The Bookshop

Page

The Bookshop

ISBN # 978-1-78430-974-9

©Copyright R.A. Padmos 2016

Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright January 2016

Edited by Jamie D. Rose

Totally Bound Publishing

This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Totally Bound Publishing.

Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Totally Bound Publishing. Unauthorized or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

Published in 2016 by Totally Bound Publishing, Newland House, The Point, Weaver Road, Lincoln, LN6 3QN

Totally Bound Publishing is a subsidiary of Totally Entwined Group Limited.

Warning:

This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has a heat rating of Totally Simmering and a Sexometer of 1

THE BOOKSHOP

R.A. Padmos

Even I, who had resisted kicking and screaming, had to admit defeat. Why would love be impressed by the protests of a simple bookseller?

Jakoba has had enough. It is 1999 and she looks back on her life that began at the start of the century. Her arrival was unexpected, but joyfully welcomed, by her middle-aged parents. In a time where a middle-class girl has one destiny, namely to become a wife and mother, Jakoba is allowed to start working at a bookshop. Books become one of the loves of her life. Later she will inherit the shop.

She values friendship, but romance has no meaning for her. She values her independence too much and knows all too well what price women pay for being married.

It is German army photographer Armin who will change the course of her life. Jakoba is forty when she meets him. Armin is almost thirty, and Germany has occupied Holland. It does not matter. For him, she’s the one, and despite her hesitation both because of the war and because she can’t understand what this handsome man sees in her—a plain woman—she has to admit her feelings for him.

Such love has consequences for both of them that will reach far beyond the war and in ways Jakoba could never have imagined.

Dedication

For my wife

Trademarks Acknowledgement

The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmark mentioned in this work of fiction:

Alice in Wonderland: Lewis Carroll

Chapter One

Let me be clear about one thing. I, Miss Jakoba Henrika Huyzen, born in February 1900, will not be part of the twenty-first century, just as I wasn’t part of the nineteenth. Even if no one knows the hour of his death, one who had to become as old as I am might be granted a clear look at the last boundary. I won’t be in the newspaper because the mayor won’t congratulate me with my one hundredth birthday, and no brass band will play their aubade.

My heart pumps my blood steadily through my veins, but at an ever slowing pace. Other people wash my no longer fitting skin, my gossamer-thin white hair. Those who live long enough seem to fall almost inevitably outside the very concept of beauty. We simply are. My young friends talk slowly and clearly, but they don’t really expect an answer from me. I am perfectly content with the silence. I do however understand their need to fill the space around them with sound.

* * * *

In the time that I was born, almost no one had his or her own photo camera. My parents waited almost six months before they put me on the woolen sheepskin at the photographer’s so he could make that one picture of me. I know now there are no ugly children as long as one or two pairs of eyes adoringly witness the miracle. And perhaps I was indeed that miracle. I arrived at a moment when no one still expected me. Not quite three months after my birth, my mother celebrated her fiftieth birthday. I was her first and only child.

I was a child of the new century, born from parents who were no longer able to let go of the old one. Accidentally, one year before my birth, a photo had been made of my parents, likely to celebrate the day when my father, twenty years earlier, as a thirty-one-year-old civil servant had saved enough to ask permission to marry the two-years younger daughter of a textile merchant. I still have that photo of two middle-aged people with the solemn, unsmiling look that was so typical of the middle class. They were never affluent, although the deeply regretted absence of children saved them from poverty hidden by a thin veneer of respectability. This couple, that so looked like they were already grandparents in their dark, stiff clothes, joined their bodies during the last spring of the nineteenth century with so little hope left, and someone or something looked upon them with pity. My expecting mother hid her pride under her skirt, lovingly widened by her seamstress, but she embroidered enough tiny vests and bonnets to dress half a dozen babies. Many years later, I took every piece of linen and cotton in my own hands to bring the heritage of my mother to my own home. Later still, I saw my beloved admire every delicate stich and smile because of the miracle that had been passed on.

* * * *

I was a quiet child in a quiet home. Still, my father took me on his lap from time to time to surprise me with a small tin toy or a piece of candy bought during his walk home from the office. I kissed his cheek above his graying beard. I didn’t have a grandfather, but did I need one with a gentleman in black suit with beard and smoking pipe as a father? So I held his hand while we walked through the park that had been opened eight years before to celebrate the coronation of the young queen Wilhelmina. It was then that I saw an automobile driven by a female chauffeur. A spectacle considered dangerous in more than one meaning of the word, and my father shook his head in calm disapproval. The lady driver wore a summer hat with white flowers, and I thought about that car and that hat for the rest of the day.

It was my mother, however, who took me to the bookshop of Mr. Beenstra. He can’t have sold many books, because most customers were lenders or they stepped inside the shop for their stationery. Mother bought her paper, pen and ink to write to her older sister, who once a year brought us a visit until her death in 1911, at Beenstra’s.

Without commenting on it, she must have seen how I admired a picture book with fairy tales while trying not to look greedy. Children learned at an early age not to ask for treats or gifts, because asking might result in not getting anything. Such a beautiful book must cost far too much and the mere thought that Mother or Mr. Beenstra would notice how much I wanted such a treasure made me blush. If Mother or Father would ask me if I had a special wish for my birthday or the feast of Sint Nicolaas, I might mention the book and who knew what would happen.

The next day Mother told me to sit at the dinner table and close my eyes. I knew something good was about to happen, but I had no idea what it could be. A new bow for my hair? A whole tablet of milk chocolate all for me? My childlike mind went here and there and it was nearly impossible to keep my eyes shut.

Luckily, Mother understood and she said, You can open your eyes now, Jakoba.

A package, rather large in my eyes, wrapped in brown paper lay in front of me on the table. The form reminded me of something, but I didn’t dare to hope… So I looked up at my mother to be sure I could open the package.

Go on. Unwrap it. It is really yours, Mother urged me, a lovely smile on her face.

I tried to be slow and meticulous, but my young age only allowed for so much self-restrain. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Did I really, honestly hold the book with fairy tales in my hands? How did Mother know how much I had wished it to be mine?

Are you so pleased with your present that you almost forget to thank Mama? My mother gently corrected me.

I threw my arm around her. Thank you so much, Mama.

Every night for weeks, my mother read me a fairy tale. This book was the first of many, and even before I could read independently, I was the proud owner of no less than six children’s books. They stood at the beginning of a lifelong affection.

Mr. Beenstra was possibly even older than Father and Mother. He was a kind, unmarried man. Once I had mastered the art of reading, I was allowed to pick out a book from his lending library for a few cents, and more than once he gave me a second one without payment. His shop was situated at a small square between a haberdashery and a bakery, where my mother treated me to a tartlet. On the other side of the square, there was a large building made of red stones that held a primary school. The square itself was halfway a fashionable shopping street and a neighborhood for decent, working-class families, where civil workers like my father also rented their houses.

One day my mother took me to the photographer. It was summer and the next September I would go to school for the first time. Looking at the photo made then, I see a gray little mouse almost hidden under a much too big silken bow. The years of perfect innocence and unconditional love were definitely ending.

* * * *

I hardly knew young adults even existed before I went to school. Miss Akkerman didn’t smell of the eau de cologne like Mother, but of lavender and sometimes roses. She had light blonde hair, kept neatly in a tidy bun, but a few hairs always escaped. She wore long skirts and blouses embroidered with happy flowers.

There was a scary amount of children in the classroom, many of them crying because it was their first day away from Mother. I sat at my designated desk, hardly daring to move, with my eyes fixed on Miss Akkerman, hoping she would be the one to save me now Mama was gone. I avoided the eyes of the other children, almost more afraid they might offer me their friendship than that they might tease me.

I was an old child, used to the calmness of two people in the autumn of their lives and nothing could ever make me get used to the liveliness of early spring. No girl ever walked arm in arm with me, sharing a piece of candy in sisterly fairness. Once or twice I was invited to play at the home of a classmate. Other girls had big sisters and baby brothers, mothers without gray hair and even grandparents who looked like my mother and father. They all called me a nice girl. They seldom asked me back a second time.

Miss Akkerman taught me the first principles of reading and writing, but it was Schoolmaster Keesing who gave me extra homework and who finally asked father if they could talk about my future. I knew what I wanted, but I also knew I wouldn’t resist the decision of my father to no longer allow me to go to school after my thirteenth birthday, when I was no longer obliged to get an education. I could help my mother in the house and learn everything I needed to become a good housewife and mother. My father was not a stingy man and he would gladly pay for lessons in fine needlework and French cuisine.

Father sat in his moss-green overstuffed chair and I stood before him. Mother was sitting at the table. The gray patriarch of our small family told me his verdict. I was to follow a few more years of education and on my sixteenth birthday, I would get a learning place at Mr.