‘Then I’ll feel bad about it for the rest of my life. I just know I will. Besides, she always tells me I wear my feelings on my face.’
‘She’s right. You do.’
‘Thanks a lot! That really gives me confidence. So, she’ll want to know about what happened while I was here. I’ve always told her everything. Never hid anything from her. She’s bound to know I’m hiding something.’
‘Then you’ve got a problem.’
‘Sure. I’ve got a problem! Thanks for telling me what I know.’
Again the rising anxiety made him fidgety.
‘I need to go to the bathroom,’ he said. ‘All that coffee while you were reading Geertrui’s story.’
When he came back Hille was looking at the wall of books. The view of her back affected him as strongly as her front, the fall of her shoulders, the curve of her bum in her jeans, the proportion of her body on her legs. He looked at his watch. The morning was almost gone. He came up behind her and put his arms round her waist, just as she had to him a few minutes before.
‘You’ll not make it back for school this afternoon,’ he said, ‘if you don’t go pretty soon.’
‘Too late already.’
‘You’re not going?’ He tried to keep the excitement out of his voice but didn’t succeed. She’d feel it in his body anyway.
‘About telling people difficult news.’
‘Let’s forget it. Just enjoy ourselves till I have to go.’
‘When?’
‘From here, about four.’
‘There’s something I want to say to you. Come and sit down.’
She unhooked herself from his arms and went to the sofa. Something in her manner told him to sit in one of the chairs. He deliberately chose the one he never sat in, facing the window.
Hille was leaning forward, elbows on knees, a fist held to her mouth.
‘About the position of kissing boyfriend.’
‘Ah!’ He could see the blow coming. ‘You’ve given it to someone else.’
‘No.’
‘What, then?’
‘There was a qualification I forgot.’
‘Which is?’
‘He must live close enough to do the kissing.’
‘And I don’t.’
‘No.’
‘So I don’t get the job?’
‘I can’t be a girlfriend of an absent boyfriend. I wouldn’t be able to keep it up.’
He said nothing.
‘You understand?’
‘Sure. You don’t need to explain. Is that what you were going to write to me about?’
‘Yes. And to say I’d like to be friends. If you want to.’
‘I want to. But everything else? If we lived near to each other?’
‘You’d get the job.’
‘I would?’
‘You would.’
‘Can I have a kiss to prove it.’
She laughed. ‘Good idea.’
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Let’s go somewhere. See some of the town together. Are you hungry?’
‘I’m hungry.’
‘Like a pancake?’
‘If you say it in Dutch.’
‘Zal … het zijn … er … lijken … een pannenkoek?’
Which gave her the giggles.
‘Glad I’m good for a laugh, anyway.’
‘Sorry! You did try. I know a good place near the Anne Frank house. Even has an English name, The Pancake Bakery, so at least you’ll be able to say it.’
‘But won’t give you such a good laugh.’
‘I’ll take the risk.’
‘Before we go, I’ll get my stuff together, then I’ll be ready to leave.’
He picked up Geertrui’s story.
Hille said, ‘Can I see the things she gave you? The book and necklet your grandfather gave her.’
‘Okay. Come up. You can look at them while I pack.’
She followed him to his room. The gatherings from his trip were in the Bijenkorf bag. He took out his grandfather’s badge, Sam’s book and the pendant, and laid them on the bed. Hille sat beside them and at once picked up the pendant, smoothing it between her fingers in a way so sensuous that it unsettled him.
He turned away and began packing his spare clothes in his carryall. Went down to the bathroom to collect his toilet gear. When he got back Hille was flicking through Sam’s book.
He finished packing, all but his bag of gatherings, and went to the bed to get it.
‘What else have you got?’ Hille said. ‘Can I see?’
‘If you want.’
He tipped out the rest of the contents. Hille sorted through them.
‘What’s this? Teach Yourself Dutch in Three Months.’ She laughed.
‘Daan gave it to me last night. His going-away present. More of a come-back-soon present he said.’
‘And will you?’
‘You bet.’
‘Learn Dutch in three months I meant.’
‘Going to have a bash, yes. Seriously, I’ve been thinking. There’s nothing to stop me studying here, is there? At university, I mean. Daan says a lot of their lectures are in English. They have to be so as to attract foreign students. And he says I can stay here with him. So accommodation would be no problem. My home-from-home, he says.’
‘Told you it was good to have a nice Dutch family.’
She put the book down and pushed away the used roll of film Jacob had taken in the Oosterbeek cemetery, and the Order of Service, to uncover the postcards of Titus and Rembrandt.
‘Why these?’
‘Daan thinks I look like Titus.’
She held the one of Titus against Jacob’s face.
‘A bit maybe.’
‘You need to see the painting.’
‘D’you like Rembrandt?’
‘Quite a lot, yes.’
‘I think Vermeer is better.’
‘Is he?’
‘Well, he’s not better. Silly to say. But he’s my favourite of the old painters. Maybe we should go and look at him now.’
‘If you like.’
Then Alma’s Panini napkin.
‘What’s this?’
He explained.
‘But why did she write such a message?’
‘Well, before I was mugged, this guy came and sat next to me and we got talking. It turned out he was a friend of Daan’s but I didn’t know it then of course. Anyway, he said if I’d like to meet him again he’d give me his phone number, and he wrote it in this.’
He picked up Ton’s book of matches.
‘But he didn’t just write his number, he wrote a message as well. Which I showed to Alma so she could translate it, and she thought it was funny, so when we said goodbye, she gave me this napkin with the Dutch saying she’d written on it.’
Hille took the book of matches from him and flipped it open. When she had taken in what it was, and laughed, she said, ‘So he’s gay.’
‘Yes, he’s gay.’
‘And he fancies you’
‘And yes he fancies me.’
She dangled the open book in front of him between finger and thumb. ‘But you haven’t used it.’
He shook his head, smiling.
‘Don’t you think you should?’
‘Really?’
‘Don’t want to take it home, do you?’
‘But who with?’
‘What about me?’
‘If this is another test for a kissing boyfriend—’
‘That’s right.’
‘Not sure I’ll pass with high marks.’
‘Let’s find out.’
‘Not too good at it. Might disappoint you. Haven’t had enough experience.’
As she started undoing the belt of his jeans she said, ‘You can learn on the job.’
‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Because you want it.’
‘What about you?’
‘I want it also.’
‘Not sure we have enough time. Wouldn’t want to miss my f
light.’
Hille chuckled, and with wicked mimicry said, ‘Put yourself in my hands. Relax. Enjoy yourself. Trust me to get you to the plane on time.’
AFTERWORD
Postcards from No Man’s Land is a book that was saved by readers. If writing a short story is like sprinting the hundred metres, writing a long novel is like running the marathon. You have to train up for it, and during the race you have to pace yourself carefully or you’ll be out of puff before you’re half way there. It’s easy to get it wrong and lose confidence. That’s what happened in the middle of writing Postcards. I got it wrong and lost confidence so completely that I packed the half-written book away and gave up.
A few weeks later, while I was visiting Sweden, I met a group of fifteen-year-old girls who were keen readers of my other books. They asked me what I was writing next. I said I had given up. They were appalled, made me tell them about the unfinished novel, and argued and cajoled until I promised I’d try again. Every so often, for months afterwards, one of them sent me a postcard, asking, How long is our book now? When will it be finished? Books need readers, or there is no point in publishing them; and writers need readers too, sometimes, to keep them going.
Postcards is the fifth novel in a sequence of six. Each tells a love story of one kind or another. One of the stories in Postcards is about love of a place, in this case Amsterdam. Another is about the love you can feel for a character in a book – Anne Frank, who was a real person, of course, but you can only know her by reading her book, in which she is the main character. So Jacob is a fictional character who loves a real person, who he only knows because she is like a fictional character in a novel. Which is an example of the way Postcards weaves everyday reality with fiction, actual people and events with invented characters and events. Both are ‘true’ in their own way.
Because the others in the sequence are linked in various ways (which I describe in the Afterword to the last in the sequence, This Is All) I knew by the time I came to write it that Postcards had to be set in a city in a foreign land, where there had been a battle during the Second World War. None of the other novels had dealt with modern life in a city, the displacement you feel in a strange land where you do not speak the language, the horror of war, and the influence of history on our lives. Amsterdam and the Netherlands provided all these.
Jacob’s story is rather like the traditional folktale about the innocent abroad. An inexperienced young man goes off to a foreign land to seek a treasure. During his journey he meets strangers, some good, some bad, some who help and some who hinder, and all of whom give him something or take something from him, offer advice, and tell stories about themselves that are also stories about him. By the time his journey is over, he has learned many things about himself and about life. He may or may not have found the treasure he was seeking, but he has found treasure of the intangible kind that helps you to grow and become more consciously aware of life and more truly yourself, rather than the person other people want you to be. ‘Every time we learn something,’ wrote the playwright George Bernard Shaw, ‘we suffer a sense of loss.’ What Jacob has lost because of what he has learned is his innocence. But he is wiser for it.
Postcards is the only one of the five novels in which the main character’s story is told only in the third person. The others are either all in the first person or mix first and third. The third person helps to keep the main character distanced from the reader, who observes him/her and what happens, rather than living it with him/her, as you do when a story is in the first person. But of course, there is Geertrui’s contrasting story, a novel within the novel, told in the first person, which brings us closer to her than we are to Jacob. We live intimately with Geertrui, whereas we only travel alongside Jacob as a witnessing companion. And I suppose that’s why so many readers have told me how much more moved they are by Geertrui’s story than they are by Jacob’s. They say they think about Jacob but they feel with Geertrui. And that was my intention. I chose to write the novel in this way, interleaving Jacob and Geertrui’s stories, so that you enjoy their different textures, their different flavours, and your different relations with them, turn and turn about, one playing off against the other.
And I wonder if that is why Postcards has brought me more awards and prizes than any of the other novels, as well as a great many appreciative letters and emails. Or is it because it is the most conventionally told, the least demanding, and the easiest to read of all six books? Whatever the reasons, I’m pleased it is so much admired and enjoyed.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge use of extracts from the following books:
Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank, translated by B.M. Mooyaart-Doubleday, copyright 1947 by Otto Frank and 1982 by Anne Frank-Fonds, Basel, Switzerland, the edition used here published in England by Pan Books, 1954. Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl, The Definitive Edition, edited by Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler, translated by Susan Massotty, copyright 1991 by The Anne Frank-Fonds, Basel, Switzerland. English translation, copyright 1995 Doubtleday, New York.
Martin Middlebrook, Arnhem 1944: The Airborne Battle, 17–26 September, copyright 1994 by Martin Middlebrook, published by Viking, 1994.
Geoffrey Powell, Men at Arnhem, copyright ‘Tom Angus’ 1976, Geoffrey Powell 1986, first published by Leo Cooper Ltd, 1976, the edition used here being the revised edition published by Buchan and Enright Ltd, 1986.
James Sims, Arnhem Spearhead: A Private Soldier’s Story, copyright James Sims 1978, first published by Imperial War Museum; the edition used, Arrow Books Ltd, 1989.
Hendrika van der Vlist, Oosterbeek 1944, translated by the author, copyright and published by the Society of Friends of the Airborne Museum, Oosterbeek, 1992.
Bram Vermeulen, ‘Mijn hele leven zocht ik jou’, from Drie stenen op elkaar, p 70, copyright Bram Vermeulen, published by Hadewijch, Antwerp, 1992.
References in square brackets at the end of quotations refer to pages in the books listed above. Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. Any omissions are regretted and will be corrected in future editions.
The author thanks many Dutch and Flemish friends and colleagues for help and information during the writing of this novel.
About the Author
Aidan Chambers lives in Gloucestershire with his American wife, Nancy, who is the editor of Signal magazine. He divides his time between his own writing and lecturing which he does extensively in Australia, the USA and Europe. His provocative and challenging novels for teenagers and young adults have won him international acclaim. Postcards from No-man’s Land is the fifth novel in what he perceives as a sequence; this starts with Breaktime, continues with Dance on my Grave, and carries on through Now I Know to The Toll Bridge. This is All completes the sequence. Each novel stands on its own exploring a different aspect of contemporary adolescence.
Also by Aidan Chambers
The Dance Sequence
BREAKTIME
DANCE ON MY GRAVE
NOW I KNOW
THE TOLL BRIDGE
POSTCARDS FROM NO MAN’S LAND
THIS IS ALL: THE PILLOW BOOK OF CORDELIA KENN
POSTCARDS FROM NO MAN’S LAND
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