Marcel (4 page)

IT WAS SUNDAY, AND THE END OF MAY. THE
grandmother had made boxy parcels of both the grandfather and me. She had brushed my black patent leather shoes, although my mother had done so already. The sweet stench of shoe polish wafted up my legs. She had put so much starch in the grandfather’s shirt that it creaked as if it would burst every time he moved his arms.

“We’ve had a letter from Anna,” she had told my father a few days before. “Cyriel is sick. He wants us to go and see him. I’m taking the lad along, if that’s all right.”

She was not seeking his opinion, merely stating her intent.

“I’m not sure …” my father had said. “All those old people you keep foisting on him …” adding, once she was out of earshot, “They fill his head with nonsense. Why can’t he stay at home with his brother and sisters? They’re quite happy playing in the sandpit.”

For days I ran and sang in the orchard. To town. To town. She had made it sound exciting.

“I don’t suppose there’s any harm in it,” my mother ventured. “At least it’ll get him out of the house.”

“If you say so.” My father clenched his fists in his trouser pockets. “They act as if the boy belongs to them.”

The grandmother buttoned my jacket, flicked the dust from my shoulders, wiped a crumb from the corner of my mouth with the tip of her handkerchief. She gave my collar a final pat, saying: “Now you wait here while I put my hat on.”

Tilting her head this way and that in the oblong hall mirror she judged her appearance through narrowed eyes, bobbing and weaving to take in every detail. Her fingers flew around her hat, tucking stray locks firmly under the brim.

The grandfather, losing patience, clicked his false teeth against the roof of his mouth.

“We’ll miss the train at this rate.”

“There’s plenty of time.”

She fumbled in the pockets of her beige summer coat, seized her handbag from the chest under the mirror and rummaged in it at length.

“All the rubbish you’ve got there,” he grinned, “all the stuff you carry around! Women! They’d take their cookers with them if they could.”

She held up her purse with a sigh of relief.

The three of us stood side by side on the platform, keeping close to the wall.

“If an express train or a heavy steam engine comes past,” the grandmother said, “you get those dangerous suction winds. That’s how my father had his accident.”

She squeezed my hand. I stood between her and the
grandfather. The breeze tugged at my jacket and I hopped from one foot to the other so I could see the sun glint off my patent leather toes.

The grandfather’s shirt crackled. Somehow he seemed not to fill his clothes, as if he were a stowaway in a hold of pressed fabrics.

“Here it comes,” he whispered. “Can you hear it? It’s coming.”

The electric cables over the track began to thrum softly. To town, to town.

Both grandparents kept their heads covered in the train. The grandfather raised his cap from time to time to mop his forehead with a handkerchief reeking of lavender. He stared fixedly out of the window.

“What’s the matter with Cyriel, anyway?” he asked.

“Worn out, I expect.”

She held her handbag on her lap, drumming her fingers on the large metal clasp.

“Worn out? But Cyriel isn’t that old is he? Younger than I am, at any rate.”

“That man wasn’t cut out for hard graft with bricks and mortar. He worked himself to the bone.”

“To the bone? He’s a man, isn’t he?”

“Cyriel had everything going for him, what with his brains. A real intellectual. Always reading. I never knew him otherwise. It was in his blood, being the son of a printer …”

“
I
read books too. Does that make me an intellectual?”

“Cyriel went to university. You didn’t.”

“University! Everybody goes to university nowadays.”

“Not in his day they didn’t. Cyriel could have been a professor or an engineer or an architect. Even a government minister …”

“A fine lot, those brainy types. If it had come to the crunch, they’d have sold us all to the Germans. Every one of us!”

“Marcel always followed his own ideals, you know that. He wouldn’t have kowtowed to Hitler.”

“Not him, no. Not him. What d’you think they sent him to the eastern front for? For the sake of his blue eyes? A fine lot, they were. Half of them cannon fodder, the other half in the construction industry or textile trade, if they aren’t breeding cattle in the Argentine. Those chaps did very well for themselves, I tell you. Cyriel always earned good money.”

The grandmother laughed disdainfully.

“Just as well Anna has her shop, though, and that her people are well off. If it wasn’t for Anna the pair of them would have starved.”

He fell silent. Clicked his dentures. Tapped my knee.

“Three more stops and we’ll be there.”

Each time the train slowed down he studied the landscape with renewed concentration and intoned the name of the next station, as though his ritual prediction were necessary for the train to come to a halt.

“Drongen next.”

“Halewijn,” corrected the grandmother.

“Drongen.”

“Halewijn. We just passed Lauwe.”

“Drongen.”

The grandfather returned his gaze to the window with a shrug. The grandmother glanced at me, mouthing “Halewijn”. By the time the engine driver had slammed the brakes on and a brick building with the name Halewijn in blue tiles slid into view, the stillness in the compartment had grown leaden.

Out on the square in front of the station there were plane trees with bicycles clustered around their trunks like helpless glistening insects that had fallen from the branches. Yellow trams swerved into the square from the side streets, screeching on their rails as though exchanging greetings in a language only trams knew. The heat shimmered above the grey asphalt. The cafés lining the square blazed in the sunlight.

“We’ve got time for a cup of coffee,” said the grandmother. “I wouldn’t mind some refreshment.”

The grandfather nodded. “A cool pint would just do me nicely. Hotel Terminus, let’s go there. Remember? Hotel Terminus …”

She did not reply, but glanced briefly in my direction. An almost imperceptible shudder passed through her body, as if she had been caught in some shameful act. It was the same shudder that I had glimpsed once before, when she heaved herself out of her chair by the sewing machine and padded to the large cupboard in her carpet slippers. She had turned the brass key with uncharacteristic circumspection and gently moved the doors to prevent the hinges from letting out a voluptuous, drawn-out squeak.

It was her custom to handle the contents of her sewing cupboard with respect, even reverence, but this time she plunged her arms in among the folded dress lengths and rolls of material with a surprising lack of decorum. The guilt-laden quiet was disturbed by plastic bags crackling surreptitiously at the back of the shelves. I heard her chewing and swallowing. She kept rustling the plastic in search of vanilla wafers, toffees or bonbons, which she devoured at great speed without any sign of enjoyment. She was quite unlike Miss Veegaete, whose entire body seemed to shrink and swell by turns, so blissfully did she savour the cake she was served on her Friday visits. The grandmother left the sewing room in a hurry, and a moment later I heard a tap running in the kitchen, as she stood by the sink sluicing away the sweetness with hastily-gulped water.

“They’ve papered the walls,” the grandfather observed.

The hotel restaurant was chock full. Waiters bearing trays picked their way among the crowded tables. The glassed terrace overlooking the square was occupied by balding gentlemen and ladies in two-piece suits having lunch. We took a table by the window. On the glass it said
Hotel-Restaurant-
Brasserie
in mirror writing.
Brasserie
.

“This place is for the top brass,” the grandfather joked.

“He’s having you on,” said the grandmother. “Don’t you listen to him … One coffee, a pint and an apple juice please.”

The waiter scribbled on his pad and vanished as abruptly as he had appeared.

The grandparents glanced round.

“Look,” the grandmother said, pointing to a blackboard over the bar indicating the day’s specials. “They still do a
Soufflé Grand Marnier
.”

“Mariner Puff,” the grandfather said. They chuckled.

The espresso machine behind the bar squirted coffee into a jug. The grandfather laid his arms on the edge of the table and leaned forward to the grandmother.

“I can still see you sitting there.”

Her eyes swept past him. “They’ve got new benches.”

“You didn’t notice me at first. Remember?”

She did not reply, but turned to me instead.

“How’s your apple juice? It certainly looks good … This is where your grandfather and I first met.”

The grandfather beamed.

“It was after the annual choir festival, 1939 as I recall. There was a big crowd, a lot of young people, everybody talking at the tops of their voices. And singing.”

He sipped his pint.

“The whole square,” the grandmother continued, “was decorated with flags. And the songs! Everyone joined in, didn’t they? It was lovely. People used to sing real music then, there was none of that screaming and shouting you have nowadays.”

“Such as the Beatles, or whatever they’re called,’ he said gruffly. ‘How about you, lad, d’you like that kind of racket? They’re not human, more like a bunch of apes if you ask me.”

The grandmother began to rock gently from side to side, half humming and half singing. “When blossoming broom sets the heath ablaze.”

The grandfather did not join in, which was a relief, as I had noticed the waiter giving us odd looks every time he came past.

“And gold and azure light up the days.”

“They used to give us the sheet music to take home,” the grandfather said. “So we could practice the songs.”

“For four voices, some of them,” the grandmother said, “and at the top it said how they should be sung.”

She raised her forefinger. The waiter thought she was beckoning him. “With Pride and Valour, that’s what it said.”

The grandfather gazed dreamily out of the window at the square. “
Soufflé Grand Marnier
, I told the landlord, what’s all this about
Soufflé Grand Marnier
? Have we stopped being Flemings, all of a sudden? So what do you want me to call it, he said. Simple, I said, Grand Mariner Puff, what else?”

Their shoulders shook with suppressed laughter.

“And he did change the name, too! He really did!” the grandmother said. “Once a year for the choir festival. Mariner Puff. I expect the place has changed hands by now. The old landlord probably died years ago.”

“Your grandmother was sitting over there, in that corner,” the grandfather said, “surrounded by young folk. Drinking a pot of Trappist. Yes, she liked her beer all right. They called her the Flower of Stuyvenerghe.” He winked broadly.

“That’ll do,” she said. A pink flush spread over her cheeks, which was unusual.

“And that flower,” the grandfather said, “was picked by me. Not that there weren’t plenty of bees about. But I dare say their stings weren’t as good as mine.”

The grandmother set her handbag down on the table with a thump.

“I’m going to pay the bill, or we’ll miss our tram.”

The tram stopped at a crossroads on the outskirts of town. A gentle breeze ruffled the blue and white awning on a kiosk with an onion-shaped dome. The streets in this neighbourhood had a countrified air. Some of the houses were separated by yards with sheds and outbuildings that were barely visible behind tall hedges. Cherry trees poked their branches over the fence along the pavement.

Anna’s shop was on the edge of the square opposite the tram shelter. A painted wooden sign over the door said “Haevermans Stationery”. A display of old magazines languished alongside dusty calling cards and inkwells in the sun-drenched window. Singers with long bleached hair smiled toothily from record sleeves, which were so faded that their lips had turned green.

The grandmother gave the glass-panelled door a push. Somewhere at the back of the shop a bell shrieked, like a cat being trod on its tail. The shop was deserted, and smelt of tobacco.

The grandfather sniffed the air.

“They’ve got some fine little cigars here. The slender ones, good quality. Cigarillas or something. Cyriel always used to bring me some when he came to visit.”

The counter on the far side of the shop was more like a cave stacked with snuff boxes, pipe heads and cigars around a cash register.

The grandmother paced the floor, took a fashion magazine from one of the shelves, glanced at the pages, replaced it and picked a few postcards out of the rack to inspect them closely.

“They’re certainly taking their time,” she hissed.

“This place could do with a good clean,” the grandfather said.

“I’m sure Anna’s got enough on her mind as it is, poor soul.” The grandmother ran her fingertips over the different types of notepaper. “Mmm, paper …” she said, “it has such a lovely smell sometimes.”

It was a long wait. The only sound came from the clock over the counter, crunching wearily as it struggled to make the second hand move, without success.

At long last someone could be heard thumping down a staircase in the depths of the house. A door flew open, and a gangly boy of about sixteen with a dark shadow on his upper lip and a shock of pitch-black hair appeared in the cavernous shop. He stood there looking at us blankly until his eyes widened suddenly, as if had just remembered something.

“Ah yes, of course,” he muttered, tossing his head to flick the hair from his eyes and rushing out again before the grandmother had time to greet him.

“Odd chap, that,” the grandfather said.

The grandmother looked down at me.

“Their youngest,” she said, and then, in a low voice. “He was an afterthought, really …”