a city! In one of his letters Fre had asked which day was my day off during the week so that he could take a snipperdag and we could go out together. I had laughed to myself when I read his question. A day off during the week? You’ve got to be joking! The only days off apart from Sundays, were Koninginnedag (the Queen’s birthday), the yearly sports-day and a few specific Catholic ‘Sundays’, and even then the animals had to be fed, the cows milked and the hay taken care of, if it was going to rain. Ingrid was eighteen months younger than I was, fancy being able to spend the evening with a book! Pa always asked if I had nothing better to do if I was reading the newspaper, and Mum would have burned the book if she saw me reading anything else but children’s stories. Books were evil; nothing good could ever come from any book and films were the quickest way to get you into the hands of Satan, she always said. ‘Ora et labora’ was Mum’s motto. Mum prayed all day while she worked an ingrained habit from her four years in the convent. ‘Work and Pray’ was the only way to heaven, and what we were here on earth for. That was what we were taught at home as well as at school and in church. Certainly, it kept everyone out of trouble but, as there were never enough hours in the day to get through our workload, there was not much time left for sinning anyway. Mum was so old-fashioned! On a Sunday afternoon a couple of weeks later, the first hot day in May, Fre suggested we go for a ride on the brommer. That was all right with Mum as long as we took Tiesje with us as she wanted to go to bed for her usual afternoon nap and Jopie had gone to her friend Lena’s place as usual. “Haven’t you got something cooler to wear than that blouse?” Fre asked when I was ready to go. I didn’t but, while Fre put the sewing machine on the table, I cut the collar off an old blouse. I had just put it on, when Mum got up to go to the plee (or to check on us). “What on earth have you done to your blouse?” she said angrily. “Take it off immediately; I won’t have you flaunting yourself like a whore!” For once I was tongue-tied, shocked at my mother’s coarse language in front of Fre, but he said calmly: “It’s not that bad Moes. Girls in the stad wear it a lot lower than that.” Turning to me he asked: “What if you wear your white necklace with it?” I quickly got the long string of beads out of my bedroom and wound it around my neck four times. Mum was satisfied that I looked more decent that way, but she shook her head when she watched us go, Tiesje enthusiastically waving from between us. Fre drove first to the polder where our cows were grazing. Then we went to nearby Bunschoten and Spakenburg the well-known fishers’ villages where Mina our fish-vendor lived and most women and children still wore their traditional costumes on Sundays. The women’s stiff, square shoulder piece was worn over a tight black bodice with short, checked sleeves pinned on to the armholes. A short apron of the same material as the sleeves, which reached just below their hips, was worn over a long black skirt. A small white cap, pinned between a thick roll of hair at the front as well as at the back of their head, completed their colourful outfit, which was very different from any other traditional Dutch costume. They were famous, especially for freshly baked fish and smoked paling (eel) as well as for krentenbrood. As more and more of the IJselmeer (the former Zuiderzee) was reclaimed, former fishermen now had other thriving businesses, which included a huge button factory and a big bakery whose bread was sold around the country. Fre said that those people were always at the market in Arnhem too. He pulled faces while Tiesje and I feasted on paling before we followed the road along the IJselmeer. We looked around in Nijkerk and stopped for a picnic in a paddock on the way to Harderwijk. The paddock was covered with hondsbloemen (dandelions), white margarieten (daisies), maroon koekoek’s and mauve Pinkster (Pentecost) bloemen, while yellow water-lissen (irises) were flowering in abundance on the edges of the sloten. We picked flowers and, sitting against a haystack, we wove them into a headband. While we ate the goodies we had brought with us I took my long necklace off and I gave it to Tiesje to play with, but he soon fell asleep. While we kissed in the hay, Fre’s fingers caressed the visible top of my boobs. Oh! The feelings that stirred in me! I did not want him to stop but my mind worked overtime; it mustn’t get out of hand! When his hand went in the direction of another forbidden place, I got scared. “Stop it, please Fre!” I begged. After kissing me softly again, saying that he had plenty of patience, we got up and brushed the hay off our clothes. My hands trembled when l woke Tiesje and splashed some cold water on my burning face on the edge of the sloot. “Here! You can do with some of this too!” I said, throwing a handful in Fre’s direction. Tiesje soon woke up properly when Fre grabbed me and threatened to throw me in the sloot. Clapping his little hands he shouted enthusiastically: “Yes Fre; do it! I’ll help you too!” “Better not,” Fre laughed, “Moes won’t like it if Mientje is all wet when we come home.” “Moes won’t like it if she hears that we sat in the hay either!” I warned him. Before we left, we checked each other carefully for any telltale signs but my little brother told everyone what had happened anyway. “Did you have a sleep this afternoon?” Mum asked when he did not want to go to bed at his normal seven o’clock bedtime. “Ja,” he said innocently. “I slept in the hay with Fre and Mien.” Mum’s mouth quivered when she looked at me, but as Fre was within hearing, she said nothing. Life without Pa around was so peaceful! When we started to feed the chooks I suddenly remembered that I had promised to introduce Fre to Mevrouw van Montfoort, ‘my second mother’, that afternoon. Mum offered instantly to finish feeding the chooks herself with Wim and told Jopie to look after Tiesje. We could stay for the evening meal, if Mevrouw invited us, she said before we left on the brommer; Siem knew that Pa was away so he would be helping her with the milking, she said. Glad to be on our own, we stopped on the way to Amersfoort. Sitting in the grass on the side of the road, we talked about our future, knowing that things were not going to be easy... Mevrouw van Montfoort liked Fre instantly and the children were soon fighting over his lap, begging him for a ride on his motorbike. Mevrouw asked Fre to call her by her first name but Fre declined, just as I had done. We had just started the evening meal when Meneer van Montfoort came home with Betsie. Although it was his day off, he was wearing his uniform and he had already dropped Pa off. I was glad to hear that Pa was home in time to help Mum with the milking, as Siem might not turn up at all. The weather had changed and it threatened to rain. “You can sleep here tonight”, Mevrouw van Montfoort offered Fre when we were leaving. “You are free tomorrow, aren’t you?” Fre took her happily up on her offer. It had started to rain as soon as we were home and it was pelting down by the time Fre got back to van Montfoort’s place at ten o’clock that night. He had a great talk with my ‘foster-parents’ that evening, he wrote in his letter the following day. As it was still raining cats and dogs on Monday morning, Fre had left his bike there and he had taken the train to Arnhem. The children had jumped on him to wake him up in the morning, and they had tricked him at breakfast by putting an empty shell in his eggcup. “They were just about falling off their chairs with laughter when I pretended not to notice,” he wrote. “They are lovely people.” They were. And like Mum, my surrogate mother also fell in love with Fre at first sight. Because I was always busy, the weeks went quickly for me, but Fre was bored in the shop, which was ironically called ‘The Optimist’. As trade was terribly slow, the days dragged by for him. He envied Annie, the country girl he worked with, he wrote. Annie was nineteen, two years older than I was; she had been going steady with her boyfriend Bert, who was a carpenter, since she was fourteen and still at school. They rode their bikes from Westervoort where they both lived every day and they often had lunch together when Bert worked in the stad. Seeing them together so often made the weeks seem endless to Fre. Standing at the counter, he usually wrote a long letter to me on Tuesday as well as on Thursday, which made Annie giggle saying that he was ‘really and truly bewitched’. I seldom managed more than one short letter a week in return as I also had to find time to write to Wout and my girlfriends in Den Haag and Huissen. The following Saturday Fre came to van Montfoort’s place after work to pick up his motorbike. He had managed to get away from the shop at six-fifteen, caught the train at six-thirty and rode into our driveway at eight thirty. His plan was to ask permission for me to go to Arnhem with him the following day to meet his father. If he could not stay the night at our place, he would go back to van Montfoort’s to sleep. My parents were nearly always out on Saturday evening but this time they had stayed home. Mum was angry with me when she heard Fre’s bike but, when Fre told her a little later that I had not known that he was coming, her anger melted like snow in the sun. By the time we had finished our coffee, Fre not only had permission to take me to meet his father the following day, but he was also allowed to stay the night. Although I was happy that he could stay, I was worried; he had to sleep with Wim and Wout in a double bed in the roughly built bedroom above the cows, and Wim was still wetting the bed occasionally... “Don’t look so worried,” Fre said. “It’s probably going to rain tonight,” I warned him. “I’m not afraid of a bit of rainwater when it leaks,” he replied, trying hard to keep a straight face. “I’ll close ‘t dakraampje (little window in the thatched roof) if it wakes me up.” Mum laughed, tears running down her face. Earlier on that day, when we talked about the possibility of him sleeping over at our place, I had told Fre about Siem’s ‘accident’ when he was four. His bed had been wet one morning, something that had not happened since he was two. “It rained through ‘t dakraampje last night Mama,” he had said when he got up. My father had doubled up with laughter, but Siem had angrily stamped his feet insisting that that was what had happened; there could not possibly have been another explanation for his pants being wet. Chapter THIRTY-FIVE

Mum stayed up until we were all in bed, making sure that I wasn’t going to the kit, the boy’s bedroom above the cows where Fre was sleeping that Saturday night. The cows had finally been taken to the paddock the day before and another busy week of spring-cleaning was waiting for me. We had already done the walk-in cupboard, the geut and Mum’s bedroom and expected to finish the rest by the end of the week. Pa could hardly wait for me to go sewing again so that I earned money. I often thanked God that we were not allowed to work on Sundays! The following morning I was awake early as usual. I would have been too excited to sleep in, even if I had been allowed to do so; today I was going to meet my future father-in-law! Pa had gone to milk the cows alone and Mum was calling out to Siem to get up and give him a hand. But Siem was either fast asleep after the usual drinking session with his friends on Saturday night, or he was pretending not to hear her. Mum always went milking with Pa in the morning but she had refused to go, wanting to keep an eye on me while Fre was sleeping with my brothers... I thought that was ridiculous. “As if I would crawl into bed with him!” I said disgustedly. But that same afternoon, when my sexual feelings were aroused properly, I started to think differently. Later, when I had to fight the disturbing, sinful urge to give Fre all I had instead of staying a virgin until we married, I appreciated her concern even more. Twenty years later, when our eldest daughter was going out with boys, peoples’ attitudes towards sexuality had changed dramatically. The pill had removed the fear of unwanted pregnancies which was a blessing but the way sexual freedom was portrayed in magazines and on television, made me sick. It wasn’t until then that I fully understood my mother’s paranoia; she must have been petrified when I was away for a weekend, sleeping over at Fre’s place...

My anxiety about Wim wetting the bed slowly disappeared when I heard Fre laugh and carry on with my brothers in the bedroom above the now empty cow-stables. But the colour in my face flared a few minutes later when my lovely brother came into the heert with his eyes to the floor. Although he had already changed his pants, I could smell the disaster as soon as he opened the door. “Fre wants to know where he can wash himself, and... eh, he needs clean underpants,” he said sheepishly. I could never be angry with Wim; he was such a nice fellow; not being able to control his bladder was awful for him. He had only wet the bed a couple of times during the last year. Wout never made a big fuss about it, but the worry of it happening with Fre beside him would have made him nervous.

I gave Wim a bucket of warm water, a was-handje (a face washer in the form of a little bag to put your hand in) soap, a towel and a set of underwear from Wout to take to Fre. “Hi!” he grinned when he came into the heert a little later. I asked if he had heard the rain that night. “No, I slept like a log and we left the window open,” he said. I loved the way Fre’s lips were twitching when he was joking. A little later I walked - very self-conscious - arm in arm with Fre to church for the early Mass. I could hear people think! When we came home two hours later we quickly had breakfast and left on Fre’s motorbike at ten for the sixty-kilometre trip to his place. It was a glorious day and I was happier than I had ever been. We stopped for a while near the schaaps-kooi at the Veluwe where the yellow brem and purple heather were in full bloom. We stretched our legs and had a cuddle before we went on our way again. Joking that we probably had forgotten the time, Bep was waiting with the hot midday meal when we walked in through the back door shortly after one. “How could you be so sure that we were coming?” I asked. “I wasn’t,” Bep laughed. “But there was a good chance with my brother’s charming ways!” Fre’s father was sitting in the lounge as Fre said he would, a greying, soft-spoken man with laughing eyes behind heavy-rimmed glasses, a few inches taller than Fre and quite thin. “The right weight for a diabetic,” he said when we shook hands, asking me to please call him ‘Father’. “ Fre looks like Mother,” he said when I mentioned that I could not see any resemblance between them. “He has her character too,” he added softly. With tears in his eyes he told me what a lovely person Fre’s mother had been and how much he still missed her every day. She was only sixty-six when she died fifteen months ago; her death had come as such a shock to all of them. Mother had trouble keeping her ‘water up’ for along time; the operation she had to have went well and she was just about to come home when she suddenly died of thrombosis. Fre had told me that his mother had had to wear pads all the time. She always begged them to stop when they were telling jokes as laughing made her wet her pants. The way Mum always laughed, with tears running down her face, reminded him of his own mother, he said. “Mother would have liked you Mien; it’s such a pity she died before you met Fre,” Father sighed. He then told me how relieved they both had been when Fre had broken up with Melanie, his former girlfriend. Mother had said many a time to him: “That is no girl for you jong! You will never be happy with her.” On and on he went in his soft, melodious voice, wiping his tears away time and again. After a cup of tea, we took Father to the bus stop to go ‘home’ to Ap’s place. Then Fre took me to Velp on the brommer, five kilometres north of Arnhem, where he showed me the house where he was born, and where we would live when we got married, if everything went according to plan. Housing had always been a big problem in Holland. Because the waiting list for a council home was several years, long engagements were normal. At that time Fre’s youngest brother Gerard, a cook on a coastal ship, had been engaged for more than a year. He was away for months at a time and always stayed at his girlfriend’s place when he was ‘home’. Because Fre was the eldest, the council house would be for him, providing he got married and lived in it with his father. Bep, as well as Fre, said that Father did not care for Gerard’s girlfriend. He could not bear the thought of having to live with her, they said. Before we got to the house, Fre showed me the village, a suburb of Arnhem. The Catholic Church with its tall pointed tower watched over the close clusters of shops and houses. As in most towns Catholic girls were taught by nuns in a school joined onto the convent next to the church, separate from the boys who were taught by brothers in the boys-school across the road. I could not imagine what it would be like not to have boys in the class. The beautiful villas of the ‘upper-class’ were on the left side of the highway to the north, surrounded by forests. The poor (the working class) lived on the right side, across from the railway. A lot of new houses were being built on the slope down towards the River IJsel. That was where Fre’s family lived in one of the old homes, built in the early twenties. The house was one in a row of half a dozen, surrounded by several identical blocks of houses. The neighbourhood looked friendly and clean with the dark green front doors alternated with large, shiny windows with short lace curtains and a row of pot-plants on the windowsills. The windows were divided into small squares by slats and took up just about the whole front wall of the living-room. The street, laid with bricks in a fishtail pattern, was divided by a row of big trees and the stoep (footpath) joined directly onto the house, without a front garden. Via a narrow path we came to a small overgrown garden at the back of the house. A lump stuck in my throat when Fre opened the back door. This would be where I would live when I became his wife. “ Welcome home Mevrouw Blom!” he said, when he put his arms around me; “You’re shivering!” “It will be wonderful to be together forever,” I whispered. “But I’m still so young.” Saying that he would wait, he kissed me again; I was getting older every day and I would be twenty-one before I knew it. Standing in the little, dark kitchen, I tried to picture Fre’s family of seven grown-up children, three girls and four boys, cramped around the table. But not for long as a terrible smell of urine came from the toilet on the other side of the tiny back porch. Fre threw a few buckets of water in the bowl, which ran into an in-ground tank in the tiny backyard behind the house. “Father emptied it every year in the spring, but he has not done that since Mother died,” he explained. “He always grew the biggest lettuces and beans from the muck.” “No wonder you did not like anything that was green,” I laughed. I shuddered by the idea as only animal manure was used to grow vegetables at home. “What’s the difference?” Fre asked. I had no answer to that question. The kitchen was no more than two by three metres and the living-room was only half the size of the heert in our old house. An old square extendable table with six chairs stood in the middle of the room and two armchairs, a divan (sofa-bed) and a dressoir were placed against the walls. At the back of the room, opposite the big window, was a coal-burning heater, surrounded by small cupboards of which the two top doors had leadlight panels, made by Fre. A dark brown shawl with an Indonesian design was pinned in a diamond shape on the wallpaper of the chimney, between the cupboards. Ap had sent it when he was fighting against Soekarno’s take-over of the Dutch colony in 1948, and it had hung there ever since. I looked at a black and white portrait of Fre’s mother on the wall above the sofa. “ It’s not very good,” Fre said. “I drew it when I was at art school.” He shrugged his shoulders and pulled a face. “Father likes it. He thinks it’s just like her. One day I’ll make a better one.” I was most impressed, as there was none such artistic talent in our family. Maybe there was, but it hadn’t had a chance to develop as we were always working. To the left of the kachel was a door to a tiny bedroom where Fre’s parents had slept. Their four youngest children were born on the same feather mattress that was still on the narrow double bed that stood against the wall, under the window with only space left for a kitchen chair. “This will stay Father’s room. Come, I’ll show you upstairs where our bedroom will be,” Fre said. He took my hand, and with our arms around each other we walked up the stairs. There were only two rooms; a small one which had been for the girls and a long, narrow one for the boys. “How on earth did you all fit in here?” I asked. “This is as bad as at our place!” “ A lot of meek sheep fit in a barn,” Fre laughed. “Greet and Bep were living with the families they worked for, way before Ingrid came to live with us.” As at our place, they all had shared double beds. We sat down on the bed in the girls’ room, which would be ours when we were married. “ Oh Mientje, my liefste meisje (beloved girl), I’m so happy to have found you!” Fre whispered while he kissed my neck and face, holding me tight. I eagerly responded to his kiss on my mouth and held my breath as his hand felt for the buttons to open my blouse. So far he had only felt my breasts on the outside of my clothes, the stirring of which had shocked me at the time. I was not supposed to have those kind of feelings until we were married I thought. When his fingers touched my nipple I took his hand away, unable to bear the incredible feeling of desire I felt between my legs. “It’s all right schatje (darling); I don’t want to hurt you,” he said softly, kissing me tenderly while I fumbled with trembling fingers to close the buttons again. Oh! There is nothing more beautiful than innocent young love; I’m getting wet, just writing about it! Overwhelmed with feelings of love, I put my head on Fre’s back, holding him tightly as we drove back to Arnhem-south where Bep would be waiting with the evening meal. She looked at me curiously, as we came into the kitchen where she was stirring the soup left from the midday meal. “You look happy!” she stated. “Did you like the old house?” Sure that she guessed what we had been up to alone in the house, my colour deepened. “ It’s lovely,” I stammered, quickly turning my attention to the children to hide my embarrassment. After the evening meal we rushed to the station. I had to be home before ten o’clock and did not want to miss the train again. We had to be careful not to upset my parents; our relationship depended on it. Sitting alone in an empty compartment, I recalled what had happened when I got home from my first visit to Fre’s sister in September. My parents might be angry with themselves again for letting me go. With Wout away in the army and no income from Siem, who often refused to help with the work at the farm, Pa was now in a bad mood all the time. When I was away, as today, Mum had to feed the chickens and the pigs with Wim or Bartje while Jopie had to prepare the evening meal and look after Tiesje. I took a deep breath, hoping for the best. There was no way I would give up on Fre now that I had had a taste of what my life would be like after we were married, no matter how selfish my parents said that I was... Chapter THIRTY-SIX

As I walked into the heert, close to ten o’clock, the expression on Mum’s face told me immediately that something was wrong. She was alone; Pa had gone to bed early as usual. As I expected, he had nagged her all day about letting me go to Fre, no doubt insinuating that we would be doing sinful things. Pa knew what it was like to be young, struggling with his (over- sexed) desires. Fre was twenty-six, the same age Pa had been when he had made a girl pregnant. In 1991, when I was in Holland to find out the truth, I learned that she was not just ‘a girl’ but Pa’s girlfriend, with whom he had been going out for at least six months, before she became pregnant. His dominating father had also forbidden his sister Anna’s relationship with the girl’s brother, because they were ‘below his stand’. The old man had created a nasty uproar in the neighbourhood by banning other youngsters to meet with any of the girl’s family, which had terrible, long-lasting effects. Soon after our arrival I found Pa’s son, who was born in 1927, in the far south of Holland, which made it possible for him to meet his brother Ties, a brother he had not known existed. Until his death, Pa - and Mum Ð had believed that Pa was under curatele (guardianship) by law, arranged by his father in order to get out of paying maintenance, which proved to have been only bluff. Mum started to cry when she told me that Siem had not come home to help them with feeding and milking. Pa had been in a bad mood all day, demanding that Mum forbade me to see Fre again. She had told him that she did not want me to end up in a madhouse as Tante Jans had done, having to blame herself for it for the rest of her life. She felt sorry for Fre, saying again that she could not understand why he bothered with me; I caused him nothing but trouble. I bit my tongue, wanting to scream that it was they who gave him trouble, not I. “I’ll go to bed,” I said lamely. “Jans will be waiting for me tomorrow morning.” It’s just as well that I shall be busy with the spring-cleaning this week, I thought as I crawled into bed beside Jopie and Bartje, fighting my tears. Although Jopie was soundly asleep, she pulled her legs up as soon as she felt my icy cold feet. I wondered if Fre would let me warm them on him; not many men did, I was told. My father had never let Mum touch him, telling her to ‘hoepel op’ when her feet were cold. Pa did not mind warming Mum’s feet, and she loved him for it. The thought of Fre soon made me glow inside as well as outside. He loved me; he knew that I would never give him any trouble if it were up to me. I had already gone to the neighbour’s place before Pa got up the next morning. Singing and whistling popular tunes, I went through the weekly load of washing as fast as I could and had it on the line in record time. I quickly ate the simple hot midday meal, which was part of the agreement, and cleaned the washing area in the shed. Before Jans had a chance to ask me to see if the sheets were dry so that I could help her fold them, I rushed home, ready to get on with the spring-cleaning. After he had to do the milk-run himself all winter, Pa had finally been able to hire someone to do the rotten job for him when spring came. While he took the last straw and manure out of the stables, Mum and I scraped and scrubbed the dried-up cow dung of the walls, while I sang the one popular song after the other. Pa joked with Mum about being in love, saying how Fre would have felt up in heaven with such a young girl in his arms. When Mum went away to see what Tiesje was up to, he wanted to know if Fre had held my breasts and if we had done any tongue- kissing. I shuddered at the idea alone, thinking how Pa had put his horrible thick tongue into my mouth, which nearly choked me, when I was twelve. I had frozen instantly when Fre had tried to kiss me that way; I simply could not bear it... Pa laughed his horrible noisy laugh at my reaction. Father forgive him. Surely, he would have been unable to see how much hurt his actions had already caused me... As arranged, Fre came to our place again the following Sunday. I was helping Mum with the midday meal, when he came in, followed by Wim, Jopie, Bartje and Tiesje, who had been waiting for him on the road. Shocked by his blue face and red-rimmed eyes, I rushed towards him, put my arms around his waist and kissed him, forgetting to restrain my feelings for him in front of my parents. “Don’t be so silly!” Mum berated me. “Fre doesn’t need your kisses! Let him get to the kachel and give him a hot cup of soup instead!” Fre agreed with her whole-heartedly. Mum’s delicious vegetable soup with a generous number of balletjes, and without the thick layer of fat that usually swam on top, soon revived him. As promised, Fre brought his precious photo-album from his time in the navy with him. Everyone, including Mum hung on his lips when he told the story behind each picture, opening a whole world for us. He had decorated every page with drawings of Donald Duck, commenting humorously on the scene in the pictures. In one of the photos on board a photograph of Fre had been taken of him in such a way that only his laughing face could be seen between his knees. He was holding his legs with his shining shoes pointing forward. After begging him to demonstrate how he had done it, Fre gave the secret away. There had been two sailors; Fre was laying on his belly while his mate had put his legs over Fre’s shoulders! Later that afternoon Fre started work on another repair job for Pa, which put him in a very good mood. Because he had to work all day on Saturdays, Fre was off on Monday mornings; we were delighted when Pa asked him to stay the night in order to finish the job. After the evening meal my parents went visiting a neighbour, leaving us playing cards until Jopie, Wim and Bartje had to go to bed at eight o’clock. We soon forgot about the cards, as Fre’s navy album was brought out again. A little later we were chasing each other around the room, rolling over the floor as we had done many times in the past. Tiesje crawled all over Fre with his wet nappy, but he hardly took any notice. Then they all had great fun helping Fre to catch me, tickling me until I said that I loved him, and promised that I would stay with him forever. The ‘little ones’ had been in bed for half an hour, when we heard the back door open. I quickly straightened my dress and I was combing my hair in front of the big mirror, when Mum came in, followed by Pa. My flushed face and shiny eyes would have spoken volumes, but Mum readily accepted my explanation of our play-fighting and rolling over the floor with Tiesje. Pa went to bed right away and, after talking to Mum for a little while, Fre followed his example. He always stayed up late at home, but he knew that we had to get up early in the morning and he was careful not to take advantage of my parent’s hospitality. Saying that he had had a long day, he gave me a peck on my cheek. Mum giggled when he put his arms around her too and gave her a good-night kiss, as he had always done with his own mother. I cleared the table and went to bed, leaving Mum going through the photos in Fre’s album on her own, when Pa called her from the bedroom. “Kom vort Moes! The day has been long enough!” I was just about asleep when I heard the sliding door of our little room slowly open. It was Mum, just making sure that I was in bed, she said when I lifted my head off the pillow. Or that I was alone with Jopie, I thought wryly, when I went back to sleep. I had already been at the neighbours for an hour, before Fre got up the following morning. Later, when I was drinking coffee with Jans and her invalid sister, he came flying past on his brommer on his way home, beeping the horn. “He could have come to say goodbye to you!” Jans said disappointedly. She was probably dying to meet him as she always wanted to know what was going on but, because she was so old- fashioned, I was afraid she did not approve of Fre coming to see me while I was working. I never knew what to expect when I came home, but this time Pa was in a good mood as Fre had managed to get the big, rusty circular-saw going again. There was a Vienna waltz on the radio and we soon swirled around the room. As usual, I went with the flow of Pa’s moods; laughing and joking with him when he was happy, and trying to ignore him when he was cranky. I blamed myself entirely for what had happened when he had ‘taught me what boys would do to me when I had grown up’. Men were like that; they could not help it if God had given them a strong sexual appetite, Mum said. It was the girls who had to be strong and keep the boys at a safe distance. Pa had given up the easy life he had had at Tante Marie’s place to help Mum out; he told us often how devastated his old girlfriend had been when he suddenly decided to marry a widow with seven young children. Tante Anna, Pa’s oldest sister, had laughed heartily when I asked her about their relationship. “She was well in her sixties, over the age of bearing children,” she chuckled while her big belly shook. At the time, I was far too naive to understand what she meant... At the end of May, Wout came home from the army again. He had been on a six-week exercise and he now had five days off. Pa was annoyed that he still had to go back, complaining about the unfairness of a boerenzoon wasting his time in the army while he was badly needed at home. As Wout was fed-up with the army himself, and a lot of work had been left undone at home, he was soon at loggerheads with Pa again. He could not wait to take control of the farm, his farm! He didn’t mind not getting paid, but having to ask for, and being refused pocket money had been the start of many bitter arguments between them. No, I was not looking forward to having Wout at home permanently again... My younger brothers eagerly showed Wout Fre’s navy album, which he had left with us, telling him the stories behind each of the pictures. When Fre came the following Sunday, the two of them had a lot to talk about, laughing about the funny guys they had met in the different services. Although Wout detested ‘wasting his time’ in the army, he later said that every fellow should be in it for a while. “They do make a man out of you,” he said. I had promised Opoe to bring Fre around for a visit that afternoon and, as the weather was nice, we walked arm in arm to the village, very conscious of the curtains being moved behind the windows. Seeing me with a complete stranger gave the villagers something new to talk about. Fre was appalled to see my grandmother in her tiny room, praying her rosary in front of the window from where she looked at a blank wall and a heap of coal, without even a blade of green showing. When I told Opoe that I would never let Fre go again, no matter how much Pa objected, the little old woman cried, which I had never seen her do before. Sitting in silence, I wondered if she were thinking of her own courting days with Father Simon, who was not what her father had wanted for his only daughter; or about Tante Jans, Mum’s oldest sister, who became mentally disturbed because she, Opoe, had forbidden her to see her lover. Had she been trying to protect her daughter from the pain she had endured herself because of marrying a poor bloke, or had she been proud and greedy like people said she was? Was it a sin to want the very best for your children? After all, Tante Jans was only sixteen, a ‘snot-nose’, as I was when I met Fre. Promising Pa that he would look at another repair job before he went home on Monday morning, Fre was again allowed to stay the night. Before he left at ten to be back at work in Arnhem at one, he came to help me with the neighbour’s washing for a while. Like everybody else, Jans liked Fre instantly and it soon became quite normal to have him around at the weekends. During the following week Fre went to the old house in Velp on his evenings off to clean up. The place was filthy, he wrote, but it had not looked too bad to me, when I had been there six weeks earlier. Now that his written exam for the Business Management Course was behind him, he had plenty of spare time in the evenings and he decided to wallpaper the living-room. He had a lot of experience with it, as it had been part of his glazenier’s job before he went into the navy. Pa seemed happy enough when Fre was around but he always complained bitterly about our loss of freedom with ‘that stranger’ around, as soon as he was gone. In his letter early in June, Fre said that his father had returned to the family home the previous day and that he had moved in with him. His father was delighted when the director of the AKU, where he had worked for many years on the production of synthetic fabrics, had offered him a position as a filing clerk in the office. He loved the job and hadn’t had any dizzy spells since. When I told Mum that Fre had moved in with his father, Pa flew up as if a bee had stung him, sure that Fre would want to get married as soon as possible. “Here we go again!” I thought. “Keep your calm Mien!” Deciding not to get drawn into the argument and with tears filling my eyes, I picked up Tiesje and walked out of the door. It would be a long time before I was twenty-one, the time Mum and I had agreed upon for me to get married. After a few weeks with his father, Fre missed Bep and the children terribly. He was bored stiff in the shop and, alone with his father in the evenings, they had soon ran out of conversation. Although he came every weekend to our place he often wrote twice a week. The days seemed endless, he said in every letter, saying how slow the time was going and how he longed for the weekend to be with me. During the weeks that followed, he painted the whole house, but that did not ease his longing to be married and have a family of his own... Chapter THIRTY-SEVEN

During those first months with Fre, I was happy and put on some weight. With my 114 Dutch pounds (57 kilos) I felt and looked well. The weeks were flying for me; I would marry him soon enough and dreamt of having my own family. We agreed that six children was a nice number to have. Despite the fact that Fre’s family was always poor, he and his siblings seemed to have had a very happy childhood. When Fre moved back into the old family home with his father, his siblings visited them every Tuesday night. The evenings were always gezellig, Fre said. Martha, Gerard’s girlfriend came to these family meetings too. Fre felt sorry for her. She was lonely, as his brother was at sea all the time. My face glowed and my stomach cringed (with jealousy?) when he wrote one day that he had taken her home on his brommer the previous evening. “Martha is a lot of fun and we love teasing her,” he wrote. “She was dead-nervous as she had to go into hospital this morning to have another operation on her nose, and she was terrified of the thunderstorm last night.” Before he had gone back, Fre had had a cup of coffee with her parents. Standing in the hall, when Martha let him out of the front door, he had called out loud enough for her parents to hear: “Oh! No Martha! Don’t do that! I don’t like you hanging on my neck and kissing me like that!” The girl’s father had roared with laughter while Martha shouted that that was not fair. At the end of the letter Fre said that he would much rather have taken me home, but still... I could not help feeling uncomfortable about it. Because there was often little to do in the shop - one day they sold only one pair of socks - Fre’s letters were always long. I often waited for Frits, the postman, on my way to work in the morning to see if there was a letter for me. Sometimes, when it was raining, I slept at van Montfoort’s place but I often declined the offer of staying the night, as there could be a letter waiting at home. When she later heard that I had gone home in the streaming rain for nothing, Mevrouw van Montfoort would laugh ruefully, shaking her head saying: “That love, that love; pity it seldom lasts.” So far, I had only met Fre’s father and his sister Bep, and I was dying to meet the rest of the family. Henk’s wife, Gijsje, was due to have her second baby, and I wanted to see for myself what Gerard’s girlfriend Martha was like as Fre kept on talking about her. “You don’t have to worry about her; I don’t want to touch her with a bar of soap, except to wash her dirty mouth out,” he wrote one day. “Father thinks the world of you too. He says that you are a lot more mature than Martha, and she is twenty!” Pa was not going to let me go to Arnhem again in a hurry. Fre offered to pay for my train- fare, but that was not the point, he said. I was now sewing most of the time and brought in a considerable amount of money, which was all saved up to build a grand new house. My twenty- two year old cousin Mina, who worked as a live-in housemaid in Amersfoort, was paid eighteen guilders for working six days a week, while I was getting nine guilders for a nine-to-six day, which included a hot midday meal as well! We worked out that Fre’s weekly pay, including working all day on Saturday, was little more than I was getting in four days. “No wonder they don’t want you to get married early!” Fre said disgustedly, when I told him about it. Most of my sewing was repair work; I was an expert at putting patches in, not on as is done nowadays! I loved making something new but, even though skirts, dresses, pants and jackets for the children were usually made from old dresses and rain coats, I often sweated over it. The correspondence course Pa had bought for me when I was fifteen was the only reference I had. After I turned seventeen at the end of October, my parents did not see the need to pay me pocket money any more as I had started sewing for people at night. Shortly after Fre had sent me the lovely nail-care set for my birthday, one of my brothers had broken the tip of the little scissors, which greatly upset me. The following day, when I was sewing in the stad, I bought a new pair, which cost three guilders and twenty-five cents, a third of what I was paid for a day’s sewing. Mum was beside herself with fury when I told her that I had taken the money out of my day’s pay. I argued that I was going to pay it back as soon as I was paid for babysitting, but she did not want to listen; I should have asked permission before I had bought it, she said. “You earn money first then spend it; not the other way around!” she said angrily. On the eighteenth of June, buurvrouw Bertha came with a message from Fre that Gijsje, his brother Henk’s wife, had a baby girl. In a letter a few days later, he wrote a few lines, which disturbed me. Deeply in love, I soon forgot about it, but his warning hit me again when I read through our ‘love-letters’ to compile this story. In Fre’s family, birthdays were always celebrated with an - compulsory - family get- together. That evening, Fre had been to his cousin Ap’s place for his birthday. Ap was a big, jovial fellow, half a head taller than Fre. They had always been the best of friends and they had joined the navy together when they were nineteen. Ap had left after eighteen months when he had fulfilled his obligations but, as Fre’s former boss had no work for him, Fre had signed up for six years. Henk was also at Ap’s party, alone as Gijsje had to stay in bed for ten days. Because she refused to feed the baby until he got home, Henk had to leave at nine-thirty. Fre was angry with his sister-in-law for breaking up his brother’s fun. He had stayed himself until one o’clock that night and warned me not to play those tricks on him when we were married. He saw me as being quite capable of bossing him around too, he said. I could not understand how a man could stay away at a party while his wife was left at home alone having to stay in bed with a one-week-old baby! Surely, Fre would not do that to me? At the end of June I was sick for a couple of days. Fre was very concerned for me, saying that I had to slow down, as I was working myself into the ground. I lapped up his sympathy like a starved puppy, but he was right; I could not carry on the way I had been doing. Apart from working long days sewing and doing the huge loads of washing on Mondays and Tuesdays, I had helped with hooien as soon as the spring-cleaning was finished. It always rains a lot in Holland but 1956 was an exceptionally wet year and the spring of 1957 was little better. Because Wout was in the army, Mum was the only one to help Pa during the day and they always had to take Tiesje with them. Most of the hay was made in the polder, eight kilometres away, and in our paddock near the railway. As it had often rained between short periods of sunshine, the hay had to be turned several times before it could safely go into the hooiberg. In the mornings, Mum had to help Pa with the milking and it was up to me to get the others out of bed and make breakfast for them. By the time Siem had left for work with a packed lunch, and my other siblings were on their way to school, it was often past eight o’clock. I would just manage to do the dishes and make the beds before I had to go sewing, a six to eight-kilometre bike ride away. Because I wanted to be able to pay for my train-fare when Pa gave me permission to go to Arnhem, I was keen on sewing and baby-sitting in the evening. In his letter, Fre promised to have a word with Mum at the weekend and he would try to talk to Pa again. Mum and I laughed at his serious offer to take me to Velp so that he and his father could take care of me for a couple of days, but she agreed with Fre that I needed a break. Before Fre came the following weekend, a violent storm had blown the electricity pole at the back of our house over. He worked all weekend to restore the electricity to the chook-houses, which was a very dangerous job. By the time he left on Monday morning, he had Mum’s assurance that I was allowed to go to his place the following Saturday afternoon and I could stay until Sunday evening. Needless to say we were over the moon with joy, a whole weekend together in Arnhem! But that same evening Pa seemed to have forgotten what Fre had done for him, I could go but I would not get a penny from him for the train-fare, he growled. “You don’t need to pay; I’ve got plenty of money myself!” I laughed, which was of course the wrong thing to say. Pa’s bottom lip dropped even further, complaining all day that nobody took any notice of him. The following morning, Tuesday, washing-day at home, he refused to get out of bed. I now had to help Mum with the milking while Jopie prepared breakfast. “ The way we are going, we’ll never be able to build a new house,” Pa moaned when I brought him a cup of tea in the afternoon. “I had such big plans when I came here. We’ll be staying in the ouwe keet (old hut) for the rest of our lives,” he went on and started to cry. “I must have been crazy when I married your mother,” he sobbed, full of self-pity. “Who else in his right mind would take on a widow with seven children?” I had heard it all before, many times. Two years before, Pa had bought the old house, including the land, from the Catholic Church from whom my father’s father had already leased it on a yearly basis, for a very low rent. We didn’t know then that Pa had persuaded Ome Hannes, who became our guardian after my father died, to give him permission to use my father’s inheritance, which had been held in a trust account for each of us until we were twenty-one... Within a week after his five-day break, Wout came home again, this time without his uniform. After half a year in the service, he had received dispensation after all, without any prior notification. Life at home was not getting any easier with him around even though Wout and I had become much closer during the last six months. Since he had a girlfriend himself, he no longer scolded me for writing to Fre, even if he had left the previous day. While he was home for his five-day break from the army, we talked at length about Betsie, his girlfriend at the time. He now understood what it was like to be in love and unable to see each other, he said. When I left for Velp on Saturday afternoon, he and Pa were arguing again. I was glad to get away and forgot the trouble at home as soon as I rode out of our driveway. It was a wonderful feeling to have a whole weekend with Fre and his family and I was determined to make the most of it! From the directions Fre had given me, I easily found my way to the menswear shop where he worked and arrived there close to five o’clock. Fre introduced me to Annie, the country girl he worked with. She was just like Fre had said; a skinny, dark-haired girl with laughing eyes, catty and funny, giggling and chatting non-stop in a high-pitched voice. I liked her immediately and we would become close friends, especially in later years. The ‘Optimist’ was smaller than I had expected. It was filled to overflowing with merchandise, overcoats, shirts, trousers, jumpers and socks. There was a rack with leather coats in all shapes and sizes, a lot of army surplus and the latest fashion, spijkerbroeken (jeans). They were selling well, Fre said, but people regarded them as work-clothing which was sold in Meneer Lamers’s other shop, a little further up the street. As they were slowly becoming more acceptable as everyday wear Fre had brought an armful over to see how they would go. I could not imagine how Fre could stand being in that stuffy room all day after spending so many years at sea. But he considered himself lucky to have a job at all, reminding me again that he had no experience other than making leadlight windows, which had become a dying art after the war. Fre took me upstairs where Henk and Gijsje were living, snatching a quick kiss on the steep, narrow stairs at the back of the shop. Gijsje, a lively lady in her late twenties, was feeding her new baby, Conny, when we came in. One-and-a-half-year-old Patrick was sitting in the playpen in a corner of the cosy, well-filled room, which looked out onto a three-storey building across from the narrow, inner city, street. Gijsje was the same age as Fre, nine years older than I was and, also because she was the daughter of Fre’s boss, I felt her to be far superior to me. She laughed heartily when I called her ‘mevrouw’. While I was admiring the two-week-old baby, Henk, Fre’s eldest brother came in. Although they were of the same height and spoke with a similar accent, they were very different in looks as well as manners. Henk had black curly hair and dark eyes, his superior flair and the mocking look in his eyes made me feel ill at ease. When Fre finished work we had a quick cup of coffee with them, then we drove to Velp on the motorbike, where Fre’s father welcomed me with a delicious hot meal. Before came in through the back door, we had hugged and shared the first real kiss since I had arrived two hours earlier. Fre’s father was obviously extremely happy to see me; he could not do enough to please me. I felt sorry to leave him on his own after the lovely meal of spring vegetable soup, the main course of soft meat, cauliflower with white sauce, steamed potatoes with gravy and cucumber in vinegar, followed by custard with bosbessen (blueberry) sauce for ‘afters’. But he insisted that he would be all right; we should enjoy the little time we had together as much as we could, he said. “What a difference from being at our place,” I sighed when I climbed onto the back of Fre’s bike again. When Fre was at our place, we were seldom allowed out; this was the first evening we had to ourselves. Fre’s father had cracked up laughing time and again while we told him about our walk with Mum the previous Sunday evening. The weather had been beautiful and, looking for an excuse to get away on our own, Fre had suggested we go for a walk that evening. “What a splendid idea Fre!” Mum had said enthusiastically: “I’ll come too! I haven’t been around the Duust for ages!” So off we went on the three-kilometre walk, with Mum! Jopie stayed home with Tiesje, but Wim and Bartje rode their bikes with us as well. Because the days were long at that time of year (the longest day is on the twenty-first of June in Holland), the sun was still shining when we left at eight-thirty. Part of the walk followed the milk-run and the round took at least one and a half hours. We would still be able to walk close together later, when the sun was down and the moon came up, or so I thought, while we walked hand in hand beside Mum. But we had only gone a few hundred metres, when Mum said that she would walk much easier if she could give each of us an arm, which meant that she had to walk between us. As our pleasure in walking had been taken away anyway, we said that we did not mind, but I fumed inside. When the moon came up we carefully squeezed each other’s hand behind Mum’s back, so that she would not notice. As time went by she leaned more heavily on us. I was glad to get home, but Mum had not enjoyed herself so much in ages, she said, asking happily if she could go with us again next time Fre came. “That was beautiful!” she sighed when she fell onto a chair and put her feet on another stoel which Fre had put in front of her. “Yes it was!” Fre said, with a wink in my direction, his mouth quivering as it always did when he was joking or trying not to laugh. My disappointment had melted instantly and my heart overflowed: Oh, I loved him so much! Wanting to make the most of our weekend we went to the cinema in Arnhem for the nine o’clock movie ‘Annie Get Your Gun’. It was the first film I had ever seen, except for a few Laurel & Hardy’s that had been shown at school. But, sitting at the back with Fre’s arms around me, whispering sweet nothings into my ear, I remember little of the film. Some young people behind us were petting heavily all the time which was probably why Mum forbade me to go to the cinema, besides what was shown on the screen. Fre’s father was still up when we came back at midnight. While we sipped the hot cocoa ‘Father’ insisted on making for us Fre told him about the film in detail. I could not understand for the life of me how he could remember it all. It turned out that he had already seen the movie a couple of times before, when he was in the navy. In turn Father told me how Fre’s mother and her sister, Tante Nellie, who lived just around the corner, had gone to the movies every Tuesday afternoon for years. Films and books had always been Mother’s main interests, he said. “There were always several bits of paper in the book which Mother got from the library,” Fre filled him in. “We used to rush through dinner, so that the one who got to it first could read it,” he laughed. No, Mother didn’t mind as she could read during the day, Father said, when I commented that that wasn’t very nice for her. His tears flowed freely again when he remarked on what a lovely lady Mother had been, and how sorry he was that I would never be able to meet her. It was after one, when we finally went upstairs to go to bed. For once there wouldn’t be anyone calling me early in the morning, and I could sleep in as long as I liked, but I was a little nervous when Fre took me in his arms and kissed me passionately when we said good-night in my room. Knowing that he was alone in the bedroom next door, I was unable to get to sleep for quite a while. Then, just as I dozed off, I suddenly woke up again wide awake as Fre was standing beside the bed, saying that he could not possibly go to sleep with me so close by. I did not hesitate but lifted the blankets and let him in beside me. Lying in each other’s arms he told me again how he longed to be married and have me with him all the time. The thought of me having to work so hard while he was bored to tears with his life, made having to wait until I was twenty-one unbearable for him, he said. While he was talking his hand roamed over my body, stopping occasionally at a sensitive spot. Mum had not told me how the man’s seed came into a woman’s body, but I had a fair idea from what I had seen with the cows. I was not supposed to look when a bull climbed onto a cow but I had seen it in the distance and I had walked onto the scene by accident one day. It was shortly after Mum had remarried; I was eleven at the time. I had been horrified to see the huge red ‘carrot’ of the big bull, feeling terribly sorry for the cow, tied onto a ring at the back of the shed so that she could not escape; she seemed far too small to carry the weight of the bull. Pa was making rude remarks and, with his hands deep in the pockets of his overalls, Wout jumped up and down, his eyes shining with excitement. I will never forget Pa’s awful laugh when he saw me standing there, telling me to have a good look. I shuddered when I felt the swelling in Fre’s pyjama pants, quickly blinking my eyes to get rid of the image of the bull and Mum’s frequent saying that no woman could ever be so rich that she was not equal to a cow... After petting passionately for quite a while I could not bear it any longer; all I wanted to do was give Fre all I had, but I knew better than that. Mum had warned me that a baby could grow from the tiniest seed, which could be in a bit of moisture at the end of a man’s ‘thing’. Trembling with desire I pushed him away. I could not possibly look Mum in the eyes ever again if I had taken even the slightest risk of getting pregnant. Lucky for me, Fre felt the same way; he was glad that I had kept a cool head, he said. Before we left, he had promised Mum that he would take ‘good care’ of me and that he would not abuse her trust in him. While he kissed me goodnight, he apologised again for getting carried away. We talked about my frightening and overpowering feelings for a while, before he finally went back to his own bed. I thanked God that I had come to my senses in time and shuddered at the thought that this was only the beginning. How could we possibly keep our relationship pure for another three years? We would rely heavily on our prayers. And Mum’s! Thinking of the evil power of wanting to do ‘it’, I again started to doubt that I was normal. Before I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, I decided to have a ‘quiet word’ with the pastoor about it, next time I went to confession. Chapter THIRTY-EIGHT

When I woke up in the morning the sun was already shining high in the sky. Fre stood looking at me with a broad smile on his face, fully dressed and groomed. “Hello sleeping beauty!” he grinned. “Welcome back to the land of the living!” “What time is it?” I asked. “Looks like midday!” “It’s ten o’clock; Father is waiting with breakfast for you.” I shot up, then fell back into the pillow, putting my arms around Fre’s neck when he kissed me. “We have to hurry; we still have to go to Mass you remember,” he said softly. “We have a lot of praying to do you know.” I smiled, remembering the previous night. “Lucky for us that Mum is always praying for us too!” I laughed, then more seriously: “Looks as if we need all the help we can get!” As the weather was beautiful, we went for a drive in the afternoon to the Betuwe, the fruit and vegetable country where Pa came from. I showed Fre where Pa’s two sisters lived and I convinced him that it would be a good idea to introduce him to Tante Marie. “Oh! This is the sailor who had a flat tyre when you came last time,” Tante Marie chuckled when they shook hands. After we recalled how, three months earlier, Fre had to walk all the way back to Arnhem through the snow, we went inside and had a cup of tea with Tante Marie and her husband. Their three sons were also home and when we were about to leave, my friend Annie, who lived a few doors away, called in. She was now going steady with Joe, Tante Marie’s eldest son. An hour later, we were at Tante Anna’s place in Doornenburg, twelve kilometres further on. Afraid that she would tell me about his past, Pa did not like me visiting his oldest sister. When I was there earlier Tante Anna had told me a lot about their brutal father who had made her give up her boyfriend, whom she had loved dearly, only because he was a brother of the girl Pa had made pregnant. She had later married ‘Ome’ Theo, a much older man with a hunchback. Although he was a lovely man, their marriage had not been a happy one. Riet and I had a great time roaming around the village when I was fourteen, but things were very different now. Riet’s eldest brother, also called Theo, had been killed by a drunken motorbike-rider when he was walking home from church on a Sunday morning the previous summer. Since his death she had not been in the mood for partying any more, she said. The sudden death of her brother, to whom she had been very close, had left Riet angry, and Tante Anna was even bitterer than she had been before. Riet had always polished the furniture and the copper ornaments until she could have used them as mirrors but, when I called in with Fre that Sunday afternoon, the house looked badly neglected. Tante Anna warned Fre that her brother (Pa) would not let me leave home easily; he and those two sisters of hers in Huissen were all terribly money-hungry, she said. Fre laughed. “So I noticed!” he said. On a previous visit, Tante Anna had told me what their father’s nickname had been. Her big belly shook with laughter when I told her about Pa’s reaction when I had told him that I knew. As in our village, everybody in Huissen and Doornenburg was known by a nickname, most of them not very flattering. In our dorp was a man called ‘the fiddler’. I never understood why; the man did not play any musical instrument at all. I later learned that he had acquired the name late in life, after he had married a much younger woman and produced fourteen children in quick succession. Pa’s father’s nickname, the ‘kaaienboer’, or simply the ‘kaai’ also had a double meaning. The story goes that Pa’s mother used to make huge, thick spek-pannekoeken, pancakes with a lot of speck. But the word kaai also meant ‘black crow’, which accurately described his father’s dominating and penny-pinching character. Pa was reading the paper when I told Wout about Pa’s father’s nickname. He had instantly dropped the paper and jumped up, as white as a sheet. For one terrifying moment I thought he was going to hit me; something he had never done before. But instead, he told me in no uncertain terms that he would wring my neck single-handedly if he heard anyone in the village ever call him by that name. Tante Anna always wanted to know how her sisters were doing with their land and their other possessions. She was still angry that they had refused to share anything with her and Pa, after their domineering father had died in February 1950. I suddenly realised when I wrote this last sentence that he had only been dead a little over a year, when Mum married Pa in May 1951. One day, when I was sewing at Tante Marie’s place, I asked her innocently why Pa had not inherited the farm, even though he was the only son. Taken aback by my question, she explained that Pa had no idea how to handle money. Her father had been convinced that his whole boerderij would have gone to ruin if he had left it to him. Because she had always stayed home, he had left it to her. After a short pause she said resolutely: “My father would have turned in his grave if I had gone against his wishes.” Fre was glad to get away from Tante Anna and her angry daughter. The visit had left a nasty taste in his mouth, he said later, when he took me to the station. Something Tante Anna had said about Pa had disturbed him. “You knew that I wasn’t going to be handed to you on a silver platter,” I said jokingly, trying to get him smiling again. “Pa is not as bad as his father! And you are not after his money, are you?” Fre smiled and pressed me to his skinny chest; all he wanted was me he said, even if I came naked. “Maybe you prefer me naked,” I laughed, which made him kiss me again. The day had flown and, before I realised it, I was on my way home on the train, wondering what Pa would say this time. But Pa said nothing; he lay moaning in bed with a black eye after a fight he had with Wout that afternoon. In the heat of the argument, Pa had grabbed a piece of wood but, before he could lash out with it, Wout’s fist caught him in the eye. Wout had been crying. “The ouwe klootzak (old bugger) sucks the blood from under my nails,” he said, still fuming. Wout had wanted some pocket money to take Betsie out. Knowing that Pa would make a fuss about it had upset Wout even before he had asked him for it. Pa’s remark about Wout wasting money on a girl who would never want to have anything to do with him if she knew what a hot- head he was, had enraged him like a red rag to a mad bull, he said. Fre had been horrified when he heard what Wout had to put up with at home.

I did not see Pa until I came home from doing the neighbour’s washing, the following afternoon. Even though I was angry with him for the way he always treated Wout, I could not help but feel sorry for him when I replaced the wet face-washer on his blackened eye. (There were no fridges or freezers to make ice in those days.) Carefully choosing my words, I reminded him that Wout was not a child any more, and I managed to cheer him up a bit by telling him that I had been to Tante Marie. He wanted to know all about her, but when I told him about our visit to Tante Anna, he got annoyed. “Why don’t you go to Mieneke instead of wasting your time with that sour puss?” he asked. After my stay at Fre’s place, we arranged to meet at the station in Amersfoort the following Saturday evening to go there for our monthly confession. Because our local pastoor had humiliated me when I had only been a child, I wanted to talk to a different priest about my ‘abnormal and sinful’ desires. Afraid that he would say that I was evil my knees were trembling when I told him that I desperately wanted to have sex with Fre. But the priest assured me that my feelings were quite normal; God had made nature that way to produce children, born out of the love their parents had for each other. He went on to warn me about lust, an evil emotion which brought out our animal-like instincts. We would know in our hearts when our feelings were selfish and hurtful for our partner. Keeping our desires under control until we were married strengthened our characters and deepened our love and respect for each other, he said. Before he gave me God’s blessing, he advised us to pray together in moments of temptation as that was the best help we could get, apart from keeping ourselves busy with hobbies (other than kissing and cuddling, I supposed he meant). I left the church happy, as I usually did after confession, knowing that God had washed my slate clean again. “What a difference in priests!” I said to Fre when we walked out of the church. In the navy, Fre had encountered good and bad ones too, he said; the trouble was that you did not know whom to believe, especially when you were young. A pater in New Guinea had warned them time and again of the sinfulness and dangers of masturbation, advising them not to forget their daily prayers and to keep their thoughts pure, as they would end up in a mental institution, if they kept up the sinful practice. For some people the taboo had caused a lot of sexual frustration. But then of course, priests and parents alike could only teach what they had been taught them selves, he said. That weekend Fre was very nervous, as he had to sit for the oral examination of the Business Management Course on Monday morning. His written exam, a few weeks earlier, had been hard and he would not get the results until after the oral examination. The course had been very involved and, because he had started six weeks late and ‘his brains had gone rusty’, it had been difficult for him. When I broke up with him, at the end of November, Fre had wanted to quit. Bep, his favourite sister had encouraged him to keep going but, as his heart had not been in it, he got far behind with the lessons again. After I came back at the end of March, he had a ‘reason to study again’, he said and, as his enthusiasm returned, he had soon caught up with it. Fre left early on Sunday afternoon to read up on law and taxation, his weakest subjects. His exam was at nine in the morning and it only lasted half an hour. He was overjoyed when he was told directly afterwards that he had passed both his written examination as well as the oral one he had just completed. He rang buurvrouw Bertha immediately but her son, Eddy forgot to pass his message on to me. I was with him in thought all day and feared that he had failed, until the buurvrouw shouted her congratulations late in the afternoon when we were both taking the washing off the line. In his letter I received the following day, Fre said that he was sure that his guardian angel had been watching over him as he had read up on precisely those questions that had been asked. I blushed with pride when I read that he had been able to relax, by thinking of his future with me. If I had not come back to him, he would have never made it, he said. When Fre had left that Sunday afternoon, Pa teased me about the way Fre had kissed me in front of the big mirror earlier on that day. Thinking that he was just presuming what we would have been doing, I laughed, but I became suspicious when he described exactly how Fre had held me in his arms. He had watched us through the keyhole in the door! My first reaction was that of relief that we hadn’t done anything else but kiss passionately. Although I was angry with him, I could not help but laugh at the way Pa licked his lips and rolled his eyes, saying how jealous he had been of Fre for being young and obviously deeply in love. Naive as I was, I told Fre the whole story when I wrote to him that night; he was beside himself when he got my letter the following afternoon. “I knew I could not trust him!” he said angrily, when he came on his bike that same evening, to see if I was all right. I had never seen Fre so worked-up before. “Of course I’m all right!” I said, stunned by his angry reaction. When he calmed down I told him, without going into any detail, that Pa had taught me shortly after he had married Mum, what boys would do to me when I was older. But when I confessed to Fre that I had let him touch me because I was inquisitive, I was in tears. “I’ve felt dirty ever since,” I sobbed, worried sick that Fre wouldn’t want me any more. But he took me in his arms and kissed my tears away, saying that he loved me just as much. “For goodness sake; you were only a child at the time! People go to jail for things like that,” he said, while he stroked my hair with trembling fingers, swearing that he was capable of caving Pa’s face in for doing such horrible things to me. Relieved that my parents were out, we went inside and had a cup of coffee. It was past ten o’clock when Fre left for the long ride home, where he arrived shortly after midnight. On the morning after Fre’s unexpected visit, I felt sick again. I blamed it on my period, which was due at the time. Knowing that Mum would have found out soon enough that Fre had been, I told her about his visit as soon as I got up in the morning, saying that he was concerned about Rooie Gijs coming to see me so often. It was true; Fre was worried about Gijs too but Mum looked at me suspiciously, asking for the real reason he had been. But I could not tell her; she would not understand anyway. I would have much preferred to stay in bed to avoid more questions about Fre’s visit but, as I was expected at Mum’s cousin Hannes’ place to sew that day, I did not stay at home. I liked being with Alie; I admired her tremendously for her optimism in spite of her difficult life and I could talk to her about almost everything. When I introduced Fre to her one Sunday afternoon, she had pulled me aside before we left, whispering that I would be stupid if I listened to Pa and let Fre go again; he was well worth fighting for, she said. We always had a lot of catching up to do when I got there. While we drank coffee, I told Alie about my stay at Fre’s place two weeks earlier and Mum’s obsession about me getting pregnant. She shook her head when I said that Pa had watched us through the keyhole from the deel. I also told her about Fre’s unexpected visit and his worries about my safety. By lunchtime I had a splitting headache and I was looking as white as a sheet. Alie sent me to bed with an aspirin. After a couple of hours of sleep I did not feel much better and went home early. The following day, Friday, I still felt like vomiting all the time. Mum must have been absolutely petrified, as she knew that my period had not come on time. Because of the old rags we were still using, we always knew from each other (and our neighbours!) when ‘our old grandmother was due to arrive for her monthly visit’. I detested to wash Mum’s dirty rags but, as I still hoped to become a nurse, I could hardly complain about this awful job. Sitting at the end of the bed that evening, Mum asked me with trembling mouth for the real reason Fre had been to see me on Wednesday night. “Did he want to know if ‘opoe’ had arrived?” she asked. “Of course not!” I said angrily. “Fre wouldn’t ask a stupid thing like that!” Mum let out a big sigh, but she was obviously not satisfied with my answer. “We haven’t done anything, if that’s what you are worried about!” I snapped at her. Mum warned me again that the slightest bit of slime from a man’s genitals could have seed in it. “Bart only had to look at me to get me pregnant,” she said sadly with trembling lips. After she pressed on for the real reason for Fre’s visit, I blurted out that Fre was furious with Pa for spying on us and that he did not trust him around me. Then we both cried. Mum did not have an easy life with Pa, she sobbed, and things were not getting any better, as we all wanted to go our own, selfish ways. My friendly relationship with rooie Gijs was very hard for Fre to take. He was nearly always there when Fre came on the weekends and I talked a lot about him in my letters. I assured Fre that I had none of the feelings for Gijs that I had for him, but he said that such things could easily change. Although he was happy that I did not have to ride home alone in the dark from the railway station in Amersfoort after my last visit to Velp it was disturbing for him to know that Gijs was waiting for me instead of one of my brothers. One day Gijs had taken me all the way to Arnhem on his brommer to save me the train-fare, as he wanted to go for a drive anyway. Even though I had left him as soon as we were in Arnhem, Fre was not happy at all when I told him about it. I had met Gijs at dancing classes, which had finished in April, and he worked with Siem in the building. They usually rode home together after work and he often called in for a cup of coffee and a chat before he went home. “People with red hair cannot be trusted” was one of those silly Dutch sayings, which caused many people a lot of heartache. Because my cantankerous grandmother, Opoe Mijn, had red hair, Mum believed that the saying was true. When I reminded her that my father was red too, she said that only his beard was red; that’s why he had shaved himself meticulously every day. My father was called ‘rooie Bart’ because of his ruddy complexion, she said. His nickname ‘Bart Pier’ (red earthworm) was because he was tall as well as a good worm catcher. In one of my letters I warned Fre that our children would probably be redheads too. He had laughed about it and answered that he would make sure that they would not have to suffer cruel remarks. “I’ve seen plenty of beautiful wigs for sale in the stad,” he wrote back. Despite his red hair, Mum liked Gijs and she knew that I was as safe with him as I was with Gert; my relationship with Fre was dangerous because I was ‘mad about him’. It was extremely hard for any man to control himself if a girl was leading him on like I was doing to my poor fellow... Chapter THIRTY-NINE

It was a relief when Tante Lena and Ome Albert from The Hague arrived for their yearly summer holiday on Friday, a couple of days after the incident between Pa and Wout, as the atmosphere in the house was still explosive. We did not care much for Ome Albert with his communistic ideas but we all loved Tante Lena. She had hoped that their eldest son Ap and I would end up together but I could never see myself as his wife, having to live in the big city. Louis, their second son, now seventeen brought his new girlfriend Ans this time. He was already engaged to her even though barely a year had past since he broke up with Tiny, who had encouraged me to write to Fre. Ans was a year younger than I was and, as with Tiny, we clicked immediately. Always surrounded by boys, it was great to have a girl my own age to talk to. Pa’s black eye still showed every colour of the rainbow when the city-folks arrived. He told Tante Lena that he had walked into a piece of wood when he was working in the pig-shed the previous week; how stupid of him; he normally watched what he was doing, he laughed. Tante Lena loved pottering around in the house while Mum was helping Pa on the land, which meant that I did not have to do much when I came home from sewing. It did annoy the hell out of Pa when he saw me playing ball with the visitors, but he did not dare complain about it while they were around. This time they had brought a ‘badminton’ set a sort of tennis game, the new rage in the capital city. Before the war, tennis had been only for rich people, Tante Lena said, but it was now becoming a popular sport for the working class too. Any sport was regarded as a waste of time in our household, especially for girls. Pa was always on about the stupidity of a guy running behind a ball, kicking it as far away as he could, then running after it as if the devil was at his heels, only to kick it away again. He complained endlessly of the guys being too tired to do a decent days’ work for their bosses on Monday mornings. But Mum was quite happy to see a horde of boys playing soccer in the paddock on Sunday afternoons, as it kept them out of trouble, she said. When Fre came on Sunday morning, I still looked very pale but ‘opoe’ had arrived and I felt my old self again. I proudly introduced him to Tante Lena and her family. Only Ap was unimpressed with him. “I thought you wanted a tall fellow like me,” he grumbled in his high-Dutch accent. Fre had come by train this time. His brommer was kapot; burned out from riding too fast the previous Wednesday evening, he said. Because our house was filled to the brim with visitors, he went to van Montfoort’s place to sleep that night. We had hardly spoken to each other all day when I took him to the bus stop in the evening. With our visitors around, the days flew faster than ever for me, but they dragged along for Fre. As had become the norm, he wrote two or sometimes three, closely filled letters every week between serving customers. Because he did not have to go to evening classes any more, he had decided to paint the whole house, room by room to occupy the long evenings. His father, who had a new lease of life with the prospect of having me there as his daughter-in-law, had started immediately with the kitchen, he wrote. I laughed aloud when Fre asked when my parents would be taking their holidays, hoping that theirs did not coincide with his own vacation the following month. Nobody on a boerderij had any holidays; if Pa had his way we would even be working all day on Sundays! I felt a little disappointed that Fre still expected me to be able to have a week off after he had been at our place so often. We were busy with wekken (preserving fruit and vegetables in glass jars) at that time of year and I would be lucky if I could get away with him for a day or two. Mum was only away for an overnight stay in Huissen with Pa once a year, and that was more than her mother had ever done. Mum said she never had such things as a school-reisje (school- excursion) when she was young either. She always seemed jealous when things were better for me. When I was thirteen we had our first outing with the school, a trip to the south of Holland where we were to visit a number of big churches before going to the ‘Efteling’, a still famous fun park near Eindhoven. On the evening before the exciting event, I jumped over the sloot in front of our house and sprained my ankle badly. Mum put a bandage drenched in vinegar tightly around my foot but the pain was still excruciating and it was impossible for me to walk. I had finally fallen asleep during the early hours of the morning and woke up long after the bus had left the following morning. When it became clear to me that I was unable to go on the trip, I was very upset. As always when I started to cry Mum was angry with me. “ Keep your tears for worse things than missing out on a trip,” she said while her mouth trembled. “You’ll be getting many, far worse disappointments in your life!” As it was, I never went on any school excursion; when the next one came two years later, I had already left school. Apart from Henk, who was a live-in knecht at a boerderij in Hoogland, everyone else was living at home again when Wout came back from the army. In the first week of July, when Tante Lena and her family stayed with us, Siem had his first holiday, as he was now a bricklayer. Because it had become absolute chaos in Holland when all the bouwvakkers (everybody in the building industry) had holidays at the same time, the government had split them into two groups. Workers above the Rhine, where we lived had the first two weeks of July off, and people south of the river had their holiday in the second half of the month. That way the camping grounds, which had rapidly become a very popular way of spending family holidays, were less crowded. While I was enjoying myself with the visitors, Fre was bored to tears in the shop. People always seemed to arrive in spurts; they were either run off their feet or there was no one about for hours. He missed and envied Annie, who was out with her boyfriend for a whole week. Her continuous chatter had kept him sane when there were no customers in the shop, he wrote. As agreed, Fre had started in the clothing shop on a very basic wage but the pay-rise he was promised after three months, was changed to a commission on out-dated items which were very hard to sell. Having started at the bottom himself, buying seconds at factories and selling them at the market, Meneer Lamers expected his staff to get out into the street and talk people into the shop, not letting them get away until they had bought something. After a six-week holiday in Spain and Italy earlier in the year, he had scolded Fre and Annie for not selling enough, complaining that he could not afford them having more than one week off instead of the set two weeks a year for shop-assistants. Annie got her two weeks holidays but, as Fre had worked two months short of the full year, he only had one. Knowing that I made my own arrangements about going sewing, Fre made plans in his letters for a bus-trip through the beautiful south of Holland and day trips on his motorbike which he was still trying to fix himself with the help of his brother Henk, who was a mechanic. When Fre came again, it was the last weekend in July and, as our city guests had left the previous day, Pa was in a good mood. He laughed about the way Tiesje greeted Fre, running towards him as fast as his little legs could carry him. As always, Fre scooped him up and set him on his shoulders without taking any notice of his wet nappy. Wherever Fre was, Tiesje was too. My little brother’s cute ways of saying things stole everybody’s heart. Whenever Pa complained about Fre behind his back Tiesje would look at his father with his dark eyes, as if warning him not to say too much. Because Pa was always on his best behaviour when Fre was around, he did not see any problems about getting permission for us to become engaged on my eighteenth birthday at the end of October. In his letters he made plans for a big party at our place; his family had already agreed to hire a minibus for the occasion. Fre’s father had pointed out to us that we only needed Mum’s permission. When I told her about Fre’s plan she said that she could see that Fre wanted a ring on my finger to show Gijs and other ‘vultures’, that I was promised to him, but getting engaged was a ridiculous city habit. After a very wet spring, the weather had turned beautiful. Mum gave Fre permission to take me out that Sunday evening, if we promised to be home no later than ten o’clock. We walked arm in arm through the village and took the bus to Amersfoort. As it was only just after seven when we got there, we decided to go to the movies, thinking that Mum would have no objection to a film about the visitations of Maria, the Mother of God in Lourdes, which was on in one of the cinemas. The film finished at nine-fifteen, early enough for us to get home in time. But, as the moon was out we forgot about the whole world on our way from the bus-stop and we did not get home until twenty past ten. We were having another hug at the deel when Mum came out of the heert, scolding me for being late. Pa had gone to bed at nine but, as usual, he had been unable to get to sleep without her (so he said, but we could often hear him snoring to the high heavens). “Kom vort Moes!” he would call out time and again when we were still mending socks or knitting. In the end Mum would get sick of it and go to bed too, sighing deeply, as she knew what was expected of her... “Mien is not a child any more Moes,” Fre said softly. “Nobody of her age has to be home at ten these days.” “I don’t give a shit what others do!” Mum said angrily, then softer: “I know you’d take good care of her Fre, but she is still my responsibility.” I should have known better than to tell Mum enthusiastically that we had been to the cinema. Her face turned white and her mouth screwed up. She let go of the door-handle to the heert in a flash and hit me in my face with all her strength. She had not hit me since I was eight when she found me with my pants down, playing mother with our neighbour’s boys. While the white marks of Mum’s fingers on my cheek turned bright red, Fre stared at her with open mouth. “But Mum,” I stammered, with my hand on my face, “we only saw a film of Bernadeth in Lourdes!” “I don’t care what film you saw, it’s all rotzooi (trash)!” Mum said stubbornly. “You know what I think about movies!” By that time Fre had come to his senses. “Really Mum,” he said, squeezing my hand, “there are some very good movies. You should see this film about Lourdes for yourself; it’s really beautiful!” He went on telling Mum that his mother, when she was still alive, had gone to the movies with her sister, Tante Nellie, every week as long as he could remember. When Mum had gone to bed Fre kissed the hot mark on my face, still shocked by my mother’s fury. My guess that she had had a bad evening with Pa for letting me go out, and her wanting to stay up for me until I came home, was not far off the mark. He had nagged her all evening about it, Wout said the following day. He (Wout) had gone to bed early as his fists had been ‘itching to close his gob’, he said. The following morning, Pa grumbled at me before I left to do the neighbour’s washing, but he had acted as if nothing had happened when Fre got up later. After he had helped Jopie with the dishes and some other household chores, Fre came over to say good-bye to me. As it was still school vacation, Wim and Jopie took him to the bus stop on their bikes for the three-hour trip by bus and train back to Arnhem. With still two weeks to go before Fre’s holiday the days were dragging worse than ever for him. That weekend he came for the first time after work on Saturday night, on his motorbike. Mum knew that he was coming but she went out as usual on Saturday evening. Her mind was at ease as the ‘little ones’ Wim, Joke, Bartje and Tiesje were with me and they were allowed to stay up late. We spent the evening playing cards and laughing a lot. Tiesje refused to go to bed with Fre around and he was still up when my parents came home, just before midnight. On Sunday afternoon Fre tried to teach me how to ride his brommer so that we could alternate driving on long stretches during our holiday. Standing in the driveway, he instructed me patiently how to ‘give gas’ by turning the handlebars. But when he let go of the saddle, I panicked. In my anxiety, I turned the handlebars too far, the bike roared and raced off with me. I could not take the sharp corner at the end of the driveway and landed in the sloot across the road, in front of the house. I hurt my leg badly, but Fre’s concern for me rather than his brommer, was worth every bit of pain I suffered! Poor Fre! He must have been horrified when I wrote to him on Tuesday that Gijs, who had a similar motorbike as his, had taught me how to ride properly that afternoon. In my usual short letter, I told him that I had been to the doctor at Hoogland with Gijs to get medication for Pa whose blood pressure was sky-high. I wrote that I had ridden the bike all the way back home, with Gijs sitting behind me. I was not a little surprised to see Fre ride into our driveway on Wednesday evening; this time he really came to keep an eye on Rooie Gijs! On the first Saturday in August, Fre came again as soon as he had finished work at six-thirty, and this time he had holidays. He and Annie had been run off their feet all day in the shop, and he had worried until the last minute that Meneer Lamers would ask him to come back on Monday. But he had not, and we were finally going to be together for ten whole days. “If Pa can bear having Fre around for that long,” Mum cautioned me. I had done the washing for Jans on Friday and I did not have to go out sewing that week, but I had to promise Mum to do our own washing and help her with preserving beans and peas during the week, ‘without complaining about it’. Pa had several jobs lined up for Fre too. He seemed to know how to fix anything and he was willing to help with everything that needed doing. In return he was allowed to take me out at the end of the week, Pa said generously. Fre had brought a set of badminton we played with Jopie, Bartje, Wim and Tiesje in the afternoons when the work was done. Sometimes we walked to the village to visit Opoe and do a bit of shopping. Mum did not mind us going out as long as we took Tiesje with us, so that she had her hands free. Every evening, a crate with beans or peas was turned upside down on the table. Everybody, except Pa who would read the paper, helped to take the ends off and break the beans and shell the peas so that they were ready to be preserved in jars the next day. Because Mum loved playing cards, there was always time for a game before we went to bed. Whenever she played she forgot about the time and everything else she was supposed to do. And, of course, we all knew how to take advantage of that! The days flew and a vicious thunderstorm on Friday afternoon threatened to spoil our weekend off. The following morning it still drizzled a little but we left early as planned, to visit Tante Jans, Mum’s sister in Venray, nearly a hundred and fifty kilometres away, where she lived in a mental institution. This time we did not have to take Tiesje and I could stay at Fre’s place on our way home that night. It was a slow trip as it rained off and on and Fre could not risk the bike over-heating again. Holland was not as flat and looked a lot bigger than I thought it was. We went through beautiful hilly country, stopping several times to stretch our legs and admire the views from the lookouts, eating the sandwiches we had taken with us under a big tree beside the road. The sun was shining when we got to the institution at two o’clock in the afternoon. It was very quiet in the well-kept gardens that surrounded the big buildings of ‘Sint Anna’. After knocking on several doors, we finally found Tante Jans in the chapel along with most of the patients and their carers. They turned in their seats when we came in, wearing our long raincoats and boots and carrying an overnight bag between us. We were shocked to see so many deformed and distraught faces staring and pointing at us while we slipped into the empty seats at the back of the church. Some women grinned at us, others seemed afraid, whispering to each other as if we were aliens from another planet. Fre felt nauseous by the sight of the unfortunate women and wanted to turn back right away. His older brother, Wim was in ‘Sint Servaas’, an institute for mentally and physically handicapped men, nearby. He was three when he had measles and he started having fits as a result of a high fever, which had left him brain damaged. Once, when Fre was little, he had visited him with his parents but he had been so scared, that he vowed never, ever to go back there again. Tante Jans was happy to see me and, as she was a walking encyclopaedia, she memorised Fre’s baptismal names as well as those of his parents immediately. While we had a cup of tea in the recreation room overlooking the beautiful garden, she stunned Fre by saying: “ So, thus you are Frederikus Gerhardus, son of Hendrikus Lambertus Blom and Amalia Johanna Markhorst, born on the nineteenth of November nineteen-thirty in Velp near Arnhem.” Later, when we said good-bye she repeated the same again, just to make sure. “There doesn’t seem to be much wrong with her,” Fre said as we walked back to the bike. I agreed; Tante Jans looked out of place among all those sad cases, most of whom were completely away with the birds. She had put on a lot of weight and seemed content. Her schizophrenic attacks were kept under control with medication and she worked during the week for a normal family with two or three children in town. It was nearly five o’clock when we drove off in the direction of Arnhem, more than eighty kilometres away. The rain kept off until we arrived in Velp, just before complete darkness set in at ten-thirty in the evening. Fre’s father was waiting with hot soup, exactly what we needed after the long day. An hour later I could not keep my eyes open any longer and went to bed. I was so exhausted that I did not even notice that Fre had slipped in behind me in the double bed some time during the night... Chapter FORTY

Shortly after midnight, I woke up from a beautiful dream. But it was no dream; Fre was holding me in his arms, sound asleep. He stirred when I carefully turned around. The street lamp outside the bedroom window threw a soft light on his face. He looked so relaxed and boyish in his sleep. He must have felt me looking at him as he suddenly opened his eyes. “Hi!” he grinned sleepily, “I had this lovely dream...” As it was impossible to get back to sleep with Fre beside me, he went back to his own bed after some heavy petting. When I woke up later, the sun was shining. Fre’s father was calling out from the bottom of the stairs, saying that breakfast was ready for us. The next minute, Fre was beside me under the blankets again, but not for long as I was terrified that his father would come up and find us in bed together. “Father would never do that,” Fre said. “You can be sure about that.” “He is waiting for us with breakfast and we have to be at church in an hour,” I reminded him, pulling away from his tight embrace. “We’d better get up if we want to make the most of our day.” Fre smiled his lovely smile, saying that he could not possibly think of anything better to do than to stay in bed with me all day; regardless as to whether the sun was shining or not. As a well-brought-up girl, I waited until he had returned to his own room, before I took my pyjamas off and got dressed even though I was wearing a hemd (a vest is a cardigan in Dutch) and underpants underneath as usual. As there was no bathroom in the house either, Fre stood in his sparkling white singlet at the kitchen sink, washing not only his face and arms like my brothers did but also his neck and armpits. Beside him, his father was busy making a pot of tea at an old-fashioned gas stove. As I could not possibly take my jumper off in front of Fre and his father, I waited until they were both sitting at the table in the lounge-cum-dining-room, and closed the door. As at home, the Catholic Church in Velp was a fifteen-minute walk away. It was a lovely church, with lots of stained glass windows and a fantastic organ. During the war, the huge iron klokken (bells) had been stolen from the tower by the Germans and nearly every window had been broken. The windows and the bells, all bar one, for which a collection was taken that morning, had since been replaced. They resounded happily while we walked arm in arm to the centre of the village that morning; as if they welcomed me to the parish I’d belong to when we were married. Our children would be baptised here and we fantasised about their names. We agreed that we would give them a name we liked, rather than sticking to the traditional way of naming them after parents, aunts and uncles, which would only give more trouble. After a while we decided to worry about that when the time came as we had enough on our plate for the moment. While we were at church, Fre’s father had cooked a lovely meal; chicken with Brussels sprouts; the only vegetables I detested were red cabbage and those horrible little green cabbages! As I could not possibly disappoint this lovely man, I ate a few but I must have turned green in the process as I was teased about them for years afterwards. It is funny how you learn to eat anything at other peoples’ places; I now love sprouts and I do not mind red cabbage at all. Maybe your tastebuds are changing when you are growing up; I cringe if I see a young parent trying to push food down a toddler’s throat. As I had promised Mum to be home at feeding and milking time, we left shortly after the midday meal. Pa was as cranky as usual when I had been away. Not even caring that Fre was around, he grouched about the young people these days, doing as they pleased. The world was going to pot and another world war was about to happen to put us in place again. “You mark my words!” he would say. I had heard it all a hundred times before and asked him cheekily to change the tune which of course, made him madder instead. But, by the time Fre took the overalls he had borrowed from one of my brothers off, Pa was all right again. Fre left early on his bike the following morning. Because he had not done the dishes as usual and given Mum a kiss before he left, she wondered what had been the matter with him. Her face lifted when I told her later that afternoon that he had not called in at Jans’ place to say good- bye to me either. Although he had beeped the horn when he flew past on his bike, I felt disappointed and uneasy. Coming home from Fre’s place was always such a let-down, and goodness only knew what was still to come... When I left for the neighbours early that morning, Wout and Pa were arguing over a dead piglet and, when I came home at three that afternoon, they had a terrible row. During the night one of our sows had piglets. Because the mother was always aggressive, she had been put in a cage while she was giving birth and the babies were only allowed to suckle when she was safely lying down. Pa had sat with the sow until ten the previous night. Then, when Wout came back from his girlfriend’s place, he had taken over. At that time the sow had already had seven piglets, but there were more to come. As progress had been terribly slow, Wout had fallen asleep at one stage during the long night. He had woken up just as the mother lay down on the last newborn piglet, killing it instantly. When Wout came home from the milk-run at lunch time, Pa’s bottom lip had still been down onto his chest, complaining about the loss, and Wout was losing his patience. Pa’s expectation that ‘they would make Wout a head shorter in the army’ had not given him total control over my headstrong brother. On the contrary, Wout now had a lot more patience; he spoke up for himself and walked away rather than using his fists. On and on Pa went about a young fellow such as Wout being unable to stay awake, saying time and again that he himself had been able to do several nights without sleep, when he had been his age. Feeling bad enough himself about losing a pig, Wout argued that it was only the runt of the litter. He said that he was sorry he had been honest and told Pa what had happened; he should have thrown it in the manure tank behind the pigpens instead, and said nothing about it. Mum got heartily sick of Pa’s nagging too. “Why don’t you be happy with twelve healthy keutjes (piglets) and forget about it,” she said. “It was too small to have a chance with the others anyway; the sow only has twelve nipples!” As Mum took sides with Wout for a change, Pa’s temper flared even more. For a while they cursed and swore at each other something shocking, then their fists hammered into each other. Screaming hysterically, Mum tried to pull them apart while I pulled at Wout’s arm, pleading with him to be the wiser of the two. While they were fighting, Wim and Jopie came home from school. Jopie fled to her friend Lena’s place, as she always did when something unpleasant was going on, but Wim watched, his face as white as a sheet. Suddenly, Wout seemed to have come to his senses as he walked away, “to prevent himself from killing the old bastard”, he said. He cooled his frustration with some hard work as he usually did when he was angry. Although Wout had not touched Pa’s face this time he was bleeding again from several burst capillaries. While Mum pushed him onto a chair and dabbed his face with cold water, he kept raving. I rinsed the facecloths for her until the bleeding stopped. By that time Pa’s cursing had changed to sobbing in self-pity, which for some reason made Mum angry with me. Come to think of it now, it is rather strange that she reacted so differently to Pa’s crying, from when I was upset. My tears always made her furious, perhaps because it made her feel guilty... or was it because she was never allowed to cry herself when she was young? In Fre’s letter, which he wrote a few hours after he got to work that same afternoon, he said that Pa had not spoken a word to him all morning. Not used to such cold and rude treatment, he felt that Pa had a grudge against him. His feelings were of course quite accurate; both my parents blamed all the trouble at home on my relationship with Fre. Trouble had been waiting for him at work too, as his boss had been in one of his terrible moods that afternoon. There had been no customers at all for hours. While Annie dusted the rack of leather coats and jackets for the second time that afternoon, Fre wrote one of his long letters to me. He was just about finished with it when Meneer Lamers came in and blew his top. Fre had been tempted to quit there and then but, as he would have had no income, he decided first to apply for a job at the AKU, the ‘silk-factory’ when he was free the following Monday morning. They made viscose and other synthetic materials and most of the jobs there were terrible, he said. His father as well as his brother Ap had already been working there for years. Before his father got the office job, he worked with acid-baths in the zuukelder with Ap. Fre had detested ‘night-watch’ when he was in the navy, and hated the thought of having to do shift-work again. As usual after a fight with Wout, Pa became depressed and stayed in bed for a couple of days. After doing our own washing on Tuesday, I was glad to escape the morbid atmosphere in the house on Wednesday morning nervous, as I was going to a new customer that day. My new boss’s husband was the headmaster of a large Catholic primary school in Amersfoort. The pastoor, the doctor and any teacher, but especially the headmaster, were superior figures which you would only approach when strictly necessary and with the greatest respect. They were the only people we addressed with ‘U’ in the village; everybody else was ‘jij’ or ‘jou’. I had great problems with that when I first went to work in the stad where all adults were addressed with the formal ‘U’ until permission was given to do otherwise. It was wonderful to be able to call everybody ‘you’ when we came to Australia, which also took away the barrier of ‘I’m better than thou’. Out of breath, my face flushed from the strong wind I set my bike against the wall of the given address of my new boss, a stately old house, and rang the bell at the front door, a few minutes before nine o’clock. Mevrouw Simonsen, a tiny grey-haired lady, opened the door herself, saying that she could not afford to have a live-in help on the small salary of the headmaster. She then told me to wheel my bike to the back of the house and enter through the side door, which was used for ‘servants’. After I had hung my raincoat on the kapstok in the hall, Mevrouw took me to a bedroom upstairs where the sewing machine had been set up in a corner and a huge pile of repairs was waiting for me. After she had shown me what she wanted done first and telling me that she would bring me a cup of coffee in an hour, she left me to it. One of the things I liked best about my sewing was the cosiness of being with other people and listening to the goings on in their different households. Used to being more or less the centre of attention, I did not look forward to being on my own all day. Before I started on the pile, I put the table in front of the window. I could not see the street below unless I hung out of the window, but at least I could see the sky, even though it was grey. When Mevrouw came in with the coffee, she was not too happy; looking out of the window would distract me while I was working, she said. But, as she did not say that I had to put it back, I left the table where it was. As soon as she had left, I went on with the job, sipping coffee on my own while I worked. Soon after, a strange smell of cooking drifted up from the kitchen and I wondered what would be for dinner. At midday Mevrouw Simonsen followed her two teenage daughters upstairs and introduced them to me; a blond one and a dark one; Juffrouw Bernadeth and Juffrouw Louise. ‘Juffrouw’ (Miss) Louise, who was short with long dark hair, sat straight in her chair with a similar air of importance as her mother. Bernadeth, was my age but much taller than I was. Her long, blond hair was loosely tied into a ponytail. She grinned at me with a disapproving look in the direction of her younger sister. Behind her mother’s back she indicated to me with a finger to her head and rolling her eyes that they were both crazy. Seeing the beautifully decorated paper-thin china plates and the silverware on the table when I came down to the dining-room where I had been permitted to have my meal with the family, I panicked. I had never used a napkin and I had no idea how to use all that shiny cutlery. Meneer Simonsen, a rather insignificant man in a three-piece, dark suit and a tie, was already seated at the head of the table when I came in. He nodded his head when his wife told him who I was. The room was beautifully furnished with large antique cupboards and similar red- upholstered chairs as Opoe had in her pronk-room. Seeing my uneasiness, Bernadeth laughed, saying that her mother wanted them to stick with all those silly old-fashioned traditions. While Mevrouw Simonsen berated her eldest daughter, her husband frowned at them, but he did not say anything. I watched in amazement as Mevrouw kept walking back and forth to the kitchen bringing out covered dishes of silver and fine porcelain. Mum always set the pans on the table. Only Bep, Fre’s sister, and one of the other ladies where I went sewing used serving dishes. Sweat pearled on my forehead when Mevrouw dished up the meal; a tiny piece of meat which could be blown off a plate, followed by a few fried potatoes with thick, lumpy gravy. My stomach turned when I realised that the lumps were actually cut-up mushrooms! Nobody in his right mind would eat them where I came from! Worse was still to come when Mevrouw lifted the lid of the vegetable dishes and the awful smell of Brussels sprouts, covered with cheese, filled the room and, as if that was not enough, she also had re-heated some red cabbage from the previous day! Saying that I was not a big eater, I easily persuaded Mevrouw to give me only two sprouts and as there was not much of the red cabbage anyway, she gave me only a teaspoon full. After a lengthy prayer, Meneer Simonsen took the big, white napkin out of the ornate silver clasp beside his plate and tucked it into the tight collar of his white shirt, but the girls put theirs on their laps. Not knowing what to do with mine, I decided to be on the safe side and tucked it under my chin like Mevrouw had done when she finally sat down. By that time the food was quite cold. While I struggled with knives, forks and spoons I tried hard not to choke on the awful vegetables on my plate. I still think about that first meal at the headmaster’s place as the worst I ever had. When the girls came home after school at four o’clock, they both came up to talk to me. When I called Bernadeth ‘juffrouw’ she told me to forget about that silly title. “I’m just Bernadeth or Bernie!” she said. Louis soon had enough of listening to us talking and went downstairs to play the piano. Her older sister stayed chatting while she did her homework but her mother soon called her to go downstairs, ‘knowing’ that neither of us could work while we were talking. When Mevrouw came up, shortly before it was time for me to leave, she was most put out when I mentioned Bernadeth. She told me to keep the appropriate distance between us; I was only a servant; ‘Juffrouw Bernadeth’ and ‘Juffrouw Louis’ was the only way to address and speak about her daughters. I wonder now why I ever went back there! Meneer Simonsen was very timid man compared to the two headmasters I knew from the school in our village. In my last year at school, we had a new headmaster. After the previous one whose hot-temper matched his flaming red hair - Wout was always in trouble with him - Meester Pielage was not my idea of a headmaster at all. He was a homely, soft-spoken, somewhat nervous looking man. With his friendly, outgoing nature and pleasant manners he had soon become very popular with our class as well as the rest of the school. Meneer Pielage and his lovely wife have never left Hooglanderveen. Now, since long retired and both in their early eighties they still are a great asset to the community. As it was raining cats and dogs that Wednesday evening when I came home from my first day of sewing at the headmaster’s house, Fre did not come to our place as planned. He wrote the following day that he and his father had visited Tante Nel instead. Tante Nel, a tiny, fun-loving lady with grey, natural curly hair and thick spectacles, was his mother’s younger sister and her husband, Ome Albert, was his father’s eldest brother. Fre’s father (Hendrik or Henk) and Ome Albert were very different; his father was tall, slim and clean-shaven while his uncle was a short, stocky built man with a moustache. Ome Albert, was a shoemaker an excellent tradesman. I had visited them before with Fre, the first time I was at his place. Fre’s mother was the middle one of three girls in their family: Anna, Amalia and Nell. Fre’s mother had also worn glasses but not as thick as these of Tante Nel; Tante Anna, who lived further north, was nearly blind. Ome Albert and Tante Nel had four sons. Tante Nel talked a lot about Dieneke, their eldest child and only daughter, who had died of tuberculosis at the age of fifteen. Ome Albert had never set foot in church after her death, she said. Instead of going to church, he went for a walk every Sunday morning with Arno, his big German shepherd. They always followed the same route, calling in at each of the four cafes on the three-kilometre walk. Ome Albert seldom had more than one glass of beer in each pub and Arno always got the last drops of his beer on a plate. A few weeks before my visit, when Ome Albert had spent a weekend in hospital, Arno had gone from pub to pub, looking for his boss. In his next letter, Fre said that Tante Nel had celebrated her birthday the previous weekend. Her sons had given her a reel-to-reel recorder so that she could send a message to their eldest son Gerard, who lived in New-Zealand. During the war, Gerard, a big, heavily built fellow, had been picked up by the Germans and taken to Germany to work in their factories. When the war ended three years later, he had worked for a farmer until a horse had kicked him and he had landed in hospital with severe head injuries. Like thousands of others at the time, Gerard could not see a future for himself in Holland after the war and ventured out as soon as he had sufficiently recovered to pass his medical tests. Fre felt sorry for his cousin, as he had been in the navy and he knew what it was like to be single and so far away from home, he said. He had seen in Brisbane (1953) how immigrants in Australia lived in army-huts for years before they could afford anything better, and even then, families were sitting on empty fruit-crates because they could not afford to buy furniture for their rented or heavily mortgaged homes. From Gerard’s letters, the situation in New-Zealand seemed not much better than in Australia. No, Fre would never want to live in either country, he wrote again... Because it was still raining on Saturday evening, Fre came on his bike on Sunday morning, wet and cold to the bone. As before, Mum scolded me for hugging and kissing him while he longed for the delicious vegetable soup that was simmering on the kachel.

“What have you got on your arm?” Fre asked as I suddenly pulled away from his embrace with a painful look on my face. “ I burned it on the kachel,” I said sheepishly while I reluctantly showed him the seven- centimeter long wound above my elbow. In my excitement at seeing him again, I had forgotten the excruciating pain for a moment. I felt really stupid when Mum told him that I had fallen asleep next to the kachel the previous evening, shortly after I had refilled it with coal. I woke up startled when my arm fell onto the red hot stove, as my skin was sizzling on it and pulled my arm away. Mum had told me to go to Ouwe Luuk, Gert’s uncle, who could take the pain away by praying over it. Fre had heard about those miracle cures before and he came with me. He was as stunned as I was when the pain had gone by the time we got home and, so long as I did not touch it, I was all right. Later that afternoon, Fre was kicking a ball around behind the house with my brothers and some young neighbours, when one of them kicked it through the window of the shed, just as Pa got out of bed. He was livid; momentarily forgetting that Fre was there he really let go. “ Man, keep toch calm!” Mum said impatiently. “One of these days you’ll have a heart- attack for a little thing like that! It’s not worth bothering about it; Fre is already fixing it!” Fre had started to take the broken pieces out of the frame. Fixing a broken window was one of the first jobs Pa had asked him to do. He had worked with glass since he had left school and, as Pa used big sheets of clear glass to grow seedlings under in spring, there was plenty around to replace it with. But it wasn’t until later on that evening, when Fre promised to help Mum with the bookkeeping to avoid having to pay unnecessary tax over the money I brought in, that Pa stopped moaning about it. “I’ll be glad to get you out of here,” Fre said before we each went to our own beds, he beside Wim, who had not had another ‘accident’ since the first time Fre had slept over, and I with Jopie. I let out a big sigh; the three years wait until I was twenty-one seemed an awful long time for both of us. “The time will fly if I work hard,” I whispered while I answered his passionate kisses. But that was the wrong thing to say as Fre continuously worried about me. “You already work too hard,” he said. “You look awfully pale lately!” “Working is good for a person and it keeps our minds off things!” I copied Mum’s saying. I reminded him that there were an awful lot of people in bed with griep (influenza) and my period was due. “I would not mind having a few days in bed at all,” I sighed wistfully, suddenly feeling awfully tired. Chapter FORTY-ONE

Sometimes, I find it hard to believe how naive I was. I still am, in many ways I guess. After Fre left on Monday morning worried about the difficult situation I had to live in, we had a good day and a lovely evening at home. Pa had been in a better mood than we had seen him in for weeks. Thinking that it would cheer Fre up to know that things were all right after the unhappy weekend, I wrote him all about it the following day saying that Tiesje had been entertained by Gijs all evening and that we had all been in stitches over their antics. But of course, Fre was not happy at all to read that I had such a good time with Gijs, and it was painful for him to know that Pa had laughed with his ‘rival’ while he had hardly spoken a word to him. On top of that, I told Fre about the ‘trick’ Pa had played on me at one o’clock in the morning. When Gijs left at ten-thirty I had gone to bed, but Pa had stayed up sharing dirty jokes with two young neighbours and my older brothers until well after midnight, killing themselves laughing. I had been sound asleep, when he woke me up with a fresh cup of tea and a beschuit with sugar, as he often did with Mum early in the mornings, when he was in a good mood. I had been happy to see that it was only one o’clock and I would be able to go to sleep for another five hours. But of course, Fre was not impressed by Pa’s idea of a practical joke at all! The thought of Pa going into my bedroom in the middle of the night was agonising for him, and made him nervous. Although it was too cold for Fre to ride his bike such a long distance to visit me during the week, he raced into our driveway shortly after eight on Wednesday evening to see for himself that I was all right. Poor Fre! He looked so worried and he was blue from the cold. When Pa laughed his nasty laugh, commenting that he looked like death warmed up, Mum was as angry as I was. It was extremely cold for the time of year and very misty when Fre left at seven the following morning. Mum and I had helped him pack a layer of old newspapers between his jumper and his waterproof suit, glad that Pa had gone milking so that he could not make more nasty comments. The rain-suit, which was made from black, rubber-backed canvas, was the most popular item Fre sold in the shop. Mum had bought one for Pa and Wout too, as it kept them dry as well as warm while they were working in the rain. It was comical to see Fre awkwardly getting on his bike before he drove off into the still dark morning. “ That love! That love!” Mum laughed, shaking her head like Mevrouw van Montfoort would. “And that, all for a girl like you! What makes you deserve a guy like him?” she asked. “I don’t know,” I laughed, ignoring the sour tone in my mother’s voice. “He says I make him happy. He can’t wait until we are married, to have me with him all the time; three years seems an awful long time to him.” On our way into the house, Mum warned me again not to get it into my head to want to get married any earlier, just because we would be engaged in a few weeks time. I was stunned! Did she say engaged? All she had said when Fre asked her permission earlier was that ‘getting engaged was city nonsense’. Now she gave us her blessing. She wanted Fre to ask Pa for his permission too - which he would have done anyway - so that he would not feel rejected, but not until close to the day, which would stop him grouching for weeks and we would not talk about getting married until I was twenty-one. So, Fre got two letters from me that week! To get away from my unhappy home as much as possible, I had taken on another family in Amersfoort for one day per fortnight. Meneer Keet had a grocery shop. He was a jovial, solidly built, balding man, the type of greengrocer who was able to spread happiness wherever he went, even though he might curse some difficult customers behind their backs. Their eldest child was twelve and Mevrouw Keet was expecting her tenth child. The family lived behind the shop, a small living-room and a kitchen with three bedrooms upstairs. Boxes of groceries were stacked up high against the back wall of the living-room and in the passage to the shop, leaving barely space enough to get through. The children all had set tasks to do, from delivering orders to peeling potatoes, sweeping the pavement in front of the shop or washing the shop windows and the dishes. Unlike in other families and in our own household, there were seldom arguments about their tasks. Maybe they were always on their best behaviour when I was around, but I doubt if that was the case. Mevrouw Keet was huge but she still had a few more months to go. She served in the shop all day as her husband was away most of the time, delivering goods to his customers on his bakfiets (a solid bike with a large basket at the front) and taking new orders. Despite her weight and her aching legs, Mevrouw seemed always happy too. Rika, their live-in housekeeper was in her mid thirties. Because her relationships with the opposite sex had all turned sour, she was terribly worried about being left alone. In months to come we would both get terribly depressed and cry in unison, each about our own seemingly insurmountable problems. When Fre did not turn up at the usual time the following Saturday evening, I was awfully worried. Because he always said that a bit of rain would not prevent him from coming on his brommer, I became more worried as the evening went on. My lovely brother Wim’s suggestion that he might have had an accident, made me very edgy when the wind became stronger. The roads were lined with trees; a tree could have fallen over, or a branch snapped off... I shuddered at the thought of Fre lying somewhere along the road, badly injured or worse... I quickly blinked those awful thoughts away; his brommer would probably be the trouble anyway. The way Fre rode his bike, often ignoring the speed limit, was wearing it out fast. He only had it for a year but he had done an awful lot of kilometres during the last months. When he had not arrived at ten o’clock, Mum sent me to bed, saying that I looked like a ghost. She was irritable with me, probably because she knew that my period was late again. As I could not bear to wait at home to see if Fre would come or not I went to the early Mass the following morning. My desperate prayers were answered when he turned into our driveway, just before noon. There had been a terrible storm in Arnhem the previous evening and, afraid he would get to our village too late for the Hoogmis at ten-thirty, he had fulfilled his Sunday obligation in Velp before he had left home that morning. Knowing that I would be worried, he had driven as fast as the bike would go but halfway he had been picked up for speeding, which cost him half his week’s pay. That weekend, Mum was terribly worried as a tax-inspector was expected the following Tuesday. Pa did not have the slightest idea about bookkeeping and it was up to Mum’s primitive efforts to keep track of things. Come to think of it, I don’t think Pa could write more than his own name. While we were drinking coffee, she asked Fre to have another look at the books. Pa objected strongly, saying that it was none of Fre’s business to see what they were doing but, when Fre said that he could explain things without having a look at the actual figures, he turned as a leaf on a tree. Fre spent most of the Sunday with Mum working on long columns of figures. At the end of the day she was very happy, saying that he had saved them a lot of money. Anybody who saved Pa money became his friend, even if it was only for a couple of hours. While they were talking amicably that evening, Fre plucked up courage and asked Pa’s permission for us to get engaged on my eighteenth birthday, four weeks away. Pa’s face dropped as if he had been knocked on the head. Oh no! I was only a snot-nose and he, Fre, did not know what he was talking about, he said, turning his broad back towards Fre, then he changed the subject and talked non-stop about all sorts of nonsense. Fre was fuming. His hands trembled and he was as white as a sheet; nobody had ever turned his back on him before, he said. Even in the navy, where some officers barked like dogs at their recruits, he had never felt so humiliated as he had been by Pa’s rudeness, he wrote to me the following day. Mum smiled at Fre behind Pa’s back, grimacing not to take any notice. He had done the right thing to ask Pa, even though he did not need his permission, she said later on that night. As I was his stepdaughter he had no say over me whatsoever. “Forget about it for a while; there is plenty of time,” she said. Fre did not sleep much that night and, as Pa had ignored him completely the following morning, he left earlier than usual. I felt sad when he did not call in again at the neighbours to say good-bye to me, and I wondered what else had happened that morning. When I came home, in the afternoon, Pa’s humour was still far below zero. Wout barked at him ‘to shut up and leave me alone’ when he started to pick on me, which provoked Pa’s anger even more. “You keep out of it! It’s none of your business!” he shouted. I went to the pig-shed to prepare our own weekly washing. While I scooped the boiled potatoes out of the furnace-pot, I thought about the unhappy situation in our family. “Why couldn’t they want the best for their kids like parents did in other families?” Fre had asked. Tears were dripping off my face when Mum came in. “Don’t think that’s getting you anywhere,” she said harshly. “Keep your tears for later. You may think that you’ve won when you get married, but you’ll learn soon enough that marriage is not a bed of roses either!” There were two, densely filled letters from Fre in the mail the following day. In the first letter, which he had written as soon as he had got to the shop, he blurted out his anger and frustration, saying that he would probably rip it up. At the end of the letter, he said that he was feeling much better now that he had it all off his chest but, not wanting to worry me, he was still planning to rip it up. In the second letter he wrote that same evening, he felt quite all right after he had talked things over with his father. Because he wanted to be honest with me and give me the chance to learn to know his ‘other’ side, he decided to send the first letter too. By asking Pa’s permission, Fre had saved his face, his father had said. It had been silly of Pa to refuse, as he should have realised that that would cause a lot of problems. At the end of his letter, Fre was in a black mood again. He said that he felt as tight as a charging, bull the same restless feeling he had when he came back from New Guinea. “The walls are threatening to fall upon me and I want to fly at everyone,” he wrote. “My longing for us to be together is becoming unbearable.” The following evening, Tuesday, Fre’s two brothers, Henk and Ap, his sister Bep and Gerard’s fiance Martha were together at their place as usual. But Fre was not in the mood for fun and laughter. All he wanted was for them to leave, he said in his letter the following day. He had barked at Martha when she started to tell a dirty joke again. The girl had not known what had hit her, he said. I was glad to read that the others had apparently agreed with Fre that she should change her tune a bit. I had still not met Martha, or Ap and his wife Henny, whom Fre did not like very much. In the same letter, Fre said that he had an argument with her that evening too. Henny was angry with Fre because he had not been to her birthday party. I had to read that sentence twice. Why would she be angry about that? Birthdays were never celebrated in our household since Mum had remarried. Only if we were bold enough to remind her about it, would we get a present, usually a piece of clothing we needed anyway. I was thrilled when she gave me a much needed black cardigan and leather gloves, when I turned seventeen the previous year. Henny was also angry with Fre because he had still not introduced me to her and Ap. Because her birthday was on the fifteenth of August, a Sunday for Catholics, she had expected Fre to bring me to her party that day. Fre’s argument that he was unable to come because he was on holiday, was no excuse for Henny; she had said angrily that she would not come to Fre’s birthday in November either. “That suits me fine!” Fre had snapped at her, furious about having to explain himself to a sister-in law. I agreed wholeheartedly; it was none of her business as to why we were not free to come and go as we pleased. I could not understand all the fuss about a birthday at all, but I later learned that a lot of people in the big towns were as obsessed with it as Henny was. The rule of having to go to your siblings birthdays Ð and the habit to compare the value of presents - became quite common throughout the villages in later years too, causing a lot of unnecessary trouble in families. The following Saturday evening Fre and I went to the doctor’s house at Hoogland on Mum’s pushbike as Pa wasn’t well and he was running short of medication. The doctor’s wife told us that the pills had already been taken to the convent in our village. Glad to be on our own for a while, we stopped on the way back, completely forgetting about the time. When I pulled the bell at the convent, it resounded hollow through the still, dark building and it seemed ages before anyone came. Just when I wanted to pull the bell cord again, the door opened and a sister stood in the doorway, staring from me to Fre and back. As she was in her nightie I had not recognised Sister Adriane Marie, my former household teacher, until she spoke. “But Mien! Have you got any idea what time it is?” No, I didn’t, but one look at the lit-up clock on the tower next to the convent told me that it was nearly eleven o’clock. “Oh my God! We have been away for hours!” I exclaimed, looking at Fre in horror. “You had better get home quick smart,” the popular sister said when she handed me the pills. Did I see a twinkle in her eyes when she closed the door behind us? “Lucky it was Sister Adriane Marie,” I chuckled when I hopped on the back of Mum’s bike. “Mother Superior would not have been so friendly!” We all slept well that night; in fact we must have been completely dead to the world; when we went to church in the morning, there were masses of tyre marks in our driveway; big tyres from heavy machinery. Our neighbour’s driveways across the road had the same markings; then we smelled the smoke; Ouwe Gard’s house, only two hundred metres away from our place, had burned down to the ground. Half the village had come out to see what the sirens had been all about and we had slept straight through! Pa could not stop grouching about the fact that there were nine people in the house and none of us had woken up. What kind of people were we? he asked, time and again. It was okay for him and Mum to sleep through the commotion, as they were old, but we young ones! Our eyes should fall out of our heads with shame, Fre’s included, he said. The fire had started in the chimney, just after midnight. A drunken neighbour, on his way home from the village, had raised the alarm, only just in time to save the family of five as the fire had spread quickly through the old house. Ouwe Mett had protested fiercely when she was dragged from her bed only minutes before the thatched roof of the old house had caved in. When Fre came again the following weekend, we discussed a plan of action for our engagement with Mum. We could go ahead with it but there would be no party at home and she asked us not to talk about it when Pa was around. My eighteenth birthday was on a Wednesday that year and, as it was a quiet time in the shop, Fre would take a few days off without pay. We would go to Amersfoort together to buy our rings on the day before my birthday and exchange them with each other the next morning. On Friday afternoon I was allowed to go with Fre to his place, and Mum would come on Saturday by train, “with or without Pa’s permission!” she said resolutely, with a rebellious look on her face. As Fre was sleeping over nearly every Sunday night, it became a nuisance for me to have to do the washing at the neighbours on Monday mornings. We had so little time to ourselves and, as troubles were mounting for us, we needed each other’s support badly. If I could do our own washing on Monday, Fre would help me with it. That way we would be together for a while before he had to leave at ten. I had asked Jans if I could swap and do hers on Tuesday, but she was not happy about it, as that would greatly upset her weekly routine, she said. Life was difficult enough for her having the care of her unfortunate sister as well as her busy household. I resented going to Jans’ place to do the heavy work that Monday morning but, as Fre came and talked with me for half an hour before he left, the day went quicker than I anticipated. Pa had been a little friendlier towards him that morning until Mum ‘paid’ him for his help with her bookkeeping. “How much do I owe you, Fre?” Mum had asked before he left. Without thinking Fre had jokingly replied: “Three dikke zoenen (big kisses)!” Mum had laughed heartily and happily obliged. Fre thought the world of my mother, as she did of him. “Pa hates you kissing Mum,” I said sadly. “You only want to sweeten her up so that you can twist her around your finger, he reckons.” All was well in our ‘Hemeltje’ when I came home at half past three that afternoon. But it wasn’t to be for long as disaster struck a couple of hours later. At about six o’clock Wout rode home from milking in the paddock by the railway line near the village, holding the steering wheel of his bike with one hand and pulling the milk-cart with the other as usual, which was illegal and very dangerous on those narrow country roads. It was also highly illegal for our nearly three-year-old brother Tiesje to sit between the milk-cans and buckets in the handcart. All this went through Wout’s mind as he spotted a policeman coming towards him from the opposite direction. He told Tiesje to sit very still with his head bent forward as far as he could and he breathed a sigh of relief when the policeman greeted him as they passed each other. While he looked over his shoulder at a bend in the road a little further to see whether the policeman was coming back he lost control of the steering of his bike. He had no choice but to let go of the cart, which came down with a hard thump on the road. Wout was horrified when he saw Tiesje rolling free from the cart along with the milk-cans, the big sieve and buckets towards the edge of the sloot, which was quite deep at that point and full of water. The sharp pain in his leg took his breath away when he tried to free his leg that got stuck underneath his pushbike. The next moment he watched with great relieve how Tiesje crawled away from the edge of the sloot and walk towards him while the half-full milk-cans were floating on the muddy water. A passing neighbour brought Wout and Tiesje home with his horse and cart. He had pulled the milk-cans out of the sloot and left the handcart on the side of the road. While he unloaded them at the back of our house. On one leg, his face twisted from pain and exertion, Wout limped inside, where the neighbour helped him into my bedroom at the deel. When the kind man had gone, Pa released his anger, cursing Wout for his stupidity that could have cost Tiesje’s life. He laughed about the pain in his leg, saying that it served him right. Wout let it all go over his head; Pa was right, he had been stupid, but he protested strongly when Pa kept saying that Tiesje could have been drowned. He said he doubted very much that he would have been unable to pull him out of the water in time, no matter how much his leg had been hurting him. When the pain in Wout’s leg became unbearable, Mum sent me to Buurvrouw Bertha to phone the doctor. After an extremely painful examination a couple of hours later, the doctor told Mum that he did not think his leg had been broken. He ordered complete rest and would come back the following afternoon. In the meantime Pa never stopped moaning and groaning, mainly because he would have to do the milk-run himself again and he hated the job. He tried to order Siem to stay home from work and do it for him. But Siem laughed at him, wishing him fun with it himself. As Wout was unable to get up on the ladder, he had to stay in our room and Jopie and I went to sleep above the cow stables with my other brothers. I did not sleep much that night as Wout was in terrible pain all night, and I was happy to oblige as a nurse. When the doctor came back the following day, he arranged for an ambulance to take him to the hospital that same afternoon. An X-ray the following day showed that his leg had not been broken. It had only cracked but he still had to have it in plaster, which nearly reached his crotch. The prospect of Wout being out of action for six to eight weeks frightened me. That afternoon I moved our few belongings to the kit (the boys’ bedroom) permanently as Wout would not be able to climb the steep, narrow ladder for quite some time. When Fre came on the weekends, he could finally sleep in my bed, but with Wout instead of with me! Glad to be able to escape, I went to Velp the following Saturday afternoon and took Tiesje who would be three in December with me. I had promised him that I would take him with me as soon as he stopped pooping in his pants. Because Fre’s father only had a bedpan into which his little bum sunk deeply, he referred from then on to Fre’s father as ‘the uncle with the rot-pot’. It was terribly hard to keep the peace between Wout and Pa. I was always relieved to leave the place in the morning to go sewing and dreaded what I might find when I got home at night. After being in bed for three weeks, listening day in day out to Pa’s never ending nagging and complaints, my hot tempered brother was finally able to get up. By that time he was sick to death of reading the books and magazines I had borrowed from the families where I went sewing. As my nerves were continuously on edge, Wout and I had started to argue again too. I felt being watched and criticised all day when I was at home. The farmer’s wife in the polder, where Wout had worked for a year when he was sixteen, always did every thing better than Mum and I did and she would never come inside empty handed, as we did. Like the farmer’s wife did, I now pick up things on my way and do three jobs at once, but at the time, I did not appreciate Wout’s nagging at all. Not being able to move about was very hard on my brother who was always so active. One day when I was knitting, he asked me to teach him, too. I gladly obliged and I was amazed how quickly he learned. He didn’t care about other guys laughing at him when they came around. “You try to sit here, day in, day out, doing nothing but listen to my old man growling!” he would say. I glowed with pride when he had finished the first half of a jumper for himself and showed it off to everyone who came to the house. During the first week that Wout was up, I had to cancel my sewing as half our family lay in bed with the flu. Mum was not well, Tiesje was vomiting his little heart out and Wim was burning with fever. Jopie was also in bed and Henk came home sick from the farm where he worked. I enjoyed playing nurse but, as I wasn’t feeling well myself, I got awfully tired. When I came home from doing the washing at the neighbours, a week after Wout had got up Pa and Wout were bickering again. Sick to death of Pa’s nagging, Wout shouted: “Oh, stop with that gezeik (pissing), man! If I wasn’t tied to this verdomde (damned) chair, I would shut your gob with my fists, you ouwe klootzak!” Pa was beside him self with rage. “I’ll teach you to call me an old bastard!” he yelled. He grabbed the bread-knife off the table and threw it at Wout who sat on the opposite side of the table. I yelled at the top of my lungs as the razor-sharp knife flew within centimetres of Wout’s head. It got wedged in the door behind him, where it stayed, trembling in the wood. Pa’s face was still bleeding badly when the storm finally died down and he went to bed to sulk as usual after a fight. I went to the shed and filled the furnace with water to prepare for our own washing the next day, still trembling from the ordeal. Thinking of what could happen next, I started to cry; I could not stand it any more. A little later, Mum came in. When she saw that I had been crying, she was annoyed with me again. “I’ll be glad to get out of the rotzooi here!” I sobbed. “And I’ll be glad to get rid of you!” she shouted angrily. “You are more trouble than you are worth! All you do is think of yourself, not bothering at all about what I have to put up with for your sake!” “That’s not true and you know it!” I shouted back. “If it wasn’t for you, I would run away right now!” I walked away, wanting to have a good cry in my bedroom. Mum called me back. “ You come here and carry on with the job!” she yelled. “Running away won’t get you anywhere either!” Then she left me to it. A deep calm came over me as I continued filling the furnace-pot and tubs with water from the tap, which Pa had installed the previous year. Then I sorted the clothes; the dark ones had to be soaked and about half of the whites were boiled in the fornuispot. While I was working, a plan formed in my head. A couple of hours later, I told Jopie, who had been at Lena’s place when Pa and Wout were fighting, that I was going to Fre. She would have done the same, she said with tears in her eyes. We hugged each other silently then I picked up my sewing-bag, pretending to go sewing at the neighbour’s place... Chapter FORTY-TWO

With tears streaming down my face, I got on my bike and rode to the railway station in Amersfoort. Trying to ignore people’s curious looks I stored my bike and bought a ticket to Arnhem from the money I had earned with sewing in the evenings. The train-ride seemed endless as doubts were haunting me. Was I a coward to run away leaving Mum to cope with all the trouble? What about Tiesje? I would miss him so much! What would Fre’s Father say when I came in at such a late hour? A kind Indonesian lady came over to me. She asked me what was wrong as she gave me a clean hankie. Because she was a stranger whom I would never see again, I poured my heart out to her, feeling much better for it. Before I realised it, I was in Arnhem and nearly got into the wrong bus to Velp. I had only been there twice and both times on the back of Fre’s brommer. I knew that I had to get out at the first stop after ‘Bronbeek’, the home for old colonial soldiers who had fought in the East Indies before the turn of the century. Many of them had long beards and they were still wearing the same uniforms. Fre said that there was a fantastic museum in the beautiful old buildings when we stopped and admired the flowerbed close to the highway, which showed what the day was. The date, made with seasonal flowers was - and still is - changed every day. I ran all the way from the bus-stop to Fre’s place, across the railway line and past the long, high fence of the institution for delinquent girls and women, which included unmarried mothers. When they were little Fre’s parents had told them that the institute was a lucifer-gesticht, where criminals dipped matches one by one into a phosphor bath and put them in boxes. They had been terrified of the prospect of being sent there when they were misbehaving. It seemed that someone was showing me the way, as I arrived at Fre’s place without having to ask for directions. Fre, who had only left our place at nine that same morning, looked stunned to see me on the doorstep. But his father was not surprised to see me at all. “I expected you a lot earlier,” he said while I sobbed my heart out in Fre’s arms. “Your parents are awfully hard on you, meisje (girlie). When your brother broke his leg, trouble was inevitable.” Later on, when we went to bed, me in the girls’ room and Fre in the boys, I begged him to stay in bed with me. “Please, Fre, take me; I don’t care any more,” I cried, while we lay in each other’s arms. “If I’m pregnant, they will have to let us get married.” “Oh no, Mientje! I don’t want it that way! What are we going to tell our children later?” Fre said gently while he kissed my tears away. “You know that it’ll always come up on their birthdays and we could never celebrate our wedding anniversaries as we’ll always feel ashamed.” He wiped away my argument that people would understand if we told them how difficult our lives had been. “You wouldn’t want to tell everybody what had happened, would you?” he asked. “They would not understand anyway. You’d better get some sleep,” he said, reminding me that his father would take me home the following morning. As he had not felt well that morning, Fre’s father had taken the day off from the office. He had planned to go back to work the next day but, as he was a diabetic, he could easily stay away another day. Because he was a member of the ‘Blue Button’, an organisation that befriended and helped families of alcoholics, he was used to talking with difficult and aggressive people. With his calm, convincing ways, he would talk to my parents and I would be fine, Fre said. Before he went to his own bed, we prayed together as we had done on other occasions when temptations threatened to get the better off us. I had only slept a few hours, when we had to get up to catch the bus at seven-thirty in the morning. Fre had to be at work at nine and he normally went there on his brommer. But this time he took the bus to see us off at the railway station, before he went to the shop. Fre later referred to that day as the slowest in his whole life. He had watched the minutes creeping to six o’clock, when he expected his father to return to tell him what had happened. As his father came home late, he had to wait for an additional three, anxious hours. In the train on my way home I shivered with nerves time and again even though Fre’s father was a great comfort to me. His soft, melodious voice made me feel at ease until I realised with a shock where we were going. He told me more about his life with Fre’s mother and the happiness they had shared. Just as he had done when I met him the first time, he said that he was sorry Mother hadn’t had the chance to get to know me. “You would have loved her as much as I did Mien,” he said while he squeezed my sweaty hands, which lay trembling in my lap. “You are so different from Fre’s former girlfriend; Mother worried about them continuously.” “I’m making him unhappy too, giving him all this trouble,” I stammered as tears of self-pity filled my eyes again. Father pointed out softly that it wasn’t I who gave Fre trouble. “I’ll do my best for you,” he promised, offering me another peppermint. The train slowly pulled into Amersfoort. Was it only last night that I had stored my bike at the railway station? I left it in storage to pick it up later. We didn’t have to wait long for the bus to take us to the bus stop near the village from where we had to walk twenty-five minutes to our place. I had not notice that the sun was shining until Fre’s father commented on what a beautiful day it was, and I didn’t care who was watching when I walked with this stately, grey-haired gentleman, to whom I had given an arm, through the village. It was nearly ten o’clock when we got home. A passing youngster on his bike had already informed Mum that I was coming with a stranger and Tiesje came running towards us in the driveway. I scooped him up and carried him inside. His little arms around my neck comforted me. I buried my face in his little neck; how could I ever part with him? Mum came out of the house before we got to the door. “You must be Fre’s father!” she said in her usual warm way, shaking both Father’s hands, glancing at me briefly. “Ja, we have been a bit hard on her,” she said apologetically. “It’s not easy to bring up kids those days; if you give them a finger, they want the whole hand!” After I had made them a cup of coffee, I left the two to talk between themselves. I took Tiesje with me to Wout who was still in bed, but I did not have time to talk to him for long. Wim was calling out from the bedroom above the stables, delirious with fever. I made him sip some water and wiped the sweat off his forehead. He needed the doctor. Because Mum had become too heavy to climb the narrow ladder, she had not seen him for several days. Pa came home from the milk-run shortly after I called the doctor from our neighbour’s place. I introduced him to Fre’s father. “ Bringing our lost sheep back hey?” Pa laughed loudly, while he shook hands with him. Then he said to me: “That was a rotten thing to do; running away and making Fre’s father bring you back.” Before I could say anything Father held up his hands saying: “Oh no! It was no problem for me at all. On the contrary, I’ve been looking forward to meeting up with you for a long time. Fre spoke highly of both of you; I was very disappointed when I could not come as planned a few weeks ago.” Father had planned a visit with Martha but he had to cancel the trip, as he was not feeling well that day. I was glad, as I had not been looking forward to meeting Giel’s dirty-mouthed girlfriend at our place. Within a few minutes Fre’s father was talking amicably with my parents as an unexpected visitor, dropping in for a chat. While I busied myself making meatballs for the hot midday meal, Father offered to peel potatoes so that Mum could keep on knitting. I gave him a big basket full and put a bucket with water beside him, before I went into our makeshift kitchen to get on with the vegetables and the rest of the hot meal. Pa went outside to attend to the horse and cart he had left unattended when Tiesje told him that Fre’s father had brought me home. A few weeks prior to the incident, I made the geut into a kitchenette. Disregarding Mum’s warning that it was too dangerous, I put the two kerosene burners underneath to the cork-dry unlined thatched roof of the old house that came down steeply to about one metre off the ground at that point. Although Mum was happily chatting to Fre’s father about the beautiful autumn weather, the cows who soon had to be brought into the stables at the deel and other ‘safe’ topics, I was very nervous. Because I was listening in on their conversation via the open door to the heert, I did not concentrate on what I was doing. While I fried the meatballs, the fat got too hot and left the flame on the other burner too high, without a pan on it. When Pa came into the heert from the deel, a sudden draught swept the flame high up and set the dry roof alight. To my horror, in the next instant, the flame leaped to the top of the roof. “Oh! No!” I gasped. Within a fraction of a second Fre’s father had dropped the basket of potatoes grabbed the bucket and threw the contents against the yellow flames, peeled potatoes and all. He killed the fire in that one, single hit! Pa was beside himself with fury. “You stupid girl!” he yelled, completely forgetting that there was a visitor. On and on he went. Wout came limping into the living-room, to see what was going on. “Leave the girl alone!” he shouted at Pa when he heard what had happened. “Be happy that the keet (old hut) hasn’t gone up in flames!” Pa then got stuck into Wout, screaming like a madman. After a while Mum managed to calm him down with the help of Fre’s father and by the time the midday meal was ready, things were back to normal again. Pa went to bed as soon as we finished eating but Mum kept talking with Fre’s father while he dried the dishes for me. While I cleared away the mess from the fire, Mum told him about Pa’s dreams of building a big house when she had married him. She said that they were both bitterly disappointed with all of us. Siem would soon be called up for army service, which was just as well; they would be glad to see him go as he seldom did anything for them and refused to pay them for his food. Wout was asking to be paid for working at home now that he had a bit of a girlfriend, which was unheard of when they had been growing up, and Henk refused to renew his contract with the boer for whom he worked. Like Siem, he wanted to learn a trade, which was only costing money without any return in sight. “By the time he starts to earn some money again, he’ll have to go into the army too, and he and Siem are already talking about emigrating to Australia when they are free,” Mum said bitterly. She continued to say that, when Fre and I were getting married, they would not only lose my income, but they would also have to provide for the wedding and give me an uitzet. I had already told Mum that we didn’t need to have a party and there were enough sheets and towels in his father’s house for us to use. But she insisted that they would not be able to hold their heads up in the village if they let me leave empty handed. Other young couples had to wait endlessly for a house and she was not prepared to give us permission to get married until I was twenty-one. In the meantime she could put away some money. Because she had to buy things behind Pa’s back, she had already given me a few towels and face-washers during the last weeks. Deciding to work hard so that I didn’t have time to worry, I gave Wim and Henk a glass of water. Jopie and Bartje had gone to school that morning but Henk was still in bed with fever too, coughing his lungs out. Then I went to the shed to get on with the washing, which was there exactly as I had left it the previous afternoon. I had just started when the doctor came and examined Wim. He diagnosed pneumonia. Beside medicine he prescribed strict bed-rest. Henk only needed cough mixture, aspirin and plenty of sleep; we could pick up the medicine from the convent later on in the evening. When the doctor left, I fed the chooks with Bartje while Mum went with Pa to the paddock behind the house to do the milking and Jopie made a stack of sandwiches. After we had eaten, I took Fre’s father to the train station in Amersfoort and rode my bike back home. While we were waiting for the train, Father said that he was glad to have met my parents and that things were looking better for us. “ Your father is a difficult man, Mien. I’m sorry for all of you, but especially for your mother. She sits between two fires all the time.” As if I didn’t know! Before he boarded the train, Father said that it was a pity that Mum had married my stepfather; he would have wanted to marry her himself, he said. When I came home Mum said something similar about him. But then of course, if she hadn’t married Pa, I would never have met Fre or his father. Barely able to contain her jealousy Mum’s mouth trembled when she said rather bitterly: “You’ll have two men who’ll worship you, and I’ll have to stay behind in this mess!” Her words moved me to the core. Overwhelmed with feelings of helplessness and guilt I put my arms around her. “Oh, Mama! You know that I’ll always worry about you,” I said softly. In the meantime, Fre was waiting anxiously for his father’s return. Because he was a diabetic, Father injected himself with insulin twice a day and he had to eat at set times to keep his blackouts under control. Emotional upsets could also trigger a coma. Fre had raced home after work, only to find that his father was not there. To keep his mind occupied he had peeled the potatoes, but he had no idea what to do with the vegetables. His relief was enormous when his father finally came home at a quarter to nine, looking very pale. Even though we knew that he had had no choice but to play along with my parents, we were both very disappointed when we heard that Father had agreed with them whole-heartedly that we should wait until I was twenty-one to get married. It seemed like three years in prison to me. Early the following morning Pa was yelling at me to get up. Mum was sick, he said and there was nobody else to help him with the milking. When Pa called impatiently again, I suddenly remembered what had happened the previous day; the whole house could easily have burned down because of my carelessness. It was still pitch-black outside and I could barely open my eyes. Not to aggravate Pa any further I got up quickly and looked in on Mum, while he bullied and complained about having to try to get ‘those other lazy bludgers out of their nests’. Jopie now had to get up too to get the breakfast ready. There had not been any need for me to help with the milking for a while and I did not particularly like it, especially when it was cold and drizzling as it was on that morning in October 1957. Trying to ignore Pa’s endless nagging about me having wasted his day yesterday, I was soon daydreaming while I milked the two easiest of our cows. Before he went to bed the previous evening Pa forbade me to go to Fre’s place ever again, and there was no need for me to call him ‘Vader’ any more, he said. I was upset with Mum when she told me to forget about getting engaged. But later on, when we were alone she said that I could go more often to Fre’s place on the weekends, as long as she did not have to pay for the fares. I was ecstatic, prepared to do anything for more freedom! “Everything will come right; just be patient,” Mum had said. Before I went to sleep I wrote to Fre, telling him what had happened that day. It was only a short note as I was so exhausted that I was barely able to hold my pen. Black spots were dancing in front of my eyes when I finished, but I still went to the village on my bike to mail the letter. “That love! That love!” Mevrouw van Montfoort would say. I didn’t want to remember the last bit of her saying: “Such a pity it never lasts...” My parents had gone out to play cards at the neighbours when Fre came the following Saturday evening. His face was blue and he was cold to the bone, when he got off his bike, but for a while we forgot everything around us, when we held each other. The week had gone agonisingly slowly for him, but as I had been run off my feet looking after my patients, doing the washing and the cleaning as well as getting a meal on the table, the days had gone quickly for me. Although he barely said ‘Hello’ to Fre when they came home late that night, Pa’s mood had improved a great deal. For the first time in weeks we had swirled around the heert the previous afternoon with Tiesje in my arms between us when a waltz was played on the radio. Like me, the little fellow never seemed to get enough of happy accordion and street-organ music. After a few days in bed, Mum was all right again. Henk had gone back to the boer and, although coughing a lot, Wim was up and about most of the day. But Tiesje lay listless beside Wout that Saturday evening. He had spewed all over him while playing on his bed earlier that afternoon. “I wouldn’t mind a few days in bed myself!” I sighed when Fre said that he was worried about the way I looked. I laughed when he said that it would be better for me to wait until the following weekend when I was at his place, so that he could take care of me. The idea alone had brought the colour back in my cheeks. “I wouldn’t get a chance to get near you,” Fre grinned. “Father would fuss no end over you like he always did with Mother.” Fre’s mother had suffered badly with migraine headaches and his father had always been ‘in his element’ while he was taking care of her. Fre was nervous and on edge that weekend. Not only was he worried about the tense situation at our place, which could flare up anytime, he was greatly concerned about his (our) future. He was fed up with his boss’s broken promises and his nagging about not selling enough. Neither he nor Annie were prepared to go into the street and talk people into the shop, making them buy something they would later regret, Fre said disgustedly. The commission he was getting for selling outdated suits and overcoats did not amount to anything near what he could earn at the nearby silk-factory. Fre wanted to apply for a job at C&A or V&D, the two big warehouses in the stad but, even though he had his Business Management Diploma, he lacked the necessary confidence. Word went around that only people with a Mulo (higher school) certificate were taken on. He agonised over having to do shiftwork at the AKU, but as he was not able to save a penny for our future he had no choice. He was also worried about his father. The emotional upheaval of the trip to our place and the difficult talk with my stepfather, who had continually changed the subject, had worn him out completely. The following morning, Fre had asked Tante Nel, who lived a few streets away, to keep an eye on his father as he could have another blackout while no one was around. The doctor, who came that afternoon, had ordered complete rest until after the weekend. Because he was going to the AKU again on Monday morning to see if there were any vacancies, Fre left early on Sunday evening. It was cold and the week would be long for both of us. A strong wind was blowing through the slats of the hooi-schuur (hay-shed) at the neighbours’ place when I hung out the washing the following morning. I shuddered thinking of having to climb the steep ladder when it was snowing again, having to scrape the snow off my clogs before I could go up with the heavy buckets of wet laundry to hang the clothes, frozen like statues, on the line while my fingers froze. I was angry at Jans, who refused to let me do the job on Tuesday when Fre had gone home. It’s hard for me to imagine now that I stuck that job out for nearly four years. When I came home I told Mum that I wanted to quit. I pointed out to her that Alie, their eldest daughter was now fourteen, the same age as I was when I started there and they were still paying me the same lousy amount; I would much rather go sewing, earning nearly double the amount. When I said that I could prepare our own washing on Sunday afternoon, wash it on Monday and go sewing on Tuesdays instead, Mum readily agreed. She went over to Jans the following day and told her that I would not be coming any more. Mum was outraged when Jans asked her if Jopie, who was a few months younger than her eldest daughter, could do the job instead of me. “How dare you ask?” she had hissed. “What’s good enough for my girls should be good enough for yours!” Although I felt guilty about leaving Jans to cope on her own, I was overjoyed that I didn’t have to go there any more. Fre and I would be together until ten o’clock on Monday mornings and we would be able to say goodbye properly in the schuur... Chapter FORTY-THREE

My feelings of guilt and shame for letting Jans down at such short notice could not possibly match my relief at not having to do her washing on Monday mornings any more. Before Fre left the previous evening, he asked Mum if I could go to his place the following weekend. I held my breath, anxiously waiting for her reply. “Yes, that’s all right; she has worked hard this week; it’ll do her good,” she said. “You are a schat (treasure) Mum!” Fre said and gave her a kiss. When I hugged her too, she warned me not to tell Pa; she would tell him herself shortly before I was leaving. As Pa had found someone to do the milk-run for him, he seemed his old self again, laughing and joking one moment and moaning and groaning the next. And I went with the flow as usual. “What was the matter with Fre last night that he left so suddenly?” he asked curiously that afternoon. “He hardly touched you when he said goodbye to you in the shed.” “Have you been spying on us again?” I asked angrily. “And what’s wrong with that?” he asked. “Surely, you don’t begrudge an old man a bit of pleasure, do you?” “It’s none of your business what we do!” I replied in my usual catty way. “You have no shame, do you?” The ouwe viezerik’s (dirty old man) rotten laugh followed me when I angrily stomped out of the door to make a start on our washing. The man honestly believed that he had done me a favour when he had taught me what boys would do when I grew up, convinced that every girl and woman liked being touched in those places! There was something unnatural about women if they didn’t, he said, as Mum did, because she had been a nun. To keep my mind occupied, I counted some of the items in the washing that day: Twelve sheets, twenty pillowslips and twenty-one shirts, I wrote to Fre. Most of those shirts were white, and they had to be bleached and starched. Lucky for me Mum did most of the ironing when I was out sewing. I detested ironing, except in winter when I could stay next to the kachel with it, listening to the radio. After having been at home for the last ten days, I was glad to go sewing again on Wednesday morning. I had a new family to go to that day. Mum had been doubtful to give me her permission because they were ‘gipsies’. She saw the frivolous woman and her man every Friday at the market with their street-organ. “They may not even be married,” she said with her mouth screwed up. “Of course they are!” I had said indignantly. “Why do you think they wouldn’t be?” Mum had pulled up her shoulders, saying that they were ‘that kind of folk’. Before I left that morning to go there for the first time, she warned me to be careful.I couldn’t believe my eyes when I walked into their house, which was built against the one metre-thick walls of the inner stad. The old house was quite large and it was filled to the brim with all sorts of knick-knacks. They even had a barrel-organ in their living-room, beautifully decorated in pastel colours with vines, flowers and landscapes. Three frivolous-looking, dolls stood on little platforms in front of more than a hundred wooden pipes, their arms activating a bell when the handle was turned. I just loved the happy music of those fantastic instruments, which were hand-operated and driven by bellows. Apart from some other street-entertainers with an accordion or a ‘fiddle’, those organs were often the only music that was heard at the turn of the century. Because the proprietors were usually poor, people looked down on them. After the war, when every family could afford a radio, most of those grand old organs disappeared over the borders. The Dutch government now registers the remaining ones, allowing only new ones to be taken out of the country. They have become very popular, especially in America and Japan. Some people become obsessed with those organs; my husband is one of them! Some years ago a Dutch-born friend of ours took his Australian wife to England for a holiday where they visited one of the great organ-fairs. Our friend did not rest until he had convinced his wife that it would be wonderful to own one, even though they had to mortgage their house to the hilt. Apart from the expensive organ, he now owns music, which plays for one hundred hours. The music is ‘kapt’ (cut out) in strips of cardboard, folded in a zig-zag fashion. A ‘book’ for a two-minute piece of music costs nearly a hundred dollars! He and his lovely wife travel to markets and fairs in his holidays and on long weekend. “There isn’t any profit in it, but we are making a hell of a lot of friends!” he laughed when we first met them. Fre, (or Fred as he is called since we live in Australia), now my husband for more than forty years, has just finished building his second thirty-six pipe kist-orgeltje, and he is already planning the next one, this one with a hundred and twenty-eight pipes...

My new boss’s mother, an old invalid woman, sat in a fancy rattan chair beside a cream, decorated wood-stove, surrounded by a mountain of colourful rugs and lacy pillows, keeping an eye on me in the house, while I was sewing. I had the feeling that she did not trust me, just as the general public did not trust gipsies. Her daughter was out most of the day, taking turns with her husband at turning the heavy wheel of the organ and collecting money from the onlookers. She wore a lot of make-up and her colourful dresses all had a tight fitting bodice and a wide, gathered skirt. A tight band around her slim waist accentuated her boobs and suggested broad hips. Her thick bunch of long, black curly hair was pinned back behind her ears so that her huge earrings were dangling freely with every move she made. Although the work must have been exhausting, she always looked happy. The couple pushed or pulled the heavy handcart together through the streets of the stad every day except Sunday, and in summer they went to neighbouring villages, walking all the way. I did not see much of my boss. When she was in the neighbourhood she called in briefly and only once was she home before six o’clock, when it was time for me to leave. As at several other places, I only went to this family a couple of times. As her mother hardly spoke to me all day - and if she did I could barely understand what she was saying - I was glad not to be asked back again after my second visit when all the repairs were done. In anticipation of being at Fre’s place at the weekend, I was bursting with energy that week and, as good weather was predicted for Thursday and Friday, Mum and I decided to have a big clean-up. Unbelievable what a mess people can make when they are sick! Wout’s leg was still in plaster but, as he now managed to climb the stairs to the kit, Jopie and I could get our own room back again. While I was sewing at the gipsies place on Wednesday Mum had folded and ironed the washing. On Thursday morning we stripped all the beds and hung the blankets in the sun to air. Then I took the overcoats and suits out of the walk-in cupboard and hung them on the clothesline in the backyard too. Being in the cupboard where Pa had abused me never failed to fill me with feelings of guilt and shame. I cleaned it as fast as I could to get out of there quickly. Another wave of guilt and shame came over me when I wiped away the cobwebs from the charred roof in the geut. How stupid of me to put the open burners so close to the thatched roof! What would have happened if Fre’s father had not been so quick? The consequences of the house burning down did not bear thinking of... After the fire in the makeshift kitchen, I had taken the kerosene burners to the back of the deel where we had always done the cooking during the summer months. But, as winter started at the beginning of November, the cows soon had to go back inside and we would have to cook and eat in the heert again. Because Pa kept on calling Mum away to help him, she was of little help to me. I was glad when Jopie came home from school that afternoon telling me enthusiastically that her teacher had to go to a wedding on Friday so she would be able to help me with the rest of the cleaning. The Friday flew. With the “Arbeids Vitaminen”, the most popular music program full blast on the radio, Jopie and I scrubbed and polished happily. When Pa came inside for coffee, the Koekoek waltz came on. In my enthusiasm I grabbed him and swung around the room, joined by Jopie with Tiesje in her arms. Wout drummed away on his plastered leg with a wooden spoon and Mum moved around in tune with the cheerful music, waving a ladle with which she was stirring the pea soup on the kachel. I hadn’t felt so happy for ages! Dog-tired but happy to be back in our own clean room Jopie and I went to bed early that night. It felt like heaven to slip between the freshly washed sheets and we slept like roses. I wasn’t feeling well when I woke up on Saturday morning but I was careful not to show it. If Mum noticed, I would have had to stay at home and I wanted to go to Fre at all costs. As Jopie could easily do the rest of the cleaning that day, I went to van Montfoorts in the morning as had been previously arranged. Mevrouw had bought a knitting machine and she had promised to knit a jumper for me while I made a coat for Betsie. I had never seen a knitting machine as they had only been on the market for a short time. It was truly amazing; you could knit a whole jumper with long sleeves in one day! It took me longer to sew the pieces together than it took Mevrouw van Montfoort to knit them. But, fussy as I was, I did not like my new jumper as it was knitted too tightly and in stocking-stitch only. I decided to take it with me to Velp that evening and embroider some flowers on the top, but I ended up unpicking it instead. As in many other households, the expensive machine was put aside after a few months never to be used again; another item to be paid off, for months to come, by the family. Money was always a problem at the van Montfoort’s. It was most embarrassing for me to have to ask about pay as they did so much for me. Mevrouw was furious with Pa for pestering them about money, after Meneer had taken him all the way to Brabant on his day off to get Wout out of the army. “He didn’t even offer to pay for the petrol!” she said disgustedly. (Pa had not seen the need to give them anything as they were going there anyway.) At three o’clock that afternoon I took a shower as I always did when I was at my second family’s place. By the time I went home to give Pa some money and pack my bag for the trip to Fre, I had black spots in front of my eyes. Determined to get on that train, I swallowed another couple of aspirin. Pa was furious with Mum when he heard that I was going to Fre’s while he had forbidden me to ever set foot in his place again. With a heavy heart, I pretended not to hear him shouting at her when I finally got away at half past five. Fre would be waiting for an hour as I had missed the train of five-twenty-five. It was cold and drizzling and my bones were aching but I did not care; in a few hours I would be in my lovely fellow’s arms again... As I was as sick as a dog when I arrived at Fre’s place, a bed was made for me on the divan in the living-room. That evening and the next day Fre and his father fussed over me, spoiling me rotten. I was supposed to go home on Monday morning but Fre rang Buurvrouw Bertha on Sunday afternoon, asking her to tell Mum that I was sick. Another day of their devoted attention made me want to be sick for a long time but unfortunately by Tuesday I was well enough to go home. Mum was doing the washing when I came home early that afternoon surprised to see me, as she had not expected me home so soon. “I knew that you were sick when you left on Saturday, but I let you go anyway,” she said, adding with trembling mouth: “I bet those two men could not do enough for you!” “Oh Moes! You are the best mother in the whole world!” I said, putting my arms around her. In the evening, while we were mending socks and Pa had gone to bed, Mum asked: “Does Fre still want to get engaged on your birthday?” My heart missed a beat. “We would love to,” I said hopefully. “Would you let us?” “ Well, I’ve been thinking about it,” Mum said thoughtfully. “Your birthday is on Wednesday. If you have the party at Fre’s place the following weekend, Pa doesn’t have to know anything about it.” “Oh Moes! You make us so happy,” I sighed, tears filling my eyes while I gave her a hug. “Are you still planning to come too?” “Of course I am!” she answered determinately. “What about Pa and Wout?” I asked. A stubborn look came over my mother’s face. “They can kill each other if that’s what they want!” she said harshly. Although I could hardly wait to tell Fre the good news, I waited until Mum was in bed before I wrote a letter and rode my bike through the cold night to post it in the village, two hours later. We only had two weeks until the party. I had no idea what I was going to wear, as I had nothing suitable for such an occasion. I could borrow a dress from Bernadeth, the headmaster’s daughter she had said but as it did not fit properly, I decided to make one myself, as buying a dress would be far too expensive. Now that I did not have to do the neighbour’s washing any more, I had an extra day to sew but I had a lot of other commitments. I had just started on three jackets for van Montfoort’s children, at home in the evening so that I could keep the money. Mum had bought a roll of winter material to make long pants for Henk, Wim and Bartje as they had outgrown all they had to wear to school. She could not pay me for making them but she would give me a fooitje (tip), she promised. The following day, I went to a new family again, that of a removalist. They had a telephone I was allowed to use. They made so many calls every day that one more would not matter at all, my boss’s generous husband said. As long as I kept it short, I could talk to Fre whenever I was working there (one day per fortnight) and I did not even have to pay for it. Making a phone call to Fre was the quickest way for me to get warm when it was cold. I was already sweating when I dialled the number, not only because of my excitement to hear Fre’s sooting voice but because the owners were always listening in on our conversation. I rang Fre a couple of times but he was either helping a customer or he had gone to get goods from their other shop. Afraid that Meneer Lamers himself would answer the phone, I soon stuck to writing my short, childish letters the postman usually delivered the following day. Fre’s father was very happy when Fre told him that Mum allowed us to get engaged after all and that she would be coming to the party. “ I haven’t seen him in such a high spirits for years,” Fre wrote on the twenty-first of October, nine days before my eighteenth birthday. In the same letter he said that he had another run-in with his boss and that he had met his eldest sister Greet, whom he had not seen for a long time. He had called her the ‘lost sheep’ when he greeted her, surprised to see her talking to his father, when he came home from work the previous evening. Fre had told me earlier that Greet had been friends with the Germans during the war. Because some members of his family were still very bitter about the grief she had caused, especially to their deceased mother, she had not been home for years. He had a great talk with her, he wrote. He had invited her to our engagement party, hoping that I did not mind. In the next line he worried if he had done the right thing by inviting her, wondering what the others, especially Henk and Bep would say if Greet showed up at our party. I could not understand why Fre thought I would mind; it seemed ridiculous to me that they were still angry with their sister, more than ten years after the war. A couple of days before my birthday Frits, the postman delivered a big parcel for me. “I’ll be glad to see the end of this lot!” he said when he put the box on the table. “It seems like the whole district has gone crazy about those so called ‘wonder-pannen’.” Mum invited our much-loved postman to stay while she opened the box so that he could see what all the excitement was about. About six weeks earlier Mum and I had been to a local cafe where a salesman was demonstrating those ‘steam-pans’. Nearly every woman of the village was there and they were very enthusiastic. Soup could be cooked in the base-pan which had a heavy bottom. On top of this pan were two others with lots of holes in the bottom, one was for potatoes, the other for vegetables. There were dividers to separate the vegetables if more than one sort was to be cooked. The regulator in the lid, which was put on tightly with a strong clamp, would control the steam. Salt was only needed in the bottom pan as there would be enough salt in the steam for the potatoes and the vegetables and because no steam could escape, all the vitamins were kept in the food. As only one flame would cook the entire midday meal and cooking time would be reduced by more than half, those wonderful, glossy aluminium pans would save a family hundreds of guilders a year, the smooth salesman promised. Just about every woman at the meeting had bought a set. Mum bought the largest, a set for twelve people for herself and a set for six persons for me. She had to pay for them in advance and I would pay her back from the money I earned in my own time. As I was getting one guilder an hour, it would take me thirty-five hours to get the money. I had already paid back half the amount when the pans were delivered. We soon found out that things were not as simple as the salesman had said they would be. To start with, soup was only cooked at the weekends or as a one-pan meal in itself, such as thick pea or brown-bean soup, for which the base pan was too small. Most of the meals we cooked during the week, especially in winter, were one-pan meals like sauerkraut and hutspot, (a mixture of potatoes, onions, carrots and brown beans) and the bottom pan was too small for that too. If vegetable soup was made in the bottom pan at the weekend, it could not be stirred and, because the potatoes needed longer to cook in the second pan, the soup would be gluey by the time the potatoes were ready. Most people never cooked more than one vegetable other than apple-sauce or rhubarb, which could not be cooked in a pan with holes in the bottom. In our household only two of the pans were used, potatoes in the bottom and vegetables in the top pan. Like with the knitting machines most ‘wonder-pans’ ended up in the furthest corner of a cupboard, other people only used the bottom pan for cooking and the other two as a seive. I had hoped that Mum would give the set of pans to me as a birthday present, but that did not happen. Giving her permission for us to get engaged and paying for her train fare to get to Velp for our party, should be enough, she said and I agreed. It was the best present she could have ever given me! As planned, Fre had taken a few days off and came, half frozen on his motorbike, on Tuesday evening. On my birthday the following morning, dressed in our thickest winter clothes, we went to a jeweller’s shop in Amersfoort to buy our rings. Fre felt embarrassed that we could only afford the cheapest ones they had, but I did not care; they were made of gold and shone just as brightly as the dearest. There was no time and Fre had no money to have anything engraved in them, as we wanted to take them home and show them off right away. It was a miserable, rainy day but for me it felt that the sun was shining on the ride home. We called in at Ome Willem’s bakery in the village and selected ten beautiful gebakjes, one for everyone in the family. Although he was still limping and his leg hurt badly, Wout had started to do the milk-run again the previous Saturday, refusing to stay home a day longer, which had greatly improved Pa’s mood. “Bring the bottle out Mien!” he said when we finished our coffee and cake. “Let’s have a toast on your birthday!” I happily got the bottles of jenever, brandy and advocaat out of the cellar while Fre took the little glasses out of the dressoir. While I poured the drinks, I made sure that Pa noticed the smooth golden band on the second finger of my right hand (Catholics in Holland wore their wedding ring on the left hand). “Fre’s present for my eighteenth birthday!” I said when he asked what the meaning of ‘that thing’ was. Naive as I was, I was not at all prepared for the thunder that followed. “Forget about the drink!” Pa shouted, standing up and banging his fist on the table. “You vuile rotzakken (dirty rotters), doing everything behind my back!” “Calm down!” Mum barked at him. “Nothing has changed; they are only engaged! They won’t be getting married before Mien is twenty-one.” When my parents had gone to bed as usual after the midday meal, Fre and I went for a walk, taking an umbrella and Tiesje with us. This time Mum did not come with us for a change. It was a great relief to get away from the house and feel the cold wind on my burning face. But, as I had a lot of sewing to do before I could go to Fre’s place on Friday afternoon, we could not stay away for long. In the evening I brought the material for my dress, which I had bought at the market the previous Friday, out of the cupboard. I had not wanted Fre to see it before the party but, as he was around until we could leave, I had no choice but to make the dress while he watched me. “How could you buy material like that?” he asked. “That’s supposed to be for a nightie!” “I like it!” I protested irritably. I felt deeply hurt, as I loved the apricot coloured, glamorous material with its shiny pattern of little roses. “And besides, it’s too late; there is no time and I have no money to get other material!” Seeing my shocked face, Fre apologised saying that it would probably be all right when it was made into the pattern I had designed for it; a simple cocktail dress with a wide, half circle skirt and a short-sleeved jacket with a fashionable high, pointed collar. The tight-fitting bodice came down into a point at the waist so that it did not need a belt. Mum objected strongly to the three centimetre wide shoulder straps of the dress until I promised to wear the ‘bolero’ at all times. As Pa now knew that we were having a party at Fre’s place the following Sunday, I could work on the dress openly without having to lie by saying that it was for one of my customers, as I had planned to do. Watched with great admiration by Fre, who had happily taken my measurements, I drew up the pattern and cut out the outfit that same evening. But before I could start putting it together, I had to finish the three little coats for van Montfoort’s children and the trousers for my brothers. Mum always insisted that duty came before pleasure, which included sewing or knitting for myself. On Thursday afternoon I sent Jopie with the coats to Betsie, the deaf seamstress in the village who had a new machine which could make buttonholes. I loved going to Betsie’s but I seldom had time to stay longer than a few minutes. She was a terrific dressmaker. By the time the coats were ready to be picked up later that afternoon, I had my brothers’ trousers ready for the buttonholes to be made too. As zippers had become readily available, there were only three buttons in each of them, one in the waistband and one each on of the back pockets. Mum took the pants herself and she could wait while Betsie worked wonders with her zig-zag machine. The metal zippers, which had recently replaced the buttons on the fly, were an absolute blessing. But, because I was in such a hurry, I had terrible trouble getting them in properly that day; I would have happily exchanged them for the old-fashioned row of buttons. But then, it would have been too expensive to let Betsie do them all on her machine. After the evening meal Fre took the finished coats to van Montfoort. On his way, he called in at our neighbour’s place to tell Aaltje and Mett that I could not possibly come that evening as planned. With only one day to go, and my nerves as tight as guitar strings, I could finally start on the dress which I would be wearing when I would be meeting most of my future in-laws for the first time. I felt exhausted and depressed when I got into bed close to midnight that Thursday evening. My head was aching and I tossed and turned all night, worrying about the days ahead. What would happen when Mum left on Saturday afternoon? Could she leave Pa alone with Wout; she had never been way at night without Pa. And what about my dress? Maybe the others in Fre’s family would think that it looked like a nightie too... Chapter FORTY-FOUR

When Fre and I were on our way to Velp on the brommer, late that cold Friday afternoon, I still had to do all the hand sewing on my dress for our engagement party. Fre had gone to Amersfoort that morning to buy a new type of iron-on tape to save me having to sew the long hem by hand but, because I was nervous and terribly agitated it had not been the success it should have been. In the end, I had become so frustrated with it that I cut the tape off. The dress could now only have a very narrow hem, which I still had to sew by hand; a hem could not possibly be stitched in any dress with the machine as is done these days; only an extremely lazy dressmaker would do such a thing! Being at Fre’s place was as lovely as it always was. While I was sewing, his father cooked the hot evening meal, teasing me that he was cooking my favourite; Brussels sprouts. As I looked very tired, both Fre and his father wanted me to have an early night but because we still had to do a lot of shopping for the party the following day I insisted on finishing my dress before I went to bed. Like everywhere else in Holland, the shops in Arnhem and Velp were open until six on Saturday afternoons and everything, except the cafes, was closed on Sundays. Time passed quickly and we were soon at the railway station to see if Mum had been able to get away as planned. I let out a sigh of relief when I saw her waving happily from the far end of the platform. Oh yes! Pa had grumbled all right, but she did not care, she said. His bottom lip had been down as far as it could drop, but he had not tried to stop her and on the train, she had had plenty of time to pray for peace at home while she was away. Now she was going to enjoy herself, refusing to think about the family until she got home, she said. When Mum was praying, she was in a different world, unaware of what was going on around her. Although I realised early that it helped her cope with the difficult situations in her life, her praying later annoyed me. It reminded me of how she had left me in charge of my little brothers and sister, at times forgetting all about us. Fre’s father was as excited as a schoolboy, when he greeted Mum; it was lovely to see them together, holding hands. Later in the living-room, they seemed to have forgotten where they were, talking non-stop while Fre and I prepared the evening meal in the kitchen. My nerves were on edge; I was shivering and cold to the bone even though it was quite warm in the kitchen. Tears filled my eyes when I heard Mum say after the meal how much she hated the thought of us being married. When Fre asked what was the matter, I stammered that I did not know, and ran off to the garden. It took a while for Fre to calm me down. When I had ‘a hold on myself’, he took me back into the house again but, seeing the sympathetic look on Fre’s father’s face and knowing that Mum would be angry with me for crying, I burst into tears again, this time sobbing uncontrollably. Fre was horrified and Mum looked at me disgustedly, as she always did when I was crying. Fre’s father handed me a clean hankie, saying that it was a normal reaction as I had a lot to cope with lately. While Fre held me in his arms, Father gave me a glass of boiling hot milk and filled a hot water bottle, which Fre put in my bed. A couple of aspirin and an early night would do me the world of good, he said. Ashamed of letting myself go like that I crawled into the warm bed. When Fre came upstairs to ‘tuck me in’ I buried my head under the blankets. Afraid of Mum’s anxiety at us being alone in the bedroom, I sent him away after only a few minutes. It was just past nine o’clock but I felt completely worn-out. As the events of the last weeks kept turning around in my head, sleep did not come easily. Tears of self-pity kept coming relentlessly, no matter how hard I tried to stop them. On Thursday evening, the night before I left home, Pa had been reading the Amersfoortse Courant as usual, Fre was playing cards with Mum, Jopie and Wim and I was working on my dress, when Mum said to Pa: “I’ve decided to go to Fre’s place on Saturday too.” Pa had dropped the paper, he had taken his cigar out of his mouth and said, with a look that would have killed a lesser person than my headstrong mother: “Oh no you’re not!” I looked at Fre who had gone white, warning him to keep calm. Pretending that she had not heard Pa’s remark, Mum kept on playing cards. With a stubborn look on her face, she calmly continued: “I’m going on Saturday afternoon and I’ll be back with Mien by midday on Monday.” For the next half-hour Pa had complained loudly about everyone in our household doing as they pleased, not taking the slightest notice of him, using him as a doormat to wipe our dirty feet on. Mum had let him carry on for a while, then she said determinedly: “It’s about time I met Fre’s family; I’m going whether you like it or not! Jopie can stay home from school on Monday morning; if I’m sick you will have to do without me too.” Moaning and groaning about the awful fate that had brought him to this god-forsaken-hole, Pa had gone to bed to sulk. “Don’t look so worried Fre!” Mum had said when we were alone. “He is always angry with me anyway. I’ll tell Wout to stay away from him and if they have a fight, I won’t have to hear it until I get back.” We had both hugged her, happy that she would be at our engagement party after all. I worried continuously about my family, never knowing what would happen next. The thought of having to come home to Pa’s nagging after the party brought new tears. Annoyed with myself for crying, I wiped my tears away with the bed-sheet, as my hankie was already soaked, completely. When I finally fell asleep I dreamt of being in a prison cell with my three adopted children, two girls and a boy, as I had before. Some nasty men tried to take them away from me. Fre visited me in the cell, promising me to take care of me and the children forever which gave me hope and strength to fight for them. I woke up in tears in the morning angry with myself for crying again because of a stupid dream. When Fre came into my room a little later to wake me up to go to church, I hid my head under the blankets again. “Mientje, Mientje! What am I going to do with you!” he said when he saw my red, tear- stained face. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he told me some funny stories and soon had me laughing again. Together we could blow every cloud out of the sky, he said, and our party that evening would be just wonderful. By the time we walked through the fresh, clear morning to the ten o’clock Mass arm in arm with Mum between us, I was just about my old cheerful self again. After Mass we called in at Tante Nel and Ome Albert’s place for a cup of coffee where Mum and Tante Nel chatted like old friends. Before we knew it, it was time to go back to Fre’s place. Fre’s father had stayed at home, not feeling well. He was preparing a big pot of vegetable soup when we left, insisting that I enjoy myself on this special day. Because of his earlier blackouts, Fre was always anxious about his father, but he had been all right for the last couple of weeks and he had just finished setting the table when we came back at one. After the meal, Mum lay down on the divan, talking with Father who sat beside her, happily smoking his pipe while Fre and I took our time doing the dishes. After a cup of tea we went for a walk with the four of us. Father told Mum about the neighbourhood where Fre had grown up and I showed her the old-fashioned haberdashery shop, the butchers and the bakery. I told her enthusiastically that all sorts of vegetables, already cleaned and cut to be cooked, could be bought at the greengrocer’s shop. Hearing the jealous undertone in Mum’s voice, made me feel guilty but we all laughed when she commented what a luizeleventje (a life like a lice on a sore head) I would have when we were married. Our engagement party in the evening was lovely. The whole family was there except Fre’s youngest brother Gerard who was at sea, and I missed his adopted sister Ingrid who was at teacher’s college in Nijmegen. Greet, his eldest sister, ‘had been wise enough to stay away’. The tiny living-room of the old council house was filled to capacity with Bep and Bert, her handsome policeman, Henk and Gijsje, Appie and Henny, Gerard’s girlfriend Martha, Tante Nel and Ome Albert and their son Ap, Fre’s best friend, and his fiancee Dory. Ap and Dory were both twenty-seven, the same age as Fre, and they had been going together for many years. Fre told me how Ap had nearly died of a broken heart when Dory had ‘knocked him back’ when he had asked her to go out with him when he and Fre had first joined the navy. As Dory’s father was a town clerk and Ap was ‘only a smithy’, he had felt that he wasn’t good enough for her. When she finally accepted him, Ap, that big bear of a man, with hands as big as shovels, had been beside himself with happiness. After years of waiting for a house they had now been promised a few rooms in an old aunt’s place, and they were hoping to get married in February, in three months time. As was the custom at every party in Holland, coffee was served first with gebakjes from the local bakery which had been delivered on Saturday morning. After a second round of coffee, this time with a koekje, the bottles of liquor were put on the table. Apart from beer and brandy, jenever, lemon gin and advokaat, boeremeisjes and boerejonges were favourites in Fre’s family too. After our walk in the afternoon we had made lots of snacks; thin gherkins wrapped in sliced ham, pieces of liverwurst, metworst and different types of cheeses arranged on large platters, as well as hot little meatballs and spicy croquettes with mustard. Even though most people had to go to work the next day, they all stayed until midnight when a fresh pot of coffee was made before everyone went home. It was the first time in my life that I was the centre of attention and everybody loved my shiny pink outfit. At first I had felt silly in my summer dress while everybody else was wearing thick winter clothes, but as the evening wore on and they were all hot and sweaty except me, I felt like a princess. “She looks adorable,” Bep said to Fre, who gleamed with pride. “Fre thinks that my dress looks like a nightie,” I laughed poking my tongue at him. “Don’t take any notice of him; men haven’t got the faintest idea about clothes!” the women advised in unison. Fre’s father had insisted that Mum slept on the thick, feather mattress in his bedroom while he made a bed for himself on the divan. It must have been awful for my mother to see me go upstairs with Fre where our rooms were, next to each other. She had been beside herself with fury when she came back from milking one morning and saw me coming from the kit above the cow-stables while Fre was still in bed. On the morning after our engagement party, Fre’s father went to work at the AKU on his pushbike at eight-thirty as he always did. He loved his office job, he told Mum when they said goodbye. “ After slaving away on the shovel most of my life, I was finally being called ‘Meneer’ instead of just ‘Blom’ when I started there,” he laughed. As Fre was free on Monday morning he came with us on the bus to the railway station. We had tidied the house and done the dishes after everybody had left the previous night and Fre would pack up our presents when he came home from work in the evening. In the train on our way home, Mum said what a lovely time she had and how nice Fre’s family was. My feelings of longing to be with them forever turned immediately into guilt and shame when Mum’s mouth trembled and the corners of her lips went down, saying that I would get ‘heaven on earth when we were married while she was left to struggle on in the ouwe keet...’ With the usual uptight feeling in my chest, I cycled beside Mum into our driveway just before midday, hoping that things would be all right. The smell of sauerkraut came towards us when the backdoor opened and Tiesje came running ahead of Jopie wanting to know all about the party and the presents the family had given us. There had not been any need for me to worry; Pa had been complaining a lot, but there had not been any arguments at all, while we were away. He was happy to have Mum back again, but he soon started nagging her and he ignored me completely. When Wout came home from the milk-run he said irritably: “Man! Stop your whingeing! Can’t you see we’re all fed up with it?” “Shut up!” Pa screamed, “I’m sick to death of having everyone walk over me, your mother included!” Wout kept calm, saying that it was becoming impossible for us to put up with his idiotic, old-fashioned demands which infuriated Pa even more, saying that he, Wout, kon ‘opdonderen’ (could leave home); he would be glad to get rid of him. The next minute I closed my eyes when Pa lashed at him and Wout’s fist shot out. The awful cracking sound I heard had come from the chair behind Pa, which had fallen apart. I ran out of the house crying. Why did I stay in this hole when I could be with Fre and his father instead! Little Tiesje had followed me into the shed, his dark eyes pleading with me to stop crying. I scooped him up and held him tight; how could I ever be without him? I’d miss him so much! Unable to get a mouthful of food down his throat, Pa had gone to bed when the storm had subsided. We ate our meal in silence and I was glad to escape to the shed to get on with the washing, when we had finished. Wout came in to talk to me. He said that, in order to keep the peace, he had spent most of the weekend at his new girlfriend Tony’s place. Their relationship was becoming serious and he wondered about his future. “I would leave as soon as possible if I were you,” I said. “One day you might kill each other.” Wout did not seemed too concerned; he still hoped to own the farm, one day, he said. Of course; with a blood-pressure as high as his Pa could drop dead any day. In my letter to Fre that evening I blamed my wanting to cry all the time on my longing to be with him. Pa had gone to bed early and, sitting beside me, Mum was writing to Pa’s sisters, inviting them to his birthday the following Sunday, hoping ‘that they could talk some sense into their brother’. “Pa hasn’t spoken a word to me since I came home and Mum accused me of being selfish this afternoon,” I wrote. “She said I was only thinking of you all day and didn’t give a damn that I caused them endless trouble, leaving them in the stront (shit) in pursuit of my own happiness. It hurts me so much to hear her say such things. You’ll understand as you know how worried I am about what happens to her when I won’t be here any more.” At the end of my short letter, written in pencil, my emotions got the better of me again. Knowing that she would be furious with me for ‘making a spectacle of myself again’ I went to the deel where I washed my face with icy cold water from the pump. When I came back onto the heert a little later, Mum was reading my letter to Fre. I wanted to grab it away from her but the look on her face warned me not to. When she had finished reading it, she wrote some lines in the empty space that had been left after I told Fre that I would be able to carry on now that I had aired my feelings. I had ended the letter with my usual words of love and longing and sending regards to his father, before I signed off. I hugged her and we both cried after I read what Mum had written: “ Forgive me Fre for the unfair accusation I threw at your schat (treasure). I’ll be very careful this week and mind what you told me last Saturday.” Then she thanked Fre and his father for the lovely weekend. Fre doesn’t remember their conversation but I guess he had told her about my strong attachment to my family for whom I always felt responsible and the guilt I felt for the hardship I caused them through my love for him; especially for my mother as I loved her dearly. She loved having Fre around and it hurt me terribly knowing that she would miss him more than she would ever miss me. In his reply, Fre wrote that Mum would not have to worry about losing a daughter when we married, as she was gaining another son. Mum sniggered when I let her read it. She knew that we wouldn’t be coming home often, even before we had a family of our own. We would gladly stay away from the mess, and she could not blame us for it, she said bitterly... Chapter FORTY-FIVE

After the weekend of our engagement at Fre’s place, Pa did not speak a word to me until Wednesday evening when I was alone with him. He made dirty insinuations saying that he felt sorry for Fre as I was driving him up the wall with those longing eyes. Using very crude words he said that I would swallow his tongue if I could. “How dare you!” I hissed, my face burning with anger. With his eyes half closed he went on relentlessly: “The guy runs after you with a huge bulge in his pants all day as if you have honey on it.” “You horrible, filthy pig of a man!” I screamed, stomping out of the door, his mean laugh ringing in my ears. Before I could go to sleep that night, I decided to talk to our local priest on Monday evening, after our religious instruction for eighteen-year-olds, which went from October to April, about the unbearable situation at home. Still feeling depressed the following day, Thursday I went sewing for the family Keet, the grocery-shop owners for the second time. While Rika, their live-in housekeeper talked about her worries of remaining a spinster while she dreamt of having a husband and children I started to cry, ashamed to feel so unhappy while I had Fre and she had no one. As Rika was chronically depressed, she was soon crying with me. I’ll never forget the look of horror and surprise on Mevrouw Keet’s face when she came in the living-room and saw us both sobbing our eyes out. The next two days I was busy at home as Pa’s sisters and their husbands were expected for his birthday the following Sunday. They had not been for several years and Pa wanted to be sure that everything was looking perfect. Pa was still sulking when our highly regarded visitors arrived. While I was serving coffee and little cakes and got the bottles of liquor out of the cellar, I overheard bits and pieces of their conversation. “Times have changed Gerrit,” Tante Marie said. “You can’t treat them like we were treated when we were young.” “Not that that was any good!” her husband fell in. “Work, work and a hiding if you opened your mouth to voice your opinion on things!” “ At least we showed our parents respect,” Pa protested. “They treat me like a doormat here!” “You can’t keep on using your fists,” Tante Mieneke replied. “You’ll never get any respect that way!” “I have to show them who’s boss here,” Pa muttered. “Sure, but fighting doesn’t get you anywhere,” Tante Mieneke’s husband said. “You should start paying Wout some wages. How old is he now?” “He turned twenty last August,” Mum answered, pointing out that one day he would get the farm. “Oh no, he isn’t!” Pa fell in. “I bought the place and Tinus is my son!” Mum screwed up her mouth while the conversation went on. “Don’t you know that its law these days to pay your children if they work at home?” Tante Marie asked, avoiding a confrontation. Pa shook his head, moaning: “What’s the world come to! Disaster will come of it; you mark my words!” By the time Pa’s family was leaving, he was in a much better mood. When I asked cheekily, if I would be getting pocket money again he laughed, saying that I was lucky I was keeping what I was earning in the evenings. For Wout everything would stay the same too; it was winter and he earned enough with shaving cow’s tails and udders, as he did every year. Wout, Siem and Henk all earned a lot of money taking milk samples in the morning and shaving cows electrically at night. It wasn’t easy money by any means. They had to get up very early and ride their bikes to farms up to ten kilometres away, often in terrible weather conditions. Wout, who had attended agricultural evening classes for years, did not mind not being paid wages. He knew that that was impossible and the boerderij would be his, no matter what Pa had said. Fre was nervous and agitated the following weekend. Whenever he tried to talk to Pa about our future, Pa pretended not to hear him and changed the subject and, after a year of empty promises, Fre was fed up more than ever with his job. On his previous visit to the ‘silk-factory’ he had made an appointment for an interview on Monday morning, but he was not looking forward to it. On top of that, his brommer was now so slow that a solex (a pushbike with a little motor) had passed him on the road to our place, the humiliation of which was more than he could stand. Unable to fix the problem himself, he was still worked up, when he left on Sunday afternoon. As planned, I stayed behind to talk to our local priest after religious instruction the following evening. The pastoor’s lessons were as boring as they had been at school. Although he had been quite friendly to me lately, I did not expect much support from him. In the lesson that evening he talked about God who always forgave our sins when we were truly sorry. You could do the most awful things, but if you were sorry only seconds before you died, you would still go to heaven. That did not make sense to me, but nobody asked any questions as usual. Some guys joked about it afterwards, saying ‘you could go for it, have a good time and hope you didn’t die instantly’. As expected, I did not get far with the pastoor. “Your parents are right; you are far too young,” he said. “Getting married because you are not happy at home only leads to disaster.” It did not make the slightest difference to him that I loved Fre so very, very much. Lucky for me, my dependable friend Gert had waited for me and I could air my frustration on our way home. “ It seems to be too much for the pastoor to talk to me; I was out within minutes,” I complained in my letter to Fre when I got home. Mum was always cranky with me for writing to Fre after religious instruction. “It makes me sick; he has only just left!” she said disgustedly that evening. “ Yeh; they think marriage is going to be a bed of roses but they’ll have something else coming!” Pa predicted sourly. Although it was bitterly cold, I was glad to go sewing the following day. Trouble was in the making when I got home that Tuesday evening as Siem was in one of his moods; teasing and joking with Pa, which was getting out of hand. Not long after I got home Pa shouted at the top of his lungs while Siem kept talking calmly, laughing at him. With the blood draining from his face, he said that Pa had bossed them around long enough and it was time he was taught a lesson; now was as good a time as ever. He had promised to pay Pa back for the unfair belting he had given Wim, shortly after he married Mum, and the nasty experience he had himself when he was twelve, which still needed to be paid for, he said. The ‘experience’ Siem talked about happened a few months after the incident with Wim when Pa was romping with Siem in long grass on our way came back from weeding the sugar- beet field. Pa sat on top of him and holding him down while he rolled his knees over Siem’s biceps, as the boys did to each other when they were play-fighting. When Siem cried out, saying he would make him pay for it when he was old enough, Pa promised he would not get a chance as he would kill him first. To show him what that felt like he had held Siem’s throat tightly until he was blue in the face. Siem kept on and on, daring Pa to hit him so that he could show him that the roles had now been reversed. This time Wout as well as Mum were on Pa’s side. I begged him to stop before it was too late, but there was no way he could back down now he said; he had to keep his promises, didn’t he? That’s when Pa lashed out at him. The ugly fight continued onto the deel. Mum shouted encouragements to Pa while Wout cursed Siem. When Siem let go and turned his back, Pa grabbed a pitchfork... “Siem watch out!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. People who are beside themselves with rage have no idea what they are doing, otherwise Mum would never have screamed as she did: “Kill him Gerrit! Finish him off! That rot jong is not worth to be alive!” Thank God Siem jumped aside at the right moment! The pitchfork flew past him, only inches away, landing in the trough in front of the cows. Pa was in a terrible mess, but Siem had been able to avoid every blow. He got on his bike and left, yelled after by my parents, to never dare come back. Although I was told not to let Siem in under any circumstances, I waited for him when everyone else had gone to bed. While I wrote to Fre, briefly telling him what had happened, Pa folded the paper he had been reading and got up, warning me again and in no uncertain terms, to keep Siem out. “ And what would you do to her if she didn’t?” my brother’s voice came from the door behind him. Pa turned as if a bee had stung him. His battered face going white as Siem came close and locked eyes with him. “Forget about fighting with us in future,” he warned. “You know we are stronger than you are now; I’ll kill you if you try again!” Without another word Pa went to bed. While I made coffee for my shaking brother he told me about the pent-up anger he had carried all this time and his plans to go to Australia. His hands were trembling while he drank his coffee, not in the least sorry for what he had done. I went to bed but Siem stayed up a bit longer; he would not be able to sleep anyway, he said. When I got to the deel I heard someone crying in the boys’ room above the cows. It was Henk, my sixteen-year-old brother. Every one said that he had no feelings whatsoever. When I got to him he sobbed: “Siem goes to Australia when he comes out of the army and I’m not staying in this rotzooi either! Why don’t you ask Fre to make you pregnant, then they have to let you go too.” I put my arms around him and we cried together. In my own bed, a few minutes later, I prayed fervently, begging God, to give me strength not to lose my head whenever I was with Fre... The following afternoon when Fre’s letter came, I locked myself in the old plee to read it in peace. He described in detail what fun he had had the previous night with his family. I soon could not see the letters through my tears. Why did I have to live in a family like this while others had such a good time? Fre went on to say how worried he was about me, and he had not even received my letter! I should not have said anything about the fight with Siem last night... “Oh, there you are!” Mum said impatiently when I came inside. When she saw my tear- stained face she exclaimed: “Oh God; here we go again!” The rest of that day and the next, is a complete blank to me, no matter how hard I have tried, I can not remember anything at all. From our letters, I know that I ran away to Fre again and his father brought me back the next day, Thursday, as he had done only a week earlier. Fre has no recollection what happened that day either, except that I was terribly upset. In a letter he wrote that Thursday evening, dated 14 November 1957 he said that he was very worried about his father. He came home late (at seven-thirty) that night very upset, as he did not get anywhere with my stepfather. After expressing his concern for his father’s health Fre wrote: “I have already forgotten what happened yesterday, so we won’t talk about it any more. I’m glad you came; I just hope we can get married soon, very soon!” Then he changed the subject, talking about the weather. I would later learn that, like most people, men in particular, Fre would always avoid talking about emotional problems, which only aggravated our troubles throughout our marriage. Life resumed as it always did after a fight, peaceful with Pa in bed for several days. When he got up, he treated Siem as if the incident had not happened at all. Like me, Siem never bore Pa any grudges; we both figured that he was paying for what he had done to us as time went on. Because I knew what awful things had happened to him when he was young, forgiving him was not difficult for me. Forgetting is a different matter though... But then, forgetting doesn’t seem the way to go either, how else do we learn from our mistakes? I wonder. After Fre’s father had brought me back for the second time in a week Mum had been nice to me. That same evening, she wrote a letter to Fre in which she apologised, saying that life was not easy for either of us. Because I was still crying at the drop of a hat, Mum went to talk to the pastoor the following week. He had assured her that crying was quite normal for youngsters who could not get their way with their parents. He advised her to ignore my tears and get information on Fre’s past from his navy padre. Although Mum laughed about the pastoor’s request, she insisted that I wrote to his aalmoezenier, Pater van Houten to satisfy our old priest. Fre was furious when I wrote to him about it. He looked tired when he came the following Saturday night. On the first Tuesday in December Fre celebrated Sinterklaas with his family, doubling up with laughter. They had each taken a name out of a hat the week before and made a present for that person. The present itself was of little value; it was the way it was dressed up and the long rhymes which made the evening such a success. Fre got a record made from chocolate and his father a new set of false teeth made from marzipan. Martha had expected to be put in the zak (hessian bag) van Zwarte Piet as they had done the previous year but she got a sandwich of old bread with dried prunes, instead. The following Thursday, the fifth of December, the night before Sinterklaas’ actual birthday, I took Jopie, Bartje and Tiesje to the van Montfoorts as the bishop himself was visiting there that night. Little Tiesje, who had never seen the Saint and his helper, was wary of Zwarte Piet, but he laughed at naughty Ria for being afraid and crying. We had made presents for each other, which somehow had all ended up in Zwarte Piet’s hessian bag. We were a cheerful group when we went home through the snow on our bikes that evening. I only wished that Fre could have been with us. Fre gave me his present the following Saturday. ‘To have a hobby instead of always working,’ he said while I unwrapped a white tablecloth to embroider. A lovely flower pattern was drawn in the centre of the square tablecloth which had six pockets sewn on the edges with matching serviettes, all of different, pastel colours. Trying to keep a straight face, Fre said that the pockets were for our kids to hide food in if they didn’t like it. “After they’ve tasted it first, of course,” he said. We were all doubling up with laughter and tears were running down Mum’s face, when he demonstrated how our children would pull faces and look around before they spat it into the pockets. When I said that there were not enough pockets for us as well as six children, he said that the tablecloth would probably be worn out by the time we had all six of them. “You won’t be so lucky!” Mum sniggered, saying again that I would have a dozen in no time... After the midday meal on Sunday, when my parents had gone to bed as usual, I brought the tablecloth out again, wondering where to start. Fre took the project out of my hands and kissed me passionately. “You can give me a hand embroidering it too!” I chuckled when I freed myself from his embrace. “It’ll give you something to do other than vrijen all the time!” Fre’s mouth twitching as he grinned: “That’s what I bought it for; working on it together to keep us sane!” Mum did not understand that our temptations were a lot stronger when we were left at home than if we went for a walk or a ride on our bikes. No matter how much I argued about it, we had to stay at home with Tiesje when they were out on Saturday nights and they went to bed on Sunday afternoons, while the others could go out with their friends. “Someone had to keep an eye on things,” they said. A week after Sinterklaas, Fre got sick. In his letter he told me that he had one of his frequently occurring headaches, which made him always feel nauseous and very tired. I did not have to worry about him; a couple of early nights and he would be all right again. But, when the inspector of sickness compensation came to see him the following day, he had burst into tears. Feeling terribly embarrassed about it he had told the doctor about his frustration, crying uncontrollably. During the last three weeks leading up to Sinterklaas, Fre had to work twelve hours a day, six days a week as shops were open every night until nine o’clock. At the silk-factory Fre was told that there was little chance for him to be employed in the near future. Because he still had a job, he had to give a couple of weeks notice while others could start immediately. As I was still crying for no reason at all, he worried continuously about me. He was also very concerned about his father’s health. Shortly after his father had brought me back to our place, Fre had found him in a coma. He had to force-feed him with sugar to bring him around. His father had hoped to persuade Pa to let us marry earlier, but Pa had ignored him, just as he always did with Fre. His father’s legs were now swollen with nettle-rash, the same nervous allergy Opoe had suffered from, and he felt often dizzy. Because it was too cold for the brommer and the trip by bus and train took more than three hours of travelling each way, we did not see much of each other during December, January and February, the three coldest winter months in Holland. As it always caused a lot of trouble, I only went to Velp once in December. Jopie and Tiesje came with me that Saturday afternoon and we had to be back at milking time on Sunday. Mevrouw van Montfoort was in bed with spit (lumbago) when I got there the following Thursday morning. Meneer went to my parents and arranged for me to stay with them until Fre arrived at the station on Saturday evening. Mum was still up, waiting for us, when we came home at ten that night. While Fre was sick, Pa had forbidden me to go sewing at van Montfoort’s place until they had paid up. Their bill had crept up to sixty-eight guilders over the last weeks, a week and a half’s wages. I felt awful having to tell Mevrouw about it. Fortunately, her mother who had died a few months earlier had left her some money, which enabled her to pay me a few weeks later. As it was bitterly cold, I was glad to be able to sleep there again when I was in Amersfoort for two consecutive days, without having to feel guilty about it. Two weeks before Christmas, the letter I wrote to Pater van Houten, Fre’s navy padre, came back unopened. A note on the back informed us that the popular pater had left for the mission in the rimboe (jungle) of Indonesia. A couple of hours later, Mum suddenly gave me her permission to get married the following summer, two years before I was twenty-one. “ Well, Pa doesn’t know yet,” I said in my letter to Fre that night, reluctant to spoil his surprise. “Mum is still waiting for a suitable moment to tell him.” When he came again the following Sunday morning Fre looked awfully skinny. He had been unable to eat properly for weeks, he said, but that was about to change. Just before he had left, Wim, Bep’s husband Bert’s brother had offered him his old job in the leadlight workshop back. He had an order for several church windows and, if Fre was prepared to white-wash ceilings and do wallpapering again, he could afford to pay him fifty guilders a week, the same as he was earning now on a good, forty-two-hour week. It wasn’t much, but the prospects were good. While he sat his time out in the clothing shop, Fre would help Wim at night and he would start full-time with him after the New Year. The future was looking up! Christmas 1957, my last one at home was also the first Christmas Fre celebrated at our place. He loved the way we had breakfast after the midnight Mass, which was a happy affair that year. Seeing little Tiesje’s shining eyes, surrounded by the flames of the candles on the table, put Pa in a good mood. Mum had mentioned earlier how empty it would be without us next Christmas. Fre and I had promised her gladly that we would be home again the following year. With tears in my eyes I looked at Fre’s happy face across the table; I would be his wife next year! As soon as Christmas was over my brothers and their friends started lighting fireworks as they always did. The cans they used had got bigger and better every year. One day the previous year, one of the boys had lit a two-litre tin in the same fashion as they had always done with the small ones. Because the lid was on too tightly, the can had exploded in his hands as the bottom had blown out instead. He was lucky that only his hand had been badly damaged; it could easily have been his face! Not that the accident stopped the guys experimenting; that same year they were shooting with a thirty litre milk-can! They put the can on an angle with the lid aimed at an empty paddock across the road. They put a bit of carbide in the can, add a little water, or piddled in it to get it gassing, then quickly put the lid on and light it with a long stick through a small hole in the bottom. It sounded like a bomb exploding! The neighbours complained that their cows were restless; their milk production had dropped considerably during the week leading up to the New Year. One Sunday afternoon, the boys had placed such a ‘bomb’ at the corner of the house, next to the bedroom where Pa was still sleeping. The whole house was shaking and the blast nearly gave Pa a heart attack! Mum had been beside herself with fury at such stupidity. The boys had been shocked themselves, but that did not stop them experimenting further either as they were now shooting with a forty litre milk-can in the wheelbarrow. While Fre was watching, hardly believing his eyes, the blasts split the air, time and again on New-Years-Eve and again the following afternoon, a stormy day. When the guys asked one of the younger fellows to sit on the milk-can, holding it down while they fired it, Fre warned them that that was a stupid thing to do. But, not wanting to be called a wimp, Gert’s brother, called ‘Stief Heil’ because he walked as if he had wooden legs, was determined to go ahead with it. As the lid was on too tightly, the can as well as young Henk bounced half a metre off the ground before it flew off. He could barely walk for days, and his family worried for years whether he would ever be able to produce children. A few hours later, when they shot at the empty block again, the lid suddenly changed direction. Instead of going into the empty field it fell in the front garden of our neighbours across the road, slinging snow and mud onto the windows of their house. Before the buurman had time to complain, a hailstorm pelted down. As soon as the hail stopped, the boys filled the can again, put another lid on and fired it. Again the wind changed the direction of the lid, which flew into the side of our neighbour’s shed where I did the washing, making a big hole in the boards. The pigs and the cows in the shed panicked, making one hell of a racket. As my brothers had to pay for the damage to the shed out of their hard-earned pocket money, the disaster was the end of the fireworks on New-Years-Eve at our place. Chapter FORTY-SIX

With half a year to go before our wedding, life was not any easier for me in the New Year. Mum had still not told Pa that she had given us permission to marry in July. When a salesman came to the door, early in January, Mum bought towels and a set of sheets for me, which brought a flood of protest from Pa. When I complained that other girls could keep most of the money they earned to save for their uitzet and I didn’t even get pocket money, Pa nearly exploded and Mum told me angrily to keep my big mouth shut. But at night, while I wrote a letter to Fre, Mum pleaded with Pa again to accept the fact that I would be getting married sooner or later. “She is wasting her time,” I wrote. “Vader is adamant that I am ruining all his dreams for the future.” It was my fault that Wout was asking for pay too, he said. Now that Wout had vaste verkering he wanted to know what he could expect for all the years he had worked at home. A good hiding was all that Pa was prepared to give him! It had finally sunk into Wout that he would never get the farm, unless Tiesje did not want it when he grew up. Wout wasn’t too worried about it as Mum said that he could have our grandparents’ house the ‘Temple’ instead. It was a nice brick house and, even though it was small and there wasn’t much land with it, it would be a good start for him. The old house we lived in, was badly in need of a new roof, and Pa saw his hopes to build a new house vanish because we were not cooperating... As always, Fre fixed something or other when he was at our place the following weekend and Pa was quite pleasant to him. But as usual, he had only just lifted his heels on Monday morning when trouble started again. On and on he and Mum went about the trouble I was causing not only them, but everybody else as well. As time went by, I became more sensitive to their nagging. Because I was tearful and unable to cope, I felt useless, a burden on the people around me whom I loved. Until a few years ago, when I finally learned to deal with my depressions, and speak up for my right of happiness, I was unaware of this recurring pattern which gave me, and my family, a lot of unnecessary heartache. That Monday I busied myself with the washing, trying to keep my deepening depression under control. In the afternoon, a salesman, who came around regularly with cigars, had a cup of tea with us. When he commented on my growing into a nice young woman, Mum told him that they were sorry to loose me as I was getting married that summer. After seeing Pa’s face drop, the salesman turned to me. “You getting married?” he asked. “You should ask your mother for her tits!” That was all Pa needed to put him in his element! He slapped his knees with laughter. Not being able to stand their horrible laughing and crude comments, I went to the shed where I let my tears run freely. A little later, Mum came in. For a moment I thought she was going to hit me. “You and your rotten crying!” she shouted, shaking her fists in front of my eyes: “You have pestered me into giving you permission to get married with your endless gejank!” No doubt she had copped Pa’s fury when the salesman had gone, as he now knew about Mum’s decision to let me go. An hour later she said she was sorry she had lost her temper. At that moment Ome Willem’s son, Cor, came in with bread on his daily round. He was a lovely, good-looking fellow, several years older than I was and still unattached. Mum told him what had happened. “Mien is mature enough to get married and have a family, Tante Aaltje; you don’t need to worry about that,” Cor said. “I would marry her myself if she would have me,” he added with a wink in my direction. Later on, that same afternoon Kraatz, a friendly, soft-spoken train-conductor came to buy fresh eggs as he had done regularly since the beginning of the war, when my father had still been alive. Fre had met him on the train the previous Monday morning. “Been visiting in Hooglanderveen, have you?” he had asked when he checked Fre’s ticket. “ Yes, I missed the train last night,” Fre answered, rubbing his unshaven chin. He was stunned when the friendly conductor asked: “Did you have a good time with Mientje?” Before Fre could ask any questions Kraatz had laughed: “I recognised you from the photograph on the dressoir.” Relieved to be able to share his worries with this kind man, they had talked all the way to Ede/Wageningen where Fre had to change trains. Perhaps Kraatz - we always called him by his surname only - purposely came that afternoon as Fre had told him that I was always in trouble as soon as he had left; in any case he was a godsend! Mum liked and respected Kraatz very much. While we drank coffee, he said: “She might be only eighteen Aaltje, but she is a lot older in her ways; most girls at twenty- five are not as mature. I have met Fre too, a fine chap; there is no need for you to worry about them.” I could have kissed him, but as that was not done, I breathed a sigh of relief, smiled at him and left the heert to take the dry washing off the line. Pa walked around with his bottom lip at his third buttonhole, grousing about me for days. To prevent myself from answering back, I stayed away from home as much as I could. A few weeks before, Aaltje, our next door neighbour told me that Ep had bought a sewing machine for her; I was welcome to sew at their place in the evenings when things were uncomfortable at home, she said. I had gladly taken her up on the offer. The neighbour’s house had been rebuilt soon after the fire. With a big window and a separate kitchen, it was a lot more comfortable than the old place. With his new job, making leadlight windows, serving customers in Wim’s paint-shop and occasional wallpapering at peoples places, Fre was now free on Saturday afternoons and he had to leave on Sunday evenings as he worked on Monday mornings. If he was not doing jobs for Pa he helped me, with fresh energy, embroidering our tablecloth ‘to keep our minds off things’. Although my siblings were in stitches at first, it had soon become quite normal for them to see Fre with a needle in his hands. On the last Friday in January, I went to the headmaster’s place again, wondering what kind of boring, old-fashioned repairs Mevrouw Simonsen had in store for me that day. “ Have you ever worked with fur?” she asked, while I shook the snow off my self-made, reversible, green and grey hooded jacket. No, I had no idea, I answered breathlessly, wondering why she never offered me a cup of coffee my other bosses always did when I arrived in the morning. While I hung my brand-new, pride and joy on the kapstok in the hall, Mevrouw Simonsen showed me her old black fur coat, which was completely bare everywhere on the edges. She wanted me to repair that old thing? Yes, she did! It was the only one she had and her husband was not paid enough for her to buy another one, she said while she handed me some strips of similar fur she had been lucky enough to buy at the market. The ‘greedy little vendor’ had wanted the earth for it but Mevrouw Simonson had managed to get it off him for nearly half the price. While she kept talking, we walked up the stairs to the spare room, where she showed me how to make sure the new piece was going in the same direction as the old fur. Before I pinned the pieces together, she blew the fur away from the edges. Then she gave me a metal finger-hood and watched while I sewed the trial pieces together close to the edges with small, overhand stitches. When I finished the seam, she gave me a little hammer to hammer the stitches flat. The result was amazing! Mevrouw Simonson soon left me to it, without a radio, alone in the chilly bedroom, the windows still covered with ice-flowers. But, because I was doing something completely different, I did not mind so much that day. I soon discarded the finger-hood Mevrouw had given me as I could never work with them but, before I finished the bottom of the first sleeve, the back of the needle had penetrated my skin several times. After trying the metal cap again, I ended up using my nails to push the needle through until it went through my nail as well. That Friday, a meat-free day for Catholics Mevrouw had fried a banana instead of the usual fish with the midday meal. My brothers were doubled up with laughter when I told them about it when I came home that night, picturing a fried banana with a few other lif-lafjes on a thin porcelain plate... In the afternoon I made a new edge along the buttonholes of the fur coat but I ran out of time to do the last pocket. Although my face was burning from the strenuous job, my eyes were sore and my fingers were extremely painful, I agreed to stay an hour longer to finish the job, so that Mevrouw could wear the coat at the weekend. I was very disappointed when she only gave me one lousy guilder more for the extra hour I had spent on her coat. Tears of exhaustion froze on my new jacket on the way home through the freezing night. Money - or rather the lack of it - had become a big worry for me. Wim, Fre’s boss, did not get the order for the church windows and he could barely afford to pay Fre’s wages. Fre became even more disillusioned with the navy, where he had hoped to learn a useful trade when he had signed up. He had been accepted to train for corporal but, because he was far away when a new training course started, he had missed out. When Fre heard halfway through his contract, that his place had been given to someone else for the second time, he had given up and set out to have a good time with ‘the boys’ instead. Because of his generous nature, Fre had not been able to save much in the navy. He had sent some money home to his mother when he was in New Guinea to be put in the bank but when he came home his mother confessed, in tears, that she had used it to pay for a new winter-coat and coal. She promised to pay him back, but Fre had laughed her troubles away. What was money for anyway but to make people happy, he had asked. His mother had always looked after him; he was glad to let her have the money, he said. Towards the end of his time in the navy, Fre had used his savings to buy the brommer, and civilian clothes had taken the balance. After he now paid for travelling expenses and cigarettes, there was little left from his meagre wages. I wasn’t happy when he wrote shortly before Christmas that he had gone halves with his father in buying a new radio, ‘the latest model on the market, which would last for a very long time as it wouldn’t go out of fashion’. On top of that he had committed himself to an expensive life insurance, so that I would get a yearly amount of money if he died before he was sixty-five. Fre was outraged when I told him about the fur coat of the headmaster’s wife when he came the following Sunday. It would have cost them five times as much to have it repaired somewhere else, he said. He demanded that I wrote a letter to them, saying that I wasn’t coming back any more. “If you don’t, I’ll do it for you,” he said determinedly. “You will be a nervous wreck by the time we get married,” he predicted. “If you work like that when we are married, the machine will soon be locked up in a cupboard!” he warned. My sewing had become an obsession for him. When I complained to Mum that I was getting too tired from sewing at night as well as during the day, she gave me five guilders a week pocket money, half of what Wout was getting. But, as life was miserable at home, I still went out sewing and babysitting as much as I could. My eyes were sore and I was always fighting sleep when I wrote to Fre at night, once, sometimes twice a week. After Mum scolded me one evening, saying that that was the reason I started to look like a ghost, I wrote those short scrawls in bed beside Jopie, by the light of a torch. At the end of January Fre’s boss’ wife, Willie asked if I could sew for her one day per fortnight. As she was prepared to pay half my train-fare and I paid the rest, Mum had no objections for me to take her up on the offer. I was thrilled as I could now be at Fre’s place every second weekend from Thursday evening until Sunday afternoon. I would have loved to have gone immediately but, as that year the meat had gone off, another much smaller pig had been slaughtered the following Monday, the first week of February. Fre wanted to see how we preserved it all but by the time he came back the following Saturday evening the job was done. Later that afternoon, when we visited Opoe in the convent, Meneer Pastoor called me aside. He had booked me into a weekend retreat for Catholic girls to prepare them for marriage, a weekend for which I would always be grateful to him. The retreat was to be held from Friday morning until Sunday afternoon at Don Bosco in Amersfoort, two weeks later. It was the first time since I had left school three years earlier that I was with a group of girls, and we stayed for two nights. Although most of the twenty girls there were much older than I was, I felt at ease in the group immediately. Only one of them, Teresa, was my age and, as her problems were very similar to mine, we ended up spending a lot of time together. The pater who led the retreat was completely the opposite from our grumpy ‘shepherd’. He was a much younger, sympathetic, down to earth man, who really listened to what we were saying. Before I left, he promised me to have a word with our old-fashioned pastoor. After being with the other girls and the lessons of the ‘worldly’ pater, I felt well and truly ready for marriage; at eighteen I was far more mature than some of the oldest girls in the group. In the week before the retreat, I went sewing for a new customer, a jeweller-watchmaker in Bilthoven some twenty-five kilometres away, where I had to go by train from Amersfoort. Because of the time schedule, I would get there half an hour late but, as my employer was prepared to pay for the fare on top of the nine guilders I was paid for a normal sewing day from nine until six, I was happy to give it a go. The lovely couple, both in their early forties had two children late in their marriage. The eldest boy was at preschool and a nine-month-old little girl smiled at me from the box (playpen) while I was sewing in the sun-room of their cosy house behind the shop. Rocking her back and forth in my arms, I dreamt of having my own baby; how long would it be? The sudden thought that some people could not get any children at all, made me shiver; I could not think of anything worse happening to me. The following evening buurvrouw Bertha came with a message for me: Meneer Keet had rung to say that I could not go there in the morning as his wife had her baby that night; a son weighing eleven and a half pounds, nearly six kilos! Mevrouw Keet had been in hospital for three weeks and she would have to stay at least another two weeks to recuperate from the birth, the friendly grocer had said. Being free on Friday meant that I could go to the market. I loved the market but, because I was nearly always working on Fridays, I had not been for ages. Mum loved the idea of us roaming the stalls for bargains together too and, no matter how much Pa objected to be left on his own with the eggs to sell, we were going! We took Tiesje with us on that cold but sunny morning and we had a wonderful time; first walking around to see what was available, then haggling with the stall holders about the prices. After we had coffee with a piece of cake in a cafe at the market square, Mum haggled some more, having great fun. Although haggling is expected at markets and I enjoyed watching, I always felt embarrassed about it. Before we went home, we ate two delicious Dutch croquets with mustard, at a corner stall and bought some fried fish and oliebollen to take home. We happily showed our goodies when we arrived home at midday. Amongst pieces of material, underwear, fish and household goods, were several items for my uitzet. As soon as Pa started to complain about it, Mum cut him short: “Hold your horses,” she said. “She has paid for them herself!” It was true I had, but with Mum’s money which I did not have to pay back for a change. Siem had left for the army that first week of February, given the ‘holy cross’ (like the priest gave his blessing at the end of Mass) by Pa who was glad to see him go. After the fight, they mutually respected each other and, after a while, their arguments had become good-natured, often with a lot of laughter. Would Pa have recognised how lucky he was that the pitchfork he threw in his anger had missed my brother? Fre brought his father the following Sunday for a visit. Apart from wanting to see Mum again, Father was concerned about his own future. As he was not well, chances were that the doctor would no longer allow him to be on his own all day and, because the shortage of houses was acute, there was now a lot more pressure on the council to make room for families. If he left the house again, it could be taken away from him, which would leave Fre to fend for himself. Father was also concerned that Giel would get married first, as he could not see himself keeping peace with Martha. As usual, Pa changed the subject as soon as our marriage was brought into the conversation but later in the afternoon Father had a long, serious talk with Mum. When I took Fre and his father to the bus stop that evening, Father said we might be married sooner than we thought, but things were not looking any better when I came home. Pa was raving on like a mad bull; it was all my doing that Fre’s father had come with his ‘sob-story’ he said. As had become normal after Fre left on Sunday evenings, I went to bed early, sobbing my eyes out and I was glad when washing day on Monday was over, so that I could go sewing for the rest of the week. Even though temperatures had dropped far below zero again and there was a solid layer of snow on the roads, I peddled home to see if there was a letter from Fre on Wednesday evening. As I copped Pa’s wrath the minute I got through the door, I disappeared with my sewing to Ep and Aaltje’s place as soon as we had eaten and the dishes had been done. In Fre’s letter that day, he said that his father had had another coma after their return on Sunday night; Tante Nellie and a neighbour were now keeping an eye on him while Fre was at work. Pa’s bottom lip was still down when Fre came the following Saturday, and he ignored him all day Sunday. Afraid to lose his temper, Fre was trembling when he left earlier than usual that evening. Before he left, Mum had told him not to worry about it too much, Pa could be as cranky as he liked; he had no say in the matter, she said. While we watched Fre go she told me to make sure that all the mending was up to date and the house was clean then, if Giel planned to get married, we could marry first. There seemed to be no end to Pa’s nagging, the following Monday. He wanted Mum to forbid us seeing each other, saying that we would get over it in time. (As he had done when his girlfriend got pregnant, I guess!) Trying hard not to answer him back or burst into tears, as I had done earlier that morning, I went on with the washing. In the evening, Mum reminded him again of what Moeke, Pa’s adoptive mother during the war, had said when she had visited the previous afternoon. Unable to stand Pa’s bitter complaining about us to Moeke, Fre and I had gone for a walk. When we came back, she had left and Pa was still in a bad mood. Later that night, when Pa had gone to bed, Mum said that Moeke was right; they would be much better of without me; the sooner the better so that they would have peace in the house. She (Mum) was not prepared to risk having me turn into a mental wreck like her sister, Tante Jans, she said, with the corners of her mouth turned down. Ignoring the bitter tone in my mother’s voice when she said we could get married after Easter, I put my arms around her. While I thanked her from the bottom of my heart, my tears dripped onto her big bosom. It did not bother me at the time that she could not respond; that came much later. She just stood there like a statue, with her mouth quivering, trying hard to control her jealousy I guess. That same evening I wrote to Fre, telling him my happy news: in only six weeks time I would be his wife! Oh! How I wished to share this happy moment in his arms...! Chapter FORTY-SEVEN

Fre got my letter with the happy news the following afternoon. He rang Buurvrouw Bertha immediately but as I had gone sewing she arranged for him to contact me later that evening, after religious instruction. During the following two weeks I went sewing nearly every day, saying goodbye to my customers. I had hoped to be able to keep the money I earned those last weeks but, as Mum had to pay for the wedding, that did not happen. I promised to repair everything that needed mending in the last four weeks at home as well as making the material Mum had bought at the market into another set of trousers for Wim, Henk and Bartje. Then I would do the spring cleaning hoping the weather would be mild so that the cows could get to the paddocks early, as the bruiloft was to be held at home. The first opportunity to get married after Easter was the seventh of April, the day Annie, who worked with Fre in the clothing shop, was getting married to her carpenter. We decided on the fifteenth, which gave us a better chance so that the cows could stay outside. The pastoor was not happy when I asked to speak to him after classes. “You are not getting married to get away from home are you?” he asked without a grain of sympathy, and he needed to talk to my ‘fellow’ before he was prepared to set the date I requested. When I said shyly that Fre was only at our place at the weekend, he growled impatiently: “ If he hasn’t got the time to make the necessary arrangement, then don’t bother to get married!” I carefully explained that it would be difficult and expensive for Fre to take a day off and make a special trip. While I was still talking, the priest started to walk away. “Suit yourself!” he said. “You can always go somewhere else.” If my face had not been burning from anger so much, my tears would have frozen on my cheeks while I rode home. I could not believe that a priest could be so unkind. Man of God! Wasn’t he taking the place of Jesus here on earth? (Maybe this explained why I never felt comfortable praying to Jesus...) Perhaps the pastoor was angry with me because I always went to confession with Fre in Amersfoort or Arnhem. Mum’s saying that priests and nuns were only human too, came to my mind: Well, she had lived with them for four years; she would know. I was glad that Gert had waited for me so that I could air my anger. By the time I got to our neighbour’s place to wait for Fre’s call, I had calmed down, wondering if the old priest had even realised that he had hurt me by being so cold and inflexible. Perhaps it was his way to protect me from making a mistake. Mevrouw van Montfoort was not the only one who said that being in love could never last... Buurvrouw Bertha congratulated me and Fre’s soothing voice on the phone made me feel happy immediately. Those six weeks would go soon enough, he said.The following day, I went to Mevrouw Keet to sew, the first time since she her big baby was born. He was so cute and content. While I admired him, Mevrouw gave me a picture of a dress she had cut out of a magazine and a length of beautiful grey-green Ottoman-silk. She wanted me to make a cocktail dress for her to go to a wedding the following Saturday. Apart from the awkward dress for Ouwe Mett I had so far only made dresses for Jopie and myself and one for Mum. The thought of having to cut into the expensive material terrified me but Mevrouw Keet was not in the least worried that I could not make it. Although it was midwinter, sweat pearled on my forehead when I drew the pattern which had a deep pleat from each shoulder to the breast, an open neck with a rose made from the same material on a round collar, short sleeves and a wide, six-panel skirt. I had no idea how to extend the pattern to make the shoulder pleats and, of course, I did not have the lessons with me to look it up. While the minutes ticked away loudly on the Friese staart-klok, I struggled to get the dress out of the material. Knowing that I was making a mistake my hands trembled when I cut into the silk. When I pinned the top together a little later, I could see that things were very wrong and my heart pounded wildly when Mevrouw Keet fitted it on. As the armholes gaped at me from under the pleats I panicked and burst into tears, wanting to die of embarrassment. Because Mevrouw’s body was still out of shape so soon after the birth, the waist was also far too short. “Soup is never eaten as hot as it is served” Mum always said and in the end I managed to fix the problem. As I was an expert at putting in patches, I added a piece from under the deep shoulder pleat, which ended in an under-arm dart and extended the waist by a band, made from scraps. To cover the seams of the band I made matching roses at the front and covered buttons at the back. Because the weather was bad I could stay at van Montfoorts place where I did the hand sewing the following two evenings. When I took the dress to Mevrouw Keet late on Friday afternoon, she was very happy with it, and best of all; she gave me five guilders extra! When I got home that evening, Pa was still moaning about the loosing battle he fought with Mum and the expenses our wedding would take. I suggested that we would get married in Velp, but that did not sit well with him either. “And putting us to shame! No way! There is already enough talk around the village,” he snarled at me. I was relieved when I could go to Fre’s place the following day, Saturday and, as I was going to sew at Willie’s place on Monday, I could stay away until late that evening. Fre’s father was delighted to see me. “You see, you are married sooner than you expected,” he laughed while he shook both my hands. Well, it hadn’t been quite that easy... A week later, Fre took the Monday off. In the morning he helped me with the washing, then we went on Mum’s pushbike to het gemeentehuis at Hoogland to register our wedding. On the way home, we slip-slided through the snow, behaving like elated birds let free from their cages. My sides hurt from laughter when we got home to celebrate. But there was no one around to celebrate with. The kachel had gone out and it was cold in the house. My parents and Tiesje were asleep and the pan with our stone-cold dinner stood among the dirty dishes from the midday meal on the table. Hutspot, a mixture of red kidney beans, onions, carrots and potatoes still always reminds us of our wedding registration. In the afternoon, we went to see our lovely priest. To our surprise he was friendly to both of us. He even managed a smile when Fre explained why he was called Frederikus while he was baptised Franciscus. He asked Fre a few questions out of the catechism and his intentions of giving our children a good Catholic upbringing, then we could go. I was stunned; he had even kept the date, the fifteenth of April free for us. The whole exercise had taken less then ten minutes; fancy getting nervous for that! A week later, I had another surprise: Mum bought a brand-new sewing machine for me! She had wiped Pa’s objections aside saying resolutely that she would not have people say that they had sent me away empty handed. Although I was disappointed that it wasn’t a zig-zag machine like Betsie had, I was thrilled with it. As it was my last week of sewing I had arranged with Willie to go there Friday instead of Monday. I had planned to take the train to Arnhem in the morning but Mum allowed me to go to Fre on Thursday evening and take the sewing machine with me, so that Pa did not have to see it again. It was already dark when Jopie took me to the bus-stop with the heavy cast-iron machine on the back of my bike. When I heaved it into the bus to Amersfoort, I wondered how on earth I would manage to carry it all the way to Fre’s place. In the train, a friendly soldier nearly did his back in when he put the heavy suitcase in the rack for me. He did take it out again too but he did not offer to carry it into the station in Arnhem; by that time, he had probably seen the ring on my finger! I dragged the suitcase, which now weighed a ton, to the bus station. The bus to Velp was packed as a popular film at the cinema had just finished. “My God! Have you got lead in that case?” a man, who lifted it out of the bus exclaimed when he set it on the footpath. The fifteen-minute walk to Fre’s place took twice as long as normal. I don’t know where I got the strength from to carry it that far. “That love, that love!” Mevrouw van Montfoort would say. I was exhausted when I finally got there, but my priceless possession and the look on Fre’s face was worth it. The two weeks of sewing had flown. As I had already done most of the repairs at home in the evenings I started on my brothers’ trousers very early on Monday morning while Mum did the washing. Then I made a gorgeous dark blue suit for Tiesje, which had long trousers with a short, long-sleeved jacket, a white shirt with a little lace edge around the collar and a bright-green sleeveless vest. Pa had tears in his eyes when I fitted it on my darling brother, who had turned three in December.As we could not do much of the spring-cleaning until the cows could go out of the house, Mum allowed me to go to Velp for a couple of days to clean my future home ‘like only a woman could’. I felt in heaven! While Fre and his father were at work, I put the gramophone on full blast and played every record they had. Thinking without a doubt, that every neighbour would want to share my happiness and enjoy the music, I flung the windows wide open on this first beautiful day of spring, singing and polishing. On the morning of the second day, I took the vitrage (lace curtains) down in every room. While the cotton curtains were simmering in a bucket on the gas-stove, I washed the windows. Then, singing along with the Arbeids-vitaminen on the radio, I switched off the gas, and took the bucket to the kitchen sink. Without giving it another thought, I held the handle with one hand and grabbed the still red-hot ring at the bottom with the other to pour the curtains into the sink, screaming as my fingers burned onto the bucket. My guardian angel must have been right by my side making me hold onto the handle otherwise, I would have had the boiling water over me as well. As I was on my own, I held my hand under the coldwater tap as long as I could stand it. Then I put a thick layer of burn-cream on my four badly burned fingers and kept on working as well as I could to keep my mind off the pain. Fre had to write the envelopes for the invitations to the wedding himself that weekend. Because there was no time for me to make my own wedding dress, Mum and I scanned the Amersfoortse Courant every day for a second hand one. Two weeks before the wedding Mum went with me to have a look at the first one for sale. I fell in love with it immediately and, as the price was reasonable, Mum bought it for me. (Twenty-five guilders, half a week’s wages.) It was a lovely, fully lined dress made of white chiffon with small, cream velvet roses which suited me perfectly as my thoughts and actions had not been pure enough to deserve a bright, white dress. It had a fitting bodice, a high neck and long narrow sleeves that ended in a point on my hands. I loved the fully lined skirt, nearly a full circle and the long train at the back. The lady who had worn it was very tall which meant that I had to alter it quite a lot. By cutting some twenty centimetres off the front of the skirt, the train ended up half a metre longer. With only one day to spare, I was horrified to see that my panties were still shining through the thin materials at the final fitting. Because I had to buy the material to make a petticoat in the village that afternoon I was sewing right up to midnight in the evening before my wedding day. The good weather held on and the cows went outside the day after Easter, a week before the wedding. While I scrubbed, wallpapered and polished with the help of Jopie and my brothers, my parents entertained my ‘well-wishers’ and because my hands were often wet and dirty, Mum opened their presents for me. Listening to their laughter coming from the heert, there seemed never to have been any problems about us getting married at all. A couple of days before our wedding, buurvrouw Bertha came for a visit saying that she could not face up to going to our reception. A shock had gone through the village two weeks earlier as our neighbours’ second son Eddy, who was a postie, had been killed on his motorbike in Amersfoort. Eddy was a year older than I was. He had only been at our place half an hour earlier, when we heard the devastating news. “It may be hard for you to let go of your daughter Aal, but it’s a lot harder to see them go like Eddy,” buurvrouw Bertha said, wiping away her tears. Mum agreed wholeheartedly and even Pa said that that was the last thing he would want to happen to any of us. At the beginning of my last week at home, the weather changed. Pa complained loudly about the stupidity of having a wedding so early in the year; it was inevitable that the cows had to get back into the house again. Mum and Wout went around the neighbourhood and borrowed thick jute cover-blankets for the cows so that they could stay out in the paddock until the wedding was over. But a couple of days before the event, two of them, who were in calf had to be brought inside, at least for the night. As everybody’s nerves were on edge there were some heated arguments with Pa that week. Fre’s nerves were as tight as guitar-strings too when he came by train on Good Friday. He was horrified to see the cows back in the stable. “It doesn’t make much difference,” I tried to assure him. “There are only twenty-five adults and five kids for the koffie-tafel and some of them are leaving before dinner, we will all fit in the heert. Your family will love to see the cows inside, especially the kids!” Fre had brought new shirts for everybody and, as he would wear a hired costume when he came again, he also brought his Sunday suit. He had hired a small bus for his family, which had cost him a small fortune but it still was not big enough to fit everyone of his family. Bep and Bert would come by train with the kids and we arranged for a son of the local smith, who had recently started a hire-car service, to collect them from the station in Amersfoort. All Fre had to do was look after the corsages for the guests and the flowers for the three flower-girls (Bep’s girls) and me, while I would take care of the food and the flowers in church. I had already arranged a photographer to take some pictures, for which we had to pay ourselves. When we walked to the bus-stop on Easter Sunday evening, we were both nervous but we were also very excited; in two days time we would be together forever! Most of our wedding day, on the fifteenth April 1958, went in a blur but I have some vivid memories from it too. Our prayers were answered as the sun was shining that morning but bad weather was predicted for the evening. To be able to receive Holy Communion on our special day, the Mass was at nine-thirty in the morning and as was the custom, the civil service was held an hour earlier at the council office in Hoogland. We had asked the pastoor if he could make it later in the morning as Fre’s family had to come so far, but he refused. As the cows had to be milked the pigs fed and everyone had to be ready by eight o’clock, it was absolute chaos in our house. They all seemed to need me at once; if I had not put my dress on when I got up at five-thirty, I would have had no chance to get dressed before Fre arrived. I was dressing Tiesje when the top button came off Pa’s shirt. While I was sewing it on he did not stop grumbling about the inconvenience I had caused him until I lost my patience. “Stop your grouching, or I’ll prick you in your throat with my needle!” I said angrily. “This is supposed to be the happiest day of my life!” A few minutes later, when I finished dressing Tiesje, Pa’s face lit up. “Isn’t he a perfect specimen?” he asked. “He’s going to be just as handsome as his father!” At that moment Fre came in, looking great in his hired suit. His icy cold hands trembled when he gave me a beautiful bouquet of white fresias and lilies of the valley and kissed me briefly. I did not know until later that day that he felt extremely uncomfortable in his black suit which was delivered at six that morning instead of the previous day. He had panicked when he realised that there had been a terrible mix-up as his trousers were a mile to big for him. He had no option but to pull them up to his armpits with his bretels (braces), as there was no time to exchange them. Because his whole family came at once, I had not noticed that Bep had taken the hem of his pants and the sleeves of his jacket up with a few stitches and she took the back in with big safety pins after they arrived at our place. Saying that I looked awfully plain Bep had put some lipstick on my lips and colour on my cheeks before I helped her pin the traditional small corsages which Fre had brought, on every family member’s chest, women’s facing up and men’s down. There had been no time for me to go to a hairdresser but after Bep had brushed my hair again and she pinned the lace cap with the short veil, which came with the dress in it, she seemed quite happy with the way I looked. While I put my nylon gloves on, she hurried us out of the door to the first of the two hire cars and we were soon on our way to het gemeentehuis, a fifteen-minute drive away. Bep and Bert’s three little girls, our bridesmaids, came with us in the auto. They looked adorable in their light blue floral dresses with wide bright blue sashes Bep had made herself. They wore shiny black lacquered shoes and white socks, and as still was the fashion, a big bow on top their dark curly pony-tails. Fre had given them each a posy of bright dried flowers, which they could keep. Fre’s father and his eldest brother Henk would sign the wedding papers for Fre. Because I only needed Mum’s permission to marry, Pa could not sign our marriage certificate for me. As Wout was not yet twenty-one, I wanted to ask Ome Hannes to be my witness but Mum wanted Fre to ask Pa instead so that he would not feel left out in the ceremony. Afraid to be rejected, Fre had agonised for days to ask the question. When he had finally plucked up courage, Pa seemed relieved as he said indignantly: “Of course I will jong! It wouldn’t have been very nice of you if you hadn’t asked me.” As previously arranged, the photographer took a photo of every couple when they left the council office. At one guilder each we had agreed on a total of twenty-five (black and white) photographs, half of Fre’s weekly wages. We were late when we got to the church in Hooglanderveen and just as we got out of the car, I lost my ring! Because I had to take it off after the civil service to give to the pastoor, I had slipped it on my little finger, over my nylon gloves. Painfully aware that our moody priest hated to be left waiting, we searched the car nervously and found it in between the seats. The pastoor and his two altar boys were waiting at the back of the nearly empty church. (Tuesday was the cheapest day of the week to get married.) The pastoor looked me up and down disapprovingly but he did not say anything. A deep colour spread over my face, as I knew what he was thinking; I would not be the first bride he’d ask if she deserved her white dress... Our families only filled part of the first pews in the cold church and only a few older villagers sat scattered through the back. Shortly after the wedding ritual, in which I promised to obey my husband and vowed that we would love each other until death would part us, I felt as if I was going to faint. I could hear people whisper: “You see; she had to get married!” Praying fervently for the nausea to pass and with a bit of eau-de-cologne on my hankie I soon felt all right again. After the choir sang the first lines of the opening hymn of the Mass, the pastoor suddenly turned around and clapped his hands. While it was still in the echoing hollow in the nearly empty church he called out to the organist at the back of the church: “It isn’t Easter any more; this is a huwelijks-mis!” After the mass, when we signed the papers in the sacristy, the pastoor chatted amicably with our parents for ages while we could hardly wait to leave. The family went to our place for coffee, while Fre and I were taken to the photographer in Nijkerk with Bep’s girls to have our statie- portraits taken. The girls were in stitches when Fre put the traditional high hat on his head and it promptly sunk over his eyes. It was nearly midday when we came home, starving, as we had not had anything to eat since the previous evening apart from a koekje and a cup of coffee with the pastoor. The day prior to the wedding, we had decorated the heert with traditional slingers, long colourful streamers of paper roses and cut out boys and girls, holding hands. Our families sat around the two long trestle-tables singing a traditional welcome song to the bride and groom when we came in. Apart from our parents, brothers and sisters and Opoe Kleter, my only grandparent who was still alive, there were no other guests for the koffee-tafel lunch. Aunts and uncles, neighbours, friends and some of my sewing customers came at the reception from three until five in the afternoon. The highlight of the reception for me was Gartje-meu (Opoe Mijn, my father’s mother’s only sister) in her traditional black costume with the white knipmuts. Opoe Kleter still wore her black dresses and her gold jewellery, but she now wore a black hat instead of her knipmuts. Digging deep into the pocket underneath the wide, gathered skirt Gartje-meu produced fourteen shiny silver guilders one by one, which she had saved up and polished for me. The little old woman was obviously delighted with the attention she was getting, especially from Bep and the girls. After the reception, Bep and Bert were taken back to the train station in Amersfoort. Tante Lena and her family, who came from The Hague in a hired car in time for the reception in the afternoon, stayed for dinner which was cooked at the back of the deel by Tante Mina’s daughters Annie, Mina and Jo. I don’t remember anything of what was served but I guess it was the usual; vegetable soup with balletjes, a small piece of soft meat with potatoes and two or three vegetables for the special occasion, with side dishes of pickled cucumber, apple-sauce and rhubarb or red pears. When I went outside after dinner to use the outhouse, emptied and scrubbed clean before the big event, it was already dark. An icy cold wind got hold of my skirt and billowed it up wide around me which made me feel like a princess on her way to a midnight ball. Sitting on the old plee a little later with the door open with my skirt draped around me, looking at the stars, I felt like a queen on her throne! As I walked back to the house, Tante Lena’s eldest son, Ap came towards me. With his hands deep in his pockets, he stood still in front of me, looking deeply into my eyes. “I hope Fre’ll make you happy,” he said turning abruptly away. A lot of laughter came from the deel where Fre’s seaman brother Gerard lay in the straw next to the cows. He was as drunk as a skunk and my dear brothers had great fun feeding him pieces of mouldy bread. The weather had turned drastically at about eight-thirty when I said goodbye to my family without shedding a single tear. An icy cold wind was howling when I came out of the back door still in my wedding-dress and happily stepped into the hired Volkswagen for the journey to my new home in Velp, a trip I’ll always remember! I was horrified to see Fre’s drunken brother lying on the back seat of the bus, oblivious to the world. I felt very uncomfortable to have to sit in the middle of the bus so that we had no privacy at all and I felt terribly embarrassed when some of my in-laws commented on the happy night that lay ahead of us. Before we were halfway home Gerard vomited all over the place. The stench was unbelievable! It was now pitch-black and a thick mist came up followed by icy rain, which made the road as slippery as freshly cooked spek. Henk, Fre’s eldest brother had a terrible time trying to keep the bus on the hilly road through the Veluwe and I was glad when we finally got to my new abode safely. The sixty-kilometre trip had taken nearly two hours to get there. But trouble was not over yet, as nobody wanted to take Fre’s drunken brother home. “You can leave him in the gutter where he belongs as far as I’m concerned,’ I heard Fre say angrily. “He is not staying here!” In the end Ap and Henny agreed to take him to their place, not far from us, but Martha, Gerard’s girlfriend had to stay with us. Instead of Fre carrying me over the threshold in my wedding-dress as he had planned, his father took my arm and walked me to the front door, where he handed me the key to the house with great ceremony and tears in his eyes. Then he put his arm around me and guided me into the tiny living-room. Fre’s father had insisted that we use the master-bedroom behind the living-room while he went into the former boys-room upstairs. I still can not understand for the life of me why Gerard’s girlfriend, Martha had to sleep on the divan instead of in the girls-room upstairs where I always slept when I was at Fre’s place. While I slipped into my brand-new, Chinese-style blue flannel pyjamas, our wedding present from Mevrouw van Montfoort, Fre searched for sheets and blankets for Martha. When he undressed and put his pyjamas on in the soft light of the overhead lamp, I suddenly got scared of what was to come. “ Oh God! What have I done; I hardly know this fellow!” I thought. But, as soon as I snuggled in his arms, I felt safe again, knowing that Fre would take care of me. It was close to midnight when we were finally in bed after the highly emotional day. We both felt extremely uncomfortable to know that Martha lay only a metre away from our bedroom door, no doubt listening intently to every move we made. With Fre’s hands caressing my body, we talked softly for a long time, hoping she would go to sleep. I later learned that what Father said was true; Martha was in love with Fre instead of with his brother; it must have been agonising for her to listen to us, making love. Everybody, including Fre and his father had to be at work at nine the following morning. At first I did not know where I was when there was a knock on our bedroom door. Then I remembered... Another knock woke me up properly as Father called out: “Are you awake Fre? It’s seven o’clock; you have to go to work you know! Open the door, will you?” Fre quickly got up put his pyjama pants on and opened the door. With a broad smile, his father handed him a breakfast tray. Before I knew they had all three gone to work and, alone in the house, I had plenty of time to think. Fre was so tender with me but our first attempt at lovemaking was not at all as I had expected. Because I was scared, we fumbled for ages under the thick layer of blankets. It had hurt a little and I was bleeding a bit. As it was late and he had to go to work in the morning, Fre went straight to sleep afterwards but I had been awake for ages. “So this is ‘it’, I thought disappointedly; “big deal!” Before he left for work, Fre promised that it would be a lot better next time. It was. As I learned to relax I thought that it was the most beautiful way God had made two people melting together to create their offspring. Chapter FORTY-EIGHT

Although it was very cold the day after our wedding, Fre promised to come home for lunch. While I fluffed up and made the feather bed, I wondered how long it would take before I would become pregnant and recalled the happenings of the last year, some of which I quickly blinked away. Shortly before Fre had gone back to Velp to live with his father in the council house, Father’s older brother, Ome Albert, had arranged a meeting with Fre’ siblings - without Fre - about his Father’s future. He was worried that Father would lose the council home if it stayed empty much longer. Since Fre’s mother died in February the previous year, my father-in-law had lived with Ap and Henny, who needed his room for their second baby, which was due later in the year. Because Father was not allowed to live alone, due to his diabetes Fre had no choice but move in with him. Ome Albert had pointed out to him that, as the eldest son still at home, the lease of the house would be past on to him, providing he lived with his father, when he married. Fre had not looked forward to living alone with his father, as he was happy at Bep and Bert’s place. After I had run away from home the second time, Fre’s father had talked to Appie, Bep and Henk about his plans to go to our place to see if we could get married sooner. Being the eldest son, and feeling responsible for everything since his mother died, Henk had objected strongly, saying that I was far too young. “Who is going to end up with the pieces if things go wrong?” he had asked. Because of his well-developed moral consciousness, he had already been lumbered with his adopted sister, which had become a strain on his marriage. Bep had laughed at Henk, assuring him that Fre was quite capable of shelling his own peas. Fre was still angry about it. “Why don’t they come out and say things to my face?” he had fumed, “I hate the way they stab each other in the back in my family.” I was glad we always told each other straight what we thought at home; that way we knew where we stood with each other. I switched the radio on and hummed along with the popular tunes while I put away our wedding presents most of which would end up staying in the cupboard for years. The bell rang; it was the agency from which Fre had hired his billen-tikker (bottom-tickler) to pick up the suit. I did not say anything about their mistake that had caused Fre such distress. No doubt they would have had plenty of complaints from the other guy in Nijmegen whose pants would have been three sizes too small; poor bloke! Because Fre’s father always did the cooking when he came home from work, he felt lost in the beginning but he soon got used to having me around. Apart from my father-in-law’s blackouts those first weeks of our marriage were absolute bliss for us. The first time I found Father in a coma was on the Sunday after our wedding. It was a beautiful sunny day. After having coffee outside near the back door, we had left Father there in his comfortable armchair smoking his pipe, while we prepared the midday meal. When we called out that dinner was ready, there was no answer. Not giving it a second thought, as Father was quite deaf I went outside and found him slumped in his armchair. At first I thought he was asleep but when I called him and touched his arm, he did not respond. I was horrified, as I had never seen a person like that before. While I held him down, Fre struggled to open his father’s mouth with the back of a spoon to take his dentures out. Although Father was unconscious, he fought with all his strength. It seemed to take ages before Fre could feed him some sugar-water. We were both shaking and looked as pale as the patient when he came around. Father thought that he had only been asleep for a while but his headache later told him differently. He was unable to go to work for a week and I was happy with his company. During the first months of our marriage Father was often home because of comas and dizzy spells, caused by the stress of the changes in his lifestyle, the doctor told him. Although he liked his office job, he looked forward to his retirement at the end of the year when he would be sixty- five and entitled to an old age pension. While we sipped coffee and tea, he told me all about Fre’s childhood and his own life, which he would repeat time and again in ensuing years. Fre’s father was born in Velp on the twenty-eighth of December 1893, the second son in his family. His mother died when she gave birth to her sixth child. His father later married a woman who had five children of her own, of similar ages. Father’s stepmother was a ‘harsh’ woman and his father had often taken his wages straight to the pub. There had always been a lot of trouble in the family. The children, hers as well as his, had started work at the age of thirteen, most of them in one of the brick-factories near the IJsel, shovelling clay or stacking bricks from dawn to dusk. On Saturday evenings Father’s stepmother had held up her apron for everyone to put his wages in, most of it spent on her own children. Ome Albert, Father’s eldest brother was taken on as a shoemaker’s trainee in the village at thirteen and became a top cobbler. By the time he was nineteen he had refused to hand in his hard-earned money and left home. Fre’s father, Hendrik left home a few years later but he had stayed at the brick-works, as there wasn’t much other work around at the time. The two brothers had always been close and ended up marrying two sisters in September 1920. Fre’s mother, Amelia was born in Arnhem on the fourth of November 1889. She and her sister Nellie had been housemaids for well-to-do families. They were both fun-loving girls but Fre’s mother was the more serious of the two sisters. Tante Nellie was four years younger and more outgoing. She took after her father who was a ‘bit of an adventurer’, she said. They had an older sister, Anna and a brother Johan, who had died of TB when he was young. Before he married, their father Gradus Markhorst, had gone to Africa where he worked as a gardener at a mission in Morocco. During that time he had served for four years, between 1860 and 1882, as a Zouaaf in the Pope’s army which had gained him great admiration and respect. For years he had been a porter at a big hotel in Arnhem. He spoke English, German, Italian and French. When Fre’s mother was ten, her father fell out of a train. He spent a year in hospital to recuperate. Later on he travelled around Holland and Germany, repairing and replacing pleated seats of chairs and weaving baskets. The girls did not see their father for months on end but when he came home, he always brought presents for them. In the meantime their mother had been sewing her fingers to the bone to provide a living, Tante Nellie said rather bitterly. When the two sisters were ready to marry the two brothers, it was extremely difficult to get a house, or even some rooms to live in. They had waited for several years before they finally found a couple of rooms and a small apartment in Velp. After they married in a double wedding on 15 September 1920, Father had kept on working at the brickyard while Ome Albert started up his own shoemaking business. Fre’s mother was four years older than his father. She was not very strong and having a child every year had soon taken its toll on her health. She was forty-three years old when the last of her eight children (including a stillborn baby) was born in 1933. “There was nothing you could do about it,” Father sighed. “Nellie and Bart had it easy; they had a child every four years but Amalia was expecting whenever I looked at her.” Tante Nel told me later that she did not conceive ‘because she always did a ‘plasje’ immediately after they had done ‘it’, which unfortunately did not work any more by the time I needed her advice! After their fourth child was born, Father got a council home where the family has lived ever since. They had two daughters, Greet and Bep, then a son who died shortly after he was born. Fre’s mother’s bitter disappointment was all but forgotten when another ‘Henk’ was born a year later followed by four more sons: Wim, Ap, Fritske (Fre) and Gerard. When he was three years old Wim had measles with high fever which caused epileptic fits, damaging his brain which remained at the stage of a three-year-old ever since. “He was such a beautiful child,” Father said sadly. “Mother refused to let me send him to an institution until he was nine years old. By that time he was incredibly strong and it became impossible for her to care for him any longer.” From then on Wim had been in the institution in Venray where eight-year-old Fre had visited him one scary day. “It always broke Mother’s heart to visit him,” Father said when he told me about the long trip to get there. To save on travelling costs Fre’s father had cycled with his mother sitting on the back-rack of his bike, to the railway station in Nijmegen, twenty-four kilometres away where they took the train to Venray. From there it was a ‘fair walk’ to the institute where the poor little fellow was lying on his bed in a straightjacket most of the time. Wim was incontinent and could do nothing for himself. By the time they came home late at night, Mother had been so stiff from sitting on the back of the bike, that Father literally had to carry her inside. Later, with modern treatment Wim had learned to feed himself and eventually, with endless patience from the staff at the institution, he even became toilet-trained and was able to walk. Fre, who was born in 1930, had been ‘a ray of sunshine’ to his parents during the depression. He was a cute toddler, a real ‘teddy bear’ and always happy. He could not bear to see anyone being sad, especially not his mother. He would not give up trying to make her laugh until she managed to smile, his father said. Because he was a very sensitive boy, he was an easy target for his eldest brothers’ love of teasing. Father had been several times up to the bedroom in the evening, trying to convince Fre that there was no tiger or lion under his bed or behind the cupboard, as Henk or Ap had said there was. It had usually been a shadow of someone passing in front of the street light. One evening Fre was so convinced that a big beast had gone behind the cupboard that his father had no choice but to empty the heavy wardrobe and pull it away from the wall before he dared go to sleep. No wonder he had been wetting his bed occasionally... “The depression years were terrible,” Father continued another day. “I was lucky to have work as long as I did, as more and more people were retrenched every day. The days seemed endless, pay was low and the cost of food sky-high.” He had to get up at four in the morning and had walked the six kilometres to the brick- factory where he worked with the shovel until four in the afternoon, knock-off time. To earn extra income he had gone back in the evenings to fire up the ovens and in winter he had often stayed all night, sleeping on the bare floor next to the fire. When the brick-factory closed its gates, Father worked for the ‘Work Brigade’, a workforce in exchange for unemployment benefits. “ We stood on the shovel there all day too, digging sewerage channels in and around the area,” he said. “Part of the job was cleaning the muck out of the big water-pumps. I was always keen to have my turn as we could keep the fish that got caught in the netting. I could sometimes exchange them for eggs or milk.” In the beginning, the fish had been a welcome meal but Fre still can’t stand even the smell of fish today. When he refused to eat it one day, his father had sent him to bed on an empty stomach. Next morning the fish was heated up for breakfast, then lunch and for dinner again. “By that time it had gone off,” Fre said, shuddering at the memory of it. “Father sent me to bed again, but I could not sleep. Mother later brought me a crust of bread, which made Father furious.” Because there was no money to continue the welfare project, Father lost his job the following year and he too had to stand in a queue for handouts from the church and other welfare organisations. “ A hard task for a proud man,” Father sighed when he told me about it. “Mother hated having to hold her hand up too but she had no choice. She was sickly and always terribly tired. The ladies of Sint Vincentius brought extra food to keep up her strength, a few eggs, a litre of milk or a piece of meat. But she always saved the eggs up so that she had one for each of the children,” he chuckled. “Because Father was unable to provide for us, he became more and more frustrated and his temper flew easily,” Fre interrupted. “One day, we were all limp with laughter at something or other while we were eating. Father yelled at us to shut up but we could not stop laughing. He got so enraged that he picked up his dinner plate and banged it on the table. The plate broke in half and his dinner spat everywhere. Mother shot up and shouted: “How dare you waste good food! If you can break a plate, so can I!” She grabbed her own plate and threw it onto the floor. Then they looked at each other and burst out laughing.” My father-in-law laughed heartily. “When Greet was thirteen, she was a big girl for her age,” he went on. “The welfare ladies said that she should quit school and earn some money for the family. They got her a job in a lady’s hat shop in the stad, taking orders to customers on a bakfiets (carrier-cycle). Later, she learned to make hats; she is very good with the needle.” Greet later worked in a German household. Her employers thought the world of her but the job landed her the name ‘Moffen-meid’ (German-lover) and worse, when the war broke out. Although Fre had told me about his estranged sister and her bullying husband who had sympathised with the Germans, I asked Father: “Where is she now?” “She lives on the other side of town,” Father answered. “Her husband is an asthmatic and he drinks a lot. She hasn’t got an easy life with Harm. They have two little girls.” Father told me later that he and Mother went to see Greet regularly, but the others didn’t know. “What they don’t know, won’t hurt them,” was their motto. Fre’s two older siblings Bep and Henk especially didn’t want to have anything to do with her. They could not forgive their sister for the agony and shame she had brought on their family, Father said. Greet had become a hypochondriac. “ There is always something wrong with her health to get attention or sympathy,” Father explained when I asked what a hypochondriac was. To avoid trouble, Fre had not invited Greet to our wedding either. It might have been all right if she would have been there on her own but none of them could bear her impudent husband. Fre was ten when World War Two broke out. During the last years of the war Fre’s parents had been in constant agony about the whereabouts of their children. From the stories Fre and his brothers kept repeating I got the impression that it had been one big adventure: stealing bread, sausages and even a generator from the Germans. Because they were hungry they had roamed the country for food, sometimes staying away for several days. Once they walked some fifty kilometres through snow and ice, as far away as the Achterhoek where a butcher gave them a big liverwurst. They had eaten half of it on the way home; the rest was off by the time they got there. At Christmas time in the hunger-winter (1944-1945) Fre and his brother Appie, had taken thirteen weinach-stollen (fruit-loaf with rich almond filling), from a storeroom at the back of a big villa, which was occupied by the Germans. It was a cold and miserable day and most people had stayed inside. While Appie and several other boys kept talking to a German officer who was working on his car at the front of the house, Fre, who was the smallest of them all, crawled though a little window, which they had broken the previous afternoon. The other fellows said that there were cheeses and cigarettes in the storeroom, but Fre only saw the stack of beautiful fresh loaves of krentenbrood. He quickly put as many as he could in hessian bags and ran home as fast as he could with Appie and the others. The boys had often been chased by the Germans; some had been caught and fortunately let go after a good hiding. Fre’s mother had been terribly worried about their sons’ stealing. At confession the local priest told her that it was all right to steal because they were hungry and, as long as they stole from the Germans, she should not worry about it at all. During the war Bep worked in the household of a very nice Dutch family. Shortly after the war started the Germans took the father of the well-to-do family to a concentration camp because of his activities in the underground. A few months later, a policeman came to her parents’ door with an order for Bep to work for the Germans in a canteen. Bep, who detested everything to do with the Germans, refused to go. She told the policeman in an unflattering way to take her older sister, as she was ‘friendly’ with them anyway. To refuse an order like that was extremely dangerous; the Gestapo could easily have sent her father as well as her brothers to Germany to work, or worse. “When you agreed to go, you saved your family from a peculiar fate, didn’t you?” I asked Greet many years later, when she told me about her tragic life. She shrugged her shoulders. “Och; I have always been the black sheep of the family anyway,” she sighed resignedly. One day in 1943, a young woman came to see Fre’s mother, asking her to give her two-year- old daughter a home as she could not take care of her herself. “Mother had never seen the girl before but she had known her mother before we married,” Father told me. “Welfare had already taken her other three children away because of neglect. Ingrid was born in jail and later put into a welfare home, which was being closed down. Her mother had run off with her father, a German officer, a friend of her husband; she was an alcoholic.” At the end of the depression, when Father lost his job, Fre’s mother had promised God to take care of an unwanted child if He gave him work again. Some time later her prayers were answered, as workers were needed at the silk-factory, just before the war broke out. The young woman’s mother knew about my mother-in-law’s promise and urged her daughter to try her luck, as the child would otherwise be taken to another orphanage. With her youngest son Gerard now ten, Fre’s mother saw her vision of an easier life when the war was over, go up in smoke. Father had left the decision up to her; another mouth to feed did not make a lot of difference to him, and the older children all promised to help take care of the little girl. Mother could not bear the thought of sending the unfortunate child to an orphanage and, after agonising about it for a day or two, they had agreed to take Ingrid in. “It broke your heart to see the little girl,” Father said. “She was just skin and bones. She was two years old but she could barely stand. The people of the institute were later prosecuted for neglect; they had used welfare funds for themselves and let the kiddies starve.” Ingrid had soon recovered as the best food the family could lay their hands on was for her. With her white Shirley Temple curls, dressed up like a doll, her older sisters and brothers paraded her in the neighbourhood. Fre became her best friend but there was often trouble with Gerard, who had been the youngest until his little sister arrived. Ingrid hated the way she had been put on display when she was little. In later years she never wore a dress and her hair is always cut very short. Fre had a fantastic childhood, he always says. He had never noticed how much his parents struggled to make ends meet while he was growing up. As a young child he was often sick with normal childhood ills as well as measles, mumps, bronchitis and kinkhoest (whooping cough). When he was twelve, he was in hospital with diphtheria for six weeks. Fre and his brothers always had to do jobs after school, such as gathering leaves and manure for the garden, picking blueberries in the forest and blackberries along the edges of the paddocks so that Mother could make jam from them. They were often sent to a baker and a butcher as far away as Arnhem, to get bread and meat that was of better quality and often a few cents cheaper. But there had always been plenty of time to play, usually in the street. Only the doctor and the grocer had a car at the time; all other transport was by pushbike, handcarts and horse and cart. The youngsters in the neighbourhood had great fun throwing paarde-keutels (horse-turds) at each other, scolded by their mothers who ordered them to sweep the valuable manure up to be used in their vegetable-garden. The boys had to make their own fun, and their own toys. As we did at home, they made a pikketol (spinning-top) from an empty cotton spool and marbles from clay and they held races walking on stilts, made from one-litre conserve tins. Holes were made in the bottom of the tin so that a long piece of string could be pushed through them. By holding onto the strings, the tins moved forward at every step taken. They also pushed a rim of a discarded pushbike in front of them by using a smoothed stick of wood, as we did. One of Fre’s favourite games was playing soccer, either in the street or in a nearby, empty field. Some of the games the boys played, such as dog fighting, how many horns has the bok (billygoat), hit the donkey and knuppeltje uit de zak, were very rough. Those games involved a lot of jumping on each other’s back and poking and hitting each other with sticks. Although Fre did not like these ‘character building’ games, he would never try to find an excuse, as that would have made him a coward. During the last year of the war, the school was closed. When it opened again in September 1945, Fre only had to go there until he turned fifteen in November, old enough to get a job. He always wanted to become an artist, but of course, that was only for the very rich in those days. From the day they started school, children sat in rows, selected according to their father’s occupation. A son of a labourer would not make it into an academic career, as their parents could not afford to pay for their books. Fre’s father wanted him to become a house painter, but Fre hated that idea. Only people who were missing some fingers would become painters, he said. There were plenty of them around after the war, either from active service or from playing with gunpowder. Fre was very happy when Bep’s boyfriend Bert, who later became her husband, got him a job in his brother Wim’s leadlighting workshop. On his pushbike, made from discarded parts, barely able to reach the pedals and still in his shorts, he rode to Arnhem that first cold winter. Like every beginner, he had to do the dirty jobs, such as melting old lead and pouring the hot, liquid metal through a sieve into narrow moulds to make the strips of lead, which held the pieces of coloured, hand-painted or just clear glass together. Making stopverf (putty), cleaning the glass and polishing the lead with shoe polish until it shone perfectly was another of Fre’s jobs. He was sent out regularly with a bakfiets or a hired hand-cart, to collect old lead, oil, broken glass and other materials which Wim had seen in bombed and burned-out buildings to make, and repair, stained-glass windows. The workshop was in an old three-storey house. Because none of the rooms had a heater and the wind blew through the cracks in the walls and windows, it was often bitterly cold in the drafty workshop. Wim employed two other men, who were often at each other’s throats wanting Fre to do jobs for them at the same time. After a year or two, Fre was making windows too, first simple clear glass panels and later the colourful church windows, designed by famous stained-glass artists like Wim van de Burgh and others. In the meantime, Fre went to evening classes at Kunst-Oefening, the Academy of Art in Arnhem, four evenings a week on his pushbike. He had felt terribly out of place between the rich and much older students, who only seemed to be there for the fun of it. “The teachers never looked at my work properly,” he said disappointedly. However, he had never skipped classes no matter how bad the weather was and persevered with it until he went into the navy at nineteen. It wasn’t all hard work for Fre though; there was often a lot of fun and laughter. The men had made a ball from old rags, which they kicked around during coffee and lunch-breaks until it fell apart. One day, when Wim cut a chook’s head off, it had escaped. The head-less bird flew from the top floor onto the flat roof of the neighbours at the back of the workshop. Another time, the fellows had dressed Wim’s watchdog, a big black bouvier, in a suit complete with trousers, a white shirt and a jacket. When they wanted to put a hat on his head, the dog had had enough. He broke loose, ran to the front room of the workshop and jumped straight out of the open window. For a moment the guys had looked at each other in shock as they were on the second floor! When they got to the window, expecting the dog to be dead, or at least badly injured, they could hardly believe their eyes when they saw him run down the street and disappear around a corner. The three of them had run down the stairs and gone after the dog as fast as they could. People had cracked up laughing in the busy streets, pointing in the direction they had seen the dog go. Eventually someone had caught him several streets further on, still wearing all his clothes. Wim and his wife Willy lived next to the workshop. They had two little girls whose rabbit hutches Fre had to keep clean. Wim had given him strict instructions to keep the two rabbits he was fattening up for Christmas separate at all times. But, as it was very difficult to clean a hutch with a rabbit in it, Fre had put them together whenever his boss was not around. He realised what the reason for Wim’s order was when one of the rabbits was having babies. Wim had been furious but his little girls were delighted. In 1950 most of the church windows had been repaired and leadlight in houses had gone out of fashion which meant that Wim had to lay off some of his workers. As Fre was nineteen at the time he was soon to be called up for army service. One day during his holiday he and his big cousin Ap, who was his best friend went for a bike-ride and ended up in Nijmegen where the now famous vier-daagse, a four-day-walk, was on. In the centre of the old city they saw a window display, telling young men to make sure to get into the Dutch Royal Navy where a great future was waiting for them. By the time the two fellows got home, their minds were made up; they were going to apply the very next day. When they went to Hilversum some time later, they both came through their intensive medical tests. “I was two centimeters too short,” Fre said. “But they told me not to worry; they would stretch me that much during the three months training.” From the sixty-four young men who went in training, fewer than a dozen were taken on. From Fre’s group of twenty, only three had stayed. Fre had signed on for six years but Ap only wanted to do his compulsory eighteen months in the forces. The two friends did not see much of each other as they were in different navy-barracks. And no! Fre never gained the extra two centimeters to make him the required heigth of one meter-seventy. While every one of the children was still at home, Fre’s father had always done the cooking on Sundays. His mother, who loved not having to cook every day, told everyone time and again to say that the meal was delicious, even if they could hardly get it down their throats. When Fre’s father made something, a toy or some item for the house, the same rule had always been applied. When the children got older and complained about his shoddy workmanship, his mother insisted that it was ‘all-right’. “Don’t say anything about it; he has done his best” she would say, warning them that he might never make anything again, if they criticised him openly. It was hard for Fre - as well as for me - that I was not brought up that way... Although Fre’s father befriended families from where the father - or the mother - was an alcoholic, he enjoyed an occasional drink himself very much. One evening, when Fre’s parents had been to a party at the neighbouring club, he sang all the way home, loudly repeating the first two lines of a popular song: ‘Dag Chris, dag Kruimeltje’. Fre’s mother had been so disgusted with him that she refused to let him sleep with her that night. Later, whenever Fre was home from the navy for the weekend, he went on Sunday mornings to a cafe with Father and Ome Albert and his brother Henk or his cousin Ap, to play a game of billiards. Sometimes, when Appie was home from the army, a whole group of them would go. Those outings had occasionally got out of hand; Mother had not been too happy when they came home late and Father had been tipsy, singing: “Dag Chris! Dag Kruimeltje” to her. When Ingrid was thirteen, two years before Fre’s mother died, she was the only one left at home with her elderly parents. By that time Mother had been incontinent for some time, which was very difficult to cope with for a teenage girl who had always been the centre of attention when she was little. Because there were no sanitary pads Fre’s mother had to wear rags, which were washed every day. Wrung out by hand, the still dripping-wet rags had to be dried around the kachel in winter in the tiny livingroom... Ingrid was another reason I always prayed to God not to give us an ‘after-thought’. Like my brother Ties, she had several ‘fathers and mothers’ from the day she was taken in by Fre’s family. Then they all left home, one after the other, leaving her behind to cope with her elderly parents, just as happened to Ties when he was a teenager. Once a week Fre’s mother would go to Bep’s place where she could have a proper bath but an hour later she would be wet again, Bep said. Fre’s father cried when he told me that Mother’s nauseating odour had prevented him from the close contact she had craved for so much, especially during the last years of her life. “Amalia was always so concerned that others would notice,” he snivelled. “But there was nothing she or I could do about it. I’ve let her down so often... I am so very, very sorry...” Chapter FORTY-NINE

After we married it was still cold for weeks before summer started. Even though he had to ride seven kilometres each way Fre came home for lunch every day, unless it was raining. He preferred to go by pushbike rather than the brommer so that he was warm when he came home, and it saved petrol; we needed every penny we could get. Hent, the baker, a very friendly, middle-aged man, who came to the door every day to deliver bread, always called in just as Fre hurried back to work. I often felt embarrassed, wondering what he thought of my red face... Because Father came home half an hour earlier than Fre in the evenings, Fre’s lunchtime break was the only private time we had. In the beginning I often sat on his lap, but we soon stopped hugging each other when his father was around as it made him cry. Seeing us so much in love made him realize how much he missed Fre’s mother. Before we married, Fre and his father seldom went to bed before midnight but I had had it by ten o’clock. Although we were both keen to go to bed, we waited until ten-thirty, a ‘decent’ time. To keep our minds off things, we borrowed a big puzzle from Tante Nel, who had a stack of them, and we played cards, the three of us, in the evenings. Although my parents paid for the wedding, there were a lot of extra costs such as the hire of Fre’s suit and the Volkswagen mini-bus. I agreed with Fre that, if we wanted his family to come to our wedding, he had to pay for it. He had borrowed money from his father for the flowers and Bep’s train-fare, and I owed Mum money for the photographs, as they had to be paid for in advance. We needed to replace the vitrage in the bedrooms, which had fallen apart when I washed them and Fre wanted to buy materials to make cupboards on the walls of our bedroom, as there was no space for a wardrobe. There was never any talk about me sewing for other people to complement our income, as married women were provided for by their husbands at the time. Fre regretted that he had spent all his money while he was in the navy. “With the extra pay for being away from home, I had a fantastic salary,” he said. “While we were in Australia I earned a lot of extra money by doing the washing for the other boys; they were happy to pay me twenty-five cents per item.” “Twenty-five cents per item?” I asked. “That would have been four items for one guilder for which I had to work a two whole hours!” Fre laughed. “Well, I also had to iron their white uniforms. The funny thing was that the male nurse in our barrack, often helped me with it; without pay.” For the time being, we had to make do with Father’s old furniture but we had already designed modern cupboards for our bedroom as well as for the livingroom which he would make as soon as we could afford to buy the materials. When he started on the lovely cupboard above the bed, he had never made anything like that before. It had two shelves for our underwear with an open shelf underneath for the alarm clock, a glass of water and a few nick- nacks. Fre painted the shallow cupboard black and the two doors soft yellow. Then he made a larger one for the opposite wall, also with two doors, for tops and shirts, sheets and pillow-slips and painted it in the same colours; I was so proud of him! Before we married Fre and his father had already re-painted the doors of the cupboards in the kitchen in alternating pastel colours, blue, pink and yellow, the latest fashion. When the bedroom was finished, we bought a round table with a gray top and six black chairs for the kitchen. By that time it was autumn and he started on a wall unit for the livingroom which we wanted to make into a modern lounge. Because the shed was too small to work in, we took the table and chairs into the livingroom so that he could work in the kitchen. It was a marvellous time for me. Keeping the little house tidy and washing with our brand-new twin-tub machine (our wedding present from Fre’s father) was easy. I often visited Tante Nel during the day and I went to the market in Arnhem most Fridays where I bought cheap materials to make curtains and new clothes for myself. During the last four months before our wedding I had lost eight kilos but I started to put it back on as soon as I was expecting our first baby. The fact of having our own children had never been out of my mind for a moment and we had the wildest fantasies of being the best parents they could ever have. When I got my period, two weeks after we were married, I felt sad that I wasn’t pregnant yet. I was disappointed again when ‘opoe’ came in the beginning of June, and my whole world fell apart when I started bleeding after I was two weeks overdue in July. Fre and his father were waiting for me to go to Bep’s place to celebrate her birthday when I came out of the toilet and burst into tears. Father shrugged his shoulders when he heard what had happened. “ It’s early days yet, Mientje, and you have had a stressful time behind you,” he said soothingly. “I’m sure you will get plenty; maybe more than you want!” Fre calmed me down but I could not possibly go out and face a house full of people at Bep’s place. Even though he hated to leave me on my own, Fre went with his father to the party. The following morning Bep came for coffee with me. She understood how I felt, she said and assured me that there was no need for panic. “You are crying now because it takes too long. In a few years you’ll be crying because you are expecting yet again,” she said. We were thrilled when the bleeding turned out to be a false alarm and we were going to have a baby in March the following year, after all. Henk and Wim had been to visit us on their pushbikes on a Sunday, two weeks after our wedding. They said that it was quiet at home without me but I was still nervous when we went home for the first time, the following weekend. There had been no need to worry; Jopie and little Tiesje raced out to meet us and Mum was all smiles. Pa was in a good mood too, joking about Fre having his angel in his bed now and us spending every free moment making love. Nothing much had changed; there were plenty of jobs waiting for Fre to be done as usual. When we left on Sunday evening, with some fresh eggs and a bottle of full-cream milk (for which Pa wanted us to pay and Mum said he should be ashamed of himself), we felt happy and relieved to leave my family behind and get on with our own lives. I had missed Tiesje very much but Jopie would bring him with her for the weekend, in two week’s time. Fre’s father, who had spent the day at Bep’s place, was eagerly waiting for our return. Because of Father’s black-outs we had only been home twice, when Mum came unexpectedly, early in September. I was making pillows from an old feather mattress when I saw her walk up the garden path in the backyard that sunny Wednesday morning, hardly believing my eyes. Covered in feathers I ran towards her and hugged her. Yes, Pa had objected strongly but Mum had let him talk as she wanted to see how I, but mainly how Fre’s father was. We had a lovely day, chatting and drinking coffee. When Fre went back to work after lunch, Mum and I went for a walk to the village where I bought a banaan-royal for her in an ice-cream parlour. She had never tasted anything so good, she said. On our way back I told Mum that I was probably pregnant. At first I thought that she had not heard me, as she said nothing. “Aren’t you happy for me?” I asked. She looked at me sadly and said: “Well, if you get married you get pregnant; it just makes me an ‘opoe’.” “But Mum! Some people never get any children; that would be the worst thing that could happen to me,” I replied, hurt by her cold reaction. “Yeh. I guess it would be,” Mum said thoughtfully. “Your father did not have any children by his first wife; but that doesn’t happen often. You’ll probably have one every year like most of us. Now that you married so young, you’ll have twenty-four by the time you are fifty!” “ We won’t have our children call you ‘Opoe’; that’s old-fashioned; ‘Oma’ sounds much younger,” I said cheerfully, ignoring her sour prediction. “Oma or Opoe makes no difference. Either one makes me feel old,” Mum said stubbornly. “When is it going to happen?” “Mid-March,” I said, thinking about Mum’s words. “Oh good!” she exclaimed much more cheerful now. “That’ll stop the rumours that you got married in such a hurry because you ‘had to’.” “Don’t worry about that,” I said ruefully. “They may still say that I had a miscarriage the first time.” After a cup of tea at Tante Nel’s place, I left Mum chatting with her and ran home to cook dinner. When Fre’s father came home and I told him that Mum was with Tante Nel, he went immediately to get her. Later, when Fre and I took her back to the train station in Arnhem in the evening, my lovely father-in-law walked with Mum to the bus stop, talking non-stop. At the beginning of October, I noticed that Fre’s eldest sister, Greet, came to visit Father on Friday mornings when I was at the market.“She doesn’t need to stay away because of me,” I said to him rather irritably. “She is Fre’s sister; I want to meet her too.” Since her mother died, two years earlier Greet had only had contact with Hppie, Fre’s older brother, a care-free, easy-going fellow, and her youngest brother Gerard, who was at sea. One day, Fre had pointed her Dutch-born husband, Harm, out to me in the street. He was still wearing a discarded overcoat from the German army and heavy boots, looking like a S.S. officer. Fre could not bear the sight of him. Greet was a big woman, tall and quite solid. When we met for the first time, she greeted me as an old acquaintance. Her eyes shone like stars when she fervently shook my hand, holding her shoulder with the other hand because it hurt. Before long she called me her favourite sister-in- law but I soon learned that she said the same to Ap’s wife Henny and, although not married yet, to Martha. Greet’s two daughters were nine and seven. Her husband, who was always full of his own importance, had made her life miserable from the start. Encouraged by his German mother who had visited them from Germany, he had hit her black and blue in front of the children, then aged two and three, so that ‘she knew her place’. When I told Fre and his older siblings that I had met their older sister, they all gave me the same advice: “Don’t believe a word she is saying; she is neurotic. She’d missed her career; she should have been an actress etcetera, etc.” “Wouldn’t you become neurotic if you were treated that way?” I asked a couple of times, but there was never an answer. By reading books and articles about girls and women who were involved with German soldiers during the war, I learned that most of them had some bad experiences with their own countrymen. Because the German soldiers they met had treated them gently and with respect, as well as giving them a good time, they believed in them. The Dutch, usually including the girl’s family, were blinded with hatred towards the Germans, therefore they could not see the German’s good intentions for the occupied country, they thought. Many a girl had prayed fervently for her family’s eyes to open. Because the war was considered men’s business, the women were kept in the dark about what was really happening. By the time they realized what was going on, it was often too late. The girls’ family had suffered badly because of their actions, and they were too ashamed, or too frightened, to return home. The women and other ‘traitors’ were well aware how much their fellow country-folk despised them. As the girl’s family was often unable to believe that their daughter, sister or aunt could have been so na•ve, they had often no one to turn to. Most women I read about were bitterly disappointed about their family’s inability to forgive. At the end of the war most of them had suffered terribly from the brutal wave of bottled up hatred from their country-folk. In later years they dealt with it, each in her own way, either with bitterness and anger, or burdened with guilt and shame for the rest of their lives. “A moment of absent-mindedness can make a man cry for the rest of his life,” Pa would say. We had not been to Hooglanderveen for some time when we got a mauve edged letter in the mail, which meant that a young person had died. It was Loesje, van Montfoort’s middle daughter, who was only nine. Although I had written to them once or twice, I felt terribly guilty that I had been so pre-occupied with all the new happenings in my life, that we had not visited them since our marriage. It was Friday afternoon and Loesje had already been buried that morning. We decided to take the train to Amersfoort as soon as Fre had finished work the following afternoon. Mevrouw van Montfoort’s bed stood in the living-room again; she had been sick for quite some time, her husband said, when we came in. Then they told us that Loesje had come home from school the previous Tuesday with a terrible belly-ache. When Meneer came home from work in the evening, the little girl had drifted in and out of consciousness. He had lifted her into the car and driven as fast as he could to the nearby hospital. On arrival he had carried her, limp in his arms, into the hospital where she had died soon after from a ruptured appendix. “I’ll soon be with her,” Mevrouw said, smiling weakly. She told us then that she had breast cancer. Both her breasts had been removed but the cancer had spread through her whole body. She died six weeks later. I still feel badly that I had not visited them earlier; they had been so good to me. And I did not even go to her funeral either... People are known to stay away from sadness, and I am sorry to say that, until fairly recently, I was one of them.

Tension between Pa and Wout was building up that weekend, as Pa wanted to sell the Temple. We were glad to get to our own, peaceful home the following afternoon. I was five months pregnant when we went back to Hooglanderveen again on a Saturday afternoon in November. But this time nobody ran out to meet us as something terrible had just happened. When we got inside the back door, everybody stood in silence around Wout, looking pale and in shock. Wout’s lips were blue; he was dripping wet and shaking. Pa was nowhere to be seen. “What happened?” I asked as nobody volunteered any information. Stammering, they told us bit by bit that Wout and Pa had had an argument over money again. Pa would not give him a penny from the sale of the Temple. While they were fighting, Pa had pushed Wout, face down, into the koelbak, the deep concrete box filled with water which fitted four milk-cans to keep the milk cool. While he had held him under water in the narrow space, Mum had grabbed a shovel. She had hit Pa on his back with all her might until he let go of Wout. “It surprises me that I haven’t broken his back,” Mum said, trembling all over.That weekend Fre - and the incident - convinced Wout that he had to get out before it was too late. He stayed with his girlfriend Tony’s parents for a couple of days, then he went to Gradus, my first boyfriend, where he boarded until Wout and Tony got married in 1963. He became a dedicated gardener and bought a house in the village where they still live today. Fre slept in Wout’s bed that night next to Wim, and I curled up with Jopie again. When I told Opoe Kleter the following day that I was expecting her first great-grand-child, and I was looking forward to having a picture of four generations, she said that that would be nice, but she hoped that God would not let her wait that long. Her wish came true six weeks later when she died peacefully in her sleep, just before Christmas. In the week before her death, Opoe had told Mum that Father Simon had come to her a couple of times during the night, holding his arms open for her, which explained the smile on her face when she lay in her coffin. Fre had never seen a dead body. At first he refused to go into the morgue in the convent with me, but he was later glad that he had done so. Everybody was relieved for Opoe to be celebrating Christmas in heaven, and there was no sadness at her funeral. As was customary, a koffie-tafel was held in the cafe across the road from the church, followed by a borreltje or two. In my wide winter-coat, which I had made from expensive black and blue Harris-tweed, I strutted around proudly between the guests, showing off my swollen belly. I pricked up my ears when I heard Moeke say to Mum: “Gosh! Hasn’t Mientje had her baby yet? That surprises me!” Mum’s face turned scarlet and her mouth quivered when she replied angrily: “No she hasn’t! And it won’t be for a while either!” She turned around abruptly and talked to someone else. Fre and I smiled at each other. At home, after the funeral, we had fun making a list with Mum’s help, of all the people who had expected us to ‘have to’ get married. We would send one of the traditional little announcement cards to every one of them, including the pastoor! Because Opoe’s funeral was on the twenty-third of December and Fre had to go to work the following day, we spent Christmas at our own place in Velp after all. Although the breakfast after the midnight Mass, with only the three of us, was cosy, I missed my family terribly. But there was not much time to dwell on it; Fre’s father would be sixty-five three days later and everybody was expected at our place to celebrate. They were all there, including Ome Albert and Tante Nellie with Ap and Dory. Pa had even hired a neighbour to drive him, Mum, Jopie and Tiesje to Velp in his car, for the happy occasion. As promised, Greet came later in the evening too, which meant that Fre’s family was together for the first time in years. They recalled the happy events of their youth, with their long lost sister all evening. It was a wonderful night! Now that Fre’s father had retired, I looked forward to having him home every day. But of course, that was not going to be all roses... Chapter FIFTY

As Mum predicted we had three children, by the time our eldest child was two and a half years old. Although Mum had not been at all excited about the prospect of becoming a grandmother, she insisted to look after me when our first baby was born. When Buurvrouw Bertha told her in the morning of the nineteenth of March 1958, that Fre rang to tell her that our baby was on its way, she had left home immediately. When she arrived at three o’clock that afternoon I had already been in labour for many hours and it was clear that I was not going to ‘drop’ my baby as she had done with me when I was born. Because Mum was terribly distressed to see me in so much pain, Fre’s father took her with him to visit Tante Nel. He had already prepared the evening meal and they stayed until the ordeal was finally over, later that evening. Sister Timmermans, the midwife had been in and out all morning. Shortly after mid-day she had gone to check on a lady in her early forties who was also having her first baby. The lady had given up hope, when she finally got pregnant after she had been married for eighteen years. Sister Timmermans came back at three-thirty, shaking as to what had happened. On her arrival, she had found the lady sitting on the toilet, in a great deal of pain. It had taken her quite some talking to stop the lady from pushing and getting her off the toilet so that she could examine her. To her great horror the child’s head was already showing. Had she not been there at the right time, the tiny baby would have fallen into the old-fashioned straight sewerage pipe, and disappeared in the septic tank! Shortly after the midwife came back, my ‘water broke’, but it would still take another four hours before our Lilian was finally born at seven-thirty that evening. Although her birth had been long and difficult, holding her in my arms was the most beautiful indescribable moment of my life. The following day my whole body still ached from the long hours of pushing while our patient midwife struggled for ages to get our little daughter to drink as she stubbornly kept her little tongue against the roof of her mouth. But when she finally got the hang of it, breast- feeding her was a real pleasure for me. Like Mum, I loved the intimate contact with our child, the product of our love for each other. It made me realise how awful it must have been for Mum not to feel any bonding with me, her nine-month-old child that was given to her when she came home from the mental institution... Fre was so sweet to me. That first night he had made a bed on the divan so that I could have the double bed for my self with my aching body. Afraid that he would not hear me when I woke up he tied a piece of sting on his finger that I could pull if I needed him. Fre will probably feel embarrassed when he reeds this, but I liked it too much to leave it out. Fre had the following day off to register the birth of our daughter at the council office and have our first-born baptised within the required twenty-four hours, that afternoon. Being our first daughter, she was to be named after Mum and Fre’s mother, according to tradition. Because Mum never liked her name, Aleida, she was baptised as Adelheid instead followed by Amelia after Fre’s mother. As our little girl was born on Saint Joseph day she ended up with three names, usually only used by rich people: Adelheid, Amalia, Josephina. But we insisted on calling her Lilian, a modern name, which would become very confusing for her later in life. Mum had her hands full entertaining our visitors. When Fre came home from work at six- thirty the second evening, there were only a few clean nappies left in the cupboard as Mum had forgotten to wash them, again. While Fre was still grumbling to me about it, she came into our bedroom, telling us triumphantly that she had made six meatballs from the kilogram of mincemeat Fre had bought the previous day. Fre and I looked at each other in horror. “But Mum! It was meant to last at least three days!” I exclaimed. Mum had absolutely no idea how we struggled to make ends meet with Fre’s meagre wages. We were glad when she went home that same evening, taking Fre’s father with her and promising to send Jopie, who was nearly fifteen at the time. Fre was still busy washing nappies when my lovely sister arrived, close to midnight. Completely exhausted and knowing that things would now be all right, I cried with relief when I hugged her. As I had plenty of milk for Lilian, I had been happy for the hospital to collect my surplus for other babies who needed it. The ‘mother-milk-man’ came twice a day for months, getting a full bottle for a premature twin, born in hospital a few weeks after Lilian. Being totally ignorant about the consequences to my health, I kept wearing a loose bra and specially designed glass receptacles to catch the milk from my overflowing breasts. When the production went down to a quarter of a bottle a day by the time Lilian was eight months old, the ever grateful ‘mother-milk- man’ still kept coming every day. I felt weak and useless; I had become so short of breath that I could hardly make it up the stairs. I went to the doctor, complaining that I felt worn out and lost my appetite. “No wonder you’re worn out!” the doctor scolded me when he discovered that I was at least three months pregnant and he heard what I had been doing. “You are trying to feed four babies as well as yourself!” Because I had not had my period after Lilian was born, I had no idea that I was pregnant again. Raymond’s birth in July 1960 took only a few hours, a month early according to the doctor. He barely weighed five Dutch pounds, two and a half kilos. He was so tiny compared to Lilian who had been over eight pounds when she was born. Even though there were problems with his breathing, he was still baptised in the church the next day. We could not afford to take the risk for him to die and not go to heaven. Mum was still crying about that happening to my little sister. This time we broke with tradition again by calling our eldest son Raymond, meaning ‘clever protector’ the name of a sympathetic Belgian character in a book I had read. He was baptised Raymondus with his second name Hendrikus, after Fre’s father, and Bartholomeus after my father (his name was only Bart, but that was too plain for us). As he too had three names it set the trend for a new family tradition. When he was only ten days old, our new baby developed ‘dew-worm’, a nasty eczema that usually developed much later. The scaly rash with tiny ‘dew-drops’ early in the morning, crept over his little face making him look like a monkey. For months I had to put his little arms in toilet rolls to prevent him from scratching. Until he was eighteen months old I could only clean him with oil or bath him in boiled rye-bran water, which smelled awful. Remembering how ouwe Luuk had taken my pain away instantly when he prayed over my burned arm, I did not hesitate to take our midwife up on her offer to ask her similarly gifted friend to see what he could do for our little son. Meneer Visser had found that he had healing power when he had a car accident in midlife. The key of his car had penetrated deeply into his knee during the impact of a collision with another vehicle; the pain had disappeared when he rubbed his hands over it and the wound had healed much quicker than expected. Like ouwe Luuk Meneer Visser prayed silently while his hand went briefly over the badly infected areas behind our baby’s knees, inside his elbows on his forehead and his little hands. Although it was difficult to say how much difference the treatment made, we persevered with it until the last trace of the eczema disappeared when he was two years old. Something was definitely happening; little as he was Raymond always pulled his arm or leg away even when he could not see the kind healer’s hand approaching. He also suffered frequently from recurring bouts of asthmatic bronchitis, especially in winter until he grew out of it when he was seven and neither illness came back. Mr Visser never wanted to accept more pay for his services than a couple of guilders for petrol. Towards the end of his regular visits he gave me a flowering pot-plant, a ‘Vlijtig Liesje’ (impatiens) saying that I reminded him about that diligent plant, producing one flower after another. The poor plant died on me soon after I got pregnant again. Feeding Raymond was a nightmare from the start. At first I panicked when he threw up a lot of blood, but then I realised that it came from my nipples which kept on cracking. Because the pain was often unbearable, I kept feeding times as short as possible. Even though he never cried I still fed him every three hours, around the clock, but he did not seem to gain any weight. When he was two weeks old, the Community Health sister who would come twice a week to weigh him during the first six weeks left on holidays, and her replacement did not visit at all. My alarm bells started ringing when our baby was five weeks old and he started to look like a little old man. With eighteen-month-old Lilian sitting at the back of the pram, I walked to the clinic on the other side of the village, one cold and windy afternoon in the first week of September. After waiting for more than two hours, it was finally my turn to see the doctor. He was furious. “You stupid girl! What the hell are you trying to do!” he yelled at me when he examined little Raymond. “Starve the little fellow to death, are you?” He took a little skin between his fingers again and pulled it up. “Can’t you see he is drying out?” he barked, when it did not fall back as it was supposed to. He ordered me to go home immediately and feed my poor, starving son boiled water with glucose; a nurse would come and check on him that same evening. My fingers trembled when I dressed my baby. Tears were streaming down my burning face when I walked past the nurse and the still waiting mothers in the hall, who offered me no sympathy. I cried all the way home, feeling humiliated and ashamed. I loved my babies; how could I have been so stupid and ignorant? As the doctor had said, being my second child it was inexcusable. I was also angry. By the time I got home it would be nearly five hours since I had left and I could finally feed our little son the badly needed glucose-water. Why hadn’t they given me anything for him to drink at the clinic? When I fed him the sugary water, little Raymond started to sweat profusely and, when the nurse weighed him that evening, he had put on two-hundred-and-fifty grams. As I was still upset, the friendly nurse stopped and talked to me for a while. She was horrified to see the state of my nipples. As the doctor at the clinic had prescribed a buttermilk formula for our baby because of his skin condition, which proved to be a constant drain on our budget, she tied my boobs high up to stop my milk production. Even though it would relieve me from the daily pain, I felt terribly inadequate about being unable to feed him myself, blaming myself for being so stupid. When Raymond was five months old I went to the doctor for a check-up again, as I was not feeling well. When he told me that I was pregnant, yet again, I was speechless and very upset. It couldn’t be! I had hardly allowed Fre to touch me all those months. As soon as I closed the doctor’s room behind me, I started crying. Not wanting Fre’s father and my two little children to see my tears, I went to Tante Nellie on my way home. “These men!” she said angrily, when I told her what was the matter. “Why can’t they leave their women alone!” “Oh, no! It’s not like that at all!” I cried. “We’ve hardly been able to have sex at all since before Lilian was born.” Because we wanted six children, the midwife had not stitched me up after she had cut me when our first child was born, which gave me a lot of problems after every time I gave birth. Because having sex had been painful for me, a specialist had implanted a ‘ring’ saying that I was too ‘narrow’. We had waited until the supposedly ‘safe’ days, ten days after I had had my first period, more than four months after Raymond was born. “I hated having to be so cold to Fre for so long, and now this!” I sobbed. Tante Nellie shook her head. “Gosh; I never thought it could be like that,” she said. “Our five children all came with four years in between them. We never had to do anything about it.” We both laughed when I said that her earlier advice to do piddle immediately after we had done ‘it’ apparently did not work for us. Then Fre’s sympathetic aunt said thoughtfully: “It seems that I only conceived at certain times. My poor sister Amalia! She was always so weak and worn out, and she had one after another. I used to get furious with Henk (Fre’s father).” Our second son’s birth, a week before Raymond’s first birthday, was as quick and unexpected as his brother’s. He was also about four weeks early and my ‘water broke’ without any warning. I had been in the garden when it happened with Raymond, but this time I was inside. Jopie had come to visit unexpectedly that evening, and I was showing her my new summer coat, when it happened. Jopie had grabbed a bucket for me to sit on before she ran as fast as she could to get Fre who had gone with his father, visiting Tante Nel and Ome Albert. Eugene was born a few hours later, a skinny healthy baby, measuring sixty-two centimeters and weighing three and a half kilos. Seeing the quantity of water in the bucket, it was no wonder he had kicked the basket off my lap when I was peeling the potatoes! Fre had chosen his name this time. Remembering the scoffing of my family at the fancy names we had given our first two children, Eugene, a French name, was too much for me. I wanted to call him Peter, but Sister Timmermans, who would help me deliver all our children, insisted that that was too plain compared to his brother and sister’s names. My apprehension about the name vanished the minute I looked at our new son, knowing that Eugene suited him perfectly. With three children as well as my live-in father-in-law, the old house got too small for us. We could get a newly built council house not far from where we lived, but Father became awfully depressed when Fre told him about it. He firmly believed in the saying that ‘an old tree should never be uprooted’, convinced that he was going to die if we took him away from the place he had lived in for the best part of his life. He suffered from dizzy spells again and one day, I found him in a coma. Thankfully a few visits to our young doctor made him change his mind; he would take all the happy memories of the old house with him when he moved with us into the new one. “Oh, no! I don’t mind moving at all,” I heard him say to people time and again. “It’s like starting a new lease on life!”Our new house, on the corner of a long row of identical council houses was light and spacious compared to the old house, but it still had only three bedrooms. I had been delighted to see the shower. It meant that Fre did not have to go to his sister’s place for his weekly bath any more. About a year after the move I became very nervous and depressed. As I was crying at the drop of a hat as I had done before we got married, we went on a holiday, just the two of us for the first time. We went by train to Valkenburg in the far south of Holland, where Fre had been with Bep and Bert when we first met, four years earlier. I will always remember those two beautiful days of sightseeing, climbing hills and walking through the forests, even though it was the end of summer and it rained a lot. We had laughed about the squeaking bed in the cheap motel room and choosing the best souvenirs we could afford with the little money we had. In the train on our way home we were in stitches as we could only afford one cup of coffee between the two of us. We were still laughing when we called in at Hent’s bakery, well after lunch, to get a loaf of bread on credit. As soon as we opened the front door when we came home, we came back to earth with a thump. A note on the doormat informed us that one-year-old Eugene, who was at Henny and Ap’s place, had a temperature of over forty degrees on the morning we left. The doctor had been and diagnosed a middle ear infection. As he was asleep when we got there, we decided to get three-year-old Lilian from Bep and Bert’s place in Arnhem-south, first. Poor Bep! Like Eugene had done at Henny and Ap’s place, Lilian had cried virtually non-stop for the three days she had been there. With a lump of concern in our chests we went to the stad to collect two-year-old Raymond from Gijsje and Henk’s place as Bep told us that, while we had been away, Gijsje had been diagnosed as having ‘open tuberculosis’. She was leaving for a sanatorium in Zevenaar the following week, where she would stay for nearly a year. We all had to be screened as soon as possible as any of us could also have been infected. We were very concerned about Raymond with his bronchitis. Because of the close contact he had with Gijsje he had to have a skin test as well as an x-ray. “Welcome home!” Father said, when he came back the following day from his stay at my parent’s farm in Hooglanderveen, and he heard what had happened. At the end of autumn, I got sick. My back was hurting terribly and I was so short of breath that I could hardly climb the stairs again. Fre’s father was happier than we had seen him in a long time. With me in bed in the livingroom most of the time he felt in his element, doting on me as he had always done with Fre’s mother. He vacuumed the floor, dressed the children, did the washing and had dinner ready when Fre came home from work. We could not have wished for a better housekeeper! As my health had not improved with the prescribed bed-rest and medication, the doctor had ordered another test for tuberculosis. A few days later Henny, my sister-in-law, came to visit. She had just been to see our popular doctor who had given her a message for Fre. My heart sank when she said that the doctor wanted to have a word with him as soon as possible. When Fre came home from work late that night, he went straight back on his pushbike to the doctor, expecting the worst. No, Doctor van Balen did not have the results of the tests yet. Henny had apparently been concerned about Father, doing all the housework while I was sick. Because Father had lived with her for a year after Mother died, she knew what he was like. Henny also knew that Father would spend his whole pension on us, if we would let him... Painfully aware from the start of possible jealousy in the family, I always made sure that the savings of Father’s pension went into a bank account and we helped him choose presents for everyone of his sixteen grandchildren just before Sinterklaas at the end of the year. The reason the doctor wanted to talk to Fre ‘one day in the near future’ was his concern about our live-in situation. He was convinced that the effect of living with my father-in-law was the main reason for my health problems. I had become obsessed with him staying in the house all day, staring in front of him and following my every move with his eyes. He had wanted to grow vegetables when he retired but we had taken his hobby away when we made the little space at the back of the house into a garden with a lawn for the kids to play in, which made me feel responsible for his lethargy. Dr. van Balen wanted Fre to find other arrangements for his father before he had to admit me to a mental hospital, he had said. A week later I had another heart-stopping scare, when the doctor called in only hours after he had been to see me. He had given me an injection against the excruciating pain in my back and prescribed tablets, he later realised, would be dangerous in case I was pregnant. It wasn’t until several weeks later that the test for tuberculosis came back, all clear. When spring came, and Father had gone to spend another six weeks with my family, I was feeling my old self again. By that time I was five months pregnant with our fourth child. Eugene would be nearly two when the baby was due at the end of June. As we wanted our children to grow up close together we were both very happy about it. Our deepening concern about having to find another place to live for Fre’s father proved to be unnecessary. When he came back from Hooglanderveen he told us, carefully as he did not want to offend us, that he had decided to move in with his eldest daughter Greet and her two little girls. Greet’s alcoholic husband had died in his sleep the previous summer and, as she lived only a few streets away, Father could still visit us often and go for walks with me and the children regularly, he said. He was such a lovely man; I felt guilty for a long time that I was happy to see him leave. Our second daughter, Simone, was born on the third of July 1963, another beautiful baby. She was named after Mum’s father, Simon, which made her Mum’s favourite grandchild. While I gave birth to her Fre had pain in his belly too. The midwife said that she had seen before that a husband had ‘sympathy pains’ which were gone as soon as the child was born, but Fre’s were getting worse. He was planning to go to the doctor three days later when a pea-like object came out of his navel. The pain had gone immediately. When the doctor came to see me later that day because I had a high fever, he was angry. It was no wonder I had a breast-infection he said when I showed him the pea; it was a glass splinter in a capsule of dried pus. Because I got pregnant with Simone while we used the temperature-method, the only form of contra-conception apart from living in celibacy still allowed by the Catholic Church, I went on the pill, which had then been in use for quite some time. Our doctor, a Catholic with seven young children of his own, had no objections prescribing it in a bid to make my periods more regular. We had become so frustrated trying to get to sleep in the same bed without being able to be close, that I sometimes went to sleep in another room. Our old priest was quite angry when I told him about it at confession. Surely, we did not have to have sex all the time, he said disgustedly. After his outburst, I did not dare tell him that I had given up breastfeeding after only three months, as I had done with Eugene, even though I had plenty of milk for my baby... “ He would have to try going to sleep with a warm-blooded young woman in his arms himself!” Fre suggested angrily, when I told him what the priest had said. I only took the pill for a short time; then my conscience got the better of me. So, eighteen months after Simone was born, our Richard came along after a very worrying pregnancy. Because of painful protruding veins, I had to wind an elastic bandage around one of my legs when I was pregnant with Simone, but now I had to do both legs before I could get out of bed in the morning, from the day I had conceived. Our kind-hearted nosy old neighbour, who had given birth to twelve children herself, knew that I was pregnant even before I knew it myself! As this was our fifth child, I was used to plenty of movement inside me after the first four months but I seldom felt any movement at all this time. An ultra-sound could have put my mind at ease, but they were not available in those days. Until the day he was born I was afraid that our baby would not have any arms or legs. My relief was enormous when I saw our perfect little boy; he even had a huge bunch of black hair, while the others had been quite bald. “No wonder you always had such an itchy belly!” Fre laughed when Sister Timmermans put him on my flat tummy at nine o’clock that night, the twenty-eighth of December 1964, his grandfather’s birthday. Although it was late Fre went to his father to tell him the news. When I had visited him with our other four children that afternoon there had been no indication whatsoever that the baby would be born so soon. Not wanting our old neighbour to be sticking around while the baby was being born, I had sent Lilian on her step (scooter) to her friend’s mother who had just left when my water broke, again without any warning cramps. From the day I knew that I was pregnant with Richard, I was sure that we were going to have another boy. Because our other two sons were born a month early, I said that his ‘little bit’ was shrinking when Christmas past and nothing happened. Fre’s father cried when Fre told him that we had another son, born on his birthday after all. “Now the old one can leave,” he said. “I’ll always be remembered on my birthday”. He always longed to be going to Fre’s mother. (Nineteen years later our grandson Darrell was born on that day too.) Perhaps because of my anxiety all those months before Richard was born, I was very depressed for weeks afterwards, even suicidal. It was a very worrying time for Fre; he knew what had happened to my mother after I was born, and madness was known to run in our family. Five years earlier, Tante Annie, my mother’s younger sister in Canada had become very depressed after the birth of her third child. She had hanged herself six months later. One day, about six weeks after Richard was born, Fre had taken a day off in a bid to cheer me up. The next day I went for a walk around a nearby ornamental lake, where I had fed the fish and the ducks with Fre on my own, feeling tearful and depressed again. On my way home I felt so utterly useless that I crossed the road in front of an oncoming car, hoping it would kill me. It is probably true that we all have a guardian angel; he must have been right there; I felt someone pulling me back onto the curb but, except for the driver of the car, cursing me, there was no one else to be seen. Richard was a very contented baby. He was able to amuse himself in his playpen for hours. One day he was cracking himself laughing while he did not have anything in the ‘box’ to play with. His big toe had stuck through a hole in his sock and he fell over time and again with laughter, tickling it. Too afraid to get pregnant, I stopped breastfeeding our new baby after three months again, even though I would have loved to go on for much longer. After struggling with my irregular periods for a couple of months, I took the pill, promising God that I would ‘let nature take its course’, as soon as I felt strong enough to have another child. But my conscience soon started troubling me again; how dare I try to take God’s power away! Fre was quite happy to have stopped us having more children when we had four while I still wanted six. But what would happen then? What hope did we have that it would ever stop without us going against God’s will? Or was it true what people said, that God had given people the brains to develop pills to protect the world from becoming over-populated? It couldn’t be; countries like Australia were still quite empty. During that time, I had tried to make friends with another young mother in the neighbourhood. I felt sorry for her living-in with her cantankerous mother-in-law, who bossed her around all day. Because she had only one child, who was five years old, they had no chance of ever getting a house, because people like us, ‘who were breading like rabbits’ had to have a house first, she said. A few weeks later, I felt terrible again when one of our old neighbour’s daughters talked about us over-populating the country and accused us of making it hard for them to get a house. “Clean living people like us, who are only having one child, have to wait, while others, who don’t give a damn, get first priority,” she said angrily. I later heard from her mother that she had been trying for years to have a second child... As time went on I started to feel pressurised to make up my mind. I still was missing one child, probably because I had always wanted six. I did not want too much space between them either so that they would grow up together. My back started to give me big problems again. This time the doctor sent me to a masseur because I was ‘only tensed up with nerves’. Like most people I hated to be told that it was ‘just nerves’: as if it was my own fault!

It’s amazing how our bottled-up emotions can attack us unexpectedly! Probably because of my earlier experiences with ‘over-sexed’ men, I had shaken the masseur’s treatment off as something those men did to women. I had not even intended including it in this chapter until I recently had a massage for the first time by a man. I was suffering from burnout when I attended an excellent workshop for health care workers with Petrea King the author of the ‘Quest for Life On the last evening of my five days at the Foundation in Bundanoon, New South Wales, I felt compelled to have a massage with Ray, one of the counsellors with whom I had talked - and cried - a lot. Even though I thought that I had worked through my problems, I felt nervous. Realising and disappointed that I was still ‘full of it’ a flood of tears set off the moment Ray asked if there were any areas he would touch that might be upsetting for me. I said there wasn’t. I was all right when he massaged my legs a little later but the minute he touched my back the floodgates opened again. While we sat talking about my unexpected reaction, I realised that this was the first massage I had from a man since my encounter with the physiotherapist after the birth of Richard, thirty- five years ago. While I told Ray about that horrible experience, I became very angry. “That bastard took advantage of me, a shy twenty-six-year-old mother of five children!” I said disgustedly. Could he possibly have known what he was doing to me, scaring the living daylight out of me when he locked the front door of the big villa, saying that I was his last client and later climbed on top of me to massage my painful back.? With Ray’s patient help I let my thoughts drift back to my feelings at the time, consciously accepting and expressing my anger and frustration, then let it go as we had learned in the course. I had taken my bra off as instructed at the time but insisted on keeping my pants on. I shuddered, again feeling his penis touching me through his clothes. The therapist’s conscience must have got the better of him as nothing bad had happened. Fre had been furious when I told him about it when I got home. I had gone back for more treatment later, making sure that there was someone with me. Knowing that that kind of abuse is now brought into the open, and grateful to get rid of yet another lot of bottled-up emotions, I slept like a baby that last night in Bundanoon.

Some people believed that a free spirit choose their own parents when they decide to come back to earth to learn more lessons; seeing our strong-willed youngest daughter, it could well have been true that her spirit had been pulling and pushing on me to be born. Whatever the reason for her to come into our lives, and what gave me the unshakable feeling that this would be the last time I was giving birth, I will never know. “Thank God!” I said when she slipped out of my body at eight-thirty in the morning of the ninth of May 1967. “This is it! I never, ever have to do this again!” As Princess Beatrix, now the Queen of Holland had recently given birth to her first son, Willem-Alexander, who was a prince, we named our eight-and-a-half pound bundle of joy, Regina ‘our little queen’. “People can worry as much as they like, but in the end God makes the rules anyway,” Mum would say, time and again. Her words came back to me when I sat in the specialist’s office in the hospital again, two years after Regine was born. Having sex had become near to impossible and I felt as if I was sitting on a lump. The doctor explained that my uterus had ‘prolapsed’ and had to be taken up, which was a big operation. Because I was so young - I was nearly thirty-one at the time - and I did not have an ounce of fat on me, the specialist decided to do the operation from the inside so that I would not have any scars. But he would not even consider doing the job unless he had permission to tie my tubes. Apart from undoing his work, another child would be a risk to me, he said. It seems incredible to me now, but it was a terrible decision for us to have to make at the time. What right did we have to play God by taking away the possibility of giving us more children; the ultimate blessings He could give his people? We agonised about it for months before we decided to ask a priest. Shortly after Regine was born, Fre was offered a bigger house and we had moved to Oosterbeek, just south of Arnhem. From his preaching we knew that the parish priest, who must have been well into his seventies, would never give his permission, even for the pill, which was by that time widely used by Catholics everywhere in Holland. So, we decided to ask his assistant, a much younger kapelaan (chaplain) to visit us one evening. The kapelaan had no objection at all for me to have my tubes tied. “With six children, you have surely done your duty,” he said. “I’m sure God wants a healthy mother to look after his children, not a mental and physical wreck.” Neither of us had any idea what to expect when Fre took me to the hospital that early morning in October 1970. During the operation I had kept on bleeding as fast as new blood was pumped into me, the surgeon told me later. All other surgery had been cancelled that day and a dozen donors had been called up, to save my life. I was still in hospital when we celebrated our copper wedding anniversary (twelve-and-a-half-years) two weeks later. Marriage was no bed of roses, mum had warned. Looking back on the first decade of our married life, made me appreciate Fre for the way he loved and supported me through those difficult, but also very happy and rewarding years. How could we ever lose sight of what we had been through together? Chapter FIFTY-ONE

Our marriage was just that: ‘a bed of roses’ with some sharp thorns. When I was about eight months pregnant, with our first child, I was confronted with Fre’s temper for the first time. We were at a party at Greet’s place, a few streets away, when they started to tell dirty jokes, killing themselves laughing. I could not believe the way Martha, who was getting married in a few weeks time, could talk such filth, making a shambles of everything that was beautiful between husband and wife. I felt sick in the stomach and, when Fre started to tell a risque joke too, I left the party. I was only just home when Fre stormed in, his face white with fury as I had humiliated him in front of his family. Before we married, we pledged never to go to sleep when we were angry with each other; it became a very long night before we finally agreed on a solution. As Fre had been drinking, he had temporarily forgotten that he was not in the navy any more, and I needed to lighten up; and not just a little! The incident was the end of the Tuesday evening get-togethers of Fre’s family, which made me feel guilty for a long time. While we had one child after another, I became obsessed with my sewing. There was always an excuse for one more dress or a pair of pants, even though our children had more clothes than they could wear. The house was often in a mess when Fre came home from work, which he hated. His mother and Bep had always had the place tidy when his father or Bert came home. Because I knew in my heart that my obsession with sewing was to blame, I felt that I had no right to expect Fre to help me with the housework. Fre was a wonderful husband and father until his stressful job as a foreman in a furniture factory, and the television took its toll. With three small children and the fourth on the way we could not afford a television set when it became readily available in Holland in the early sixties. Fre’s warning before we married not to try to stop him from going out when he wanted to do so, haunted me when he went off to his favourite sister Bep’s place two or three evenings a week, to watch soccer or a movie. I was often in tears as soon as he was gone. Afraid of his temper I would not dare try to stop him. This went on for a several weeks when Bep came to visit me one afternoon, asking what was wrong with our marriage. Having to stay home every night was very difficult for Fre. His father and sister blamed his restlessness on his time in the navy. The house had felt like a cage to him on his free weekends. Fre’s mother died when he was in the navy; he still feels bad by letting her down by going to Bep’s lively household after being home for only a short time. After staying home in the evenings for a few weeks, I was glad when Fre’s boss asked him to help make part of his glass and paint shop into a pharmacy for his wife, who was a pharmacist. As soon as we had eaten the evening meal he would be off on his pushbike again. Fre had sold his beloved brommer shortly after our first child was born ‘to buy a Koelstra’ he told his workmates. They had never heard about that type of car they said until they worked out that he had swapped it for a pram. I did not mind Fre going this time. He loved woodwork and we would use the extra income to save up for a second-hand car, but I was always worried about the fast way he rode his bike. One rainy day on his way back from work, Fre had driven into the back of a turning truck. I was expecting our third child at the time and sick with worry for hours, when our family doctor brought him home, covered in mud and blood, his front teeth missing. An ambulance had taken him to the hospital. It had taken the medics a while to realise that four of his teeth were false. One of his own teeth hung loose in his mouth, after the accident. Fre had pushed it back in which gave him an infection that caused him agonising pain for days. A policeman, who had attended to the accident, had warned Fre that he would serve him a fine if he ever caught him riding his bike so fast again. After the accident I could never go to sleep without Fre being home. When he was helping his boss with the cupboards for the pharmacy, they usually stopped working at ten o’clock. Picturing myself as a young widow, I paced the house until well after midnight one evening, as Fre had not come home. As there was no telephone I could use, I got on my own bike at one- thirty in the morning and went looking for him. Gasping, out of breath from the long, mostly up-hill ride to Rosendael where the boss lived, I knocked on the garage door half an hour later. Both men were stunned; they had been so busy that they had completely forgotten about the time. When the job was finished Fre’s boss offered Fre a four-year-old car we could pay off and later a job as a foreman in his newly set up small-furniture factory in Oosterbeek, on the other side of Arnhem, which employed half a dozen unstable young men. As winter came and he would be home in the evenings again, we bought our own television, on hire purchase, which put another strain on our already stretched budget. When our three eldest children were little, Fre always put them to bed and helped me with the dishes. But by the time they were doing the dishes after the evening meal, I was often left to put the little ones to bed on my own, while Fre watched television. Because I considered it my duty always to create a happy atmosphere in the house, I had soon learned to suppress my anger at being left with the work as well as being made responsible when things went wrong. Fre worked long days and needed to relax when he came home. He had come to expect to be left in peace and be waited on, just as I was instructed to do at the marriage retreat. New television stations were added in rapid succession and, by the time we had six children in 1970, the television dominated our lives completely. Fre could not, or refused to see, that our family life was suffering badly because of his TV addiction. He often stayed up until far after midnight, and was no longer up early enough to have breakfast with us in the morning. He needed more cigarettes that cost nearly as much as the rent. It had become the norm for him to have a couple of beers while he watched the endless games of soccer and their repeats on the German stations, while I could hardly make ends meet with our growing family. As our, at times heated arguments hardly made any difference, I often swallowed my anger and frustration. In the meantime I became cranky and very tearful at times while my love and respect for Fre suffered badly. As time went on, Fre found it impossible to cope with my bouts of depression; they made him feel guilty, as they had done Mum. Unable to control my tears, I directed the anger at myself, which had made me suicidal a couple of times; the first time after the birth of our fifth child. When I was at the bottom of such a depression I felt utterly useless and a failure, convinced that Fre and the children were better off without me...

We had talked about emigrating to Australia ever since we married but as long as we lived with Fre’s father that would not be possible. When he moved in with Greet four years later new plans were made. But, before we were getting serious about it, I was pregnant again with Richard. When we talked about emigrating again after our youngest daughter Regine came along in May 1967, more serious this time, Fre’s father cried and said that it would break his heart if we took his grandchildren away. When Regine was nine months old, Fre’s boss offered him a much bigger house, close to the job. So we emigrated from the council house in Velp to the boss’s house that tied him to the job, in Oosterbeek, on the other side of Arnhem. Then, in June 1970 Fre’s father died of pneumonia. Four months later I needed major surgery, which had put a stop to our plans again. In the meantime Fre was ready to quit his job; after working for seven years with those difficult youngsters, he was completely stressed out. Because we lived in a house that went with his job, and finding another house as well as a new job was near to impossible in Holland at the time, we discussed emigration to Australia again. But we did not do anything about it until December 1970. By that time Fre had become so frustrated with his job, that we had to make up our minds. Lilian was due to go to high-school the following summer; we had to go now or forget about it for good; it would be too difficult for our children to leave their friends behind when they got older. My strength had returned and there was no risk of having more children. Like most other mothers at that time I was also very concerned about the future of our daughters as thousands of presumingly hot-blooded men from Italy, Spain, Turkey and other southern European countries came to Holland to do the jobs our own folks no longer wanted. In a village close to where Fre had applied for a job, people were protesting strongly as six hundred men were moving into a former seminary for Catholic priest. The impact that would have on the young girls in the area did not bear thinking of... On New Years Eve that year we walked arm-in-arm through the snow to post a letter to my still single brothers Siem in Alice Springs and Henk in Melbourne, asking for their help. It took another eight months to get approval to join Siem in Alice Springs, a small town of eleven thousand people in the middle of the desert. Our arrival in the isolated centre was quite a shock to the system but I was delighted to hear that there was no television! Our immigration was a new start; after the first difficult months it became a wonderful adventure with all its ups and downs. Because the purpose of this book is to share my feelings about the impact my childhood experiences and my upbringing had on my adult life, the story of our first six years in Alice Springs is a separate book.

We had been in Australia for two years when trouble started again. Being alone at home, day after day, with the children at school and Fre at work, sewing against the clock to help pay the mortgage on our new house, the walls were coming upon me. It took lots of tears and an ugly fight to get Fre’s approval for me to take on a job outside the house. He had not emigrated to Australia to have his wife go out to work, he said. None of our sisters or any of our brothers’ wives were working outdoors in Holland. It did not matter to him that I was sewing all day at home to earn money. At least I was home whenever one of the children was sick, or he needed me himself. I felt like a bird let out of a cage when Fre finally agreed to let me get a job, even though he had only given his consent because he was afraid that I would end up in a mental institution if he didn’t. Working in the material section of a large supermarket, was a real eye-opener to me but after nine months I could not stand the pressure any more. I always wanted to be a nurse and I was delighted when I got a job as a nursing-aide at the Old Timers Home, looking after elderly people, not old cars, as our families in Holland thought when they got my letter, telling them about my new job. Because I now worked for a mission, Fre did not feel so bad about me working outdoors, but he would have far preferred for me to stay home sewing again. Although I had no training whatsoever and it was hard to juggle the long days of broken shifts, early mornings and late nights with six teenagers at home, I loved working with the ‘oldies’ from the day I started. However, because Fre resented me being away so much we both felt rejected. It was no wonder that I fell in love with a co-worker who gave me the attention I craved for so much, a year later. Desperately unhappy I slipped away in my little car one evening, leaving Fre to watch his beloved television that had been relayed to Alice Springs too in December 1972. I came back to earth at the gate of the hostel when a voice from inside asked if I knew what I was doing. Was I prepared to sacrifice my family’s happiness by walking out on them? Lucky for both our families as well as that of my colleague’s, Fre and I were able to sort out our problems again that time. In May 1977 we went to Holland for the first time, after being in Alice Springs for six years. While we were planning the trip we became naturalised in December, each for our own reasons. Because I had heard so many stories of people wanting to go back to live in their home country, after their first visit, I wanted to make sure that Fre could not change his mind. That was offcourse very naive, as it would not prevent anybody from becoming homesick the biggest looming disaster for any emigrant. On the contrary, not being able to go back may aggravate the longing to do so, like lovers being kept apart... As we were all happy to be in Australia Fre wanted to apply for a job at the nearby American ‘space-base’ for which he needed to be an Australian citizen. So, we became ‘Aussies’, then went back to see if we had done the right thing.

It was great to see the family again but Ð thank God - we were both glad to get back to Australia six weeks later where we felt we now belonged. Holland looked so small and full, and the people seemed so narrow-minded. Most of them could not understand the freedom we enjoyed while we were working so hard. We were devastated when we learned the day after our return that someone had taken over Fre’s job at the Panorama where he had worked ever since we had come to Australia in ‘71. We still had all six children at home to be fed and educated and I was booked to go into hospital to have a hysterectomy. While we were in Holland, Lilian, our eldest daughter and her boyfriend had broken up. One of my nursing friends had moved heaven and earth to get her into nursing training in Melbourne and, a few weeks after we came home our first child left the nest. She was homesick from the start mainly because of the grey skies, but when she rang me one evening three months later, she sounded happy and excited. “Bruce has been to see me Mum!” she said enthusiastically. “We are engaged; I’m coming home on Saturday!” For a moment I felt myself sway, then I heard Lilian’s voice, urgently asking: “Are you there Mum? Why don’t you say anything? Aren’t you happy for me?” “How can I be happy about you quitting after all the trouble Molly went through for you?” I asked. “I was so happy for you to have the chance to become the nurse I was not allowed to be.” “I know Mum, I’m sorry, but nursing is not for me,” Lilian said, timidly now. “I hoped you could be happy for me...” I reminded her that she was only seventeen and she had her whole life before her. Sure, she was as mature as I was when I got married at eighteen but Bruce was only twenty, just a boy. When I asked what I was supposed to do with Simone, who was so happy in her big sister’s old room, she replied that there was no need for me to kick her out. She would be quite happy with a tent in the back yard, as long as she was allowed to come home. A tent in the back yard is what she got! We put the red barn-like tent with a blue roof, a gift from Fre’s father we had brought from Holland, up on thelawn behind the house, complete with a piece of carpet, a single bed, a chair, and a bunch of flowers on a card-table in a corner. We made a sign above the entrance that said: “Welcome Home, Lilian!” When she had recovered from the sight, we told her that we had hired a small caravan from a friend for her but it was not available until the following afternoon. The matron of Old Timers at the time offered her a job in the kitchen and peace returned to our lives, unfortunately not for long. For all sorts of reasons, my surgery was cancelled by the hospital seven times, and always at the last minute, until I was finally sent to Adelaide at the end of November, seven months later. Before we went to Holland I had applied for the first nursing training course to be held in the new Alice Springs Hospital but because of my pending surgery I had missed out. It was heartbreaking for me when I was told that I was considered to be not fit enough to apply again after I had had an hysterectomy. When I went back to work in February I was sent home again. As nursing proved too heavy for me at least for six months I enrolled in a receptionist course at the Community College so that I could apply for a job in the office of the nursing home. Old Timers, had been extended that year to a modern complex, catering to the needs of one hundred elderly and disabled people. The matron of Old Timers offered me a part-time job in the office in March. I had been in there for a few weeks when a new matron started, the fifth since I began working there three years earlier. Unfortunately things went terribly wrong the following summer (1979) when the new matron and I could no longer get along. From the day she came back from a two week holiday, she only spoke to me via the secretary, and only if she really had to. I could only guess what could have been the reason for such a debilitating treatment. As there had been a lot of trouble with mothers having to do shifts in after school hours I had talked to each member of the staff and made up a workable roster. Feeling rejected I started to suffer from migraine headaches, back trouble and severe stomach pains. The fact that Fre had never been happy with me working at Old Timers did not help matters either; I soon became tearful and depressed again. Since he had lost his job as a picture framer at the Panorama two years earlier, Fre had been doing odd cabinet making jobs for people, which he hated. That spring he had renovated an old cottage for the new matron using as many old materials as he could, as instructed by the manager to save money for the organisation. He had enjoyed doing the job, but an architect who had flown up from Sydney to inspect the renovations and extensions of the new nursing home, condemned the old building. In the end it had taken the manager, a builder himself more then two months to persuade the business manager of the mission to pay their debt. Because my lowly paid, part-time job had to see our family through during that time, things went from bad to worse for me at home as well as at work. By December I had no choice but to take the specialists advice, to quit the job I loved. When I (tearfully) handed in my resignation the matron told me why she was angry with me; I had gone ‘over her head’ when I had asked the accountant who was up from missions head office why I was payed a lot less then the kitchen staff. She asked me to reconsider my resignation, but it was too late. I am sure the matron, a single lady without children and the apparently wealthy business man from Sydney never realised what they did to me and my family... He would have only wanted to save money for the mission.

When one door closes an other opens... In his spare time Fre had picked up painting landscapes and, after his first successful one- man exhibition at a local fair we opened our own picture framing business in January 1980 which included a gallery to sell Fre’s paintings. As we did not have a penny to our name, we borrowed two and a half thousand dollars from my brother Siem to pay for the necessary tools and materials, to make a start. While I write this, I still feel the butterflies playing havoc in my stomach on opening night... It was a very sad day for me when I had to say goodbye to my friends at Old Timers at the end of December, and I missed my colleagues for a very long time. The relationship with our customers was never the same as it had been with my old friends; it couldn’t be. Our business soon flourished. During the following year, Fre started leadlight classes for the local craft council, which became very popular. When my youngest brother Ties emigrated from Holland with his young family in February 1981, we extended into an empty shop next door, selling leadlight supplies as well as art materials. Like my brother Siem had done for us in 1971, we had signed a paper in which we promised a job and accommodation for Ties and his family for twelve months. That way Ties could look out for a job in his own field, earthmoving while he lived and worked with us. At times it became very difficult to keep the peace with five teenagers - Lilian married in 1978 - three small children and four adults in the house but, when Ties and his family left after eight months, the place seemed terribly empty. During their stay our eldest son Raymond finished his apprenticeship as a diesel-mechanic and went to Queensland with his girlfriend. Eugene, our second son, had moved to Darwin as an apprentice draftsman. Seventeen-year-old Simone followed him a couple of months later transferred as a receptionist, working in a government office. The following year Richard also left for Darwin to finish his apprenticeship as a motor-mechanic. Left alone at home Regine was bored to tears. She moved into a flat as soon as she turned seventeen in 1984. Our children could not wait to leave Alice Springs and spread their wings, but most of them came back when they got married. Only Richard lives in Darwin now and Simone lives in Perth. Lucky for us, seven of our eleven grandchildren are living nearby. Chapter FIFTY-TWO

Yes, our marriage was just that: a bed of beautiful roses with some very sharp thorns! Having our own business, being together twenty-four hours a day, proved to be a big strain on our marriage. After the first couple of years it started to gnaw at me that I had to work hard all day to get the orders ready with the help of a seventeen-year-old boy while Fre would make the frames early in the morning then go home to paint. Like most artists Fre was very sensitive to any pressure; if his paintings sold well he became too agitated to paint and if he had not sold any for a while, he became depressed and had no inspiration to paint at all. Soon after we opened the gallery the bottom had fallen out of the art market, and as time went on, Fre’s beautiful paintings were barely paying the rent, let alone the high cost of advertising to get tourists into the gallery. While Fre seemed to have an easy life, watching a lot of television to clear his mind and get inspiration, I lay awake at night fighting my depression again, as there was often no money to pay the bills on time. In the meantime Fre felt bored, lonely and ‘left out’ because I kept the worries of running our business away from him for fear of him not being able to paint. He often had a bad headache from which he had suffered off and on as long as I had known him, for days. In April 1983, seven members of our family, four from Fre’s and three from mine came from Holland to help us celebrate our silver wedding anniversary, while we were ready to divorce. We were both feeling lonely and miserable, hardly speaking to each other. Fre’s favourite sister, Bep, was horrified when she saw what was happening. “You are crazy!” she scolded me when she found me in tears the day before the party. “You have spoilt that brother of mine rotten!” My mother was blissfully unaware of what was happening. Not only were three of the seven from Holland staying with us but all our children were home for the occasion as well as my brother Henk, who had come from Melbourne with his lovely wife Robin, their two young sons and Robin’s parents. As well as running the shop it was left up to me to organise outings, find accommodation for most of them and prepare the anniversary party which was to be held at home. Earlier that morning I had taken an hour off from the shop. I was drinking coffee with some of our guests in the back yard, when Mum got angry with me. “You should be ashamed of yourself letting Robin and her mother slave in the kitchen while you sit here in the sun on your lazy bum, sipping coffee,” she said, humiliating me in front of everyone. Knowing at the time as I know now that loss of compassion is often the first sign of Altzheimer’s Disease would no doubt have shifted my feelings of anger and deep hurt to sadness and concern for my mother’s health. As always the harder I tried to control my tears, the more they seemed to flow. A trip to Queensland in our Volkswagen-Kombi after the visitors had gone was an opportunity for us to talk, and acting upon some painful decisions when we came home, which included closing the gallery gave our marriage a new lease of life again. During the following year two more of our children got married, Ray in May and Simone in December 1984. As for Lilian I made the wedding dresses for the brides as well as the dresses of their bridesmaids and my own, while the work at the shop had to go on as usual. Ray’s wedding was held in a restaurant but, as Lilian’s had six years earlier, Simone’s was held at home in the garden. That day everything that could go wrong went wrong. But later that evening, my new son-in-law’s eighty-four-year-old grandmother, who had come from Sydney by bus because of a plane strike, said that it was the best wedding she had ever been to. As she had been a teacher all her life, that must have been hundreds, she said. Then, in April 1986, Mum came to Alice Springs with Ome Hannes and my brother Wim for Eugene’s wedding. Three weeks later, Fre and I went with them to Jakarta where my bachelor brother Sam at the age of forty-eight married an Indonesian girl, whom he had met only once before. Their wedding and Mum’s suffering with diarrhoea and heat-exhaustion, of which she never fully recovered. In the meantime I had become very dissatisfied with my life. With my fiftieth birthday fast approaching, I felt that life was passing me by. I felt trapped and could not see a way out. Fre had a marvellous time when he was young, while all I had known was work. My time would come when the children were off my hands, but I could not see that happening for a long time. Perhaps because Fre was nine years older than I was he could not wait for the last of our children to leave home, but I suffered badly from the empty-nest-syndrome. Regine, our youngest, had left home two years earlier and I was still working as hard as ever. Since we had closed the gallery Fre became more and more uncomfortable having to serve customers in our picture-framing shop. He agonised for days when he had to face a new group of leadlight students, even though he was very popular and seemed relaxed as soon as the course started. We had put the shop on the market, but as more than two hundred new shops had been built in town that year there was no hope of anyone buying such a specialised business as ours. As always when I was under a lot of stress, I angrily fought my tears and my back gave me a lot of problems. A week before I was due to fly to Holland with Fre to nurse my dying mother in November 1988, I could hardly move. My popular Chinese chiropractor put me ‘on ice’ which sped up the healing process considerably. Mum was not expected to be alive on our arrival. It was an awful shock for both of us to see the dark rings around her eyes, her terrible blue lips and hugely swollen legs. The doctor had given her the strongest medication against fluid retention and the day of our arrival was the most critical point of the cure. She survived, due to my new Indonesian sister-in-law’s father’s prayers, Mum insisted later. A couple of days after our arrival, she was allowed to go home. If we had known what was in store for us, Fre and I would probably not have been so eager to hang out the Dutch flag to celebrate. There was no way Mum could live alone but she flatly refused even to consider leaving her house, accusing me of coming home to put her away in a nursing home. Although it was midwinter with snow and ice, she demanded to be cared for by Wim and Wout’s wives who both had small children. They all did what they could for her but it was never good enough. While I was having a difficult time with Mum I spent an anxious night about the whereabouts of our youngest daughter. She had gone to America to be with, and possibly marry her boyfriend who had left several months earlier. As she had not called us as promised I rang him a couple of days before we returned to Australia. Regine only had stayed for two days he said, she had gone to a girlfriend in another state, as things had not worked out between them. When I finally got in contact with Kathy she told me that Regine had only stayed for two days too. When she said that Regine had left for Australia in a very depressed state I paniced, as nobody had said anything about her when I had rang home. Saying that there was probably a simple explaination for the situation, Fre stopped me from ringing Lilian out of bed untill a more reasonable hour in the morning. Untill they have children of their own, a daughter would probably not understand that as a mother you are always a part of your children’s lives no matter how much you want them to be free to live their own independant lives. Regine had told her brothers and sisters not to say anything to us; she would ring us herself, which she had simply forgotten... Ninety-nine percent of our worries never eventuate, I was told... But still... Our youngest son Richard was also in Holland at the time. Although I could have done without the additional stress of his relationship with his Portuguese girlfriend, I had a lot of support from him as well as from Fre. Because Jackie’s mother was deaf and she spoke no English, her parents wanted a Portuguese husband, preferably one of high standing for their daughter, their only child. When the youngsters’ relationship became serious they forbade Jackie to see our son. When the parents took taken their daughter to Portugal for a year, shortly after she finished her matriculation in November 1996, Richard became a nervous wreck. The idea was that, if they still felt the same about each other when the year had passed, they would be allowed to see each other again. During that time, Jackie’s family interceptedRichard’s letters to her, as every contact between the young lovers was forbidden and with the year nearly gone he had still not heard from her. A week after we returned to Australia early in January 1988, Richard went by train from Holland to Portugal to see her. After a nightmarish week for both of them, Jackie had not turned up at the station at the arranged time to go back with him. He had left a note with a trusted friend at the local tourist bureau. Back in Hollond Richard stayed with Mum in what were going to be the last weeks of her life. A few weeks after mum died, when he had just about given up hope of seeing Jackie ever again, she phoned him. Two weeks later she arrived at Schiphol airport. The young couple got married at a registary office in Amersfoort at the end of March. Jackie was later re-united with her parents and, six months to the day after they married in Holland, they came to Alice Springs for the happy couple’s official church wedding. When they had been married for eleven years, Jackie’s mother gave Richard an expensive bracelet ‘to make up for the hardship she had caused him’ which he wears all the time. In November 1989, eighteen months after my mother’s death, our eldest daughter, Lilian, took over the management of our business, which we then had for ten years. The decision to quit had been extremely hard for me as it meant that Fre, at the age of sixty, had to find another job. I agonised about it for months but I had no choice as by that time I had come to the end of my tether. My mother had taken over my mind and I was crying at the drop of a hat again, making costly mistakes in the shop. My earlier nightmares, in which I dreamt of a big liverwurst - Pa’s penis - choking and strangling me, came back again. I realised that something was seriously wrong when I woke up crying one morning a year after Mum died, while I had been quite happy the night before and I could not remember having dreamt at all. “Where does all this sadness come from?” I asked Fre in despair. Fre had been patient with me for ages, becoming very frustrated with my unpredictable behaviour. After he left to go to the shop on his own that morning, I plucked up courage and made an appointment to see a counsellor. The minute I saw the young Canadian counsellor, I started crying again. “How can a young fellow like him possibly know how I feel?” I thought. The young man seemed to take no notice of my tears. He must have handed me a dozen tissues, while I told him what had happened in my life. He laughed heartily when, at the end of my story I sobbed in desperation: “I’m nearly fifty and I haven’t done anything yet!” When he stopped laughing he said: “Here is a woman who has brought up six children. She left her own country and built up a new future far away from home, taken up nursing without any experience whatsoever, started and managed a successful business, and she is crying because she hasn’tdone anything yet! What you probably mean is that you haven’t done anything for yourself?” he asked. I stared at him for a moment as he had hit the nail right on the head. That was exactly what the matter was with me! When I apologised for my tears for the umpteenth time, he told me never to be ashamed of them. He assured me that crying was not a sign of weakness as most people thought it was. Tears released the poison in our system; it would make us very ill if we always suppressed them, he said, as he explained the ‘fright, fight or flight’ system to me. After we talked about what I wanted out of life and what my options were to make more balance in my existence, the counsellor asked if I could bring my husband next time. I said that there was not much hope of that. Like most men and lots of women, Fre had a very low opinion of psychiatrists and other counsellors, mainly due to the way they are portrayed in movies and on television where they are often shown to be madder then their patients. Apart from that, there was nothing wrong with him; it was me that was crying all the time! I went back to the counsellor another two times and read all sorts of self-help books of which Louis Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life and Gerald Jampolsky’s Love Is Letting Go Of Fear were the most helpful to get me on my feet again. In the meantime I went showering elderly people for the Red Cross and took their trolley around the wards in the hospital while Lilian, our eldest daughter as well as my best friend, came to help Fre in the shop. After three months I was feeling my old self again when out of the blue something went terribly wrong, one Sunday morning at the end of June. Early that morning I had woken up in tears again without any reason. The thought about spoiling the weekend for Fre, his predictable anger and the children’s questions about my red eyes when they came to visit with our little grandchildren, made me panic. I slipped out of our bed and took a hot shower, hoping to get myself under control. But that did not happen. Although I had been suicidal once or twice before, when the children were little, I found it hard to believe that people could actually harm themselves the way they did, until that Sunday morning. Standing under the shower, unable to put a stop to my tears, I became disgusted with myself. ‘Old habits die hard’: I still saw my tears as a terrible weakness no matter what any counsellor said. I hated my inability and my unwillingness to conform to what was expected of me. For the next couple of minutes I gave myself a thrashing I believed I deserved, furiously hitting my thighs with my fists. When I dried myself a little later, I stared in shock at the big black marks that were fast appearing on my legs. I was going crazy! A deep calm came over me when I looked into my frightened eyes in the bathroom mirror; this was the end of me torturing myself! I had done the best I could; I would go mad if I kept going like this any longer, ending up in Ward One, the mental ward in hospital if I did not take care of my own needs, the young Canadian counsellor had said. Fre woke up when I went into the bedroom. When I showed him what Ihad done, he took me in his arms, rocking me and kissing my tears away. After a few minutes he let go of me. I went into the kitchen and made a cup of tea with a crisp Dutch rusk we usually had in bed on a Sunday morning. Feeling good about myself, a plan formed in my head but I did not tell Fre about it when I came back in the bedroom. Early the following morning I went to see Maureen, our accountant who had become a trusted friend to me through the years. After I told her my plan of action, I showed her what I had done to myself the previous morning. Maureen hugged me, saying that she was glad that I had finally been able to accept that I had to get out of the shop before it was ‘too late’. Maureen agreed whole-heartedly with my decision. Although I am grateful now to have felt what it was like to own one’s own business, I was a nurse at heart; not a business women. When I came home, Fre was watching the midday news. I set the table outside in the warm winter-sun, then I asked him to switch off the television as I had something important to tell him, after we had eaten. Not knowing how he would re-act, I could hardly swallow my sandwich. When we finished eating, I took a deep breath and said: “I’ve been to see Maureen this morning.” “Oh!” Fre said. “What for?” I told him then that I had decided to get out of the shop for good and what I wanted us to do. “We will have a huge clean-up sale, making as much money as we can, as we did when we closed the gallery,” I said. “Then I want to advertise the shop for half the selling price. If it has not been sold at the end of October, my fiftieth birthday we will sell out; I want to be free by Christmas.” I could have known Fre’s reaction; he hated the shop, as that was the only thing that made me so miserable in his eyes. “That’s fine with me, if that’s what you want,” he said while he stood up from his chair, then walked inside and turned the TV back on. I was stunned! After all those months of agonising that was all he had to say? A week before my birthday, when it was clear that we had no hope of selling the shop, Lilian asked us if she could take it over. She liked picture framing and she was good at leadlighting. Her two boys were now going to school and it would give her a full-time job. With Fre’s help and Liz, our faithful American part-timer, she would have no problems running it. At the time I was not happy at all about her taking over, as I knew that I still would have to be involved. But after all that has happened since, I am glad now that I agreed to give her a chance. We stayed around to teach her the ins and outs of the business until the end of January, when we set out on a two-month holiday around the East Coast of Australia. We were in Queensland six weeks later, when I rang Lilian at home on her thirty-first birthday. My whole world fell apart when she told me that her husband had left her and her two young children, a week after we had gone. When we had somewhat recovered from the initial shock we wondered if he had been unable to cope with Lilian’s new assertiveness which included losing twenty-five kilos. Not wanting to spoil our holiday, she had said that everything was fine when we rang her on Saturday mornings at the shop, to see if she needed our help. She had asked our other children not to say anything either, when we rang any of them. No longer able to relax, we cut our holiday short. For the next three months I was needed in the shop again, while Lilian tried to come to terms with her grief, and I took over the book- keeping permanently. I did not mind, as I had no idea what I wanted to do with my freedom anyway. Fre wanted to lease our house out and go around Australia for a year. He expected me to be happy reading books, embroidering, knitting for the grandchildren and making cups of coffee for him, while he would earn our keep by painting the countryside, selling his paintings on our way. I felt terrible to have to disappoint him, but that was the last thing I wanted. I was only fifty and wanted to make something of my life, other than being a wife and a mother. In July that year (1990) we went on a six week trip to the Kimberlies in the beautiful Geikie Gorge were we met up with an elderly couple from New Zealand. As always, when we talked about our emigration, Alan and Beth were very interested to hear our stories about us leaving our home country to settle in Allice Springs in all places, telling me to write them all down. I had told Beth that I was at a crossroads in my life and writing did appeal to me. She laughed when I said that writing your autobiography was something you did when you were eighty and there was nothing else to do. She happened to be an author herself writing for different magazines. They later invited us for dinner at the caravan park in Kununurra, where we talked about books and writing all night. Life is full of ups and downs; so much has happened since I started writing ten years ago. Retirement proved to be completely different then I expected. Because of my experiences with Fre’s father’s retirement and my fear of being locked in at home again, that became a very scary time for me. I expected Fre to be watching TV most of the time but - Thank God - that did not happen. We were just finding our way when Lilian was badly injured in a car accident while on a camping holiday at Kangaroo Island, in January 1990 with her two sons aged seven and ten. She had to be cut out of the wreck and was airlifted to a hospial in Adelaide where she stayed for ten days with a bad leg cut and broken arm. During the next three months we were both in the shop full-time as well as looking after our two eldest grandsons, then helping out until Lilian was back on her feet again at the end of the year. My ex-son-in-law honestly did not know what he was doing to Lilian as well as her younger son Darrell when he took Steven on holiday to his parents in Adelaide that Christmas, with the intention of settling in Tasmania with our daughter’s new-found friend...I was with her in the shop on the seventeenth of January 1991 the day the war broke out in the Middle East, when Bruce rang to say that Steven was not coming back. He had told me earlier that he strongly belived that a child should choose which parent he wanted to live with after their parents broke up; then forget about the other. He had seen nothing but heartache as kids were being pulled from one parent to the other, he said. For the next six months we had no contact with our grandson whatsoever as ours as well as Lilian’s letters were intercepted. The only contact she had was with the headmaster of his school. While were in Canada in May 1991, to gather information for this book Lilian went to Tasmania, to see for herself that Steven was happy to stay with his father. At the end of her two-day stay, he decided to come back to Alice Springs with her.

After we spent five very stressful months in Holland and Canada I had great difficulties settling down to writing. The novelty of being home together day in day out soon wore off. Afraid of being criticised, we both felt ‘watched’ in whatever we were doing. In 1993 we sold the ‘Dutch Embassy’, the first house we owned and build a new house on a beautiful piece of natural bush-land here in Alice Springs. Because we were able to buy with the money Mum left us, I look upon it as a gift from her to make up for the hardships she had caused me. Apart from the plumbing, the electricity, and the roof we build the entire house, just the two of us. I look back upon those two years as a builder’s labourer, as some of the best years of my life. Even though, or perhaps because the work was heavy, I never once suffered from backache during that time. When the house was finished, we suddenly seemed to have nothing in common any more. Throughout the years we always had a lot of problems with our sexuality, due to my abuse as well as my upbringing. After we were married, we soon learned that we could not do whatever we wanted to in bed, as we had been made to believe. Our training to restrain ourselves before we married proved to be a great help when we were struggling with birth-control without being able to use the pill. Then, when we finally could use that wonderful pill, there was no longer an excuse for me to refuse having sex when I was too tired, or simply did not feel like it. For a woman to refuse her husband was a terrible sin, I was taught at the retreat; she would be driving her man into the arms of another woman... In later years Fre blamed the surgery I had to have - a prolapse repair in 1970 and a hysterectomy in 1978 - for my inability to enjoy our lovemaking, as it nearly always hurt me. But I am convinced that it was mainly due to my attitude to sex, which was completely the opposite of Fre’s ideas. To me, having sex has little or nothing to do with making ‘love’. Unless I felt loved and appreciated, I could not relax enough to enjoy it, while having sex was Fre’s way of showing his love for me. By the time the house was finished, we hardly dared to touch each other for fear of giving the wrong impression. To avoid getting hurt, it became a situation of ‘no cuddles no sex’ and ‘no sex no cuddles’. Consequently, we both became very lonely and miserable again, each lying at the edge of our double bed, hardly talking to each other. Fre became restless again, homesick for Holland while all I wanted to do was write. I could not understand why he could not enjoy our new house after all the hard work we had done to get it finished. Because we had always done everything together, it was hard on Fre when I refused to go with him to Holland in March 1995. The last two visits in 1987 to nurse my mother, and four years later to gather information for this book, had been very difficult for me. I don’t like flying and I could not bear the thought of trying to fit in with the demands of our families again. Apart from that, we did not have the money; the few thousand dollars we had left after we had finished the house were for emergencies like having to buy another car. I felt very sad when Fre left on his own but the separation proved to be the best thing that could have happened to us at that time. After a couple of days I settled down to writing my family’s story. I had a wonderful time, writing, eating and sleeping whenever I wanted. I could switch the light on to read in bed at all hours of the night and listen to soft music instead of the noise of the television. To be able to visit my friends and stay out as long as I wanted without Fre worrying about me - and our car - when I stayed out late, was such a relief. Whenever I felt lonely in the house, I simply switched the television on in the lounge and pretended that Fre was there, watching. At times I felt terribly guilty that I did not miss him at all, especially when he rang, as he did not sound happy in Holland at all. I am keeping the two letters he wrote to me that time, just in case he gets homesick again in the future... Then, early one morning, three weeks after Fre had left, the phone rang. It was Jopie, my only sister. “Ah! Jopie! Nice of you to call so early in the morning; I guess you knew that I would be writing,” I said. “Yes, I thought you would be up. But I don’t have happy news for you, Mien,” my sister’s voice, from the other side of the earth, said. While she spoke all the blood drained from my face and my legs turned to jelly. “Oh my God!” I thought. “Fre!” “No, it isn’t Fre,” I heard Jopie say. “It’s our Wim; he had a heart-attack this afternoon; he died instantly.” My feelings of intense relief that it wasn’t Fre were replaced immediately by immense sadness. My dear brother Wim, taken at the age of fifty-two, leaving his lovely wife Gerda to cope with their three, teenage daughters. It was late at night in Holland when Jopie rang and my family had not been able to contact Fre as he was staying with a friend for a couple of days. We decided that I would ring him in the afternoon, early in the morning in Holland to tell him what had happened. By that time I had phoned Sam in Queensland and Henk in Victoria to tell them the sad news, and arrangements had been made for me to go to the funeral with Ties, who lives a few streets away from us, here in Alice Springs. At first I did not plan to go, but after a few hours I knew that I needed to go for my own sake, to heal the wounds of Mum’s death. Our goodbye, after I had been home to nurse her, had been very cold, and I had not gone back for her funeral, when she had died a month later. Even though it took nearly all our savings, I am glad that I went. There was a lot of anger in me at the time and those three weeks proved a time of great healing for me. One day, a week after Wim’s funeral, Wout and I were looking at the headstones at the village cemetery, when I suddenly stood before the elaborate marble tomb of Pastoor van R. “Oh! I’d like to kick his grave for what he has done to me!” I said, as a gulf of anger hit me. “Meid toch!” Wout said. “That you are still so obsessed with what happened in the past!” The next minute I heard Mum’s voice as Wout said: “He might have been a priest, but he was also a man; he would not have known any better.” “Yes, I know; they were only twelve-year-old kids when they were sent to a seminary to become priests,” I said timidly. “At the time, people would probably never have told them at confession that they were sexually abused, but still.” Thinking about my abuse these days makes me wonder if it is any better that things are now in the open and everyone, male or female is under suspicion of sexually abusing children. Our whole family would have fallen apart; my mother and every one of my siblings would have suffered the terrible stigma of shame and humiliation instead of just me... Back in Alice Springs, Fre and I had a lot of talking to do which resulted in sharing the housework and leaving each other free to do what we liked the rest of the time. Best of all for me was taking turns in cooking for a week each, including deciding what to eat, doing the shopping and the dishes. Fre would do the vacuuming while I took care of the washing. Those arrangements gave me the freedom we each needed to develop our individual gifts; Fre for building street-organs and showing people how they work and me for my hobbies; writing, gardening and caring for the elderly. Gardening, especially weeding is the best form of meditation for me. It wasn’t until I recuperated from my nervous breakdown in 1990 that I began to realise that my tears had kept me sane. After Wim’s death five years later, Fre finally began to see them as a safety valve too, thanks to watching Dr John Gray, the author of ‘Men Are From Mars And Women Are From Venus’ on television one day. When he started to put his arms around me instead of getting angry with me, our relationship improved immediately, as there was no longer a need for me to be angry with him as well as with myself. Instead of feeling sorry for myself for days on end as I had in the past, a good cry now takes care of any depression, usually within a couple of hours. Fre and I are each other’s best friends again, as we were when we started out together more than forty years ago. I am now convinced that being each other’s best friend is far more important in a marriage than being in love as being in love is mainly physical, while friendship is mental and spiritual. What a pity it took all those years to learn such simple lessons!

Yes, our marriage was just that: a bed of beautiful roses with some very sharp thorns all right! Because I grew up with so much violence, I tried to keep the peace in my own home at all costs, which meant that I did not speak up when I needed to do so. Researching and writing this book and the story about our emigration has been a tremendous learning experience for me. My involvement with elderly people as a caring volunteer during those last ten years has also taught me to give everybody ‘the benefit of the doubt’. I firmly believe that people are basically good; we all thrive when we are loved, not spoilt! And yes, I do believe in a loving God. Asking God - the spirit of uncoditional Love and compassion within me - to guide me in everything I say and do gives me the necessary energy and enthusiasm to keep going. This little prayer is also providing me courage to speak up when I need to do so. I have come to believe that whatever happens to us throughout our lives needs to happen in order for us to grow. Where would I have been without those experiences? Now that Fre and I have finally learned to let each other be free to develop our god-given talents and we learned to communicate and listen to each other’s likes and needs properly, our life is just wonderful. Of course, it needs two to tango: Fre’s willingness to learn along with me saved our marriage and made it the strong and warm relationship we now enjoy. I am a very lucky woman! * Epilogue

Peace came to my family after Wout and I had left home. Pa soon got rid of the milk-run, including the horse and cart. A few years later he sold the chooks and demolished every one of the four chook-houses my father had built so meticulously. Then he sold the Temple, my grandparents’ little house. Wout would have loved to buy it but Tony wanted to stay in the village as she had enough of scraping a living on the land. From the money of the sale, Pa replaced the old shed where I had always done the washing and, in 1967, he finally built his dream-house, a long boerderij with a roomy entrance, a lounge, a kitchen-dining-room and three bedrooms. It had a big laundry, six pigpens and enough room for ten cows at the back. In November that year, Pa turned sixty-five and he was entitled to an old age pension. (In Holland a full old age pension is paid to everybody, regardless of income. The surplus is paid back as income tax at the end of the financial year.) The following spring Pa sold the cows and the land in the polder as well as that beside the railway near the village. The hooiberg disappeared along with the lean-to and the manure heap. The empty space was added to the grassland at the back of the house, leased out to a new neighbour across the road. Mum hadn’t known herself when she moved into the modern house, and now they did not have to go milking any more either. Pa did not enjoy his retirement long. After several strokes he died the following spring - March 1969 - aged sixty-six. He had a terrible death. After the first couple of strokes he was completely paralysed and he had lost his speech. The visit of his two beloved sisters, two days before he died was an experience no one in the family would forget easily. “Jong toch! What have you done now?” Tante Marie had asked, when she walked into the bedroom and saw Pa lying on the bed. Being unable to reply, Pa’s body shook violently. Mum had calmed him down with great difficulty then she had left him alone with his sisters. But they had not stayed long; they were unable to cope with seeing their brother in such a deplorable state, they said. When I visited Pa’s family in 1991 to find out about the truth, every one of his three sisters and their husbands had died. When I called in at Tante Mieneke’s place her daughter-in-law, a very pleasant lady in a wheelchair answered the door. She had MS and was waiting for a taxi to take her to her appointment with a physiotherapist. When I told her briefly what I had come for, she said that she knew very little of her husband’s family. She had loved Tante Mieneke dearly and she had never let her mother-in-law talk to her about things that had happened in her life. After being quiet for a moment, the lady said; “Moeke was terribly scared of dying. I now know that it is important to listen when people want to unburden themselves, but at the time, I did not want to know about it. I had done in the past.” After we talked for a few more minutes, Tante Mieneke’s daughter-in-law said thoughtfully; “Moeke was terribly sorry for something she and her younger sister had done to their brother...” “That’s all I wanted to know,” I said excitedly. “You have helped me tremendously!” After I thanked her for her time and wished her all the best, I went happily on my way to see Tante Marie’s family. I found Cor, the youngest of her three sons alone in the family home. He had never married. Joe had married my friend Annie. They were still ‘working their fingers to the bone’ and ‘slaving away’ in the garden and in their hot houses on their own property, a little further on, Cor said. Their brother Wim, whose impressive gardens were across the road from his brothers’ places, had died of a heart attack at the age of forty-seven, the previous year. His widow told me that he had made himself so angry at the City Council over a piece of land they were taking from him to make a footpath into a lane way, a shortcut to town for the neighbours, that he had fainted in their office. He had died two days later in hospital. I was stunned! The land Wim had been fighting about was exactly the same strip his grandfather, also called Willem had used to terrorise his neighbours after Pa had made his girlfriend, Mina, pregnant in 1927. At the time Pa’s brutal father had forbidden his neighbours’ youngsters to have any contact whatsoever with Mina and her family. The neighbour’s eldest daughter was going out with, and later married one of Mina’s brothers. Her father had insisted that it was none of his business what he or his family did. Pa’s father had been furious. He had locked the gate across the neighbour’s driveway, which went over his property. The mayor of Huissen, in full mayoral attire, had served Pa’s father an order to open the track, three times. The police, who assisted the mayor, had forced the gate open, but Pa’s father had locked it again, every time. In the meantime the neighbour’s family with seven children had no income at all, as they could no longer get their produce off their land. Because the house those neighbours lived in belonged to Pa’s family, they had lost the case when it was brought before the court. They not only had to pay the crippling cost of the court-case, but they had to buy land from another neighbour at the back to make a new track to the main road, the cost of which had ruined the family. “Gerrit’s old man had a lot to answer for,” a seventy-five year old lady, called Marietje, said rather bitterly when I visited her in Huissen. Her mother had died from heartache and her father had been a mental wreck ever since, she said. When I had asked Tante Marie years ago, who had lived in the old house on their property, she had told me about their former neighbour who had been so unforgiving towards her father, while he had wanted to make up for something or other before he had died. But of course, she never told me what that ‘something’ had been about. “My family has suffered terribly,” Marietje continued. “My sisters and I are still very bitter about what he had done to us.” “Och Marietje, don’t say any more,” her nearly blind, eighty-year-old husband said from his wheelchair in the corner of their cosy pensioners’ flat. “Let the dead be in peace.” Marietje shifted in her chair, sat a bit more upright and said determinedly: “No! I want to tell Mien what happened.” Marietje was about eight when Pa’s father was dying in 1950. She remembered vividly how Tante Marie came in with a message from her father, asking her father to come and see him, as he wanted to make amends with him before he died. But Marietje’s embittered father had sent her home. “You can tell your father that it’s too late now,” he had said angrily. “Tell your father that he should have thought about it at the time. Nothing can make up for it now. He can break his neck as far as I’m concerned!” When Tante Marie told her father what the neighbour had said, her father had a fit. The story goes that his body shook so violently, that he had fallen out of the high bedstee. He had died of a broken neck. From my visits to Pa’s family and their neighbours, I soon learned that Tante Marie had not been able to die easily either. She had suffered terribly with cancer for a long time. In the end, she had literally starved herself to death, by refusing to eat or drink anything at all. There had been nothing left of her when she was finally at peace, in her coffin. It was at that time that I also learned what had happened to Pa and Mina and their baby son, ironically also called Wim, but after Mina’s father, not Pa’s. Mina was the youngest child in a family of seven children; she had four sisters and two brothers. After she became pregnant at the age of twenty, she had pulled her corset in as tightly as she could, and her wide, gathered skirts had prevented giving away her secret until shortly before the birth of her baby. The day after Mina’s baby was born, her two oldest brothers had ‘kidnapped’ Pa from the field he was working in and they had taken him to Mina’s place where he had acknowledged to them and the midwife that he was the child’s father. “We had better get married now, I suppose,” Pa had said when he sat with his little son on his lap. But Mina refused. “No Gerrit! I don’t want you any more. What can I expect from a man who has let me down as you have?” she had asked. Mina was lucky. Her parents had not forced her to marry the father of her child as happened in many other families at that time. An article in the paper, some weeks earlier, reported that the body of a new-born baby had been found in a manure-cellar at the back of a boerderij; the parents of an unmarried girl had been unable to cope with the shame their daughter’s child would have brought upon them...When I met Wim, Pa’s illegitimate son in a little place in south Limburg, he was sixty-four years old. Goose-bumps covered my skin when I spotted him at the railway station where he and his wife met me. He was the spitting image of his father. That day Wim told me about his childhood and the repercussions of being illegitimate which had affected him until well into his adult life. I was very tired at the time, trying to cope with many nights of little sleep. I had been getting up at four o’clock in the morning wanting to record everything I had heard during the day in my journal while keeping up with the social demands of our family, continuously speaking Dutch and writing in English. Because I was taping the whole conversation, I did not pay much attention to the details, as I would be able to listen to what Wim had said later anyway. When I came home at midnight from yet another long and exciting day, Fre and his family were eagerly waiting for me to hear what had happened. Happy to let them listen to Wim’s soft- spoken voice with the lovely accent of south Limburg I switched the recorder on. To my horror, the tape was blank; in my nervousness, I had pushed the wrong buttons down! However, a few weeks later, when his curiosity got the better of him, Wim came to Hooglanderveen to visit the place where his father had lived for the best part of his life, and I could ask him and his lovely wife Diny again whatever I wanted to know. Until he was eighteen and called up for army service, under a different name, Wim had not known that Mina was his mother instead of his favourite sister. Mina married when he was nine. Her husband had adopted him and brought him up as his own son. Wim said he had never been treated any differently from his younger brothers or his only sister, Annie, to whom he was very close. Only one particular teacher at school had given him a hard time. This man had never let Wim forget that he was ‘born out of sin’ and therefore unworthy of any special treats, which had led to endless teasing by other children in his class, even though they had no idea what that meant. When he had found out that his father was not his real father, Wim had been beside himself with anger. “I pestered Moeke for months to tell me what the name of the bastard was who had done that to her,” he told me, adding that it was just as well his mother had not told him, as he would probably have killed him. Before his mother had died, she had given Wim an old cigar box. In it was a photo of his father with his favourite horse. He recognised it immediately when I showed him a copy of it. The box had also contained lots of newspaper clippings and official documents of lengthy court cases about the battle over a piece of land as well as for maintenance for Mina’s illegitimate son. In his sorrow about what his mother had been through, Wim had burned the lot, only two years before I met him... “Moeke always kept track of Wim’s father,” Wim’s sister Annie said, when I visited her a few days later. “I’m sure she would have loved to talk to you.” Mina had told Annie, that Pa married a widow with seven children, and later, when she heard that Pa had died, she had said that she would have been a widow, if she had married Wim’s father. “Although she loved my father, Moeke often wanted to talk about him,” Annie said. “I’m sorry now that I paid so little attention as I really didn’t want to know. From the sound of it, she would have loved your mother. Pity the two have never met.” Wim had kept his birth a secret, even from his two adult children. He had always stayed away from his parents wedding anniversaries, even from their fiftieth, shortly before his mother died in 1986. “How could I expect them to explain a fifty-nine year old son when they were only married for fifty years?” he asked. According to the neighbours I spoke to, Pa’s father came from poor stock; the money to buy his property had come from Pa’s mother’s family. She was apparently a lovely woman who had a very hard life with her brutal, domineering husband. After the trouble Pa’s father had caused in the neighbourhood, she had often supplied Marietje’s stricken family with fruit and vegetables behind her husband’s back. When Pa’s child was born, she had secretly knitted baby clothes she had regularly sent along with food to Mina’s family by way of the neighbours, pretending it came from them. I could not help but feel sorry for all those people who had suffered at the hands of Pa’s father, including my stepfather, who seemed possessed by him. After being disinherited by him, declared incompetent of making any decisions for himself, he still respected and loved the man until his death. Thinking about that, I can forgive Pa easily for what he did to me. And yes, seeing Mum praying endlessly, which I had resented so much while I grew up, has probably prevented him from harming me as well as my siblings more than he did. When Pa was dying, my two brothers Wout and Wim had taken turns sitting beside his bed, night after night, wetting his lips and listening to his noisy breathing. “How could you bear wiping the saliva off his mouth, after all you had to endure from him?” I asked Wout, who shrugged his shoulders. “Someone had to do it,” he said. It had been far from easy, he later admitted but, seeing Pa like that, helpless as a child, had taken a lot of his anger away from him. Ties was fourteen when his father died. He, Bart and Wim were the only ones living at home, at the time. Siem had left for Australia in 1961, followed by Henk a year later and Jopie got married in ‘64. Wim, who was boarding with a friend, had moved home again when Pa got sick. Bart married in 1971, six months before we left Holland with our six children, aged between four and twelve, to join Siem in Central Australia. Ties cried when we left, begging us to take him with us instead of leaving him behind, alone with his old mother. I felt sorry for him, but we had our hands full with our own six children, not knowing what lay ahead of us in that far away country of which we hardly knew anything at all. “In two years time you’re eighteen,” Fre said, trying to cheer him up. “Then you can apply for yourself.” But by that time Ties had lost interest as he had a girlfriend and a top-of-the-range motorbike. He joined us ten years later, in 1981 with his young wife Elly and three small children. Ties is a wonderful father to them, the type I would have loved to have.

When Pa was gone, Mum was very confused for a while. Fre had gone back to help after the funeral but I stayed with the children for two weeks. One day Mum had boiled twenty-four eggs for Wim to take to work! While we were clearing out the wardrobe in their bedroom I asked Mum about Pa’s will. “The will is useless,” she said with a stubborn look on her face. “He has no say in the matter any more; it’s all mine now.” Every time there had been a fight, Pa went to the notaris (lawyer) to talk about his will. He wanted to be sure that we didn’t get anything; everything had to go to Tiesje, his only son. The lawyer had told Mum that she did not need to worry. According to the law he could not disinherit us; all Ties would get more was the four thousand guilders Pa had brought with him when he married her. After the first couple of weeks Mum soon learned to enjoy her freedom, playing cards and visiting people on her pushbike whenever she wanted to. When she died in 1988, just before her eightieth birthday, she had been four times in Canada and three times in Australia; first with Wim when Henk got married in 1972, then with Ome Hannes and Jopie for our silver wedding anniversary in ‘83. She came again with Wim and Ome Hannes in the spring of 1986 when our second son married in Alice Springs, and my bachelor brother Sam (Siem) at the age of forty- eight, married an Indonesian girl in Jakarta. Although Mum was suffering badly from diarrhoea at the time, she was determined to go to Jakarta for Sam’s wedding. She never recovered completely from the trip, but she was happy to have seen the last of her offspring finally settled. During the last years of her life Mum seldom talked about my stepfather. Just as Opoe had known that her first husband, Father Simon whom she had loved so much was waiting for her, Mum was convinced that my father, her beloved first husband Bart, she had always talked about so much, was waiting for her to take her into heaven. May they all be forgiven and rest in peace.

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