on your other side for a bit.’
‘I’m not snoring.’
‘You were snoring, I could hear it.’
‘I’m not even asleep,’ Raoul says.
‘You were asleep.’
‘So why didn’t I hear anything if I was awake then?’ Raoul asks, also irritated.
‘Because you were asleep! You were asleep and snoring!’
Raoul mutters, turns over and after a few minutes is asleep again. And snoring.
I sigh and get some earplugs from the bedside drawer. But even my earplugs can’t combat the number of decibels Raoul can produce at night. After fifteen minutes I give up and take my pillow to the spare bedroom. I set the alarm clock on the bedside table and close the curtains with a single swipe. As I’m doing it, my subconscious registers something strange. I open the curtain a chink. Someone is standing outside our house, on the other side of the street. A dark figure with a cigarette in his hand. I presume it’s a man – I can’t imagine that a woman would stand there smoking a cigarette in the middle of the night.
Bilal comes to mind.
I try my hardest to make him out, but I can’t from this distance. Finally the figure moves off, with the slouchy, indifferent walk so typical of my students. Shivering in the cool night air, I watch until he has disappeared. What should I do? There’s no point calling the police – even if they find him, there’s nothing illegal about staring at a house in the middle of the night.
I turn back the duvet and slide into bed, but the chances that I’ll fall asleep now are virtually nil. The image of the sharp point of the knife forces itself into my mind and is amplified many times in the darkness.
I’m up at the crack of dawn the next morning and leave the house half an hour earlier than normal. Raoul and Valerie are usually getting up when I put on my coat, and I give them a quick kiss before I get into my car. This morning they are still asleep, but I enjoy the quietness of my departure. Thoughts race through my mind: I want to go to school and yet I’m dreading entering the building. What am I going to do if I come across Bilal? Jan might have suspended him, but that won’t necessarily keep him away.
I drive through the misty Rotterdam rush hour with a sense of foreboding. A grimy figure jumps out in front of the car at a red light. He holds up a sponge and a bucket. I nod, and he washes my windscreen with sweeping strokes. It only takes him a minute. I gaze sympathetically at his neglected appearance, his long knotted beard and worn-out army jacket. I let my window down slightly and say, ‘Hi, Tom!’
Tom gives me a smile that’s missing at least two teeth and holds out his hand.
I press five euros into his hand. ‘Get yourself a good meal for once, Tom.’ Sometimes I give him one euro, others two and occasionally even a ten euro note. It depends how cold it is outside and how bedraggled he’s looking.
‘Thank you, miss,’ Tom says. ‘You’ve got a good heart.’
I smile because he always says that and I suspect he uses the same line on everybody.
‘I mean it,’ he says. ‘There are enough people who spit in my face or try to run me over. It’s dangerous work, lady. Dangerous work for just a few euros.’ Before I can say anything back, he’s walked off, still talking loudly.
Tom is always at the same crossroads. He usually walks along the queue of cars with a bucket and gets a bit of loose change without having to get his sponge out. I find it impossible to drive on and ignore Tom. In fact I can’t ignore anyone.
A while back, the action group ‘Keep Rotterdam Safe’ called on Rotterdammers not to give money to beggars. The morning before that, I’d given Tom ten euros, a bag of currant buns and Raoul’s windproof ski jacket. I can still picture him standing there with them.
‘Now I’m all set!’ he’d said.
The following day he was at the crossroads, wearing the red jacket. I’ve never dared tell Raoul about it – he’s not that keen on beggars and tramps – but he’s never missed the jacket.
‘No one has to live like that in Holland,’ he always says. ‘They could look for a job, and if they don’t want to, I’m sorry, but they shouldn’t hassle people who do work for their money.’
The topic keeps cropping up in our conversations and occasionally causes rows. But it’s also how we met in the first place.
I was twenty-two and still a student. Raoul was twenty-six. I was in my final year of teacher training at college in Rotterdam and travelled in from Berkel & Rodenrijs, where I lived with my parents.
My train was a commuter train, full of passengers who were delighted if they could find a seat and doze unashamedly or open up their morning newspaper. But the majority went through the daily torture of standing, packed together.
It was usually quite quiet when I got on and I’d be fortunate enough to get a window seat, safely out of reach of the pointy elbows in the central aisle. Engrossed in a book or course material, the time passed quickly and I barely noticed my fellow passengers.
One bright spring morning in March I was staring out of the window at the cows in the meadows and the clouds that seemed to rise up out of the mist. A loud shout broke my reverie. It came from the area next to the doors, where a few people were standing. Two young men stood facing each other. One was wearing a tracksuit, he was bald and had a nose ring; the other was dressed in a smart coat and had neatly combed hair – the picture of decency and good sense. But that must have been just show because the bald guy was shouting, ‘What did you say? Mind your own business, you prick!’
Everyone in the carriage was pretending not to have noticed.
The well-dressed man said something back, at which point the bald guy flew at his throat, pushed him against the corridor wall and punched him in the head.
I pushed past the man sitting next to me and rushed towards them.
‘Stop that!’ I threw open the glass doors. ‘Both of you!’
I threw myself between their fists. That stopped them momentarily – the scruffy guy looked at me in amazement, then irritation, and gave me a harmless shove. The well-dressed man seemed to be wondering if I was in my right mind. The scruffy guy tried to push me aside, but I didn’t let him. I grabbed his arm, looked him in the eye and said, ‘Stop! Please! Can’t you just discuss it?’
His expression was so full of fury I was frightened he’d hit me, but at that moment someone behind me said, ‘She’s right. Come on, lads, this isn’t the way.’
I looked around and saw the tall, dark-haired man who’d been sitting opposite me in the carriage. The fight was stopped, the two parties separated with final hateful glances at each other and I returned to my seat.
The man who’d come to my assistance sat back down opposite me. ‘That was brave of you,’ he said, ‘but also a bit foolish.’
‘Everyone pretending not to notice is the obvious solution, isn’t it?’ I snapped back, my cheeks flushed.
‘One of them could easily have had a knife.’
‘Don’t be silly, not everyone walks around with a knife.’
The man looked like he doubted that. ‘It can’t get much worse than it is.’
His words turned out to be prophetic. At the time knife-incidents were on the rise – these days the ticket inspectors won’t get involved in arguments on the trains.
Nowadays every suspect character who comes into Rotterdam is preventatively searched, street shootings have