Hendrik only became irritated when Willem tried to assist him with his walker, so Willem left him to his own devices and went ahead of him into the house. He walked through the living room, noting with approval that it was rigged for flood conditions: the floors were tile, laid over a concrete floor slab, softened here and there with rugs that could be spirited away to higher ground when the water came. The hallway leading from there to the stairs was lined with framed mementoes: photographs, clippings, medals, pressed flowers, and so on. It all trended strongly royalist. A large part of what Queen Frederika and her predecessors did for a living was ritual commemoration of wars and tragedies. All the Dutch people who had suffered and died in camps had received letters, medals, and so on. Their remains had been collected from shallow makeshift graves where possible and put in proper cemeteries where kings and queens went and laid wreaths and gave speeches on special days. To organize such observances, to make sure they came off well and that no one was carelessly forgotten, was a part of Willem’s job. He didn’t handle the details personally, but he supervised the people who did. It was routine work that flowed along, day to day, like water in a canal, forgotten as soon as gone by. So it was always a little weird to visit a house like this one and see many such moments frozen in time and memorialized on someone’s wall. Even—especially—when that someone was your father. Some of the yellowed newspaper clippings, inevitably, showed younger versions of Willem, when he had more hair, posing on the steps of this or that palace with members of Dutch cabinets past, or with royals. He tried not to dwell on these.