Laurens Boekman’s watch

Laurens Boekman’s watch carries a message across the years: entrusted to Raff Brinker by a young man fleeing Holland, it eventually reaches Dr. Boekman and helps reunite father and son. Its engraved initials identify the family, while its inner paper and the missing keepsake expose how much of Laurens’s story Raff had forgotten. More than a personal possession, the watch is the material link between an accidental separation and a belated return.

The watch entrusted to Raff

Raff first describes receiving the watch during the episode that had remained unclear in his memory. On the day he was hurt, he was working far down the line, across from Amsterdam, when a distressed young man asked him to take him down the river. The stranger said it was a matter of life and death. He was wary of using an unlocked skiff without permission, so Raff took him several miles by boat; the young man then said he could continue on shore.

Before leaving the boat, the young man gave Raff the watch and asked him to take it to his father, not immediately but after a week. He wanted his father to know that his unhappy son had sent it, and that if his father ever wanted him to return, he would face whatever awaited him and come back. The young man began to give an address, but Raff could not later recall it. The watch thus arrived with an intended destination and message, but without the information needed to deliver either.

The circumstances of the handover explain why the watch’s meaning was not immediately apparent. The young man told Raff that a man was dead and that he had to flee the country, while insisting that he was innocent. Raff remembered the stranger’s troubled face and his plea, but not whether he had explained what had happened. Raff had initially objected to helping someone evade the law; the young man’s distress and claim of innocence nevertheless moved him to row faster. The watch remained after the encounter, while the explanation that could have clarified it faded from Raff’s memory.

An object marked and partly emptied

The watch’s visible initials provide the first practical clue. When Raff can no longer recall the father’s name, he suggests that the letters on the watch might help. Dame Brinker finds L.J.B. and reasons from the L and B to a family name she believes may fit. Her guess is mistaken, but examining the watch turns an otherwise unusable recollection into a search with something concrete to follow. The initials preserve a clue even when the name and address have disappeared from Raff’s mind.

The watch also contains evidence of what Laurens took with him. Raff remembers that the young man opened it, removed something, and kissed it before putting it away. Much later, when Dr. Boekman tries to open the stiff spring, the case reveals a watch paper bearing blue forget-me-nots. The doctor is disappointed at first: Raff explains that there had been something else inside, which the young man removed before handing him the watch. The keepsake was Laurens’s mother’s picture. The watch therefore preserves both a trace of what remained and the absence that matters most to the father: the picture had travelled with Laurens, not with the watch.

Identification and the recovered message

When Dame Brinker shows the watch to Dr. Boekman, its initials produce an immediate recognition. The doctor cries out at L.J.B. and understands that the object is connected to his son. Raff’s forgotten message is delivered at last, and the watch makes the belated delivery credible: it has come from Laurens, even though Raff cannot supply the name or address he once heard. In the scene, the doctor holds the watch tenderly and asks where his son said a letter should be sent. The object confirms the connection, but cannot restore every missing detail.

Opening the case deepens that recognition. The paper with blue forget-me-nots recalls Laurens’s mother, who died when he was ten; Raff’s account of the removed picture confirms that the young man had kept her image. Dr. Boekman takes this as proof that Laurens had not forgotten his mother. The watch has not itself kept the photograph, but its interior and Raff’s recollection together recover the significance of the small, absent object. The doctor also explains the event that prompted Laurens to flee: while assisting him, Laurens had mistakenly prepared the wrong medicine for a patient, but the poison was never administered because Dr. Boekman caught the error. The patient died that day, and Laurens, apparently believing his mistake had caused the death, left before his father returned home the next evening. The watch’s message thus helps correct the false guilt that had prolonged their separation.

Return and lasting significance

Dr. Boekman asks whether he may keep the watch, and Raff agrees because returning it fulfils Laurens’s original wish. The watch passes from the fleeing son to Raff, then from Raff to the father it was meant to reach. Its journey is delayed by Raff’s injured memory, but the object survives the gap and finally completes its purpose. It brings a message of conditional return to the person whose response Laurens had feared and hoped for.

The watch remains with Dr. Boekman after the reunion. Later, the silver watch is visibly dull, and the narration notes that he has worn it ever since Raff handed it over. That wear gives the object a continuing place in the father’s life rather than leaving it as a clue used once and put aside. Its return coincides with a changed understanding: Laurens had not deliberately abandoned his father or committed the death he feared, and the father can know that his son remembered his mother. The watch cannot undo the years apart, but it makes recognition, explanation, and reunion possible.