Ever Yours,
Marthe
There is no longer any reason for Clara to see Mr Akkersijk. He’s translated all the letters and the search for Otto has been met with only dead ends. It’s time for her to leave Amsterdam and return to England. She has responsibilities; she has people who need her. Lately, Clara has been dreaming about the shop, about the inhabitants of Cambridge who are waiting, though they don’t know it, for her letters. She wakes in her B&B in the middle of the night, sitting up sharply, nearly banging her head on the sloped attic ceiling, sticky with sweat and out of breath. Her mother has been leaving ever-increasing numbers of messages on her phone. Clara should catch the next train home. But she won’t. There’s something she must do first. Though she has absolutely no idea how she’s going to manage it, or if, indeed, it is even possible. Yet her longing – unexpected and inexplicable – for Mr Akkersijk has reached such heights that it will not leave her alone and, so Clara imagines, the only way to overcome her desire is to feed it, fulfil it, to sate and satisfy it. Then she can return to Cambridge unburdened, without regret.
So she finds the most appealing dress she owns among her luggage – she’s been washing everything by hand in her bedroom sink, having in the first instance only brought enough clothes for a few days – and buys a bottle of very expensive red wine and sets off for the Amsterdam Archive of Paperphilia. She can’t rightly say why she doesn’t wait until the evening and go to Mr Akkersijk’s home instead, except that she’s worried then her intentions might seem too obvious.
Clara carries the bottle in her right hand and a letter in her left. The previous night she dreamt about the man she saw through the window of number ten Riverside Drive, with his daughter, looking so sad. And, when she woke, she knew she had to write to him again. It no longer mattered that she didn’t have the writing desk, or any special pen or papers. She didn’t know exactly what to say, or if it would make any sense, or matter anyway. But Clara knew that wasn’t the point. She had to follow her instinct. And so she’d sat at the tiny desk of her B&B and begun. And, when she’d finished, she asked at the front desk for an envelope and they’d kindly given her a stamp along with it.
Clara posts the letter on the corner of Sint Luciënsteeg, where she’s drawn into a shop rather like her own. Its tiny dark door is set a little back from the street and she almost walks past without seeing it. But the sight of letters in the window stops her. She glances up at the inscription in oak above the door: De Posthumuswinkel – 1865. As she steps inside, Clara sighs happily. The shop is a cross between a glorious stationery stash – monogrammed, personalised, embossed in every colour and style – and a museum of letters. One of the walls, bereft of dark wood shelves and drawers, is enveloped in antique letters, the scratches of ink and scrawl of words barely visible on some but bold on others. Among the letters are photographs of ancient printing machines and the streets and canals of Amsterdam. Glass wax stamps line shelves along with hand-printing supplies, beautiful papers, envelopes and a hundred small glass jars containing a hundred different colours of ink.
Clara takes a deep breath as she stands in the centre of the shop, allowing the scent of paper and ink to sink into her skin. With a sharp, sudden stab of longing she misses home and, for a moment, wants to be back sitting at her own writing desk more than anything. And yet, in the next moment, she wonders if she couldn’t relocate. Could Amsterdam support two very special stationery shops? Possibly. Perhaps. Why not?
This rather exciting thought keeps Clara company, buoying her steps as if she were bobbing along the canal in a longboat, until she comes to the Archive of Paperphilia and steps inside. When she approaches the counter, Clara slips the bottle of wine behind her back. The beautiful, voluptuous woman guarding the gates to Mr Akkersijk’s kingdom sits to attention before Clara reaches her.
‘May I help you?’ she asks, in perfectly accented English.
‘I was hoping to see Mr Akkersijk,’ Clara says, while thinking it is fortunate that Dutch people speak English so well. It would certainly make relocation that much easier, should she take such a bold leap. ‘Is he in?’
‘Do you have an appointment?’
‘No,’ Clara admits. ‘But he knows me. If you might call through and ask …’
The beautiful woman raises a perfectly manicured eyebrow. ‘I am afraid I couldn’t possibly do that, he’s in a meeting.’
Clara frowns. For some reason she feels as if she’s stepped into a boxing ring without realising it. So she takes a step back.
‘Okay, then, I’ll wait.’
The beautiful woman shrugs her sculptured shoulders and says nothing. She simply nods towards a single chair next to the doors.
‘Thank you,’ Clara says, turning and walking to the chair with as much dignity as she can muster.
It’s nearly dinner time, two and a half hours later, before she sees him. Or rather, before he sees her, since Clara is staring out into space – thinking how incredible it is that she can even entertain a thought as radical as actually moving to Amsterdam, when only a week or so ago she was virtually petrified at the thought of even visiting the place – so doesn’t notice Mr Akkersijk walking towards her.
‘Clara?’ he’s surprised, clearly, but not, visibly, displeased. ‘Did we have an arrangement?’
‘Oh!’ she turns, brightening at the sight of his face. ‘No, I just … I really ought to leave tomorrow and I wanted to say goodbye and thank you.’ She holds out the bottle of expensive wine as explanation.
‘Oh, goodness, you certainly didn’t have to do that,’ he says, taking the bottle and admiring it. ‘Though, I can’t say I’m sorry you did – you have very good taste.’
Clara smiles. ‘Thank you …’ Realising she hasn’t really thought her plan through in sufficient detail, she doesn’t know what to say next. She’d rather hoped it might all happen naturally or come to her in a flash of inspiration on the spur of the moment. She stands. ‘May I take you out to dinner?’
Mr Akkersijk glances down at the bottle he holds. ‘As well as the wine? I couldn’t possibly, it’s far too much.’
‘Oh,’ Clara’s spirits sink and she understands that she’ll have to return to England with this particular wish unfulfilled after all.
‘But I would love to take you to dinner.’
Clara looks up – hearing a muffled splutter of disgust from behind the counter.
‘Really? How lovely, thank you.’ She stands and smiles, instantly flush with happiness, so she feels able to be silly. ‘But, since we’re in Amsterdam, perhaps we could go Dutch.’
Mr Akkersijk laughs as they walk together out through the double doors.
‘Where shall we go?’ Clara asks, as they walk along a canal, bicycles weaving elegantly in and out of their path.
‘I know a place,’ Mr Akkersijk says.
‘Okay,’ Clara says, wondering if he’s taken many women there before.
‘I’ve never been,’ he says. ‘But I’ve walked past it a thousand times. I’ve always wanted to step inside.’
Clara smiles. ‘Then why haven’t you?’
He shrugs. ‘I’ve never had occasion to take someone.’
‘I can’t believe that.’ She wants to put her arm through his but they are folded together through his woollen coat and she doesn’t dare ask.
Mr Akkersijk shrugs again. ‘It’s true.’
‘Really? Well, that gorgeous woman who works at the Archive, I have the feeling she’d say “yes” if you invited her.’
‘Greta?’ Mr Akkersijk exclaims. ‘No. She’s far too … That’s absurd.’
Clara turns so she’s facing him, playful. ‘Too what?’
He smiles. ‘Well, too young and beautiful for such an old man as I. Wouldn’t you agree?’
‘I certainly would not.’ Clara says, emboldened by his coy smile. ‘So, are you saying I’m old and ugly enough for you?’
‘For me?’ Mr Akkersijk asks. ‘Is this a date? I hadn’t realised. I though
t we were simply two colleagues together celebrating …’
Clara eyes him, unsure whether or not he means it. Then, all of a sudden, to the shock of them both, she steps quickly across the distance between them, stands up on tiptoes and kisses him. At the last moment, she misses his mouth but her lips land smooth and soft on his cheek. Mr Akkersijk stares at Clara as she sets down on the pavement again. For a second she thinks he’s going to kiss her back, properly. But he doesn’t.
‘Well, Mr Akkersijk,’ she says, regaining her composure, unsure whether he deflected her on purpose, or she just hadn’t been accurate in her aim. She decides to believe it was the latter. ‘I think it’s only right that I should know your first name now, don’t you?’
He nods, a little dazed. ‘Pieter.’
‘Ah,’ she says.
‘It’s like your “Peter”,’ he explains. ‘We just say it slightly differently.’
Clara smiles, touched by his nervousness. ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I think I got that.’
‘Okay, right, well then …’ Pieter unfolds his arms and sticks his hands firmly in his pockets. He begins walking again, then stops. ‘Please …’ He sticks his right arm out, offering her the crook.
Clara slips her arm through his and they walk on, a little lopsided, to the restaurant.
‘So you write to them but they don’t know who you are?’
Clara nods, chewing her exquisitely soft salmon. It’s the first time she’s ever told anyone, other than her grandfather, her secret. She didn’t plan to, she hadn’t even been thinking of it, but it simply slipped out, after her very first bite of fish. She finds, strangely, that she feels safe telling him anything.
Pieter sits forward, putting down his knife and fork. ‘And you never see them afterwards?’
Clara shakes her head, still chewing. ‘Not usually.’
‘But you’re not curious, about how the letters might affect them? You don’t want to visit the houses again and take a peek inside?’
Clara swallows and gives a little shrug. She thinks of the letter she posted a few hours before – a rare instance of writing to the same person twice and the only letter she’s ever written without the help of her writing desk. But, since it’s such a fresh, new, strange experience that she can’t quite explain, Clara decides not to try.
‘Well, perhaps I see people I’ve written to, now and then, if I happen to wander down the same streets again,’ she says. ‘But I don’t really think … Well, it’s not—I’m not really writing the letters. I don’t think about what to say, I just write and after I’ve finished I’ve no idea what I’ve written.’
‘Oh,’ Pieter says. ‘How intriguing.’
Clara slides another piece of salmon onto her fork, along with a slice of dauphinoise potatoes and a leaf of curly kale. ‘This restaurant really is delicious,’ she says. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever had food like this before.’
Pieter smiles. ‘I have a confession,’ he says softly.
Clara looks up, still chewing, expectant.
His voice drops to a whisper and he stares down at his plate. ‘I wanted … I’ve wanted to …’
Clara swallows. ‘To what?’
Pieter glances up, but still doesn’t catch her eye. And then, finally, he looks at her. ‘Perhaps it’s the letters … but, I … Well, when I read you the first one …’
‘Yes?’ Clara asks, while hoping she already knows the answer.
‘I wanted, afterwards, I wanted to … to …’
‘To kiss you,’ Clara finishes.
Pieter frowns. ‘You?’
Clara blushes. ‘Me? No, I was just saying, if that’s what you were going to say – you seemed to have a little trouble getting to the words – well, I wanted to say that I wanted to kiss you too.’ Clara sets down her knife and fork, suddenly extremely nervous. ‘Oh, God. But now you’re going to tell me that wasn’t what you were going to say at all, that in fact you wanted something else entirely.’
‘No,’ he says, glancing down at his plate again. ‘That’s exactly what I wanted, I just, I just … I couldn’t say so. Then, or now, it seems.’
Clara smiles, utterly relieved. ‘You have no idea of your effect on women, do you?’
Pieter Akkersijk frowns.
‘Seriously?’
He shrugs.
‘How long has the woman I saw been working in your office?’ Clara asks, suddenly keen to shift the conversation away from their kissing.
‘Greta?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know – about six years.’
‘Six years?’ Clara raises her eyebrows. ‘And in all that time, you’ve never asked her on a date?’
Pieter shakes his head.
‘No wonder she hates me, then.’
Pieter, who’d been taking a sip of red wine, splutters. He dabs his napkin to his chin. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘Well, um, here I am,’ Clara says, ‘pushing my way in, when she’s been waiting six years for you to proposition her.’
‘What?’ he exclaims. ‘She has not.’
‘Oh, trust me,’ Clara says, ‘she has. You might be oblivious to women’s signs, but I know our ways. And she wants you, she’s wanted you for a long time.’
‘Gosh,’ Pieter says. ‘You really think so? I had no idea. No idea at all.’
‘I know. That’s part of what makes you so attractive,’ Clara says, while slightly unable to believe she actually has. Perhaps she’s a little drunk.
‘Oh?’ Now Pieter smiles, taking another, bigger, sip of red wine. ‘And what are the other parts?’ he asks, blushing even as he says the words. ‘I’m sorry, was that too much? I confess, flirting isn’t my forte.’
Clara smiles. ‘Mine neither. But maybe that’s why I find it easier with you.’
‘Why? Because I’m so dreadfully bad at it you feel like a positive Casanova next to me?’
Clara laughs. ‘Perhaps. Or whomever the female equivalent is. But that’s another part of it – you’re not slick, you’re not practised and glib. You’re real and true. You don’t seem, anyway, to hide yourself behind cute lines and witty responses, you reveal yourself when you speak. It’s very …’
‘I hide behind other people’s letters,’ Pieter says, putting down his glass. ‘I hide behind other people’s declarations of love. Another confession: I’ve never written a single letter in my life.’ His voice drops to a whisper again. ‘Isn’t that awful?’
‘No,’ Clara says, simply, though she is rather surprised. ‘But why – why haven’t you?’
‘I don’t know,’ he says.
‘Oh.’
Pieter sighs. ‘No, that’s not true. It’s because, perhaps having read such a great many beautiful letters – exquisite, moving, touching, sometimes heartbreaking letters – I’ve always felt too intimidated. I couldn’t bear to attempt to write so beautifully and fail so miserably.’
Clara grins. ‘But not all letters are like that. You’ve obviously just been reading the cream of the crop. Loads of them are mundane and boring and utterly prosaic.’
‘Perhaps,’ Pieter admits. ‘But I don’t want to write those kinds of letters. If I wrote, I’d want to be as witty as Austen, as passionate as Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller, as profound as de Beauvoir and Sartre, as literary as Virginia Woolf …’
‘Oh, so you keep your expectations nice and low, then.’ Clara smiles. ‘I think we’ve got more in common than just the letters.’
‘How?’
‘Well, when I was a little girl, my grandfather gave me a pen, in fact he made it—’
‘He made it?’
‘Yes, that was his profession, before he opened the stationery shop. But he never stopped making them – his pens were famous. He made, maybe, one a year and sold them for a fortune.’ She smiles, proud. ‘I have three of his pens in my shop: one that John Lennon used to write Imagine, one that Daphne du Maurier used to write Rebecca, another Quentin Blake used to illustrate Matilda.’
Pieter star
es at her, open-mouthed. ‘How incredible. That is to … What’s his name?’
‘Lucas Janssen. He died nearly ten years ago. He—’
‘Lucas Janssen?’ Pieter exclaims. ‘Goodness! I’ve always wanted to hold one of his pens, but it’s impossible. I’ve never even seen one. There are, what? Perhaps a dozen in circulation and they sell for about half a million euros each.’ Pieter sighs. ‘I was in London once and one of his pens was at auction in Sotheby’s. I almost went, but I couldn’t bear to torture myself. To be so close, yet so far from something I wanted so much.’
‘Really?’ Clara says, deeply touched. ‘I had no idea you were such a fan.’
‘And I had no idea you were the granddaughter of Lucas Janssen.’
‘Then I’m glad I didn’t tell you until now.’ She smiles, still rather surprised by how relaxed she feels. ‘Or I’d never have known if you really liked me, or just wanted me for my pens.’
Pieter returns her smile. ‘Well, yes. And now I can’t rightly say … If someone were to offer me one of your grandfather’s pens in exchange for you, I don’t know what decision I would make.’
‘Cheeky bugger!’ Clara pretends to whip him with her napkin across the table. ‘I’ll have you know—’
‘—ah,’ Pieter interrupts, ‘but don’t worry, in the end I would, of course, choose the pen.’
Clara laughs. ‘I shan’t be inviting you home, then, or you’ll be making off with all my most prized possessions.’
Pieter considers this and is suddenly serious. ‘Well, in that case,’ he says. ‘If you won’t invite me to your home,’ he says, ‘may I invite you to mine?’
Chapter Nineteen
‘I can’t believe I’m going to be an uncle,’ Edward says, with a happy sigh. ‘And you’re going to be an aunt – isn’t that wonderful?’
Greer nods.
‘Do you think Al and Zo will let us help choose names?’ Tilly asks. ‘I’ve already got a list of some beautiful girls’ names: Lily, Lilac, Lotus, Iris, Sage, Ivy, Heather, Holly, Poppy, Rosemary, Olive, Blossom, Fern, Jasmine …’
The Lost Art of Letter Writing Page 13