Through Dead Eyes (17 page)

Alex’s father looked at the floor for a while.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you in the morning. You’re sure you’ll be all right? You can come in here with me.’

Alex smiled weakly.

‘I’ll be fine. Honest.’

‘OK,’ said his father. ‘But any problem, Alex, and just come through to me.’

His father looked at the window.

‘I’m very annoyed with Angelien for encouraging all this . . .’

Alex could see that he was going to say ‘nonsense’.

‘It’s nothing to do with Angelien,’ said Alex. ‘She thinks I’m crazy too, if you must know.’

‘So you’ve told her about this?’ said his father.

‘Not much,’ said Alex. ‘Only a bit.’

Alex’s father covered his face with his hands again.

‘What are we going to do with you, Alex? Angelien must have told Saskia. I thought she was being strange with me –’

‘Saskia is cheesed off with you because you don’t listen to her either,’ said Alex angrily. ‘And you made fun of that book of hers.’

‘What book?’ said his father. ‘What are you talking about, Alex?’

‘Never mind,’ said Alex. ‘What’s the point?’ Alex’s father closed his eyes and let out a long slow breath. Eventually he reached out and laid his hand gently on Alex’s shoulder.

‘I’m OK, Dad,’ said Alex, knowing what was on his mind. His father nodded.

‘Get some sleep,’ he said. ‘Everything always seems much clearer in the morning.’

After a few moments Alex nodded.

‘Yeah,’ he said, without much conviction.

Chapter 18

There was a calmness now that Alex realised contrasted sharply with the pent-up atmosphere which had existed for the whole of his stay in that room. It was as if a storm had broken and cleared the air.

He was sure that somehow Hanna – or the ghost of Hanna – had been freed by the destruction of the mask. She had left the room – left the hotel, Alex was sure of that. Trapped in life and in death, she was finally liberated.

Alex too felt freed. His senses seemed keener, where before all but his sense of fear had been muffled. He felt older too, as though he had aged years in a single day.

The broken mask lay in the waste-paper bin of his hotel room and no longer held him in thrall. Its hold over him was as broken as the mask itself.

‘The place has been freezing the whole stay,’ said his father, tapping the air conditioning. ‘Now it’s boiling all of a sudden.’

Alex picked up his bag. They were all gone now, he thought: Hanna, Van Kampen, the plague children too. Their spirits had moved on to who knew where.

Down in the lobby his father handed their keys back and asked about the bill.

‘No, no,’ said the manager with a smile. ‘Everything has been taken care of. I hope you have enjoyed your stay.’

‘We’ve been very comfortable, thank you,’ said Alex’s father.

The manager looked across to Alex and smiled.

‘I have something for you,’ he said. ‘Your young lady friend left this for you.’

Alex walked across to the counter and the manager gave him an envelope, ignoring the cold stare of his father.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘Would you like me to call you a taxi, sir?’ said the manager.

‘That won’t be necessary, thank you,’ said Alex’s father. He said that they would catch the train to Schiphol and also said that they would walk to the station.

It was as if he didn’t want to spend another second longer in the hotel than necessary, even to wait for a cab.

Alex didn’t care how they got home, he just wanted to get there with as little fuss as possible.

Even school seemed attractive now – despite all the trouble and the dark looks and sniggers; its familiarity was appealing and he felt that it now held little fear for him.

Picking up their bags, they walked to the door and out into the street. Alex looked back at the window of his room, just as he had done when they had first arrived. The sun was shining now and the windowpane borrowed the blue of the sky. Alex had no impression of a hidden presence behind that reflection.

Alex had half expected to see Angelien, but the street was empty save for the bicycle traffic crossing the nearby bridge. He would never see Angelien again, he knew that.

He thought he heard a voice call his name and turned to the sound. There was nothing there: nothing but a movement in the waters of the canal – shoals of light flickering and shimmering on the surface.

Alex followed his father along the street and over the bridge, heading for Damrak, the long boulevard that led to the central station.

Damrak was heaving with people, moving back and forth along the wide pavements while trams zipped along the street. Every single person on the long street seemed to be a tourist, either walking to the centre from the station or walking, like them, to catch a train out of the city.

The central station was a big, grand building with frescos on the outside and domes on the roof. They walked past the rows of tram stops towards the entrance.

They bought tickets from a machine, Alex’s father searching his pockets for the right coins. Alex stood impassively nearby as a couple embraced passionately before separating with tearful goodbyes.

They travelled upstairs in the train, sitting opposite an elderly couple who clutched their bags to their breasts as though they suspected Alex was going to snatch them at any moment. Alex put on his iPod and looked out of the window.

The train was taking them back alongside the motorway they had driven along with Saskia and Angelien on their journey into the city, and that brought back images of Angelien. A flickering slide show flashed by of the time he had spent with her. These images were like barbs that pulled painfully on his mind. He now saw his relationship with Angelien as his father must have seen it; as Saskia must have seen it; as Angelien must have seen it. His mind flinched at each new thought.

How could he have ever thought that someone like Angelien would be interested in a boy like him? What a joke. What a big fat joke.

At the airport, they bought some sandwiches and sat on stools in view of the departures board. Their flight was yet to be assigned a gate number and a flashing sign told them to wait.

Alex took out his phone. There was a message from his mother.
That’s OK, Alex. Whenever you’re ready
.

‘Come on,’ said his father, picking up his bag. ‘That’s our gate.’

Alex followed after him and they retraced their steps from the beginning of their journey to board their plane.

Alex stowed his bag, took a seat next to the window and put his book in the string pocket at the back of the seat in front. He doubted if he would be able to concentrate enough to read it. His father was already reading his book, ignoring Alex and the cabin crew, who were beginning their safety drill.

Minutes later they were airborne and heading out over the sea. The day was another dark and dismal one and the sea looked almost black below. Within moments they were surrounded by grey cloud.

Alex glanced round at his father, who he could see was utterly engrossed in his book. He had folded Angelien’s letter up and put it in his jacket pocket. He had been waiting for a chance to read it, and could not wait any longer. He took it out now as unobtrusively as possible and unfolded it.

Dear Alex

I am so sorry that things have worked out the way they have. I wanted to come and say goodbye but I promised my mother I would stay away. You probably would not have wanted to see me anyway, huh?

I wanted to share with you the last piece of the puzzle about Hanna. I know that you will want to know – however angry you are with me.

I’ve read the last part of Graaf’s journal and we’ve been wrong the whole time. Hanna was not driven mad by wearing that mask – although I’m sure it did not help.

The painter couldn’t stop thinking about Hanna and her story. Even after she died he still was obsessed with her. He took the mask home with him and hung it in his studio while he painted the picture we saw in the Rijksmuseum. He went to Van Kampen’s home in Utrecht and talked to people who knew them there – to the servants who used to work in the house before his wife ran away.

At first he could find nothing new, but then he met a man who used to work for Van Kampen and he discovered something amazing. That man seemed pretty sure that Hanna had started the fire at the house when she was a little girl.

He said that Hanna was always a strange child but she became even stranger when her father came back with a mask from Japan.

Van Kampen had laughed when she had first put it on, but then Hanna insisted on wearing it all the time. Her mother was expecting another child and Hanna went berserk when she found out. She followed her mother about, watching everything she did, staring at her through the mask. The mother became terrified of the girl – terrified of her own daughter.

And it seems like she had good reason because there was a fire in the mother’s bedroom one evening when she was resting. Hanna was the only person about and she was burnt by the fire. At first it seemed as though she had heroically tried to save her mother, but her mother said that she had woken to see the girl moving slowly around the room spreading the fire.

Hanna’s father would hear none of it. She could do no wrong in his eyes and he seemed convinced that the mother was mistaken. The mother had a miscarriage and as soon as she recuperated she ran away and was never seen again.

We have been imagining that her father was an evil man, but maybe he was just misguided. Maybe he thought he could keep his daughter safe by locking her away. Or keep her from doing harm. He must have known deep down how troubled she was.

It seems that Hanna was not the poor imprisoned girl we thought she was. Although Hanna was burnt in the fire, the burns were restricted to her hands. She chose to wear the mask all the time and her father told the story of her burns to try to explain it.

Back in Amsterdam, Graaf discovered through a servant of Van Kampen’s that the day before Hanna jumped to her death she had heard the girl taunting her father, telling him how she had started the fire back in Utrecht and how she wished she had killed her mother and the unborn child. Her father flew into a rage and beat her with his cane until finally it broke in two.

That night, Van Kampen died in his sleep. People said that he had died of a broken heart, but Van Kampen’s physician told Graaf of his suspicion that the real reason was probably an overdose of a sleeping draught he had been prescribed.

Perhaps keeping the truth about Hanna from the world just became too much for him. Perhaps he did die of a broken heart after all.

It was Hanna who discovered him dead and jumped from the window. Perhaps she really did love him in her way. Or maybe she just realised that, however much of a half-life she had endured, she had no life without him.

Goodbye, Alex, and sorry. I never meant for you to get hurt. I hope everything works out for you back in England. Don’t hate me.

Angelien

Alex stared out of the window into the darkness. He remembered walking through to Hanna’s father’s room. He remembered how Hanna had poured the sleeping draught into his wine. Van Kampen did not commit suicide. Hanna killed him before she jumped.

Alex was sure that, whatever Angelien thought, there was something evil about that mask and he was glad he was rid of it.

The plane had touched down and was coming to a halt. Alex looked out of the window at the bright lights of the terminal gleaming in the murk. He was returning to Angelien’s letter when his father leaned over.

‘What’s that?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ said Alex, folding it up and putting it in his pocket.

His father said nothing more, just closed his book and stood up to get their bags down. All through the plane, all the passengers were doing the same.

They caught the shuttle train to the main terminal and queued up at UK passport control. Alex was tired. All the disturbed nights and stress of the last few days was finally taking its toll. He ached and longed for his own bed.

Alex and his father headed for the exit marked
Short Stay Car Park
. Alex looked at the dark figure of his father ahead, hunched and somehow smaller. Rain had begun to fall. Arc lights lit up the wet car roofs and windscreens. The roar of aircraft engines rent the sky.

Alex’s father paid for the parking ticket and headed for their car, which was parked a little way off. They seemed to be the only people in the whole car park.

The lights blinked and the locks answered the call of the key with an electronic chirrup. Alex put his bag in the boot and his father slammed it shut. Alex chose to sit in the back of the car and his father started the engine and pulled out of the parking space, following the maze-like route of arrows to the exit barriers.

Once out on to the road they headed for the M11, the traffic building slowly with each junction. Eventually they were on the motorway and heading south to London.