Ahoy for Joy by Keith Reilly Page B

come to life in his texts and she would laugh and cry as she read, reaching occasionally for her dictionary for definition or clarification of his meaning. Increasingly she used an English dictionary providing descriptive meanings rather than just translation examples of similar meaning words in Dutch. Her command of the English language improved dramatically over these months and at home she modelled her speech on the spoken words of the sub-titled English serials and costume dramas that were popular on Dutch television at the time.
    However, Michael never wrote of his personal life. This troubled her at first. She had asked about brothers and sisters, friends, the school he attended, his parents and so on, but he had just said there was not much to tell. When pushed, he had written a little; that he was an only child and described his home in some detail, with the steps at the front and the little garden, a description which had sounded rather quaint and attractive to Anna.
    He did write about his school a little, something of the subjects he was taking, but never really elaborated much and the text was staid, awkward and impersonal. In the following letter, there was nothing more which had disappointed her. She knew she was falling for the young man, and wanted to know more about him, but in the end, she settled for his poems and stories and eventually, let the issue drop. After all, she didn’t write poems for him.
    Anna wrote mostly of her own life, her family, her friends and school. She was the youngest of four children, the three older all being boys, so she was a little spoiled and occupied a unique position in everyone’s affections in the family. Her letters were mostly accounts of her experiences more or less as they happened, but as time went on she became more adventurous and began to write extensive accounts of her family history and the community where she lived.

Chapter 8

    Michael’s Pledge

    Anna lived in a small town in the east of the Netherlands situated between Utrecht and Arnhem called Pijpersbos (pronounced Pipersboss and meaning
Piper’s wood).
The name was derived from the small wooded area which surrounded the town on two sides and mostly defined its boundaries. Despite the ravages of World War Two it had survived fairly intact and represented a rather quaint example of a small Dutch country town. It had an old town of modest neo-gothic buildings, a central open square and residential areas with rows of attractive houses placed in small terraces along cobblestoned streets.
    The town lay about 50km from the German border and in the late nineteen seventies, it was already relatively affluent as the economy of the Netherlands had grown rapidly in the post war years. The Dutch had discovered copious supplies of natural gas both off shore and in the Northern provinces which they used to fuel their economy. Outstanding language skills and a long tradition of trading and export served them well in a Europe that, through the European Economic Community (EEC), was increasingly open for business. The Port of Rotterdam was the biggest in the world and one of the major entrances to the continent from the West. Foreign organisations flocked to the area to set up trading or communications hubs in Europe and the well educated population who seemed able to transcend almost every cultural boundary were quick to exploit their skills. Despite this, the village of Pijpersbos was still out of the way of the heavy industry and trading centres of the
Randstad
, the triangle joining Rotterdam, Amsterdam and The Hague where most of the business and commerce of the Netherlands was centralised. In many ways, life was slow, a little old fashioned and quite idyllic.
    Anna’s family home was a single dwelling cottage not far from the town centre, built over 150 years ago and preserved as part of the cultural heritage of the town. While small, it was set back from the road and accessed via a little humped