‘I feel so miserable, Mama,’ she said, snuggling closer to her mother.
The barn and the washhouse gone! Kees could hardly imagine it. Why, it meant that the entire back of the house had disappeared, walls, doors, windows, roof, and all.
‘We can’t stay here, Mr. Wielemaker,’ Jacob said. He was trying to roll a cigarette with his wet hands. ‘We aren’t safe here any longer. If the barn and the washhouse have gone, well...’
He was afraid to continue.
But they all knew what he meant: their house might be torn away any moment.
Kees looked at the walls of the loft. He could see that the water was still rising.
‘Whatever can we do?’ Mrs. Wielemaker asked. Tears were running down her cheeks. She had reached the point where she could no longer hide her fear and sadness. Kees noticed his eyes were pricking as well. But he refused to cry. Why, a boy of thirteen didn’t cry so easily. He kept swallowing hard instead. Kees knew what terrible danger they were all in now. In spite of all his resolutions, he felt like a very small boy, quite defenceless against the upheaval outside. Only his father and Jacob could help them now.
‘Even if the barn has gone, that doesn’t mean that the house...’ Trui said looking at Mr. Wielemaker.
‘Not necessarily, but...’
‘Without the barn, the house can’t be nearly as firm as it was,’ Jacob said. ‘We must get away from here.’
‘We should all have gone off in the rowing-boat,’ Mr. Wielemaker said.
‘They’ll come and take us away, won’t they?’ Trui asked.
‘Who? Who could take us away now?’ Jacob said. ‘They’re all too busy saving themselves. And who has got a rowing-boat, anyway?’
‘We must send out an SOS,’ Kees suggested. He felt he had to say something. Best of all, he would have liked to do something as well. If only he didn’t have to sit still all the time.
‘An SOS?’ his father asked.
‘Kees is quite right,’ Jacob said. ‘We can hang out a white flag from the roof. If we can tie the end of a sheet to something, we’ll have a white flag...Perhaps somebody will see it.’
‘God grant they may,’ Mrs. Wielemaker said, wiping her tears.
After a lot of effort, they finally got the sheet out, and now they could hear it fluttering in the storm.
People are bound to see it in the village, Kees tried to reassure himself. He thought of his teacher, Mr. Buis. He was sure to remember his pupil, Kees Wielemaker. And there would be other people in the village who would say to themselves: ‘Oughtn’t the Wielemakers to be taken away? They live on a polder, a good many feet below sea-level.’
The thought cheered Kees up. He moved over towards Sjaantje, stroked her arm gently and said, ‘Don’t worry. Everything will be all right.’
Meanwhile, Mr. Wielemaker and Jacob were standing together and whispering to each other. Kees tried to catch what they were saying, but he couldn’t make out a single word.
He saw his father nod gravely. Then the two of them turned round resolutely. ‘I think we shall all have to climb up right onto the roof,’ Mr. Wielemaker announced.
‘Onto the roof?’ Mrs. Wielemaker asked, trembling. Trui, who was putting another kettle on the stove, looked up in alarm.
‘But...but...but how can we?...I...won’t we?...’ Mrs. Wielemaker said disjointedly.
Her husband interrupted her. ‘We shall have to find a place on the other side of the roof, not the side where the hole is. We’ll be sheltered from the wind there.’
Jacob now joined in. ‘You see, we thought that by taking a few rows of roof tiles off on that side, we could rest our feet on the joists, and then we won’t be too uncomfortable. First, we’ll dress as warmly as we can and take all the blankets. Because it won’t be warm outside. Brrr.’
‘But I can’t understand why we should go outside and sit in the cold,’ Trui said.
‘If anything happens,’ Mr. Wielemaker said, ‘the highest place is the best. The water is only a few inches from where we are sitting now; that’s another reason why we must move.’
‘Well, we can surely have one more cup of coffee before we go,’ Trui said, as she poured hot water into the coffeepot, ‘and finish our potatoes.’
‘That’s all right, but we haven’t got much time to lose.’
Jacob made another attempt to stop up the hole in the roof. ‘If we don’t put this in order, the storm will blow straight into this hole and out of the one we’re going to make on the other side. The whole roof might blow off.’
Mrs. Wielemaker gathered up all the blankets.
‘We shall have to leave Witje behind,’ Mr. Wielemaker said.
‘Leave her behind?’ Kees protested loudly. He jumped up and caught hold of his father by his coat. ‘No, we can’t do that. Witje has got to come along.’
‘We just can’t do it, my boy. I am sorry for her, too, but there’s no alternative. You must be sensible.’
‘She must come with us.’ Kees stood there with tears in his eyes, the tears which only a little while ago he had fought back so hard.
He stamped his foot. ‘I don’t want Witje to be left behind. It would be mean, terribly mean.’
‘Now, listen, Kees!’
But Kees didn’t want to listen. He had his arms round Witje’s neck and cried out: ‘Witje has to come with us. She’s got to come with us, I say. I don’t want her left behind. She’s got to come with us.’
Silently, the farmer looked at his son. He understood him so well. He knew how much he, himself, had been worrying about his livestock during the last few hours. He knew how his own heart ached at the thought of his cows and his horses...No, he daren’t even think about it, think about what, in his heart, he knew must surely have happened.
‘Mr. Wielemaker, I think we can try and make a place for Witje on the roof,’ Jacob said.
‘How can we?’ Mr. Wielemaker asked.
‘We’ll just do our best,’ Jacob replied.
It took them nearly an hour before they were ready to move. First they ate up the potatoes and then they finished the coffee.
‘The pot’s got to be completely empty,’ Trui said.
Kees had two cups, his father and Jacob three each. Then Jacob rose to finish his repair work to the roof. After a lot of effort, the job was finally done.
‘Well,’ Jacob said. ‘That’s that. Now we must make an opening on the other side of the roof.’
Jacob took out the tiles and handed them to Mr. Wielemaker. The storm howled past outside, but it didn’t come in. Finally, the opening was large enough for all of them to sit in it in two rows, one behind the other.
‘That will do,’ Mr. Wielemaker said. ‘Mother, Trui and Sjaantje on the upper tier; Jacob, Kees and I on the lower one.’
‘Yes, that’ll be best,’ Jacob agreed. ‘Also, I think I’ll hang up a box just below the hole. We can put all sorts of things in it, food, and so on. Then we shan’t have to hold everything in our hands or keep it in our pockets.’
‘How will you hang it up?’ Trui asked.
‘We’ll just tear up another sheet,’ Jacob said calmly. Soon the box was hanging up from a beam and a couple of joists. Then they all put on as many clothes as they could. Sjaantje put on two cardigans and her coat, and her mother tied a bit of the sheet round her head. Kees put on several sweaters over his shirt; a thick jacket and his overcoat. But he refused to have anything tied round his head. Finally, they were all wrapped up well. Mother and Trui tied woollens round their heads. Luckily, Trui had brought up a pair of shoes for everyone.
‘I’ll go first,’ Jacob said. ‘Then Mr. Wielemaker can help me lift up the others.’ Mr. Wielemaker was to come up last of all. Jacob looked like a general giving orders. What a wonderful man, Kees thought again. Shortly afterwards, five of them were sitting up on the roof. Only Mr. Wielemaker, Bob, Miesje and Witje were still down below.
Bob looked at them all with his tail wagging. No doubt he thought it odd that all those
people were on the roof and wanted to see what they were up to.
‘You next,’ Mr. Wielemaker said.
‘Come along, Bob,’ Kees called to him and Bob stood up on his hind legs.
Mr. Wielemaker got hold of the dog and held him up. Kees seized his collar.
‘Where are we going to put Witje?’ Trui asked.
‘I’ll take her on my knee,’ Jacob said.
‘And I’ll take Bob,’ Kees said.
‘And I, Miesje,’ Sjaantje whispered. She was very pale; not because it was cold; the cold wasn’t so bad there, on the sheltered side. But she was frightened, very frightened with the water all round her, their strange home up on the roof, and because nobody knew what would happen to them all.
Bob was terribly excited on Kees’s lap and kept licking his face. He was really too big to be a lap-dog and Kees realized that he wouldn’t be able to bear the weight for long.
Miesje was the next to come up. She miaowed as Mr. Wielemaker lifted her up and Jacob put her on Sjaantje’s lap. She didn’t like it one bit up there. She tried to run away but Sjaantje held on to her.
Now it was Witje’s turn. It was very hard work getting her up. She was pretty heavy and resisted violently. Finally, Jacob got hold of her horns and Mr. Wielemaker pushed her up.
When at last she had been pushed through the hole, she suddenly butted Jacob so hard that he had to let go for a moment. She kicked her hooves left and right and, before Jacob could catch hold of her again, she was slithering down the roof.
‘Witje!’ Kees screamed out. Sjaantje buried her head in her mother’s lap and burst into tears.
‘Hold on to her. Hold on!’ Kees called out to Jacob as he anxiously watched Witje sliding down into the guttering and beyond and then hit the turbulent waters below.
Jacob reflected for a moment and then shook his head. No, he decided, there was nothing he could do now, much as he regretted it. Bob started to bark. Watching tensely, the five of them could see the poor creature disappearing under the waves. After a while she surfaced. She tried to open her mouth, but a wave covered her completely and she disappeared again. Then she came up once more and her eyes were wide open in panic. In his mind’s eye, Kees could see her drowning just like the cow that morning. Witje’s front hooves came up above the water for a moment, and then the swell sucked her away, past the sheds and out into the polder.
Now Kees began to sob helplessly. He was the son of a farmer and he had spent so many wonderful days with the farm animals, the horses and cows, the foals and calves, with the goats and with his dog. Over the years, he had grown to understand them and to love them all. And now, quite suddenly, his lovely little Witje had been taken from him so cruelly.
It was too much for Kees. Jacob put his arm round him and tried to comfort him but Kees went on sobbing—no longer a big boy, but an unhappy little child.
Mr. Wielemaker had meanwhile come up on the roof as well. Hearing Witje fall off, he had pulled himself up too quickly, and made the stack of boxes on which he had stood wobble precariously. When his weight was off it, the whole stack collapsed and toppled into the flooded loft.
Now they had no means of getting down again. There was nowhere else for them to go—except...Mr. Wielemaker dared not think the thought even to himself.
CHAPTER EIGHT - On the roof
Slowly, the long hours ticked by.
Sjaantje was sitting in the top tier between her mother and Trui. Miesje was still on her lap. She had decided to go to sleep because she could not run away, anyway.
Just below them were Mr. Wielemaker and Jacob, with Kees—Bob on his lap—between them. For the time being at least, they were all right where they were.
Jacob had thought of putting a few blankets down over the joists; so they weren’t sitting too uncomfortably.
Over to the right they could see a bit of the village, surrounded on all sides by the raging sea. They could see the roofs of some neighbouring farmhouses and the tops of a few tall trees protruding above the water.
To the left there was nothing at all. Now that the barn and the washhouse had gone there was a much wider view on that side; but it was a view of nothing but seething water. Near the horizon there was a narrow black stripe. That was the Flower Dike. Behind it was the Spui Polder. They wondered whether the Spui Polder was under water, too.
The hours passed slowly and now it was beginning to get dark. Sjaantje complained of the cold. Mother was about to put a blanket round her, when Father said it would be better not to.
‘We may have to spend the night here and we mustn’t pamper ourselves now.’
His words gave them all food for thought. What? Spend the night on the roof? What would it be like up there when it got quite dark and you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face? Wasn’t there a danger of falling asleep and dropping off the roof? How would they get through the night, when they had to change position all the time so as not to get stiff?
Kees looked over to the door of the cowshed; it was swinging to and fro with the waves. The water was so high now that you wouldn’t even be able to take a boat into the shed. Only the very top of the big door was above water-level.
‘It looks like the rudder of a boat,’ Kees said. The door moves just like it.’
The hours were still passing slowly.
Mr. Wielemaker checked the supplies in the box directly below them. ‘Well, we’ve got enough to eat anyway. That’s something. We’ve got three loaves of bread, almost two whole hams, two smoked sausages, the best part of a cheese, a cake and a bag of sugar; there are also a couple of quarts of milk. So, for the time being, we shan’t have to go hungry or thirsty.’
Kees looked at his father. There were deep lines round his eyes. He suddenly looked much older.
Kees knew that his father was still thinking about the animals, about the horses which he had so often yoked to his cart or plough and which knew him as well as he knew them. He had reared them himself from young long-legged foals, licking his hands in a corner of the stables. And the cows which he and Jacob had gone out to milk every day. They were all tuberculin tested and Father was very proud of them. And then there were the pigs, healthy and fat and worth a good deal of money.
Father must also be thinking about the house, the barn and the cook-house. Only last week he had repaired the roof of the barn.
Kees felt a lump in his throat. Poor Father and poor Mother, disaster all round them! Suddenly he remembered Witje and her big pathetic eyes. He tried to stop himself thinking about her.
‘Give me your cigarette, Jacob,’ he said. ‘I’d like a puff.’
‘I’d give you a whole tin of tobacco and a packet of cigarette papers but not for a few years yet,’ Jacob said, surprised at Kees’s request.
By now, it had got quite dark.
Now the six of them could see nothing but the dull gleam of the water. There were no stars in the sky. The wind appeared to have lessened a little, but the water was still rushing round the house and against the sheds. Kees felt as if he weren’t on a house at all but in some extraordinary boat. Whenever he looked at the flowing water for some time, it seemed as if the house were moving over a still lake. But he had only to look at the sheds to dispel that illusion.
After a long silence, Jacob said, ‘The important thing is to get through the night. Tomorrow they’re bound to come and fetch us. Have all the blankets been shared out, or is there another one left for Kees?’
‘I don’t need another one,’ Kees said, wrapping his blankets round him more closely.
‘They’ve all been shared out,’ Mrs. Wielemaker said. ‘But if Kees is cold, he can have one of mine.’
‘Certainly not,’ Kees said. ‘I’m all right as I am, and you’d freeze to death if you gave me one of yours.’
Sjaantje had tired of sitting up all the time. She was lying down now, her head on Mother’s lap and her feet on Trui’s. She held Miesje in her arms and she was snugly tucked into her blankets.
B
ob kept being handed from person to person. It was nice and warm when he was on your lap, but after a while his weight became too much for you. At Jacob’s suggestion, they had tied themselves to each other with strips torn from a sheet. ‘If one of us should lose his grip, the rest of us can hold on to him.’
‘Try and sleep now, Kees,’ his father said. But it was easier said than done. He dozed off for a while but then he thought of Witje and, in a moment, he was wide awake again. Now he was sitting quietly between Father and Jacob.
Mother and Trui occasionally whispered something to each other. Father and Jacob were smoking a lot, much more than usual. After they had all been sitting in the dark for a few hours, the downpour started up again and large drops of water beat wildly against the roof. The wind came from behind them and quite soon they were all drenched and shivering. Only Sjaantje slept on; the rain couldn’t reach her because she was sheltered by the grown-ups’ bodies. From time to time Bob howled.
Kees’s teeth were chattering. He was aching all over and was terribly tired. In the end, he fell asleep.
‘It’s a good thing he’s asleep,’ Mr. Wielemaker whispered to Jacob. Kees was leaning against his father’s shoulder. His cheeks were ice cold. Carefully, his father drew the blanket over Kees’s head. ‘Every hour of sleep is an hour gained.’
‘True,’ Jacob agreed. He was shivering, too.
‘How are you getting on up there?’ Mr. Wielemaker asked the women. ‘Can you manage?’
‘I’ll be all right,’ Trui said. ‘But your wife is very cold.’
‘My hands and feet are quite numb,’ she said.
‘Take your shoes off,’ Jacob said. ‘I’ll warm your feet.’
Carefully Jacob turned round and grasped Mrs. Wielemaker’s feet. He massaged them powerfully, so that from time to time Mrs. Wielemaker let out little cries of pain. But the blood circulation to her feet was restored.
‘It’s helped,’ she said. ‘Thank you very much, Jacob.’
‘I’ll rub your hands,’ Trui said. ‘It’ll warm mine at the same time.’
The Tide in the Attic Page 6