The Light of Amsterdam (13 page)

‘So, Jack, go on, tell me what you want, what you'd like your father to be?' he asked again and perhaps this time he said it too loudly, or out of the corner of his eye his son caught the movement of his lips.

‘What?' he asked, prising free one of the earphones. ‘What did you say?'

‘I was wondering who you were listening to?'

‘The Death Pixels,' he said then ended the conversation by letting the earphone slip back into place.

‘That's good, Jack. The Death Pixels. Never heard of them but that's good too.'

He tried to imagine a father that Jack might want but couldn't construct it in his imagination and because he was unable to construct it, it meant he couldn't aspire to become it. It was presumably a given that he'd want a father who stayed faithful to his mother and who in the middle of his life didn't suddenly prove pathetically flawed and self-seeking. If that was a given then it was also true that children allowed you no life that wasn't at their behest and that they liked things, for better or worse, to stay in the same predictable place. He had come too late to realise that they wanted cornerstones wedged tight no matter how much they might rebel against the foundations which you sought to offer their life or the boundaries you tried to give them. And what sort of son would he want? As he drove through the city the answer was easy because it was set in his memory as sharp and clear as the early morning light on the beach, with the zing and zest of the waves lacing and crimping the sand as it pulled away, leaving the rock pools laden with the fruits of the sea. And the eight-year-old boy has a green net on a bamboo cane and a bucket and every pool is a brimming briny adventure where startled crabs scuttle from under their hiding stones when he turns them over and Jack squeals with excitement and fear at the size of this one. And in the momentarily clouded water it disappears for a second but he sees it and he's almost falling in as he tries to scoop it into his net. ‘Go on, Jack!' he says and then it's half in and half out of the net but somehow he manages to bag it and slop it into the plastic bucket. ‘Wait till your mother sees this!' And he's holding the bucket level with his head like he's a champion and they're laughing and into the laughter flows the light of the morning and the seeming promise of all that lies ahead. So stop the home movie just there – no need to roll it any further, just freeze-frame it, letting it become the future as well as the past. When his son still showed the tangy, sea-sprayed excitement of life on his face and everything was all on the surface with no hidden hinterlands and when he still valued a father's approbation.

They were on the motorway and making good time now that they'd escaped the Friday home-going traffic of the city. He glanced at Jack who was scrunched into the seat with his legs pulled into him. Black jeans, baseball boots and a black hoodie with the zip pulled up to his chin. With his black hair, like a thin stick of liquorice. In one hand his mobile phone, in the other his MP3. Passports to another world. He wondered what the Death Pixels sounded like. Taking the child he once was would have been fun and he constructed an imaginary programme in his head of bicycle hire, canal-boat rides, and the shared pathos of Anne Frank's house. A McDonald's Happy Meal, a visit to a toy shop and home again with stories to tell. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. At least he hadn't completely balked at Dylan, might even have seemed mildly interested. For that alone he was grateful even though it meant buying two new tickets on eBay at a totally ripped-off price and then partly offsetting the loss by selling his one for an equally exorbitant sum. That was Saturday night taken care of but it left the remainder of that evening, the rest of tomorrow and Sunday morning to accommodate. And just as he pondered the problems this presented he remembered with a shiver of embarrassment the unbelievably, inexplicably stupid guff he'd told Stan Stenson about an entirely imaginary piece of research involving Van Gogh and Gauguin. Stan had thought he was taking the piss and now, to prove he wasn't, he would have to come up with something even though he had no idea of how he was going to do it. He lowered his head towards the steering wheel in a squirm of shame then straightened when he saw that his son was staring at him. It felt like the Death Pixels were playing in his head and the only tune they played was a tune of pain. How could he have been so stupid?

They had to slow down as they entered a coned-off section of the motorway and for a second he thought he saw an Indian in the back seat of the taxi in front of them, a feather sticking up above the seat. He needed to pull himself together, needed to have all his wits about him if he was going to help them both get through this weekend. Perhaps there was another way he could escape the mess with his head of department, perhaps he could start to paint again, conjure up a small show in a local gallery. Perhaps even have it linked in some way he couldn't yet imagine to the work of the two painters. Surely anything was possible with a bit of invention. And when a short while later they were close enough to the airport to see a plane coming in to land and Jack squirmed in his seat to catch it, he blinked his eyes and saw instead a night café under a yellow canopy and a blue shock of sky, white spotted with a snowfall of stars.

 

 

After they got their overnight bags out of the car she watched her husband stopping to write the letter and number of their location on the back of his car-park ticket, then carefully place it in his wallet. It was what he always did, prompted presumably by a fear of not being able to find the car on his return, a fear of getting lost. He had been quiet on the journey to the airport and when he had spoken it had been about some aspect of the business, some small and to her inconsequential thing that they had forgotten to do. While he had driven she had tried her best to search his face, trawl the timbre of his voice for some sign that he had already been unfaithful to her. Sometimes she used the word strayed rather than unfaithful because she was able to conceive of it as a temporary loss of direction before the possibility of return. And she knew she would let him return and felt both the shame and what she supposed was the weakness of that. But only if it was private and without public humiliation.

As she watched him pat the wallet in his inside pocket to reassure himself that it was safely stored, she wondered how he could be so precise about so many things and uncommitted about others. So as he set off towards the terminal with the bag he had weighed and measured to ensure that it would meet the requirements for hand luggage, and as she followed him, there was a stirring of resentment. All she wanted was a steadiness, a personal and mutual equilibrium that didn't need her to strive for something, that didn't live on the edge of unpredictability. She didn't want to fight with the machines, didn't want to measure herself, didn't want to have her whole life weighed in the balance and found wanting by someone who didn't know anything about her. The trouble was that she had started to understand that there was no steadfastness or safety when you were dependent on someone else. She couldn't tell any more where love ended and the need for something that was akin to but more than security began, where you had evolved or regressed to a point where it felt as if you only existed in the affirmation of another.

‘Richard, can you slow down a bit? You're going too fast,' she said, surprised by the irritation in her voice.

‘Sorry,' he said, stopping to turn to her. ‘Is that bag too heavy? Let me carry it.'

‘It's not heavy, you're just in a bit of a rush. We've plenty of time. The flight doesn't go for another two and a half hours.'

‘Sorry,' he said again. ‘It could take extra time to go through security.'

‘This is supposed to be a break,' she insisted, as if in an argument, ‘and I don't want to be worn out before we even get there.'

‘
OK
, we'll slow down. Let me carry your bag.'

‘I can carry my bag, Richard,' she said as she strode past him towards the terminal.

Perhaps the whole idea had been a terrible mistake. It was a crazy time to be going away. It was a crazy idea, too, that she had let burrow into her head. How could she have been so stupid, so inexplicably cast adrift from the normal sensibilities of her life? As she entered the terminal she searched for some way to turn them round and abandon the weekend, thought even of saying she was taken ill but she knew she couldn't pull it off and that she didn't have the skills or capacity to deceive him face to face. She had also started to believe that if things were to tumble out into the open, they would spiral away in directions she couldn't anticipate or control.

‘I'm the one who couldn't keep up,' he said as he set his bag at her feet. ‘That gym must be doing you good. Perhaps I should join too.'

‘You don't have the time,' she said, trying now to smooth the irritation that had previously edged her voice. ‘And anyway you never put on any weight that I can see.'

‘I've added a few pounds over the last while,' he insisted.

‘Well they don't show. I seem to put it on for us both.'

‘They don't show,' he said and smiled at her.

‘Then it's not gym membership you need but an eye test. We better check in. Which desk is it?' As she turned to look she felt his hand lightly on her arm.

‘Are you all right, Marion?'

‘I'm fine, just a bit nervous about going away and leaving everything, I suppose.'

‘There's nothing to worry about. We've got a good team around us. If I thought there was a problem we wouldn't be going. So try and relax, try to enjoy yourself – it's not that often we get the chance to get away.'

‘So you really want to come?'

‘Of course I do. And if you want to know I hate this Christmas period. When you're not selling plants any more but all that tacky stuff.'

They joined the short queue in front of the desk and suddenly she felt self-conscious as if somehow they looked different to everyone else. She tried to think of things to say as a way of hiding her discomfort.

‘So you know it's a load of tat?' she asked.

‘Of course. You'd have to be blind not to see that – all those flashing lights and blingy ornaments. It gets worse every year and you know what? The tackier it is the better it sells.'

‘And the Santa Claus climbing our chimney – that's a piece of good taste?'

‘It was just a laugh. And since I put it up I've sold at least a dozen and the last one was to a man who said he was driving by, saw it and wanted one just the same. The girls enjoyed it, didn't they?'

‘I think so. When are they going home?'

‘Week after next. Listen, Marion, I was wondering what you'd think of this.' He shuffled his bag forward with his foot. ‘How would you feel about us taking everyone out for a Christmas meal, as a thank you before we close and they all go home?'

‘Can we afford it?'

‘On the year we've had I would say so and we've even sold three of those black fibre-optic trees since Monday.'

‘A black tree at Christmas – it's not right. And they're terrible to touch – creepy, horrible. We shouldn't sell them, no matter how much money we make on them. People have no taste any more.'

‘At least the needles don't drop. Are you looking forward to having Judith home again?'

They shuffled forward. ‘I'd like to see her back home for good and a wedding ring on her finger. What happens if she meets someone in France and they settle there and we have to get on a plane every time we want to see our grandchildren?'

But there was no time for him to answer because they were next at the desk and she watched as he handed over both their passports and the booking form and gave the young woman the lightness of his charm. A black Christmas tree. She squirmed a little as she remembered the synthetic feel, the stupid blue fibre-optic lights, then smothered it with the thought of the large tree they would soon cut and bring to the house, where it would fill the room with a forest freshness, and how she would dress it with the decorations that owed little to fashion but instead represented the history of their family. The older bits and pieces, the things the children had made in primary school, the birds with the delicate, coloured tails, the favourite baubles that had been acquired in various cities and at different times.

After going through security he got them both a coffee and they found seats but it was as if they had run out of things to talk about and so they sat and watched those around them, glancing from time to time for news of the gate at which they were to board.

‘Anka seems a nice girl,' she said suddenly, pressing the rim of the coffee cup to her lips.

‘She's a good worker. They all are. Could teach some people here a thing or two.'

‘Perhaps she won't return after Christmas. Perhaps she'll get home and decide to stay.'

‘She'll come back,' he said.

‘How do you know?'

‘I just know.'

‘Has she said something?'

‘Just that she wants to raise as much money as she can and eventually start her own business.'

‘Here or in Poland?'

‘I'm not sure. She wants to open a florist shop.'