The Light of Amsterdam (45 page)

 

He watched her stand up as the young women arrived back, each showing the others their final purchases with curious faces peering childlike into the bottom of bags. He wondered what it was that always seemed to separate her from the rest because a few moments later she walked off. He looked at the slumped Jack, who once again had deboned himself where all the parts and limbs of his body seemed to have congealed into a homogeneous whole, and wondered how the fast food they had both just consumed had any chance of finding its way to his stomach, or being digested.

‘I'm going to get a coffee, do you want anything?'

‘A Coke, please.'

‘I'll not be long.'

He pressed his coat smooth and headed off in the direction she had gone, quickly stepping out past the shops selling expensive souvenirs and past the upmarket clothes and handbag outlets until he caught her a little way ahead, looking at a window display. But as soon as he saw her he hesitated. This was an impulse, a dangerous impulse, and he knew already that impulses were sometimes the key that opened the door to disaster but although he tried to tell himself that the strength of its pull should assuage his rising doubt, he couldn't bring himself to fully trust it. So he paused and pretended to look in one of the shop's windows then made himself glance at her and reminded himself once again that he didn't like some of her clothes, that her shoes were ugly, that she pronounced Rijksmuseum wrong. When he thought she was going to look back in his direction he pressed his attention to the contents of the window and found himself staring at expensive lingerie. Then to his horror he saw that she was walking towards him but it was too late to move away so he simply turned his back to the window and stood as if waiting for someone and tried not to look embarrassed.

‘Did you see anything you liked?'

‘I was just looking for a coffee and a Coke for Jack.'

‘I don't think you'll get them here,' she said, smiling and studying the display.

‘No. I think there's something further on.' He pointed vaguely forward while he imagined his face was the same colour as he had painted his old front door and which his wife had called pillar-box red.

‘I owe you a coffee. If you like.'

‘Thanks but I don't want to put you to any trouble.'

‘
OK
.'

She wasn't going to try and persuade him. He didn't know what to do. She was turning away.

‘Thanks, I will.'

They walked on to where there was a café and staked a claim at two seats. She tried to persuade him to take something with his coffee but he refused and then as she went to the counter realised it would have been better if he had accepted her offer. He didn't know what he was doing there and in a flutter of panic thought of making his escape but knew the shared plane flight made it impossible. He watched her hold her purse tightly in both hands as if someone might steal it and felt as if he was stumbling down a path which he had no idea where it would lead. Part of him believed that he would be better now on his own, unencumbered by complications and able to focus on his family and his job. Then for some reason he remembered the flowers left strewing the rain-washed road after George's hearse had passed, the way the wind stirred the petals, the way his tears had started. The brightness of the flowers against the grey slick of the road. And he remembered the night from childhood when they had shone their torches across the back gardens that had no fluent, coded message but which with every flickering stutter broke the silent bonds of loneliness. She was coming back now, all her attention focused on the two cups, her purse tucked under her arm. She was a good nurse. A good hand-holder. He thought of Dylan's voice straining to reach the memory of youth, the way time slowly takes everything away, of George as that young untouchable man moving like a spirit in his own element and scorning age and death that trailed mesmerised and club-footed somewhere in his distant wake. What did it matter if the impulse proved untrue? What did it matter if sometimes it led you to a place different to the one you intended? So as she set the cups down but even before she had the chance to sit he heard himself say, ‘I'd like to paint you.'

 

He wanted to paint her. It had to be something pervy. She thought of the lingerie shop. It was just a middle-class version of Marty's cup of coffee. But she didn't know what to say so at first she simply sipped from her cup. Then as he patiently waited for her answer, ‘You'd like to paint me?'

‘Yes, I'm going to paint figuratively – I'm going to paint people.'

‘You want me to model for you?' She was pleased that she had found the right word and in it expressed what was foremost in her mind.

‘I want you to sit for me.'

She didn't know what the difference was between sitting and modelling and soon she would have to get to the heart of the matter and understand whether he intended her to take her clothes off but she didn't want to embarrass herself before it was necessary. So instead she asked, ‘Why do you want to paint me?'

‘Because . . .' he hesitated and in that second she understood that if he said she was beautiful she would know for sure that he was a liar and not to be trusted, ‘you have a face with a lot of life in it, full of whatever life you've lived, and I'd like to capture it.'

She wasn't sure whether she felt disappointed or relieved. It felt like a place she hadn't been before, as if she was sitting at one of the desks she cleaned, or in the church again listening to the music. She sipped her coffee and winced at its bitterness. He hadn't touched his. Her face? She remembered the time in school when the photographer had come and then the different sizes of prints sent home in a cellophane package with her portrait visible, but her mother had sent them all back saying they had plenty of photographs and didn't need any more. She had been the only girl in the class who had returned them. Her face? She remembered how it had looked in the toilets' mirror when Shannon had revealed her secret. And how would her face look when she watched him walk her child down the aisle? In the unforgiving mirror of her imagination it felt like a face with its own special share of pain's ugliness. But perhaps this was her chance and he could somehow paint her with light in the picture, the way she had seen in the museum.

‘I don't have to take my clothes off?' she asked, hiding her embarrassment in directness.

‘No you don't, absolutely you don't.'

She looked at him openly. He was slowly shaking his head as if it was important to him that he confirmed what he had just said as the truth. She looked at him again. He had held her hand on the plane, she had held his in the church. In some important way that made them equal.

‘
OK
,' she said and as he smiled and nodded his pleasure, ‘but can you paint me reading a letter?'

 

They would land very soon. She wondered how things would feel between them when they were back in their familiar surroundings even though she had already made him promise that he would never talk about it again. She believed that there was too much talking about things in the modern world when mostly it was just best for everyone to keep things private. More than anything she hated those television programmes where families blurted out their most intimate secrets and the audience took sides like spectators in a Roman arena giving their thumbs up or down to the protagonists. That was why they would welcome Judith home as they had always done and why they would welcome her friend Elise in the same way without the need to make a show or do anything that was false or just for effect. His capacity for discretion was one of the things she admired and valued and as he read the flight magazine she glanced at the wedding ring and believed he would never embarrass her with this mad thing she had done, was probably by now able to corral it inside some vague belief that it was the product of the menopause or some other unspecified female ailment. And what did the ring mean? It should have pleased her, rendered everything all right, but she wasn't sure – there was something of the staged about it. She couldn't be sure, she could never be sure, but uncertainty didn't matter any more and she would never let it torment her again. ‘Only you, only you' – it was what men said and when they said it, it was always true, and if it was true when he said it she told herself that the rest didn't matter to her any more, because in the morning she would get up early and walk in the plantation and the trees would herald her presence by releasing the scent that would fill the air with its precious gift. A gift to her alone. In her anticipation she already felt anointed with a new lightness and when he looked at her and smiled she took his offered hand in hers, let it rest in her lap and felt no heaviness.

 

She sat beside Shannon, her whole body stiffening as the plane climbed but she didn't take her daughter's hand, deciding that this was something she had to deal with on her own if she were to make other journeys. When they were up she was able to relax a little and deliberately occupied herself with the magazine, rapidly scanning and flicking the pages. She had his phone number in her bag – he had written it on a napkin at the café and after he'd done it they'd realised they didn't know each other's surname. He had used a proper pen, not a fountain pen but a proper pen that looked expensive, and she had watched the way his hand held it and moved across the paper. She hadn't given him her number and he hadn't asked so everything was up to her and she welcomed that. There'd be time to think about it after the wedding had come and gone. She didn't know if she'd ever phone but she did know she wouldn't be his model and wouldn't be his nurse. She was sure of that.

She glanced at her daughter looking at the duty free and wondered how much money they had already spent on this weekend and how much had been wasted and then she realised that she didn't care. Despite what she had felt before she came, the trip had shown her things she had never seen, things she hadn't even known existed and which now sat in her memory as her own photographs, and she felt proud of that and proud that a man wanted to paint her face. For a second she thought of telling Shannon but stopped herself. Her daughter spent her day painting women's faces with make-up and trying to sell them things they didn't need but she would laugh and think her off her head if she told her what he'd asked. This would be her own secret and even if it never happened it too would be part of her, just as all the other things she had seen and experienced were part of her and which no one could ever take away.

 

She wanted him to paint her reading a letter but hadn't explained why. There were worse things that she could have asked for and there was plenty of historical precedence. But while he was pleased that she'd agreed he didn't fully believe that both of them would go through with it. He thought it likely that one would change their mind but wasn't sure which of them it would be. At least he had tried and he told himself that it was better to try rather than just give up and take refuge in self-pity. He looked at Jack who was busily scanning the skies for signs of alien life. On his tray sat a little scrunched-up can of Coke and a mysteriously large amount of paper debris from a very small pack of biscuits which they dutifully passed to the stewardess who was collecting rubbish in a black bin bag as they started to prepare for landing. His son's face was close enough to the glass for his nose to touch it and the entire world he scrutinised so carefully was part of a malevolent conspiracy, designed to deceive the gullible and protect the faceless nameless mandarins who ruled the world. But in its reality, or its unreality, was it very different from any of the illusions he had nurtured so ardently throughout his life? Everyone clung to something, everyone was needy. He felt a sudden desire to stroke the back of Jack's hair but his raised hand hung motionless in the space between them and for a second as he held it there, it felt like he was in a courtroom and he was promising that he would tell him nothing but the truth. But it was a promise on which he knew he couldn't deliver because he didn't know what the truth was any more except that it was constantly coloured and changed by the refraction of light. So what could he give Jack that was true? He lowered his hand and slumped back into his seat already beginning to feel the encroaching bitterness of failure. He opened his book of letters but closed it again, his eyes struggling to read the print in the dimmed light. Then, as the plane shuddered a little, he remembered the young woman, the optician who had tested his eyes. What was it she had said to him? What was it she had told him to do? Look into my light – that was what she had said. Look into my light. And he knew that was what he must find a way to say to his son but find a way that didn't use the meaninglessness of words. It wasn't ever going to be a beacon that would blaze his son's path painlessly through the confusion of life, but let him look into his father's light, however small a spark of grace or holiness still smouldered there amidst the ash, and despite everything that had happened, use it to guide his faltering steps through the darkness until he found his own direction. Look into my light, Jack. There was the grinding sound of the wheels unfolding. They were coming in to land, the airport building lights clearly visible in the distance. Rain was falling. He touched his son's head and watched him slowly turn to face him, his pale blue eyes curious and a little startled.