The trial bench

On Monday morning there was a bench under the chestnut tree. Not a lovely new bench. A long gym bench with a blue stripe along the side and a patch where a sticker used to be.

Mr Kees and Bram had carried it out of the gym. Vera was allowed to help by holding the door. She did that as importantly as possible, until Kees asked her to move the mat out of the way too.

‘It’s only here for today,’ said Bram. ‘So we can try things out. It’s sturdy, but we won’t be doing gymnastics on it.’

Joep looked at the tree. ‘I was just planning to jump over the branch.’

‘Good thing I mentioned it.’

Vera took the bench’s measurements. Bram held one end of the tape. She wrote down the length, then wrote it again because she’d muddled the numbers. Bram pointed to the blue stripe.

‘You don’t have to order that colour.’

Vera thought of blue cushions. They would look good between the green grass and the brown trunk. Her granny had two spare cushions at home. Surely she could ask to use them. She wrote CUSHIONS beside the measurements.

Bram crouched down. A root lay exactly where she’d drawn the bench.

‘We can’t put a leg here. And we need room for people to walk past. This spot, a little further from the trunk, would be better.’

Vera moved the bench on her drawing. Now the tree looked a bit odd at the side. In real life it made sense: you could see the playground from the bench without being right beside the football pitch.

At break the whole class came to look. Safia divided them into groups. Everyone could try sitting down. Afterwards, they had to name one thing they liked and one that could be improved.

‘Good thing: it stays still,’ said Joep.

‘Improvement?’ asked Safia.

‘A steering wheel.’

Safia tapped her notebook with her pencil. Joep shifted over so Vera could sit beside him.

Four of them fitted on the bench. Their bags didn’t. A boy pushed his underneath. Half of it sank into the wet grass.

Vera wrote down that the proper bench should have somewhere for bags. She didn’t know if Bram could fit that in. She added another question mark.

A girl sat facing the other way, with her feet on the far side.

‘Now I can talk to Puk,’ she said.

Puk stood behind the bench with her watering can. Her soup was so watery by now that it almost looked real.

‘If there’s a backrest, you can’t sit that way,’ said Joep.

‘But your book won’t fall off,’ Vera said.

The girl tried leaving her book beside her. The pages blew over. She put a hand on them.

‘A table would be nice too.’

Vera looked at her notes. With a table, a roof and a place for bags, it wouldn’t be a bench any more. More like a small house. You couldn’t build a house for a hundred and eighty euros. Perhaps a door, if you were lucky.

Joep read over her shoulder. ‘Don’t write everything down. Then you’ll have to make everything.’

‘I’m writing down what people ask for.’

‘They ask for a lot.’

That was true. Vera put her pencil in her pocket for a moment.

Then Puk wanted to sit on the bench. First she lifted one leg. Her foot hit the side. She raised it higher, but still couldn’t reach the seat.

Eef came over from the other class. She took the watering can so Puk had both hands free. Puk pulled on the edge. With Eef’s help, she got up. There she sat, shoes pointing straight ahead, as though she was the only one who understood how a bench worked.

Vera sat beside her.

‘Nice?’ she asked.

Puk nodded.

‘Would you like to sit here more often?’

‘No.’

Vera looked surprised.

Puk pointed at the sandpit. ‘My soup’s ready.’

Eef gave her back the can and helped her down. ‘She can’t hold the big children’s spade,’ she said. ‘It’s too heavy. We’ve only got two little spades that aren’t broken.’

‘We could make a lower bench,’ said Vera.

‘Perhaps. But she still couldn’t dig with it.’

Vera looked at the sandpit. Two small children knelt beside one spade. One was digging. The other already had a hand out, ready for their turn.

Eef took her own list from her coat. She’d counted the things that were left. Three buckets. Two spades. One rake without a handle. She’d found a photograph of the wheelbarrow in her drawing. There was a price underneath.

Vera had mostly been looking at her own book when she made her plan. Eef had counted things in the sandpit.

‘A bench is useful too,’ Eef said. ‘My mum would like to sit on it when she picks us up. Only the little ones don’t see why that matters more than their spades.’

‘I haven’t said it does.’

‘No. But you do want to win.’

Vera looked back at the gym bench. Joep was sitting there alone now, his legs stretched out as far as possible, to show that four children could also be one Joep.

At the sandpit, Puk shouted that she wanted a mayor too. She put an upside-down bucket on a mound of sand. The other little children helped. Under the hedge they found a small potato that must have rolled out of somebody’s shopping bag. Eef wiped it clean. Later, at home, she drew it with a face and a hat.

‘For yellow,’ she told Safia. ‘We’d like it to enter.’

Safia pinned the potato drawing beside Miep. ‘Has it got a name?’

‘Potato,’ said Puk.

Joep inspected the new candidate. ‘That one doesn’t speak either.’

‘But it does stay still,’ Eef said.

Vera took her own notes home. She crossed out the table. The question mark beside the bags stayed. Beneath the bench she now wrote in small letters: anyone can sit here. Then she phoned her granny about the cushions.