A poster for the wrong candidate

On Wednesday, Joep brought a roll of paper that stuck out from under his arm. An old till receipt was attached to the end. His dad had got the roll from the shop. Vera pulled off the receipt. Potting compost appeared on it twenty times.

‘Those aren’t votes,’ she said.

‘It’s a start.’

They could stay in the classroom after school to make posters. Eef went home. She had to look after her little sister, so she’d already made hers. It showed a big sandpit, three spades, and a child halfway inside a wheelbarrow.

‘The wheelbarrow isn’t for riding in,’ Eef said when Joep asked.

‘Shame.’

Vera spread the paper on the floor and began her bench. She drew a tree at one end. At the other, she wanted a chest. She couldn’t manage to draw the chest smaller than the bench. In the end it looked as though somebody wanted to put a bath full of books in the playground.

Joep peered over her shoulder.

‘Miep would fit in there.’

‘It’s my book box.’

‘It could be smaller.’

‘Then you wouldn’t see the books.’

‘Miep’s easier.’

He put an orange pen to the paper and drew a beak. Vera added a head. Then a neck, a belly and two legs. The goose gazed gravely at the bath.

Joep nodded in approval. ‘She’s got an opinion.’

Above the drawing, Vera wrote: VOTE MIEP. SHE HAS AN OPINION ABOUT EVERYTHING.

Safia was closing her bag by the door. She read the poster and smiled. ‘Make sure it says this is the yellow election.’

Joep coloured one corner yellow. Vera drew a ballot paper in it. The ballot paper was only half the size of the beak.

‘Shouldn’t the goose be yellow too?’ asked Joep.

‘Then she’d be a chick.’

They stuck the poster beside the door and took another sheet. Joep wanted to draw Miep wearing a mayor’s chain, but Vera put bunting beside the fence instead. Bennie said that was all right. She didn’t tuck a book under the goose’s wing. Miep couldn’t read, and a poster shouldn’t promise things that weren’t true.

Before they went home, they’d drawn four geese. The last had one leg too many. Joep said she was busy.

Vera’s bench was still on the floor, beneath the torn-off bit of till receipt.

By Thursday, nearly everybody knew who Miep was. Two little children had written her name in the sandpit. The P was backwards, but Miep didn’t seem bothered. She stood at the fence and pecked at a blade of grass.

‘We could get her to say a slogan,’ said Joep.

‘What slogan?’

‘Honk.’

Vera laughed. ‘She says that already.’

‘So it’s a good slogan.’

He laid his new poster on the low wall. An enormous trophy filled it. He’d drawn the football goal in front, much smaller than the cup. It looked like a little side table.

‘Where’s the net?’ asked Vera.

‘I haven’t put that in yet.’

‘You could draw the net first.’

Joep looked at the empty space between the posts. ‘That’s a lot of work.’

Two children stopped by the door to look at the Miep posters. They read the words aloud, did goose voices, and took turns shouting, ‘My opinion!’ One didn’t know the real mayor, but he knew Miep. They’d seen her drinking through the fence the day before.

Vera looked at the posters. They’d turned out well. Even the goose with three legs. She’d hidden its third leg behind a painted bucket later.

Then one of the children asked who was entering the white election.

‘Joep, Eef and Vera,’ said another.

‘What does Vera want?’

Nobody answered.

Vera stood less than three steps away. She could simply tell them. A reading bench, she wanted to say. A reading bench where you didn’t get sand in your socks.

But the conversation had already gone back to the goose. One child thought Miep was bigger than a dog. The other thought she could live to a hundred. Vera took her book out of her bag and sat on the wall. Her feet didn’t reach the ground.

Joep came to stand beside her. A strip of sticky tape dangled from his wrist. There was a crease in it that he couldn’t flatten.

‘Coming? I want to make another poster.’

‘For who?’

‘Miep.’

Vera didn’t open her book.

‘Then I’ll never finish my own.’

Joep looked at the fence. ‘But this is fun.’

‘Yes.’

That was the trouble. It was fun. The drawings, the silly sentences, laughing about the third goose leg. She didn’t want to say she wasn’t enjoying it, because that wouldn’t be true.

‘You could put the bench on a Miep poster,’ said Joep. ‘Then people would see it too.’

‘Then they’d think the bench was Miep’s.’

He thought for a moment. ‘Put: Vera’s bench.’

Vera looked at him. ‘What will you put? Joep’s goal?’

‘That’s got nothing to do with the goose.’

‘Neither has my bench.’

Joep peeled the tape off his wrist. Now it was stuck to his fingers.

‘I just thought it was fun,’ he said.

Vera nodded. ‘So did I. Only today I want to draw something else.’

She stayed on the wall a little longer. Joep went back to the classroom. Through the window she watched him unroll the paper and begin another goose. Beak first. He’d learnt that from her.

Vera slid down from the wall. She went inside, retrieved her own sheet from under the receipt, and made the bath smaller. The books almost disappeared. That didn’t matter. On the backrest she wrote: A PLACE TO SIT. EVEN WITHOUT A BOOK.

When Joep asked her for a green pen, she gave it to him. She just didn’t finish his goose.

As they tidied up, they hung her poster beside the candidates’ list. Somebody stopped in front of it, read the words, and nodded. Vera stayed by the door just long enough to see.