White Sand and Grey Sand

by Stella Gibbons

  “He’s all right,” Marie pronounced, running her hand over the warm flank covered in skin like a breadth of cinnamon satin.

  “It would take more than a walk from Zandeburghe to upset him,” said Matthys Maes dryly; so he should be all right, with nothing to do all day but pull a cartful of children down to the waves and back, wasting the good money belonging to their parents. His eyes strayed to the figure of Klaas, dressed almost in rags, sitting hunched up amidst the straw. He wasn’t going to stay here. He, Matthys, had said that he would have the horse if anything were to happen, and he would keep his word to his brother’s daughters, but that Klaas, no … let the blue, dried-up little monkey go back to that bit of land he’d been squatting on for the last ten years outside Zandeburghe, and do for himself there. There would be plenty of better use for what food the Germans would leave on the farm.

  They stayed for a few minutes, looking at the animals with the unsentimental eyes of people accustomed to work them for profit; Jooris, who would have liked to pat Klaartje and talk to him, remaining near the open door with Ydette in his arms because she had shrunk back from the dark entry and the big, stamping shapes in the dimness. He was entertaining her by making faces. Here, in the afternoon hush, they could all hear the hooting of the cars jammed inextricably in one long, creeping line with vans and carts and pedestrians on the road half a mile away, and sometimes a hoarse distant shout. There did not seem to be much to say.

  At last Matthys Maes said to Jakoba, “You’d better go. You want to be home by dark,” and they all made a move towards the door.

  When they were standing at the edge of the yard, they hung about for a moment, looking at one another. Klaas was slouching away already; Jakoba knew that nothing would be said about his staying, now. Mevrouw Gheldeere had taken Ydette from Jooris and was kissing her, and crying. “Good-bye, good luck,” Marie suddenly shouted after the disappearing figure of Klaas, and he just looked back over his shoulder and made a movement—it was hardly a wave, it was a mere sketch of a gesture—with the hand that held his pipe. They saw his blue blouse moving slowly in and out of the trunks of the apple trees for a few minutes, then they couldn’t see him any more.

  “Well”—Marie was still staring after him, reluctant to move, wanting to prolong the last few seconds while they were still in this place of refuge—“God knows if we’ll ever see him again …”

  “He’ll be all right; that sort always is,” her uncle pronounced; “he’s managed to do not too badly for himself all these years—” (He, too, didn’t want to see them go, and yet, the fewer people there were at the farm the easier it would be; he could start hiding things, and getting ready … Christ, ready for what? How could you know? At any instant there might be a bomb. … what was the good of …) “He’ll manage,” he went on. “I suppose he gets a bit out of you for grazing the horse and looking after it, and there’s his vegetable patch—not bad, for a squatter.” And a dirty, surly, sly sort at that, he finished inwardly.

  “He pays his rent,” said Jakoba. “The land belongs to Mjinheer—can’t think of the name for the minute—lives at Doorwaden. Klaas sends the money off regular every month.” Her pale eyes were glinting like the winter sea as she looked straight into her uncle’s. What right had he? He’d already been an elderly man when she and Klaas were young—what did he know about it?

  His face did not change, and when they had stared at one another for a few seconds in silence, she added roughly, “We’ll be getting along, then,” and turned away. She nodded to Mevrouw Gheldeere, while Marie muttered something about Pierre coming back safe and lifted Ydette from her arms.

  “We’ll expect the van as usual tomorrow, then, Uncle,” Marie said “all right, kiss her if you want to … there, that’s enough,” as Jooris stood on tiptoe and imprinted several smackers on Ydette’s face, held obediently forward, but with the eyes gazing indifferently anywhere but at him, “she’s used to being kissed, you can see that; she knows what to do.” Her voice, fainter-sounding and more elderly than her sister’s, died off into the quiet. In another moment they were on their way.

  They looked back when they got to the edge of the orchard. The three were still standing there, looking at them; the plump young woman in white blouse and black skirt, the long, thin boy with silver-fair hair in the shabby clothes which were all that his mother had been able to find in the ruins of the flat, the old man in his black peaked cap and rough working dress. He slowly lifted a hand and waved, and Jooris frantically flapped both hands.

  Soon the sisters were tramping through the afternoon quiet of the orchard, under the motionless boughs, alone. You could hear the gunfire louder here, and there was cheering coming from the hidden road. British troops, perhaps. They were pouring into the country across the frontier, the wireless said. Perhaps they might save everybody, yet. But it was no use thinking … get on. Get home. Then there’d be something to do to keep your mind off it.

  “Let’s go in and see old Lombaers, shall we?” Marie suggested presently; “we have to pass there anyway.”

  “What for?”

  “Well”—Marie sought for a reason that should successfully conceal her real one, which was to have a word with someone else beside her tall, rough, silently-striding sister—“he’ll tell us if them at the big house have run off. If they have, there’s one of my best flower customers gone.”

  Jakoba shrugged her shoulders, implying that none of that was going to matter anyway, and soon the chimneys which in ordinary times supplied heat for Mijnheer van Roeslaere’s greenhouses appeared through the trees, standing up black and smokeless amidst the whitewashed, sloping glass roofs. At the end of a neatly kept ride stood the villa which he had had built for the Lombaers family, managers and overseers to the business since the ’eighties.

  Hubert van Roeslaere’s grandfather had in those days indulged in a fascinating hobby which had developed by the turn of the century into a profitable business. Camellias, orchids, stephanotis and other exotics grown by the company, which remained a family affair, found their way to corsages, bouquets and festal tables all over Europe and the Americas. Much of the plant was new, for substantial additions to the original buildings had been made by the present owner in the mid ’twenties, when he had inherited from his father; the twelve acres or so which it covered were surrounded by a low brick wall above which could be seen the corrugated-iron roof of the long shed where the flowers were packed for export, mostly by women workers from Bruges and Doorwaden and the villages round about. The place stood conveniently close to the direct railway line to Brussels and the flowershops and market of Ghent, and behind it ran the great Astrid Canal.

  “Doesn’t seem to be a soul about,” remarked Marie, as they approached the white gate set in the wall; “seems dead, everywhere.”

  “Probably gone off.”

  “Like everyone else.”

  “Crazy fools … dashing off like that …”

  They were talking to keep their spirits up, for there was something singularly depressing about the smokeless chimneys, the silence and the quiet sunlight lying over the deserted path leading up to the shuttered windows of the porter’s lodge. It was not like the feeling of Sunday afternoon, either. It was a threatening hush, and even their sturdy nerves responded to its faint, eerie pressure.

  “What do you want?”

  Both started as the grudging, unalarmed voice spoke behind them. Old Lombaers had come up undetected and was standing there, with the keys of the place swinging in his hand. “Jakoba Maes and Marie Michiels,” he went on, rather as if reading from imaginary papers of identity; “come down to see your uncle, I suppose.”

  He was a spare, dried-up, very neat man of seventy or so with the severe eye and straight shoulders of the former regular soldier. That eye now moved to Ydette, who had been set down by Marie at her side and was standing spiritlessly looking at nothing in particular, and it remained there. When they had exchanged a few comments on the late afternoon news and Marie h
ad explained why they had come out from Brugge, and had satisfied his curiosity about Klaas Impens and Klaartje and the Gheldeeres and the bombs on Aalst (they had known him for forty years as a man who liked to hear all the gossip), he pointed at Ydette.

  “Who’s that? Where did she come from?” and then, when he had been told rather briefly by Marie, “What about a drink of milk for her?”

  “Milk!” said Jakoba, not gratefully. What was there about this dwarf in a white frock that made everybody so eager to give her milk? Milk costs money to produce, and if you were sharp enough you could get it back again, with a profit. People should think twice before they threw milk about. “Water will do, if you must give her something,” she said.

  “She can have milk; I’ve got some; Moritz and the girl and the child went off this morning,” the old man said, beginning to unlock the gate. “I don’t drink the stuff, I like my coffee black.”

  “We haven’t the time,” said Jakoba curtly. She had shaken off her shawl impatiently and her head, with the sandy, greying hair in a large knot, held with pins worn steely and smooth by time, was bare. She didn’t thank him; throwing milk about …

  “It’s not far, up to mine. You come along, and I’ll …”

  The explosion was tremendous; it stopped him in mid-sentence and sent the colour flying from the women’s faces.

  “God in Heaven,” Jakoba said, moving at last, “where was that?”

  It had sounded so near; it couldn’t be more than three or four miles away. Marie had begun to cry. Ydette was staring up at her contorted face.

  “Oh, you don’t want to take any notice of that; if it had got you, you wouldn’t have heard it,” the old soldier said. But he had moved behind the gate, and was locking it after him. “Don’t ever forget that; if you can hear it, the odds are that it won’t hurt you.”

  He paused, not irresolutely; he was seeking about for other comforting superstitions, collected during fifty years of soldiering in theory and in fact and stored away in a mind as neatly arranged as some quartermaster’s ideal domain. But somehow the words would not come pat, for there was something about this war that was different; it was only beginning; he could only faintly smell the difference in the air; but it was there.

  “So don’t you forget,” he ended briskly; “and now you’d best be getting home. That’s the best place for the women and the little things just now.” He shook the gate to test that it was locked, and turned away. Apparently he had forgotten about the milk.

  “Is that what Mijnheer van Roeslaere’s doing?” Marie called after him; the explosion had jarred the very earth on which she stood, but she was still capable of feeling curiosity.

  “What?” Old Lombaers’ hand was curved round his ear.

  “Mijnheer van Roeslaere. Staying at home.”

  “No, no. They’re gone. Gone off to England. They were going this morning,” coming back a little way along the path.

  “And the little boy, Mijnheer Adriaan?” Marie asked, wiping her eyes with one of her pieces of clean rag.

  “Of course, and the Mevrouw. All of them. He was out here late last night, giving me the orders.”

  The orders … he talked as if he was still in the Army.

  “Good night,” she called, turning away, and Jakoba echoed her, but he had already moved off down the path and out of earshot. They watched him for a moment; look at him, he was marching like a sentry; anyone would think he was on guard.

  So Sophie had been right, Marie was thinking as they walked quickly on: the van Roeslaeres had gone … the little boy too … it would be strange not to see him coming out of the door of the big house, with his nanni carrying the water-wings and spade and pail, on their way to the sands; fat legs in those short blue linen pants, smart striped blouses, black hair; a great fat boy for six years old, and spoiled already … gone to England. She shifted Ydette wearily in her arms; the child seemed ready to go to sleep again; just as well, for there was another good two hours’ walking before they were home. Marie’s feet burned and throbbed as if they were on fire. Up and down, up and down they went in their sabots, but thank God the city was drawing nearer at last, and the Three were so much closer that she could almost see their windows. Soon she would hear Our Lady’s bell, the sound that was like a holy, high, comforting voice, and she would be gladder to hear it than she had ever been in her life, for now the roads were becoming worse.

  They had left the meadows behind and were getting into the suburbs of new houses outside the city, making their way through the groups standing about anxiously talking, and the pale men hurrying by with suitcases and mattresses and saucepans, the laden cars standing with throbbing engines outside houses with their front doors open, the silent, staring children. Last sunlight touched the neat villas, where the snowdrop and the iris were pictured in long panels of glazed tiles on the walls; it was all clean and tidy as usual; there wasn’t a dirty curtain in sight—and then suddenly there would be a great pile of bedding lying on the pavement, or a ham—it was like a bad dream. Oh, to be home, with the door shut and slippers on, and the potatoes frying for supper, and the bell tolling, high up in the last light of the day, from Our Lady’s tower!

  They were approaching the Ezelpoort, one of the old gateways which lead across the medieval ramparts and moat which encircle the city, when they were hailed by a voice that soared easily above the confused uproar of throbbing engines and human clamour.

  “Hullo!” A hand almost as large as the ham they had seen in the road, and rather the same raw pink in colour, descended, not lightly, upon Marie’s shoulder.

  “Hullo,” said Marie, rather glumly. “I thought you’d gone back to Blaankenburghe.”

  “Not me … haven’t you heard? Parachutists tried to come down there—course, they couldn’t—but I was turned back on the road—I went by bike … ’Sides, it’s too near the sea.”

  Sophie Bouckaerts, kitchenmaid to the van Roeslaere family at the big house, did not enlarge on the disadvantages attendant upon this situation, but in the mind’s eye of the fifteen or so people within range of her voice, a submarine silently surfaced.

  “No, I’m staying with Auntie; be company for her,” she went on. “Where’ve you been, then, and whose is the kid?” looking with good-natured curiosity at the sleeping face cradled in the shawl.

  “Aren’t you staying in the house?” Marie wished they had not met her; there was enough row and fuss and noise going on, without having to listen to Sophie’s voice. “Oh, I found her on the big dune outside Zandeburghe this morning …”

  “Not me. Marieke is. At Zandeburghe? Didn’t you go to your uncle’s, then? You said you were going along to your uncle’s, to take the horse to him. Didn’t you go?”

  “Yes, we did, but we went to Zandeburghe first, to see Klaas, and see that the bathing-huts got up all right to his bit of field, and then we went on …” Marie swallowed and didn’t trouble to keep the goaded note out of her voice. She was so tired. She held Ydette a little closer as she tramped doggedly on through the milling, pushing, shouting crowd; Sophie’s great pink face was as fresh as a shrimp’s … came of being only twenty-five … when you were getting on for sixty it was a very different thing.

  “Found her? Just fancy! What a little love, isn’t she? Wonder who she belongs to? What’s her name?” Sophie was striding alongside them, her big body in a too-short dress of flowery cotton easily bumping aside those who got in her way. Her hair was pulled back into a tight knot like Jakoba’s, but it was braided as well, and light brown strands blew around her low forehead in the evening breeze.

  “Well, I suppose bang goes my chance of a kid of my own next year,” she shouted, not waiting for Marie’s answer, “André’s gone off, the Lord only knows where; saw him Sunday for the last leave and he said then that all this might come off, they was all saying so in his lot, he said. … Oh, we had such a cry … both of us, he was as bad as me … and hugging—he nearly cracked my ribs. But I gave as good as I got.” Her prot
uberant eyes, the yellowish-green of the Flemish sea, filled up, and she gave a great snort, “and of course I haven’t heard a word since … and them at the big house have gone, too,” she ended, scrubbing away the tears.

  Marie nodded her head slightly. “Old Lombaers said they were going.”

  “Yes. About eleven this morning. In the car. We was all out in the plaats to see them go. Marieke was that upset. But she wouldn’t go. Wouldn’t leave her sister and the place.”

  “She’s never staying on in that great barn all alone?”

  “She is, though. (It isn’t so big, not when you’re used to it.) Tell you what, you come along some time when she’s gone to her sister’s at Enghien, and I’ll show you the china ladies with the lace petticoats. I’ll show her.” She lifted the shawl aside with a big, gentle hand and looked down at the small, white, composed face. “Little love, isn’t she?” she said again. “You going to keep her?”

  “Don’t know.” The answer came in a hard, indifferent tone. Marie was fiercely pleased that she had got Ydette almost to their own front door without Jakoba suddenly deciding to hand her over to the police, and she did not want to remind her sister, stalking ahead, that the child was still with them.

  Sophie said suddenly, “Let me have her a minute,” and before she could protest, lifted Ydette from her arms. “There …” she said, settling her against the full swell of her breast, and looking down at her, “Little dear; lucky she’s asleep.”

  “Don’t you wake her up,” Marie said dourly. She was relieved to have her arms free for a moment (how they ached, as she stretched them wearily) but she didn’t want anyone else to carry Ydette.