And so he continues to pace. Time passes; the hours wear on slowly. And, as the sun sets on the third day and she still hasn’t come to him, Finn begins to feel the skin of his chest softly tug and twitch as his heart starts to harden, thin ice gradually forming over the lake of blood and pain.
Edward doesn’t know what to do. He can’t really make sense of what his wife has told him. His wife. Wife. Surely this means she shouldn’t want to be with another man, even if she is a ghost. Though, of course, Edward has to acknowledge he has absolutely no idea how she feels or what it’s like to be her – not that that really helps stabilise the turbulence of his emotions right now.
Greer has promised not to see Finn again until Edward decides what to do. And he’s asked her not to see him at all, not even to explain what’s going on, because Edward isn’t above poking the man he currently hates hard in the ribs. And he finds that imagining his neighbour suffering does bring a small measure of relief to his own. For the past three days Edward has spent a fair amount of time torturing himself with thoughts of his wife with this other man. This much younger, horribly sexy musician, whose hideously sublime playing has been serenading his breakfast every morning for the past few weeks. And, although Edward resents the fact greatly, he can understand why she’d choose such a man over him: an ageing architect who hasn’t created anything new in years. He has no spark any more, no spirit, he’d be the first to admit, and who would want to be with someone like that?
Except that Greer hasn’t said she doesn’t want to be with him, simply that she wants to be with him as well. But how does she expect that to work? He isn’t a ghost and nor is the next-door neighbour. How can they be expected to happily share her? At least sex won’t be involved, thank God. That, surely, would be too hard for any human to happily manage. A ghost, perhaps, but not a living, breathing person who clings to physical, material things, who believes in the exclusivity and possessiveness of romantic love, who doesn’t have the ultimate perspective an afterlife clearly affords.
Tonight, having drunk his third cup of coffee – with Tilly at a sleepover and Greer drifting about upstairs – Edward paces up and down the cold kitchen floor. His fingers twitch and he bites his lip. Can he do this? Can he possibly do this? Perhaps. Perhaps he can control his jealousy, perhaps he can learn to be a more evolved person, or perhaps he will lose his mind.
‘I’ve been thinking …’
Edward looks up to see Greer in the doorway.
‘Yeah, me too,’ he says. ‘I’ve been thinking about nothing else. But you said you wouldn’t rush me.’
Greer floats into the kitchen. ‘I’ve not come to rush you. I just had a realisation – a question.’
Edward waits.
‘So …’ She’s tentative and he’s suspicious. ‘When … When you fell in love with me did you stop loving your first wife? Did your love for me eclipse your love for her?’
Edward regards her warily. ‘I think I know where you’re going with this.’
Greer shakes her head. ‘No, really, it’s a genuine question. When we met, the last man I’d loved had proved himself to be a complete bastard – so I was delighted to replace him. I was so incredibly grateful for you.’
Edward smiles. ‘Me too.’
‘Yes, but your wife had died,’ Greer says. ‘You didn’t let her go because you wanted to, you had to. And I always wondered where that love went, since I doubt it just disappeared.’
‘No, it didn’t,’ Edward admits. ‘I didn’t stop loving Amelia when I loved you. I don’t really know how it worked exactly, I never really thought about it …’
‘And, what would you do, if she came back?’
Edward looks at his wife, eyes wide. ‘What do you mean? Is she …?’ He glances up at the ceiling. ‘Do you know something …? Have you heard …?’
Greer looks momentarily alarmed. ‘Oh, no, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get your … I don’t know anything. I don’t have a direct connection to … I’m as clueless about this whole situation as you are. I don’t know why I came back and she didn’t. But’ – something else occurs to her – ‘do you … Do you wish she had? Do you wish she was here instead of me?’
Edward sighs. ‘No – well, I don’t know.’ He sighs again. ‘I don’t know anything; I don’t understand anything. This whole crazy situation is a complete mystery to me.’
‘Me too,’ Greer says softly. ‘And I’m sorry if I’m making it harder …’
Edward gives her a wry smile. ‘If?’
Greer smiles. ‘Okay, I know, I know. But I wouldn’t, if I could help it, if I could be any different—’
‘But, can’t you?’ Edward pleads. ‘Can’t you just try?’
Greer floats towards him, her hand outstretched. ‘Oh, sweetheart.’ Edward takes a step back.
‘Look, I want to let you be whatever … whoever you are,’ he says. ‘But it’s bloody hard, what you’re asking – you know that, right?’
Greer nods.
‘And I get what you’re saying, I do, about the fact that, technically, I have two loves in my life too – but not at the same time, not really, so …’
‘What about when you’re dead too?’ Greer says. ‘And we’re all – wherever we are – together. You won’t be able to choose between us then, will you? We’ll all be together and it’ll be okay.’
Edward holds up his hand. ‘Okay, look – so I don’t know what they get up to in the afterlife, perhaps it’s all free and universal love and all that crap. But down here, on earth, we tend to go with the whole one man, one woman deal. Or’ – he thinks of his sister – ‘one woman, one woman thing or, whatever. Anyway, my point is, I’m sorry. I’m still human. I’m a child and I don’t want to share my toys, okay?’ He sighs. ‘Sorry, that sounded horribly misogynistic. I didn’t mean it like that, but I can’t do this, okay? Okay?’
Greer is by his side, her hand against his cheek. ‘Yes, yes, it’s all right. Don’t cry, please, you know I could never bear to see you cry.’
Edward puts his own hand up to his cheek, surprised to find his skin wet.
‘We can make this work, just the two of us, don’t you think?’ he asks, his voice cracking. ‘I’ve been missing you for three years and now you’re back and I don’t want to let you go again – don’t you see?’
Greer nods. ‘Of course,’ she says softly. ‘I won’t see him again, I promise. Okay? And yes, we can. I know we can …’
And she dearly hopes, for both their sakes, that she’s right.
As she sits at her desk Ava thinks, as she often does, about her next-door neighbour and what she saw. It brings tears to her eyes, so much beauty and love and sorrow all wrapped up together. She is jealous of him, even with the sorrow, because it’s so much experience, so much feeling, so much living! Which, Ava realises, is what she’s been missing her whole life. How can one be alive but not really alive? It’s a strange thing, she thinks, but true. So, even though Ava sees how much Finn will ultimately suffer, far in the future, she still envies him his suffering, envies him his life.
Ava half-heartedly ponders a few stray cryptic crossword clues secreted somewhere in the folds of her mind, before her attention soon drifts. She’s not in the mood to hide any more. And yet, Ava isn’t certain about the best way to go about reaching out to people. Even though she’s recovered from the shock of seeing Finn and would dearly love to visit him again, she can’t for fear of blurting out what she saw. She can’t risk hurting him like that, in exchange for her own enjoyment at his company, it simply wouldn’t be fair. And yet she misses him, too much. More than that, she misses her, who she is when she’s with him. Or, rather, who she was.
Ava stands, pushing her chair back and glancing around the library, at all the students with their heads bowed over their books. She gazes at them for a while, totally and utterly absorbed in the pursuit of their futures. It’s then that she realises something else. She, in her own wanting, is being too passive. She can’t expect life to hand he
r happiness on a plate. She has to go out herself and seek it. She has to find it and seize it and hold it captive. Or woo it and seduce it and nurture it. Whatever one does, whatever is best in the pursuit of happiness. Ava has no idea, but she’s now determined to find out.
As she’s looking out at the students, Ava’s sight snags on a pinboard behind the Victorian Fiction section. It’s dotted with adverts for every kind of thing one could possibly imagine wanting to do, a thousand classes of every fashion and sort: opera, salsa, calligraphy, Japanese, French cooking, wine appreciation … Without thinking, she darts out from behind her counter, her skirt snagging on the edge of the desk, catching on a stray splinter. When Ava tugs at the stiff tweed she hears the tear of a thread and looks down to see half an inch of dark-blue wool sticking out from her skirt. Instead of annoyance, Ava finds herself smiling. It is, she thinks, as she hurries across the faded carpet towards the pinboard, the first thread of her old life beginning to unravel.
Chapter Sixteen
My Otto,
I nearly died today. The Gestapo came. We thought someone had betrayed us. I thought Mr & Mrs X, and their nephew, who lives with them, would be shot on the steps of their own house. All I wanted to do was disappear, evaporate. I’d have killed myself, even with our child inside me, if it would have saved them. But I knew, too, that it wouldn’t. So there was nothing for me to do but wait. I never thought it would be possible to be so entirely consumed with fear – for our child, for Mr & Mrs X, who would each die, if they died, because of me. I had no fear for myself, strangely, as I do on most other days. As, to save them, the two who risk their lives every day for me, I would have run out onto the street to be shot.
Of course, once our child is born, once he is out of my body I know my greatest fear shall be for him, even above our protectors, though that feels rather unfair. But I’m afraid I shan’t be able to help it. I would surrender myself in a heartbeat for him, of course, but I would surrender them too. Not that I’d have the right and though it would be a great wrong indeed to do so. I wonder if they will guess at this, once he is born and if they will cast us out.
When at last I told Mrs X of my condition, I believe she talked with Mr X about doing just that. I don’t blame them for this. When they agreed to hide me, they didn’t expect to be hiding a baby too. He might cry out too often and too loudly; he might be heard, we might be betrayed. And, even though it would make sense, since to be discovered would kill us all, I could not smother him, I simply could not. I will fight for him, I promise you, I will protect our son until I can do no more.
Ever Yours,
Marthe
‘But, how? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t explain it. I am not a historian. I can only give you the facts.’
Clara stands behind the counter of the Office of Records on Haarlemmerdijk, 102. Having already waited three days and four hours for the information she applied for, Clara is now feeling more than a little agitated at not being given it.
‘So, you’re saying that there’s no record of an Otto Josef Garritt van Dijk being born in Amsterdam, ever?’
‘No, Miss Cohen,’ the short, spidery woman says. ‘I’m saying we’ve no record of an Otto Josef Garritt’ – she slides from her precise, perfect English to give extra, particular emphasis to the pronunciation of the surname, highlighting Clara’s mangled attempt – ‘van Dijk being born between 1939 and 1949. Those were the dates you gave for us to check. Correct?’
Clara sighs and nods. ‘But I don’t understand. I have his name here, written down by his mother.’ She slides the letter onto the counter.
The woman purses her thin lips. ‘Yes, you’ve already shown me it several times. As I told you before—’
‘But look,’ Clara taps the paper, feeling the panic rise in her chest. ‘She gives his exact name. It can’t have been that common. I mean, it’s unlikely there was another boy born with the very same name, so …’
The woman’s eyes narrow. ‘Yes, clearly that is correct, or we would have found record of one. However, as I’ve already explained, if the mother – as you believe – was a Jew being hidden by a Dutch gentile family during the war, then that explains why she never registered the baby. It’s very simple. It makes perfect sense.’
‘Yes, I understand,’ Clara says, trying very hard not to raise her voice, ‘which is why I asked you to check the marriage and death records too. I mean, even if his birth wasn’t registered during the war, it might have been afterwards, to make him legitimate – don’t you think? And, if he got married or had children, there would be no reason not to register that, don’t you think?’
‘I am not paid to think about such things, young lady,’ the woman retorts. ‘My job is simply to check the records. A job you have been preventing me from doing for the last’ – she glances at her watch – ‘fourteen and a half minutes. So, if you don’t object, I really ought to get back to it.’ Without waiting for a reply, the woman turns from Clara and ensconces herself firmly behind a computer screen, immediately tapping her skinny fingers rapidly against the keys.
For a few moments Clara remains, reluctant to let go of her only chance of finding her unknown relative. Still, she holds on to the one piece of good news: there was no record of Otto Josef Garritt van Dijk’s death. Which might, just might, mean that he’s still alive. And thus she somehow, if only she can figure out how, still has a chance of finding him.
‘You should return to England,’ Mr Akkersijk says. ‘You’ll probably find records of him there. After all, your grandfather left Amsterdam as a teenager, yes? So it’s possible his older brother went with him.’
‘But, why do I know nothing about this brother?’ Clara asks. ‘Why did Granddad never mention him? If he was still alive, wouldn’t he have told me all about him? It doesn’t make sense.’
Mr Akkersijk sips his tea. ‘I’m afraid many families don’t make sense. Especially those of older generations. My father was taken to Auschwitz in 1944, three months before the end of the war, before that camp was liberated. He was fourteen years old. He never spoke about it. Not a word. Not as long as he lived. I asked him a few times, especially when we started learning about the war at school, but he’d just shake his head and mutter something I couldn’t understand and my mother would tell me not to bother him.’
Clara sits in silence, clutching her teacup, not knowing how to respond to such a grand, grave admission. She glances at his kitchen floor, anchoring her gaze to a pile of letters. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says softly.
‘It’s okay,’ he says, though his voice has a raw edge, like the underbelly of a wounded creature. ‘It’s a long time ago now.’
‘Still …’
He shrugs. And Clara suddenly wants to reach out and touch him, to press her face against his chest.
‘How old are you?’ she blurts out, before instantly regretting it. ‘Sorry, I—’
Mr Akkersijk smiles. ‘That’s all right. I’m fifty-four. You?’
It’s fortunate that Clara wasn’t sipping her tea at the time of this revelation, or she’d surely have spat it out across the table. ‘Fifty-four?! Really? You’re twenty-one years older than me? I didn’t, I didn’t – you’re so, so … You’re still …’
Mr Akkersijk’s smile deepens. ‘Alive? Walking without a stick? Able to remember my own name? You young people are so funny, how you perceive the ageing process, when you really have no idea.’
‘No,’ Clara huffs. ‘Actually, it wasn’t that at all. I wasn’t thinking anything like that, I was thinking, I was just …’
Something in the air shifts as Clara trails off, as if her unspoken words have strung themselves together in a taut wire suspended across the table. When Mr Akkersijk looks at her now there’s a dash of mischief in his gaze.
‘What were you thinking?’
‘Well, I, um …’ Clara’s own gaze slips quickly back to the floor, to the safety of the papers, their curling, crisp edges, the scratch of bl
ack ink across their creamy surface. ‘Nothing.’
Mr Akkersijk inhales deeply, then picks up the teapot on the table between them. ‘More tea?’
Clara looks up. ‘No, thank you. I’m fine.’
He nods at the plate of speculaas between them. ‘Biscuit?’
Clara shakes her head.
‘Will you,’ she ventures, ‘will you read me the letter again, about the baby?’
Mr Akkersijk looks surprised, but nods. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘Thank you,’ Clara says. She sets down her teacup and opens her bag – hanging on the back of the chair – and pulls out the letter. ‘I want … I’ve never, never—’
‘Yes,’ Mr Akkersijk says softly, ‘I’ve never experienced anything like it either.’
‘You haven’t?’ Clara asks, without looking him in the eye. ‘Oh, I—’
‘Thought I would have,’ Mr Akkersijk finishes. ‘Given my grand old age of one hundred and three.’
Clara giggles. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Well, I haven’t,’ he says. ‘Their feelings are quite incredible, aren’t they? And – it’s comforting, in a way, to know that love like this survived, even amid all the tragedy.’
‘Yes.’ Clara slides the letter across the table, letting her hand rest atop it for an extra moment, so their fingers touch when Mr Akkersijk picks it up.
My dearest Otto,
He’s a boy, just as I promised he would be. He’s beautiful. So beautiful. Just like his father, though even now, I’m so sorry to say that your face is fading in my memory – I used to know every line, every freckle, every eyelash, every curl of hair. As I squeeze my own eyes shut now, to put you in focus you come back to me, though still as a watercolour rather than a photograph. His eyes are blue, just as yours, though I hear they can change up to two years after birth. I hope they won’t. I dearly hope they will be just as yours are, for ever.
The Lost Art of Letter Writing Page 11