Village Squire, 1977-01, Page 111
She looked at him across the bed, where he sat to take off
his shoes, and he looked up from bending then, to listen while
he could see her dark eyes. He caught them, lit at the centre
with a golden star• the reflection of the single lamp that was
lit in the dim room. "You have eleven mouths of your own to
feed, Jan Capel," she said, "and that boy eats like a horse."
"Ah," he said with mild frustrated violence as he pulled off
one of his shoes and let it drop to the floor. He sat on the bed
and before he spoke sent a grey gust of smoke into the
dimness. "He's growing still," he said gruffly, looking up
across the room at the wall on which hung their wedding
picture. It was the only photograph that had ever been taken
of either of them. It looked like Age itself now, the brown
picture, but it had been a hopeful youth, followed by years of
peace in labour and calm in fidelity. They were excited and
pleased with life there. in that picture on the wall. but they
had not dreamed dreams too great for themselves. The
disappointment ate away at him now. They had not asked for
much• only a simple life, only a peaceful life.
"Ja," she was saying as she shook her hair free of the long
black pins that kept it bound all day. "Ja. But there are here
six other boys growing still, your own boys."
"Ja, Ja. I know. But we have more, if we have little. than
Groeneveld. Bas eats only potatoes and cabbage here. but
what the children live on in that house I don't know."
"It's not your fault that Louw Groeneveld can't feed his
children, or is so foolish as that. to marry that woman with
seven children to add to his own nine, and make in wartime a
family of sixteen to feed. It's not your fault he is such a fool.
And that woman yet!"
Her long black hair, streaked now with grey fell down
around her dark skin and lay on the white of her nightgown.
He glanced sidewise at her across the bed, and her body
under the simple white cotton was rounded with the bearing
of his nine children. She was a mother now as she glanced at
him, and he could see that she was thinking of that other one,
the mother who had no heart to love or care for the children
who had come her way. She brushed her hair silently: he
could feel the pain of her dilemma in the silence of each hard
stroke. It was ground they had covered before in this dim
room. in the quiet time before bed which was their only time
in the long day to be alone together. Now the light of anger in
her dark eyes told him to try again the sympathy she had in
her heart.
"Maybe you are right Tinike," he said to his wife, "that we
can't feed the boy. but Louw has had bad news enough these
last weeks, that Dirk was taken into Germany."
There was silence for a moment. as her arm went up and
down, casting shadows on the wall and the only sound was the
whisper of the brush through her hair. "We too have a son in
Germany."
"Ja." he said quietly. "We too." He had only one appeal
left• and he didn't want to make it hard for her. But there was
the boy too• sleeping in the one large bedroom above their
heads, with his klompen by their door and his arm fallen
across the back of his own son Kees in the bed they shared.
So• though he knew the weary answer to his weary question.
he must ask it anyway, as she must answer. "And who will
help me here," he asked, "Who will do the work Bas does
with me now."
Her voice was dull and flat. "Kees. Kees must stay home
from school."
Then he knew how bad things were. He knew now not
because he had not seen himself the empty cupboards or the
bags of dwindling vegetables in the cellar, not because he had
not watched the children growing thinner and falling asleep
earlier. He knew it now, how bad things were. because here
he was with Tinike in their dark bedroom thinking to send a
hungry boy to be hungrier, and to do this Kees must stay
home. His heart sank and his pipe went out without his
noticing, leaving a bitter burnt taste in his mouth. Kees with
his curly hair and bright laughter was their scholar son. He
was the son who bore, with all their other hopes for all their
children, a special hope. Kees must stay home. There would
be no school, no high school, no languages, no science, no
growing future, no hope, no hope. There was a new
CUSTOM
FRAMES
JAN. thru FEB. 10 7o
Reduction on all
Picture Frame Moldings
600 styles to choose from
WE FRAME: Oil Paints
Prints Needlepoint
79 Hamilton St.
Goderich, Qntariu
Phone 524-2711
Jan. Record
CLEARANCE
ALL L.P.'s AT 1/2 PRICE
ne\\\
J a°
�‘\0
aures
Last
- eS
T
Ronnie Milsap
o 00l
Jefferson Starship
"WHERE MUSIC IS
UNLIMITED HAPPINESS"
VWage Squire/January 1977, 9