Postcards From No Man's Land by Aidan Chambers Read Free Book Online Page A

lived in the country for a while, it would be easier for you.’
    ‘Maybe I will. I want to do something between school and whatever I do next.’
    ‘You don’t know?’
    ‘What I want to do? Not yet.’
    Alma took a sip of her coffee. ‘I’m still thinking about your thief. Perhaps in his mind, he wasn’t stealing.’
    ‘What, then?’
    ‘He made it into a game, a competition. He gave you a chance. He won. So he took the prize.’
    ‘Hey, whose side are you on!’ Though meaning a joke, there was an edge in his voice.
    ‘Yours, I think, wouldn’t you say?’
    He felt a hint of rebuke.
    ‘Sorry. Wasn’t being ungrateful.’
    ‘I understand. It’s a shock, something like that. I only mean, you aren’t hurt. You’ve lost a little money, a few unimportant other things. Your pride is bruised, but is pride so precious? I’ll see you get back to your friends, then all will be well again, and soon what has happened will be just a good story to tell. But the boy who stole your things,what about him? What kind of life does he live? And who looks after him?’
    ‘Sounds like you’d have helped him just as much as you’re helping me, if he’d been the one you’d found on the steps.’
    ‘I imagine he’s a street boy who lives on his wits. You had something worth stealing, he probably has nothing. Why should I help you and not him?’
    ‘You’re like my grandmother. She always puts the other side.’
    ‘Is that such a bad thing?’
    ‘No. Just a bit galling when you’re on the receiving end, that’s all.’
    ‘I don’t mean to lecture you. A failing of the old.’
    ‘You’re not. I’d agree if we were talking about someone else.’
    ‘Always easy to be wise when you’re only an onlooker. Would you like another coffee?’
    When he hesitated she added, ‘I usually have two.’
    After she had ordered she said, ‘I remember the war, you see, the occupation. Especially the last winter before the liberation. We call it de hongerwinter . It was terrible. Food was desperately scarce. And fuel for the fires. People burned their furniture, even the wood in their houses—doors, panelling, floors even. There was nothing. Even the German soldiers were hungry. So they behaved badly sometimes. They hadn’t until then. In the first years of the occupation, at least where I lived here in Amsterdam, I could walk about on my own and not fear them. I was a young woman, only eighteen, nineteen, but I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t like them. Hated them, in fact. But they were very strict about behaving properly to us. People forget that now. Unless you were a Jew of course. For them, it was always dreadful. What was done to them …’ She raised a hand from the table and let it fall again. ‘Unforgivable.’
    She was silent for a moment, collecting herself.
    ‘But what I wanted to tell you is that though it was awful at the end, we were all in it together. Now it isn’t like that. Most of us in your country and mine are well off and comfortable compared with those days, yet we allow it to happen that great numbers of our young people are homeless. Abandoned to live on the streets. Even here in Holland, where we pride ourselves on looking after our children, it’s happening more and more. I see them begging and sitting in doorways looking like bags of old rubbish. We are told not to give them money, that they are dangerous and it only encourages them and they spend it on drugs. But I don’t care. If I can, I give something. Not to all of them, there are too many. To ones I think might benefit.’
    ‘But which ones? How can you know?’
    ‘I guess. Use my intuition.’
    Moved, and a little embarrassed too, by the passion roused in her, the flush that tinted her pale face, the hint of tears in her bleached-blue eyes, the quiver of anger in her voice, Jacob was sure she would have said more, but the coffee arrived, Alma sighed, took possession of herself and drank, and became again the calm assured person she had so