The Light of Amsterdam (37 page)

‘I can't, Shannon, I just can't.' She was pleading now. ‘You have to understand.' She rested her hand on her daughter's hand, desperate for that understanding.

‘I need you to do this for me, Mum. All my life you've done everything for me and this is the very last thing and the biggest thing.' Her daughter covered her hand with her own and held it tightly.

She had never heard her talk like this before. She wanted to pull her hand away and retreat into herself and what she had decided but the words tore at her and refused to let her go.

‘I'm cold, Shannon, we should go back to the hotel. They'll be worrying about us.'

Her daughter leaned into her and spoke so close to her face that she felt her breath on her cheek bringing back to her all the times when she had nursed her, nursed her through illness and heartbreak. Shannon wanted her to nurse her now.

‘Please, Mum.' And her voice was childlike, the child she had never turned her back on even when she was completely in the wrong. The child, too, she had felt guilty about all her life for giving her something less than everyone else had.

She wanted to push her away and hold on to whatever resolve had firmed itself in her mind but knew that if she pushed her away she would risk losing her for ever. She had already lost too many things in her life and although nothing would ever be the same between them, there had to be something left to help her make it through whatever the future would bring. The music sounded a little louder, vaguely familiar. It made her think of the music she had heard in the church. She knew it was over now and that she had lost, but a final remnant of pride stopped her giving what her daughter wanted without one final struggle.

‘I'm going to think about it, Shannon. That's all I'm going to say. And no promises. You understand?'

But despite her words her daughter understood well enough and put her arms round her to hug her. Her only response was to lightly lay her hand on her daughter's arm, and for a second it felt as if the tightness of the embrace was choking her. She thought about the consequences of what she was about to agree to and it felt suffocating just as the now-thickening tides of mist seemed to be slowly choking the city's buildings and forcing them into some indistinct and lifeless form. So she would be changed and not in ways that she would have chosen and she was frightened by not knowing how those changes would shape her life or who she would have to be.

Shannon was talking quickly, rattling on about inconsequential things, but her voice washed meaninglessly over her to be lost in the spread and splay of her fears.

Then from out of the froth of her daughter's words she heard her say, ‘Let's go, Mum,' and she was helping her off the bench, as if suddenly her mother had become an old woman. ‘It's this way, isn't it?'

She had to look around her, momentarily confused about the right direction, but then pointed the way ahead. She felt her daughter's arm link her own and the firm lean of her shoulder, tried to listen to her renewed chatter as they walked, but it was as if her thoughts were intercut with the echo of Shannon's voice, just as her calls had been with the echoes under the tunnel on the day she thought she had lost her. What would she have done if she had lost her for ever then? How could she have gone on living? Her child had given her a purpose, a reason to do all the things that she had to do. Without her she would have become a ghost of herself, worn down by the purposelessness of her work and the weight of what the world asked of her. She glanced at the animated face of her daughter and was carried a little on the breaking wave of the happiness that had chased the coldness from her features. She saw the neon sign of their hotel reddening in the distance. Soon they would be back in the warmth. Already she could see a group of figures bunched on the front steps, their cigarettes glowing in the darkness. It would be the girls waiting for them.

She had given her daughter all that she could. He had given her something else, something that was easy to give. She told herself that her daughter would always know the difference between the two. But she understood too the power of money. And then she remembered that there was something else she could give her.

‘Wait, Shannon, a second. I have something for you.' She looked at the surprise on her daughter's face, the too obvious, eager expectation, but nothing mattered now. ‘It's not wrapped or anything but I hadn't time. I bought it for you in Amsterdam – it's not new, it's old – an antique. I don't know if you'll like it.'

She took the bracelet from her pocket and cradled it in the palm of her hand in the light of a shop window. Its value weighed heavily and made it shake a little. Even in that light the blue stones sparkled in their plaited ring of gold. Her daughter took it delicately and slowly, her eyes widening in a gradual consciousness of its worth. Her mouth formed a silent circle as she raised the bracelet level with her eyes as if not fully believing what she was holding.

‘It's beautiful, it's really beautiful,' she said, giving little squeals of pleasure and then trying it on her wrist. She had to help her with the clasp, show her how it worked.

‘But it must have cost a fortune.' She held her wrist up to the light and turned it as if she was giving the world a chance to admire it.

‘I've been saving. I got a good price. So you like it?'

‘It's absolutely gorgeous. Really classy. I love it, really love it. But where did you get it?'

‘In an antique shop near the museum.'

Shannon hugged her again and again and for a second the bracelet almost caught in her hair. They rocked one another in a tight embrace and then with the bracelet still on her daughter's wrist they set off to cover the short distance that separated them from their hotel.

Fourteen

Their allocated seats, although to one side of the stage, were reasonably placed, affording a clear view, and while the knowledge of how much they had cost still made him wince, what he mostly felt was a renewed sense of anticipation and excitement. Perhaps it was this that caused his trip as he started to funnel down their aisle and left him almost sprawling face first to the accompaniment of his son's loud snigger. A moment later Jack burrowed himself into his seat then sank so low that only his head was resting on its rim. The dark, bruised patina of the leather jacket contrasted with his youthfulness and his thin wrists spindled out of its wide sleeves. He thought Jack was underweight and he would have to talk to Susan about it but his concern for his son was replaced by thoughts of her in Spain with Gordon. The different country they were in, and almost certainly sleeping together in, generated an unwelcome sense of romantic adventure that despite his efforts to block them out was exacerbated by images of remote mountains and stone-built tavernas with simple but quaint and single-focused bedrooms whose windows looked out over sweeps of olive groves. He didn't think he would ever be able to imagine her with someone else without feeling this stab of pain, primed by a jealousy that he couldn't deny was the product of some primitive male possessiveness. He reminded himself again that the pain was deserved because he was the one who had betrayed her and there was no consolation in knowing that his Hallowe'en moment of madness had been such a damp squib, a complete and utter nothingness, spluttering his life into a cascading fall of ash.

He sneaked a look at his T-shirt underneath his coat that he had discreetly unbuttoned, with its ‘You go your way, I'll go mine', and felt stupid and crass that its bitter irony had eluded him and that now he was wearing his shame in public. Glancing at his son whose spine seemed to have contracted into itself as if he had fallen from a great height he felt irritated by his posture and irritated by the fact that it was no longer possible to simply tell him to sit up.

‘Are you comfortable, Jack?'

‘Yes.'

‘That's good. Do you think you'll be able to see all right?'

Jack turned his head to look at him then squirmed upright and looked again, his eyes fixed on his T-shirt.

‘What are you wearing?'

‘It's a T-shirt from way back. I thought I'd give it an outing.'

‘What does it say?' he asked in a slow and exaggerated show of disbelief.

‘You go your way, I'll go mine. It's got sentimental value,' he said, realising that he was apologising without meaning to.

Jack slumped back in his seat smiling to himself and giving his head one superior shake of incredulity. His son's reaction pleased him even though he realised that his only ability to make him smile or laugh was through tripping, or banging his head on something – some moment of clumsy slapstick – or by some aberration that confined the embarrassment to himself. But he didn't care and would take any humiliation, would tumble into a pile of horse manure if it guaranteed a smile – anything that cracked the frozen rictus that sometimes suggested his son's emotions were in rigor mortis. The smile also gave him encouragement to try conversation in the wait for the performance.

‘Do you think your mother will really go to Spain?' He knew he was risking another eruption of blame but it was a risk he felt emboldened to take by a growing hope that Jack had vented part of what he needed and some at least of the danger had passed.

‘Would you live in something that Gordon had built?'

‘You don't like him much.'

‘He's a complete and utter dickhead. What's there to like?'

‘Your mother obviously sees something in him,' he said, desperately trying to resist the temptation to enthusiastically agree with his son because despite everything he felt a loyalty to Susan that included even her foibles.

‘Mum's head's a total mess. I think she's having some kind of breakdown.'

‘What makes you say that?'

‘Gordon, obviously.' He lifted his arm slightly then let it fall again in seeming exasperation at his father's thickness. His thin wrist looked like the stick arm of a scarecrow. ‘Maybe you haven't had to listen to him enough.'

‘He's not great,' he conceded, reluctant to let the window of conversation close.

‘Not great!' His voice dripped with scorn at his father's lack of insight. ‘He's a total wanker. I hate him.'

His momentary confusion about whether his son should be using this type of language to his father, however justified, troubled him less than the intensity of his expression of hatred. This expression of hate he'd heard before, sometimes directed at the teacher he'd got into trouble over, a few times at some boy in school, that despite its superficial childishness was invested with something he found disturbing. There was no disputing the accuracy of his judgement of Gordon as a total wanker but he couldn't bear to hear the vehemence in his son's voice. It was as if he'd pressed all his frustration and all his self-hate and insecurities into one spew of words. He wanted to tell him that hatred was a corrosive, self-destructive thing best left to the suicide bomber and the fanatic, but he knew that his son blamed him for the appearance of Gordon and so he had to tread carefully if he was to avoid a meltdown like the one in the park.

‘Your mother's too smart not to realise that before long. Perhaps she just needs him to lay a few bricks.'

‘He couldn't lay an egg. He's a dead-brain no-hoper and if she takes up with him permanently then I'm out of there. Gone!' He raised his hand again, for some reason pointing it at the stage before letting it fall. The leather in the jacket seemed to stretch and crack a little as if aware of the seismic rage below its surface.

He didn't know what to say for fear of saying the wrong thing. He could only talk to his son when he wasn't there, or listening to his music through his earphones. He was filled with a sense of sadness that was also inexpressible. The only instinctive response was to put his arms round him and tell him that everything would be all right but knowing that, too, was impossible, he moved his hand closer to his son's arm then stopped short when Jack turned his body away as if intent on inspecting the far side of the hall. He was his father and yet he knew if he were to assume a wisdom with which to offer reassurance it would be fraudulent. And even if he tried the confessional and told him about crying at George's funeral he knew that it would come out wrong and stack up as just another exercise in competitive misery.

As always he wanted to take his son's pain but could find no way to do it. He formed an image in his head of lying beside Jack in two hospital beds with their bodies intravenously linked and everything that was poisonous and destructive in his son's system slowly draining into his. But there was nothing to console or assuage the sense of guilt that always wanted to make him believe that he had added to the mess his child was in. His child who thought people were shit and believed in
UFO
s and alien life forms. A mocking voice told him that communicating with an alien life form would be easier, less fraught with the possibility of failure, and he wanted to tell his son that he came in peace, that he didn't want to colonise him, or force him into slavery to things that he didn't believe in. He remembered when Jack was about ten the pleasure that they had both got out of his interest in magic and his delight at being able to master a few simple tricks that he had perfected from his Junior Magician's Outfit. Making things disappear behind cloth, identifying the right card – it had all given him so much smiling pleasure as they encouraged him with melodramatic gasps and wide eyes. Work a little magic now, Jack. Magic a little happiness for them both. Make the misery disappear.