Geese don’t give interviews

Sam from the school newspaper had three questions for Miep. He’d written them in a notebook with REPORTER on the front. The last R was bigger than the other letters. It looked as though it was in a terrible hurry.

On Wednesday morning he asked Vera to come with him to see Bennie. She’d made the posters and knew the goose. Joep had said he was going to the football pitch.

Vera watched him through the window. He put his bag against a post and kicked the ball through the hole in the net. He ran after it, picked it up, and kicked again.

‘He’s busy,’ she said.

‘We’ll ask him later, then,’ said Sam. He tapped his notebook. ‘Every candidate gets an article. The white candidates too. But Miep goes at the top. Everybody knows her.’

Vera would have liked to say something about going at the top. Last week she’d made four Miep posters herself. It hardly seemed fair to decide now that a goose was getting too much attention.

Bennie stood at the gate with an empty bucket. There was no mud on his nose today. Only a blade of grass on his sleeve.

‘We’ve come for an interview,’ Sam said.

Bennie pointed at Miep. She was lying in the grass beside the other goose, her beak tucked into her feathers.

‘She doesn’t make appointments.’

‘It’s only three questions.’

Sam opened his notebook. He’d hooked a pen into the elastic round the cover. As he pulled it free, the elastic snapped round his thumb.

‘Question one. What would you like to change as mayor?’

Miep stayed where she was.

Sam waited. Vera waited too. A bicycle wheel squeaked in the playground. The other goose lifted its head, then put it down again.

‘Changing things is quite a lot of work,’ said Bennie.

Sam wrote something down.

‘I said that,’ Bennie told him.

Sam put BENNIE in front of the sentence.

‘Question two. Where’s your favourite place in the village?’

Miep briefly poked her beak out of her feathers. She shook her head and watched a fly. The fly landed on the water bowl. Miep walked over to it.

‘That’s her answer,’ said Sam.

‘She wants a drink,’ Vera said.

‘But it could be her favourite place, couldn’t it?’

Bennie put the bucket beside the shed. ‘You can write where she goes. You can’t know why she likes it. Geese haven’t got words for that.’

Sam looked at the sentence he’d already written: MIEP WANTS MORE WATER BOWLS. He crossed it out.

Vera peered over his shoulder. She thought of the bench on her first goose poster. Joep said she could put her bench on it. If she had, somebody would surely have said Miep wanted to build benches.

‘Question three,’ said Sam. ‘Do you have a message for the voters?’

Miep dipped her beak in the bowl. She drank, raised her head, and sneezed. Drops splashed over the rim.

Sam looked at his notebook. Vera bit her lip.

‘I’ll write that exactly as it happened,’ he said.

He put a little star after the sneeze. Below it he wrote: As far as we know, this was not an election promise.

Vera laughed. Bennie read the sentence and nodded.

Then he showed them where the enclosure would go on Saturday. It was the same corner Miep often chose for herself. He put a broad water bowl there. On the visitors’ side of the wire, there would be a low rope to stop everyone leaning against the fence.

‘This bit stays open to her own garden,’ he said. ‘If she’d rather walk away, she can. And she won’t spend the whole afternoon beside the fair. The other goose shouldn’t have to wait for us to finish voting either.’

Sam studied his questions. ‘Then we might miss the mayor.’

‘Then you’ll have a story about an empty water bowl. There might be more news in that than in three questions for a goose.’

Bennie let Sam hold the new rope. Vera fastened the other end to a post he’d put in. Miep came to look and pecked at a loose bit of rope. Bennie shortened it and gently tested the line.

‘There. Nothing left dangling.’

Vera walked back to school with Sam beside her. He read his sentences aloud. Half were about Bennie. The other half described things Miep had done. That seemed better than having the goose deliver three entire speeches.

Joep stood by the outside door, a football under his arm and a blade of grass on his trousers. Sam asked whether he had a moment.

‘Three questions,’ he said.

Joep looked at Vera. She moved aside so Sam stood between them.

‘What do you want to change?’ Sam asked.

‘The goal.’

‘What about it?’

Joep turned the ball under his arm. ‘The net. Maybe. I’m still working it out.’

Sam wrote that down. He didn’t ask whether there wasn’t enough money for a whole goal. Vera heard the pen moving over the paper.

‘Your poster has a scoreboard,’ Sam said.

‘That isn’t certain yet.’

‘I’ll put that in, then.’

Joep nodded and looked at Vera again. This time she held his gaze.

‘I still need to interview you,’ Sam told her.

Vera described the trial bench. Her granny’s cushions, the space for bags, and Bram still working on the wood. Sam asked if she read a book every break. Vera said she sometimes played tag. That didn’t seem a useful sentence for a reading-bench plan. He wrote it down anyway.

When he’d gone, Joep stayed by the door. The ball was no longer tucked under his arm. He held it with both hands in front of his stomach.

‘I hadn’t finished thinking yesterday,’ he said.

Vera nodded. ‘I know.’

She wanted to say it properly. She didn’t want to start again about his folder, or what he ought to have repaired. She glanced at his shoes.

‘My joke was stupid.’

Joep looked at the ball. ‘Everyone laughed.’

‘Yes.’

A door opened behind them. Three children came out holding sandwiches. Joep moved aside. So did Vera.

‘I have to go home,’ he said.

‘Me too.’

They didn’t walk together. At the gate, Joep balanced the ball on his foot. He let it drop, caught it in his hands, and glanced back.

Vera didn’t know if that was a beginning. But at least she’d finally said her own sentence.