The Tide in the Attic

by Aleid Van Rhijn

  For a few moments, all six of them sat quite still and listened.

  Bob stood up and growled.

  ‘It doesn’t seem to be flying on,’ Jacob said. ‘I think it’s circling round. I’ll go and have a look.’

  Kees went along with him. First they took off their socks, and then they rolled up their trouser legs. Cautiously they stepped down their staircase of boxes. Kees had to roll up his trouser legs well above the knee. They waded towards the window.

  ‘You’ll catch your death of cold,’ Mrs. Wielemaker said to Kees.

  Kees could feel the cold water cutting into his legs. He was a bit sorry now that he hadn’t stayed where he had been on the boxes.

  Jacob and he were standing at the window, but all they could see from where they stood was water.

  ‘Quick, get on to your bed,’ Jacob said.

  ‘But that’ll make it wet,’ Kees objected. Then he noticed that the water had got beyond the level of the springs, and that the mattress was soaked in any case.

  ‘Hurry up,’ Jacob told him, and helped him up.

  They both stood on the bed and looked out over the board. The breakers were still foaming against the house, forced forward by the waves behind them. The apple trees had disappeared altogether.

  There it is!’ Jacob shouted.

  He pointed at the sky. Now Kees could see the aeroplane circling the village. For a moment it disappeared behind the church. Then it came into view again.

  ‘It’s coming our way!’ Kees shouted excitedly. He couldn’t hear the engine above the roar of the storm until it was quite close. It was flying very low and at one point it was only about a hundred yards away from them.

  Jacob had wrenched the window open with great difficulty; Kees got hold of a corner of the curtain and waved it, without really knowing why. He wondered whether the pilot had noticed them.

  Shivering, Kees stood next to Jacob, whose teeth had begun to chatter as well. The aeroplane disappeared from view. They waited a little while, but there was no further sign of it.

  Then they saw a rowing boat, full of people. It came from the direction of Kruger’s farm and was dancing wildly in the swell.

  ‘They couldn’t hold out any longer up there,’ Mr. Wielemaker said. He, too, had climbed down from the platform, and now stood on the bed with Jacob and Kees.

  ‘Shall we also have to leave here, Father?’ Kees asked.

  ‘How can we?’ Jacob said and Kees noticed that Jacob would have liked to swallow his words as soon as they were out of his mouth. ‘Anyway,’ he added casually. ‘Why should we leave? We’ll be safe enough here.’

  But Kees had seen through him and knew what Jacob was really thinking.

  They looked at the boat in complete silence. Two men were rowing. Sometimes it looked as if they were making no progress at all. They could make out a woman’s white bonnet and a number of children.

  ‘Where do you think they’re making for?’ Kees asked. ‘There’s water everywhere.’

  ‘Probably for Duivenisse. It’s bound to be dry there,’ his father said.

  Now they could see another boat, right over to the left. And behind it yet another. Everybody seemed to be escaping; everybody was trying to get away. Sunset Farm must have been the only place which was not being evacuated.

  Suddenly, Kees felt very lonely, even though Father, Mother, Sjaantje, Jacob, and Trui were all with him. Shivering, he crept back to the platform behind Father and Jacob.

  ‘Do light the stove again, it keeps going out,’ Mr. Wielemaker said to Trui.

  Kees sat as close to it as he could.

  Sjaantje looked at her mother.

  ‘I want to get away from here,’ she said plaintively.

  ‘So do I,’ Mother whispered.

  ‘Let’s keep cheerful,’ Trui said. ‘I’ll make a cup of coffee for us all. That’ll wake us up.’

  ‘Yes, do that,’ Jacob said.

  ‘If only the storm would let up,’ Mr. Wielemaker sighed. Several hours had passed, and the stove had gone out once again. They all sat huddled close together.

  ‘Let’s only light it when it’s absolutely essential,’ Father urged. ‘Otherwise we’ll use up all the paraffin and we need it badly for cooking.’ Mother had served up a large bowl of porridge, which had done them all the world of good. Now they were starting in on the ham. What a funny Sunday dinner it was!

  It was a very strange Sunday altogether. Instead of going to church and entertaining visitors, they had to crouch up here, hour after hour. Sjaantje complained about the cold all the time, even though Jacob had wrapped her in blankets.

  ‘If only the storm would let up,’ Mr. Wielemaker sighed again. But the storm raged on with unabated violence. And the waves continued to beat incessantly against the window of Kees’s room. ‘The window won’t be able to hold out much longer against the pressure,’ Jacob said. The words were hardly out of his mouth when they heard a terrific crash of broken glass. The window had shattered and water was rushing in by the bucketful. It beat against the far wall and then receded again. The storm howled furiously.

  ‘I’ll try and nail a board right over it,’ Jacob said.

  ‘Where will you get the nails and the hammer from?’ Mr. Wielemaker asked. Jacob sat down again. How stupid of him not to have thought of that!

  ‘Well, anyhow, I’ll shut the bedroom door. Otherwise we’ll be blown away.’

  But that was easier said than done. During the last few hours the water had been rising all the time, until now it was waist high. Jacob tore off his trousers, and waded in in his underpants.

  ‘It’s cold all right,’ he shuddered when he was up to his hips in water. He tried to look cheerful but his efforts weren’t very successful. Slowly he made his way to the door and shut it. It required a lot of effort and, when he finally got it shut, he shut out most of the light as well.

  ‘The window in Trui’s room will give too,’ he called out. ‘Shall I shut her door as well?’

  ‘No, not yet. If you shut it, we’ll have no light at all.’

  But Mother said, ‘He’d better shut it now that he’s in the water, or he’ll only have to get wet again, later on.’

  ‘Well, I’ll go the next time,’ Mr. Wielemaker suggested.

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ Jacob said. ‘After all, I’m a young man.’

  ‘I’m not that old myself,’ Mr. Wielemaker grunted.

  ‘Yes, you are, as old as the hills,’ Jacob said with a laugh.

  Kees could see that Jacob was shivering, as he waded across to shut the other door. Now the loft was in complete darkness, except for a few rays of light through the roof, where the wind had dislodged the tiles.

  When Jacob climbed back, Mrs. Wielemaker handed him a towel. He took off all his clothes and dried himself, stark naked. Nobody thought it strange at that moment. His teeth chattering, Jacob dressed again. Then he tried to roll a cigarette with his trembling hands.

  ‘Here you are. There’s a cup left,’ Trui said, holding out a cup of coffee.

  ‘Nice and hot,’ Jacob grinned as he gulped it down.

  What a wonderful man Jacob is, Kees thought. His own back was aching from all the crouching he had done.

  ‘If only the storm would let up,’ Mr. Wielemaker said a third time. But the storm was doing nothing of the sort. On the contrary, it was pounding more and more violently against the walls. The whole house shook and the roof timbers were creaking ominously. There was a terrific noise just above their heads, which nearly succeeded in drowning the roar of the storm. Suddenly the room was much lighter, cold wind rushed in and rain beat down on them. When they looked up in alarm, they could see the sky full of clouds chasing one another. About ten roof-tiles had been torn loose.

  Bob jumped to his feet, his hackles roused. He started barking at the roof. Sjaantje screamed, ‘Mother!’ For a moment they all looked at one another in horror.

  ‘It’s bad,’ Mr. Wielemaker said, putting down his pipe.

 
‘It certainly is,’ Jacob agreed quietly.

  ‘Things can’t go on like this,’ Mrs. Wielemaker said, wrapping her shawl round Sjaantje. She was quite right. The storm was racing through the hole in the roof and whistling round the loft. The remaining tiles began to rattle. The platform was completely drenched. The rain beat against their faces, soaked their clothes and splashed the crockery. Witje bleated and Miesje sheltered behind Bob who was still barking at the roof.

  ‘Let’s try and close up the hole,’ Jacob said.

  ‘Yes, I think we ought to, but I can’t see how,’ Mr. Wielemaker said. ‘We haven’t any boards or nails and we have no hammer.’

  ‘If we break up one of the boxes, we might manage to patch it up. Perhaps we could fix the wood to the joists,’ Jacob said.

  Although they had no boxes to spare, Mr. Wielemaker agreed.

  ‘We’ll have to try. Which one shall we use?’

  ‘We had better take this one. It’s only being used as a step, anyway.’

  They fetched up the dripping box and, while Mr. Wielemaker held it, Jacob smashed it with his boots.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Now we have three useful boards. I’ll go and...’He stopped short, because now they could hear the drone of the aeroplane engine again. Jacob put down the boards he was holding in his hand.

  ‘What are you up to now?’ Mrs. Wielemaker asked in alarm, for Jacob was standing on tiptoe trying to lift himself up through the hole in the roof.

  But all Jacob said in reply was, ‘Lift me up, please, Mr. Wielemaker, quick. I want to signal to the pilot. They’ve got to take us away from here. We shan’t be safe for very much longer.’

  Kees’s heart beat faster as he heard Jacob say this. At last, it had been said! At last his own thoughts had been brought out into the open!

  ‘That’s much too dangerous,’ Mrs. Wielemaker called out to Jacob. ‘Don’t do it.’

  But Mr. Wielemaker had already lifted Jacob up and now they could see him feeling his way along the creaking joists.

  ‘Hold on tight,’ Kees shouted out, as he saw the storm tossing Jacob from side to side.

  Jacob bent over and called down, ‘Give me a sheet, quick. I can see the aeroplane coming.’

  Trui fetched a sheet as fast as she could. She opened it out before handing it up to him.

  A moment later the sheet was fluttering out of the hole in the roof of the farmhouse. It was a distress signal, a sign that there were people there who needed help. You could hear the sheet fluttering loudly in the wind. Jacob was holding on to one of the cross-beams with his left hand. Then they suddenly saw him slip. A hoarse cry...and the grey daylight poured into the loft again.

  Kees screamed out shrilly.

  ‘Oh, dear God,’ Trui moaned in a shaking voice. Mr. Wielemaker had tried to get hold of one of Jacob’s legs but he lost his own balance in the attempt and almost fell to the floor of the loft. They heard a loud clattering on the roof, and after that nothing but the roar of the storm.

  ‘He is drowning,’ Mrs. Wielemaker shouted.

  Kees caught hold of his father’s arm and said, ‘Perhaps he is holding on to the guttering.’

  A moment later, Mr. Wielemaker was lying with his chest on the roof, after Kees and Trui had given him a lift up. They were holding on tight to his legs because the storm was trying to drag him away. He could barely breathe.

  ‘He is still there,’ Mr. Wielemaker shouted above the gale. He saw Jacob flattening himself against the roof, holding on to a ledge like grim death. He was fighting hard to stop the storm from flinging him into the seething sea of water below. Mr. Wielemaker realized that if Jacob let go he was lost. Swimming wouldn’t do any good in this raging inferno; he would only be sucked out to the open sea.

  ‘Hold on. Don’t lose hope,’ he yelled to Jacob. Then he turned round and shouted, ‘A sheet. Another sheet. And tie something heavy to it.’

  They all knew what he meant. He was going to throw a life-line to Jacob, and as they had no rope up there, it had to be a sheet. If it weren’t weighted, the wind would blow it out of Jacob’s reach. While Trui was fetching the sheet, Mrs. Wielemaker held on to her husband’s left leg. She was trembling all over. Trui looked round quickly for a heavy object. What should she use? She took the nearest thing: a big ham weighing at least twenty pounds. Deftly she tied the end of the sheet round it and drew the knot as tight as she could.

  ‘Hurry, do hurry!’ Mr. Wielemaker called out, panting for breath.

  Trui lifted Kees up so that he could hand the sheet to his father. They could hear Mr. Wielemaker throwing the ham to Jacob. Then they heard his voice.

  ‘Get hold of it. Come on, try.’

  Mr. Wielemaker pulled at one end of the sheet with all his strength, while Trui and Kees held on to his legs for all they were worth.

  ‘Hang on, Jacob! No, don’t stand up; crawl up on all fours. Good, that’s right. Just a bit more. Yes, that’s it. Come on now, come on.’

  The tension in the loft was hardly bearable.

  Sjaantje was so terrified that she clung tight to her mother. Then she saw Jacob’s head appear next to her father’s. Jacob was dripping wet and choking. When his chest reached the hole, he couldn’t go on for sheer exhaustion. He remained suspended there for a moment like a corpse. But then he made a final effort and dropped down. Trui and Kees helped him. His hands were bloody and there was a gaping wound below his right eye.

  Mr. Wielemaker came down, too, and Jacob said, ‘Thank you. It was touch-and-go up there.’

  Without a word, Mr. Wielemaker gave Trui one of the sheets. The other one had been blown away.

  ‘I just couldn’t hold on to it,’ Jacob said. ‘It was fluttering in the storm so hard that it dragged me away. I lost my balance and slid off.’

  Storm and rain continued to beat in through the hole. The aeroplane could no longer be heard; only the howling gale. Bob licked Jacob’s hands to welcome him back.

  CHAPTER SEVEN — A new calamity

  The water was still rising. Kees noticed that Father was constantly watching the water level. Then he would look at Jacob and they would nod to each other, without saying a word. They were trying hard not to upset the others. But Kees could see what was going on. He wondered whether Mother and Trui had noticed, too. Sjaantje probably hadn’t; she was too young to pay any attention to such things.

  The hours passed. Some of the time they just sat without saying a word. When that happened, they could hear nothing but the creaking of the beams and the floorboards—apart, of course, from the howl of the wind.

  Suddenly, Jacob started singing a little song. ‘Come on, join in,’ he said to Kees.

  It was the last thing Kees felt like doing. The water now came up to the door-knob of his room. Soon they wouldn’t be safe anywhere. What would happen then?

  They had made another effort to stop up the hole in the roof. The box-ends simply could not be made to stay in position, and the large piece of cardboard they had used instead was pretty loose now. They all knew that it couldn’t hold for long.

  Jacob was drying his clothes by the stove. Trui had peeled some potatoes for lunch. ‘But it’ll be some time before they’re ready,’ she said.

  When they were cooked, they started to eat straight away. They had potatoes with melted butter and for those who wanted it ham, sausage or cheese as well.

  Several times Kees had heard a crashing sound. It sounded quite different from the noises they had got used to by now. Father heard it, too. Whatever could it be?

  It came from somewhere near the back of the house. And just as Jacob was about to dry his other leg in front of the stove, the whole house started to rock.

  Jacob and Father looked at each other.

  ‘What is it?’ Mrs. Wielemaker asked in a panic. Trui, who was just about to prod her potato with a fork, stopped quite still so that her fork was suspended in mid-air. The house was shaking so much that they all thought it would collapse at any moment. It was just like an earthqua
ke. Without saying a word, Mr. Wielemaker made a sign to Jacob and pointed to the hole in the roof.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ Mrs. Wielemaker asked him. She was worried because she could see her husband was starting to climb up on Jacob’s shoulders.

  ‘I want to look outside again.’

  ‘If I were you, I’d tie a sheet round your waist. Then we can hold on to you,’ Jacob suggested. ‘You know how dangerous it is out there.’

  ‘Right,’ Mr. Wielemaker said calmly.

  Trui fetched Jacob’s wet sheet and tied it round him.

  Jacob helped Mr. Wielemaker up on to his shoulder. The farmer pulled the cardboard aside and looked out. He had to narrow his eyes into slits because the storm was lashing his face so hard.

  A moment later he was down again and his wife asked him, ‘Well, what was it?’

  For a moment he said nothing, as if he were wondering how to put it to them.

  ‘Well?’ his wife asked again.

  ‘There wasn’t much to see,’ he said, at last. Kees just knew that something had shaken his father, and that he was concealing it from them. Whatever could he have seen?

  ‘Let me look out, too,’ Kees said. He wanted to see for himself what had upset his father so much; he was very frightened himself now.

  ‘Certainly not,’ his father said.

  ‘I’ll go up and have a look,’ Jacob said. He had also realized that something very odd must be going on outside. So now he climbed up to the roof.

  When he was down again a moment or two later his face was white. His breath was coming in short gasps.

  ‘What is the matter?’ Mrs. Wielemaker asked, looking first at one and then at the other. Kees could see that his father didn’t want to say. But Jacob’s mind was made up.

  ‘We must talk about it,’ he said. ‘We can’t just...’

  ‘All right,’ Mr. Wielemaker agreed. ‘I’ll tell them. The washhouse and the barn aren’t there any more.’ He looked as if he were trying not to sob. Kees could see his lips tremble.

  ‘Heavens above!’ Trui muttered under her breath. Mrs. Wielemaker looked dumbfounded. Sjaantje had been listening to them, her eyes wide open with fright.