Two Old Men and a Baby

Book 3: Hendrik Groen

by Hendrik Groen, Hester Velmans

Genres: Friendship; Humor & Satire; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Nine years before the events of the #1 international bestseller The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83 ¼ Years Old, Hendrik and his best friend Evert embark on a madcap adventure -- with an unexpected guest.

Hendrik Groen and Evert Duiker, faithful friends in good and bad times, are well over seventy and their lives have quieted down. They see each other once a week to play chess, have a drink, and grab a bite to eat while reflecting on life. But one day, their peace is rudely disturbed when Evert shows up on Hendrik's doorstep with a surprise in the form of an unexpected little guest. He had spotted a stroller with a baby in it -- unattended for just a minute -- and, in a moment of utter madness, decided to take it for a walk. Hilarious, right? Not to Hendrik, who can barely believe his friend's stupidity. After Evert regains recovers from his momentary lapse of sanity, the two seventy-year-olds resolve to return their charge to its parents -- hopefully without being noticed. But the quiet neighborhood is now swarmed by bumbling police officers, and they realize that getting rid of their accidental foster child will be more difficult than expected...

Release date: June 1, 2021

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 384

Sample

1

4:30 p.m.—Princess Margriet School

“Where the hell are those angels now…”

For just a second, the woman’s face twisted into a scowl. Then her steely smile was back. Two children stared up at her. Only the red patches in her neck betrayed the fact that Hetty Schutter, principal and sometimes eighth-grade teacher, was getting a bit hot under the collar.

Huddled on the stage, seven little shepherds were in a visible state of befuddlement. Where a flock of angels was supposed to have come fluttering onto the stage, a mother had materialized, making unintelligible gestures. The shepherds stared at her sheepishly. The mother disappeared behind the curtain again. For a while nothing happened.

One shepherd had an itch and started vigorously scratching himself under his dusty old shepherd’s robe. A second shepherd waved at his grandma. The third squirmed, pressing his knobby knees together because he was so nervous he had to pee. Something fell over behind the curtain with a crash. Then silence again.

The audience began stirring and grumbling. The fathers and mothers in the auditorium tried to maintain order, but that didn’t stop scuffles from breaking out among brothers and sisters. Warnings were hissed that someone was going to get a spanking. Two folding chairs clattered to the floor.

At the side of the stage, the curtain billowed. Someone was looking for the opening, which was located three yards farther on, where the angels were supposed to have made their swooping entrance. Whoever was behind the curtain must have been driven by nerves rather than common sense, because it couldn’t possibly have taken Charlie Chaplin, at his clumsiest, longer to finally make his entrance, all the way down to the far end of the stage where the curtain ended.

It was the headmistress.

“Uh…Ladies and gentlemen, children, due to circumstances beyond our control, our Christmas show has run into some difficulties we haven’t quite been able to solve yet, and therefore…”

One of the shepherds behind her started crying.

“…we’ll just resume selling tickets for our Christmas lottery, the proceeds of which…”

The weeping shepherd had wet his pants. A large dark spot was blooming on his blanket cape.

“…will pay for a new video projector for our school.”

The principal hissed over her shoulder for a mother to come rescue the unfortunate shepherd, then went on: “The tickets cost one euro each, and you stand to win one of the lovely prizes donated by…”

A nervous mother mounting the stage from the side began by dragging off the wrong child, then led the right child in the wrong direction, to a door that wasn’t a real door but rather a piece of scenery for the operetta club.

“…parents, friends, and our suppliers, for which we are ever so grateful. The ticket sellers will be coming through the auditorium during intermission. And uh…” She threw another quick glance over her shoulder. “And we’ll have the intermission right now.”

Her forehead was spangled with sweat. Turning around, she shooed the remaining shepherds past the bits of scenery meant to represent a meadow, and back through the opening in the curtain, where a little group of children in costume and their parental helpers huddled among the uneven bars and other gym equipment, a wooden ox and donkey, and Joseph and the Virgin Mary. It smelled of pee.

3

Half an Hour Earlier—At the Supermarket

An old man behind Evert kept ramming his cart into the backs of his legs. The Turkish lady whose turn it was hadn’t pre-weighed her green beans at the vegetable counter.

“I no understand.”

“Vegetable counter, register four.”

A whining little boy grabbed his mother’s arm, causing a jar of applesauce to fall and shatter.

“Can I borrow your store card? Mine’s in the jacket of my other pock…uh, I mean the pocket of my other jacket,” the woman in line ahead of him asked. Evert handed her his card.

“Then you should think about keeping it in your…Oh never mind, just keep it,” he grumbled.

Things just weren’t going Evert’s way. Hendrik had forgotten to stock up on peanuts and had called to ask if Evert could stop by the supermarket, because what’s chess night without peanuts? Evert had thrown in two cans of beer as well, because he thought a shopping basket with only a bag of peanuts in it looked a bit sad.

And now he’d been standing on line at the checkout for nearly fifteen minutes to pay for those fucking nuts. Whenever life handed him lemons, Evert always got thirsty. As soon as he’d paid, he cracked open one of the cans, said “Cheers” to the cashier, took a swig, and went outside. There he unlocked his bike, took another gulp, and got on. The beer was lukewarm.

You don’t usually see someone on a bike drinking beer. It’s probably illegal. Possibly because it means you can’t put out your hand to signal you’re stopping, Evert thought to himself. He wondered if anyone had ever been ticketed in the Netherlands for failing to make the stop-signal. He’d been taught the stop-signal over sixty years before, in grade school: You put out your right arm and flap it up and down like a lame bird.

“What about hand brakes, then?” he muttered to himself. “If you had hand brakes, that stupid stop-signal would stop you from stopping.”

He let out a belch.

At least Hendrik would be happy; he was bringing the peanuts.

His bicycle creaked and squeaked.

The steady rain slowly soaked him to the skin.

4

4:35 p.m.—Princess Margriet School

It was bedlam. Parents were trying to muscle their way backstage via the only exit, while the head of school was pushing the lottery vendors against the tide into the auditorium. Meanwhile the grandparents and grandkids were thronging around the snack bar erected for the occasion. The mothers in charge of the lemonade, chocolate milk, coffee, and tea hadn’t counted on the intermission being called this early and they were in such a hurry to fill the plastic cups that a great deal was spilled. Rivulets of coffee and lemonade dribbled onto the floor.

The teachers made half-hearted attempts to call for order, managing only to intensify the pandemonium. Meanwhile the school custodian was busy making sure, even in these difficult circumstances, that no one was chewing gum.

*  *  *

The gym wasn’t exactly the best venue for theatrical performances. A couple of dad-volunteers had plastered the tall windows with red crepe paper, which made the gym look less like Christmas and more like a huge brothel. Although in a brothel you don’t usually find wall racks, gymnastic rings, and 150 folding chairs. Red and white honeycomb-crepe Christmas bells and a puny Christmas tree were the only things that projected the “special mood of the feast of light.” The custodian adamantly refused to put up a bigger tree, because, said Harry, “Who’s going to clean up all those needles afterwards? And I don’t have enough Christmas tree lights anyway.” Good man, saving the school at least a handful of pocket change.

He was a thrifty man, Harry van Staveren, head custodian. He had a special line on cookies a few days past their sell-by date. He didn’t see the need for having one teabag for every cup. The canteen was his bailiwick, and every dime counted. As steward of the first aid kit, he took pains to cut the Band-Aids into strips so skimpy that they wouldn’t cover a chafed knee. “A penny saved is a penny earned,” he’d preach if anyone ventured a timid objection. For all that, he was as lazy as a lion in the zoo. Somebody had made the mistake twenty-three years ago of giving him a permanent sinecure. “So,” said Harry, “good luck to anyone who tries to get rid of me before my sixty-fifth birthday.”

*  *  *

The custodian was standing at the bottom of the stage steps, the headmistress at the top.

“Something horrible has happened. It’s, uh…awful, terrible, the shit’s hit the fan!” she stammered. She was obviously not herself. Normally she’d never say “The shit’s hit the fan.” Normally she’d say something like “We’ve just had a little hiccup.”

Come on, lady, just come out with it, he thought to himself. “Calm down, Hetty, first tell me what’s happened, then maybe I can find someone to fix the problem.”

She took a deep breath. “Harry, little baby Jesus has disappeared.”

6

Five Minutes Earlier—Princess Margriet School

“The little baby Jesus is gone. We’ve looked everywhere. Gone. What’s a Nativity play without a baby Jesus? For once we manage to wangle a real baby for the part, and now this!”

“Can’t we just use a doll instead for now?” Harry suggested.

“The parents are in the auditorium, so we can’t, they’d notice right away. You’ll have to go tell them—the parents. God, they’re already staring in our direction. Don’t look, you idiot!”

Harry blanched. “Why me? I don’t know those people. They’re friends of Esther’s. Can’t she be the one to tell them? I’ll go look for her.”

“Easier said than done. Esther’s out of town,” Hetty snapped at him.

Harry was growing more and more agitated. “Yes, but you’re always much better than I am at that sort of thing, and I’ve got to keep an eye on things back here.”

“Harry, I have my hands full too.”

“With what, then?”

“With loads of things to do, of course.”

“So tell me, what things?”

“Listen, Harry, either you go tell those parents right now, or I’ll have some things to tell about you to anyone who’ll listen.”

He broke into a sweat. “Okay, I’ll call them aside—”

“That’s right, you’re going to call them aside and then you’re going to tell them we’ve looked for their baby everywhere, but we have no idea what’s become of their little boy. Or was it a little girl—the baby Jesus? Anyway, it’s gone missing.”

“In front of everybody?”

“No, of course not, take them to my office.”

“And where was the baby seen last?”

“In the bathroom vestibule. It was quieter there, and the baby carriage was less in the way. I seem to remember it was you yourself who told Tjeerd to leave the carriage there. I’m going to go call the police.” She disappeared through the curtains.

Harry made his way through the crowd toward a nondescript couple in the center of the auditorium who’d been staring at them all that time. The woman had taken pains, though not all that successfully, to make herself look festive: brown dress adorned with a brooch, a pair of sensible shoes below, and a pale face and limp hair above. The man appeared to have come straight from work, probably at an administrative office or something.

You could read the terrified premonition in their eyes from a distance.

“Ah, Mr. and Mrs. uh…Would you, uh…come with me please?” Harry was doing his best to appear calm and composed, but his voice cracked.

“What’s going on? Is it Sabine? Is there something wrong with our baby?” Panic in the mother’s eyes.

The father cleared his throat. “Is everything okay back there?”

“Oh yes, of course, there’s just something we have to check on. Come with me, won’t you?” The custodian couldn’t come up with anything better to say. He was desperately trying to think of a way of getting out of this unscathed, but he couldn’t see how to. He led the couple back through the pushing and shoving crowd to the steps on the side of the stage, clambered up the five steps, and steered the anxious parents past three mother-helpers having an animated conversation behind the curtain. They fell silent as the father and mother sidled past.

7

Twenty Minutes Earlier—Princess Margriet School

Evert rode his squeaking bike through the drenched city. The road was already getting dark and very busy. He made a left turn, tried to increase his speed, heard a dull crunch down by his bike chain, and suddenly his feet were pumping air. He swerved to the . . .