“After you left the Haanstra School?”
“Yes. I had no one else to turn to, no place to live. So I took a chance and went to The Hague. I had very little money. I deposited myself on her doorstep. If she had turned me away—”
“Did she contact your father?”
“No. We didn’t speak of my father. She was an unusual woman. When I arrived at her door, the first thing she did was apologize to me. She realized who I was immediately and said she was so very sorry for missing my mother’s funeral. She was lame in one leg, travel was difficult for her. She invited me to live in her home without any hesitation—I didn’t tell her I had been expelled from the school and she never asked. The first evening I spent with her she took me to her church to light a candle for my mother.”
“She was devout?”
“Very.” I stare into my wineglass. “That’s how I took advantage of her. After living with so many other girls my age I was bored at Aunt Marie’s. There was nothing to read in her house except the Bible. And I had almost nothing to do except a few household chores. I had too much time to think. I became restless. The best part of my day was running errands. We were in a port city. When I went to town, I was unsupervised. I would linger on the boardwalk and watch navy boys who had just arrived. They looked so handsome in their uniforms.”
Edouard says, “Some things never change.”
He’s right. “I desperately wanted to meet one of them. I wanted to dance with a boy in uniform at the Grand Hotel. It was a mythical place to me: all the shopkeepers’ daughters gossiped about dances at the Grand. I would overhear them and feel such longing. I knew Aunt Marie would never let me attend an event as scandalous as a dance, so I asked her if she would take me to a particular church I had heard of in Scheveningen, knowing she couldn’t and that she’d tell me to visit it on my own.”
I can see my aunt now, her gray hair pulled back into a small, tight bun, her modest black dresses, her thin lips. “I’d like to visit the old church in Scheveningen,” I told her. “I’ve heard there are ancient relics there. Do you think you could take me?”
“Oh, M’greet, I’ve visited many times!” she said, surprised and delighted at my interest in holy things. “It’s such a struggle for me to take the tram. Why don’t you go? The journey’s so picturesque. It’s an exquisite church.”
“So I took the tram to Scheveningen the next day,” I tell Edouard. “Ten minutes after I boarded I disembarked at Bains and walked along the beach until I arrived at the Grand. It was larger and more glamorous than any building I’d seen in my life, and I was dazzled by it. I stood in front of the hotel, hypnotized by its grandeur. Standing nearby were two sailors. Their uniforms were white against the sand.”
“Evert?” says Edouard.
“Evert and his friend Zeeman.” I remember it as if it were yesterday, not twenty years ago. The way they were laughing, full of their own adventures. I walked straight up to them without a moment’s hesitation and introduced myself. I asked them where they were stationed.
“Java.” Evert shaded his eyes so he could see me better. “Been there two years.”
I learned of the Dutch East India Company’s trading posts in school, and I knew that the government assumed control of Java after it ceased to exist. But I had never given much thought to the islands of the East Indies until Evert and Zeeman told me their -stories—about Java’s pristine beaches and temples as old as the ruins in Egypt. I was impressed to hear of their nights camped out under the stars and their days spent cutting their way through jungles. Zeeman read my emotions on my face. He said, “Don’t let Evert’s stories fool you. He may sleep on the ground with the rest of us in Java, but he comes from a very respectable family.”
“I was born in Caminghastate,” I said. “My father was a baron.”
Zeeman narrowed his eyes as if he didn’t believe me, but he was short and unattractive and I didn’t care. Whereas Evert’s gaze made me giddy. He was tall and blond and possessed what the Dutch call Be?nvloeden. Power, influence. “You glow,” he told me, and I drank in his compliments, becoming intoxicated.
“I went to his hotel room,” I tell Edouard. “I thought I’d never have to fear for my future again. The next evening, I lied to my aunt and said I was having dinner with the daughter of a shopkeeper, that I had found a friend. I took the tram and met Evert at the Grand. The hotel had a dance floor like a wide-open sea. We danced and I imagined I was Mrs. Margaretha Pallandt.” I feel my cheeks warming, remembering how foolish I was. “Every Friday I lied to my aunt and went to meet Evert at the Grand.”