SOMEWHERE ELSE

AuthorHouse

Chapter One

With the rain streaming down her face and her mind in turmoil, Adriana turns the corner into the Rozenstraat in Rotterdam. The sky had opened up just as she left the greengrocer's with the bag of potatoes her mother needs for the evening meal. The glistening pavement is interspersed with large black patches where puddles have formed in the uneven laid paving stones. It isn't yet four-thirty in the afternoon and only the beginning of October, but already a heavy dusk has settled over the city. Reflections from lit up windows in the long row of dreary three-storey one-family tenement houses throw blurred, rippled patchwork patterns onto the slick road surface.

Adriana Cornelia Blaauw is a slim brunette: a pretty girl with rosy cheeks and a ready smile. The ready smile is absent today—replaced by a worried frown between her large brown eyes—as she trudges along through the gloomy surroundings. Her medium length hair hangs in sad looking rattails around her face, the wet ends drip steadily down her collar and saturate the jumper underneath her coat. She doesn't notice. The heavy downpour only vaguely registers with her now that she heads into the wind after turning into her street.

Home is number—two twenty six—in the Rozenstraat. It is way down the other end. Distracted, she wipes the drips from her nose and chin with the sleeve of her coat, and suddenly realises that she is soaked through. She should have taken the umbrella, but it had only been drizzling when, deep in thought she had walked out of the house without even putting her beret on. The need for a brollie had been furthermost from her mind.

She expects her mother to be very annoyed with her when she gets home; lamenting about the time it will take to dry out Adriana's only coat in this damp weather. She hates making life difficult for her mum, but today the importance of a wet coat pales in comparison to the bigger issue she faces. The beat of her footsteps echoes her thoughts. What to do, oh, what to do!

She believes that she wants to go, the adventure is so tempting; but scary too. She must also think of her parents and sisters. If she chooses to go, it will look as if she doesn't care about them and that just isn't true.

Arriving at number two twenty six, she finds that she not only forgot the umbrella, but the key to the communal door of the tenement building as well. Darn it, now she has to ring the bell. At least her two younger sisters will be home from school by now. They'll answer the door instead of her mother. The door opens, pulled by the string that snakes down the banisters of the staircases from the shared front door to their third floor apartment landing.

'Who's there?' Her youngest sister Mien shouts down.

'Only me!'

With her feet squelching in the wet shoes, she climbs the first staircase, leaving shiny wet puddles on the wooden treads. She can hear Mien and Truus, the middle one of the trio of sisters, squabbling on the third floor landing. Apparently, Truus got up to answer the door, when roughly pushed aside by her little sister for the privilege. Being some three years older, she declares Mien a stupid juvenile. Adriana smiles indulgently. She is after all the adult one. Seventeen at the end of the month. Will she still be here then, though?

On their apartment landing, her sisters are angrily muttering at each other.

Spotting her very wet sister, Mien immediately forgets her gripes and shrieks in her high-pitched voice: 'Mum, come look at our Adriana. She looks like a drowned cat!' The last part of the sentence is lost in a mumble as Truus clamps her hand over the girl's mouth.

'Be quiet, you silly mutt! Mum doesn't need to know. Go get a cloth and dry the landings and stairs—all the way down to the front door, not just ours,' she warns.

She turns to her older sister. 'Give me that coat and your shoes, your stockings too. I'll put them in the attic to dry out. Mum will have a blue fit if she sees the state of your clothes.'

Mien also wants to be helpful now and brings a small towel from the closet as well as a cloth. Handing the towel to Adriana to dry her hair and face, she bounds down the stairs to attack the long wet trail.

Liesbet Blaauw looks at her eldest daughter, who has placed the sodden wet shopping bag containing the potatoes on the kitchen bench.

'Rather wet out there, isn't it.' It's a comment rather than a question.

Adriana waits for the scolding to follow. Her wet hair and jumper are a dead give-away for the lack of overhead protection, but ... nothing. Instead ...

'Would you peel the potatoes please, love. I'd like to have dinner as soon as your dad comes home from work.'

Her mother's lack of comment unnerves Adriana. She waits a couple of minutes before she hesitantly confesses, 'I forgot the umbrella.'

'I know,' Liesbet replies.

'My coat is sopping wet. Truus hung it up in the attic. My shoes and stockings too.'

'I know.'

'I forgot the key as well.'

'I know,' her mother repeats.

Adriana has no more offences on offer and gives up.

It is getting warm in the small narrow kitchen. The two gas rings are on. Auburn glints are starting to appear in Adriana's hair as it dries. Except for the kettle that announces its boiling point with a piercing whistle, the kitchen remains deadly quiet.

Liesbet covertly studies her generally chatty daughter. The girl is miles away again. The potatoes are mishandled. This is not usual behaviour for her normally spirited eldest, but she knows very well what's bugging the girl.

More to defeat the uneasy silence than needing confirmation of what she already knows she asks, 'Still thinking about your aunt and uncle's offer, are you?'

'Mmmm? What?' Adriana has registered the voice, but not the words. 'Sorry, what did you say, Mum?'

Her mother smiles as she repeats the question. Adriana's only answer is a nod and a big heavy sigh.

Liesbet has also given the same offer a lot of thought over the last week. Her older sister Jeanne and husband Wim are in the Netherlands on furlough from the Dutch East Indies. Wim is the factory manager of a Belgian Tea Estate on the island of Java. Jeanne and Wim are childless. Not rich, but comparatively well off: mostly unaffected by the depression that has made life so difficult in most other parts of the world.

Liesbet isn't envious of her sister, but she has reluctantly acknowledged that Jeanne and Wim's circumstances are far superior to that of her and her husband, Cor. She doesn't complain; because they are still a lot better off than most of the people around them. Cor still has his job on the waterfront and a job is more than many men can lay claim to. Unemployment is rife—so yes—in a way, they've been lucky and have come through relatively unscathed, so far that is. Improvement has been very slow and new clouds of doom are gathering on the horizon. The "making ends meet," has remained an everlasting financial struggle. The flat is too small as well. A front room, a small kitchen and a back room with two sleeping alcoves is hardly luxury accommodation. Liesbet would love to have one of the more modern apartments, with bedrooms rather than alcoves. She holds onto the dream that she knows isn't likely to come true in the near future. Cor has partitioned off a room for Adriana in the attic. It has solved the space...