The Light of Amsterdam (18 page)

He started to point everything out as they walked but there was no response and gradually he too grew silent and focused instead on where they might eat. There were so many things he didn't know about his son and they included his current basic likes and dislikes. But the problem of what to eat was easily solved. A cheeseburger in Burger King was what Jack wanted and if it wasn't exactly his own preference he could live with it. Despite being offered different types of restaurant, Jack had screwed his eyes up at them all before spotting the familiar signage branding the night sky. For some reason he had thought Jack might have turned up his nose at such a place, whether from concern about some multinational conspiracy to supersize the world or just from an aesthetic rejection of its menu, but he seemed reassured by its surroundings as if welcomingly reorientated by the familiar.

They joined a long queue and Jack gave him his order of a plain (the word plain repeated with emphasis) cheeseburger, medium fries and a large Coke. He asked if he wanted to go and sit down, keep them a seat, but he stayed resolutely on his shoulder, momentarily transformed into a dependent, slightly nervous child, and it wouldn't have surprised him at any minute to feel the tug of his son's hand on the hem of his jacket. In a few moments however the illusion of familiarity ebbed away and as they edged forward they both registered that the clientele was not what they were used to. There were tourists like themselves of course, but there were other individuals who looked poor and as if they might have spent the rest of the day gathering the requisite funds for this, their only meal, and others, some in pairs, who simply looked strange and unpredictable. Someone tried to ask money of them but they turned their heads away. And then three black youths with an exaggerated loose-limbed street swagger that made their bodies look as if they had been deboned, quivered like glinting fish along the queue and took up residence at the counter. The tallest and oldest held a hand up to the queue which might have been an apology but had more of an air of assumed authority. He tried to stop himself thinking in stereotypes, engaging in racial profiling, but the three youths made it difficult with their white sportswear that looked as if they had just stepped off a field in Philadelphia or Chicago and the bling round their necks and wrists and back-to-front baseball hats. Suddenly he felt angry, the anger of the compliant, lifetime queuer, at the selfish disrespect of the jumper. And it was brazen as they lolled against the counter and leaned into the serving area. The oldest one was talking to someone. Surely the staff would refuse to serve them. Surely security would arrive and sort it out but in a few seconds they were pointing and ordering. Something was overflowing in him. He didn't want to be treated like this.

‘Hey, guys, there's a queue,' he heard himself shouting but his voice wasn't threatening and he believed it contained the correct degree of friendly reasonableness.

‘Dad!' And this time there really was a hand tugging at his coat. ‘Dad, don't, for God's sake!'

Heads in the queue and those on other sides were turning to stare at him. He wanted to suddenly reclaim the words, smother them in his throat, but it was too late, they were out, and in response he simply shuffled his feet and tightened his grip on the handle of his bag. The three youths were talking to each other and looking vaguely if not precisely in his direction and for a second he wondered if his accent had made his words meaningless, but then the tallest one and clearly the dominant of the trio was easing himself out of the slouch across the counter and theatrically straightening himself and eyeballing him, his mouth working in energetic contrast to the languid tempo of his body as he chewed on a little toothpick. He didn't return the gaze but stared straight ahead with his head up, something telling him from a David Attenborough natural-world programme that in the animal kingdom to display fear would only encourage attack. They continued to talk together and one of them was making a joke. A joke was good because already he was revisiting a whole library of newspaper headlines that involved people getting stabbed by strangers over similar and seemingly inconsequential interactions that resulted in a supposed loss of face, some unintended public expression of disrespect that sent fragile, insecure egos into total meltdown. And he had Jack with him. He had his son with him and five minutes after arriving in Amsterdam he might end up a headline in a newspaper. He started to imagine the Bebo/Facebook cybertributes, started to construct the opening of his son's funeral oration. That was if Susan even let him attend because she would blame him and she'd be right because who else was responsible?

He remembered the scene in
The Godfather
where the humble baker had to stand outside the hospital and keep his hand inside his coat to give the impression he had a gun and for a second he held his inside his breast pocket that contained only a boarding card, until it felt ridiculous. The tall guy was saying something and gesturing slowly as if he was asking someone not to block his line of vision. Perhaps they could both just turn, take their bags and quietly leave, but the thought of being humiliated in front of his son felt the sharpest pain of all. What was the guy saying? Then he made it out over the residual noise.

‘It's an emergency, man. An emergency.' And at his words his two companions were snickering and one of them held his hand across his mouth to restrain the smile melting across his face. Then he turned back to the counter where his order was ready.

Jack tugged at his coat again. ‘Let's go, Dad, we can get something to eat somewhere else.'

His son had given him permission to go and he was grateful for it but it was too late because the three queue jumpers were already moving towards them with their brown paper bags. With a hand behind his back he grabbed a handful of Jack's coat and pulled him to the inside of the queue and kept staring ahead and trying to make himself as tall as possible. In
The Godfather
the car with the would-be killers slows down and takes a good look at the solitary, momentarily plumped-up, inwardly shivering guard and then drives on. He wasn't sure whether to keep staring straight ahead or make eye contact, but something, and he thought it also came from a natural-world programme, told him that eye contact represented a challenge so he stood as nonchalantly as possible, as if pondering his choice of meal. When level the taller one paused beside him and he was smiling, the toothpick hanging out of the corner of his mouth like a wooden tongue. Holding the bag between their faces he repeated, ‘An emergency, man, an emergency!' Then he took the toothpick out of his mouth and lightly, almost delicately, pressed his shoulder with it. Twice.

He heard himself saying, ‘No problem, no problem.' Then they were gone and he shuffled forward with the queue, his eyes fixed on his feet. He was glad he couldn't see Jack but he felt his presence weighing against him and he thought of making a joke, of saying something flippant and dismissive to repair and break the silence that had oppressively settled around them. But nothing came to mind and so he asked Jack to repeat his order even though with everything else, with every movement of the queues, with every clink of money and snatch of conversation, it felt as if it was seared in his senses. When he spoke Jack's voice was dead and almost imperceptible.

‘It's very slow,' Alan said eventually. No answer. ‘I don't know why they call it fast food because it's taking ages.' No answer. He had started to think that words might extinguish the fire but just when he needed them they became evasive and always out of reach like the wind wafting away a piece of paper each time you stretched for it. He pretended to hunt for something in his pocket. When they reached the counter he affected nonchalance again but he knew the girl was looking at him and he got confused when she asked him whether they were eating in. Jack said yes on his behalf and then they were weaving back past the queues searching for a seat and he was trying to strike a balance between the tray and the bag on his shoulder. To drop everything would be the crowning glory and he had a vision of his son publicly disowning him and disappearing into the night. He had let his son down, the way he had that sports day fathers' race when he had lost his balance amidst the jostling elbows at the starting line and watched prostrate as the other fathers disappeared towards medalled glory; the way he wouldn't go on the roller-coaster at Alton Towers because of his vertigo and his two children had been temporarily fostered by a Polish couple who afterwards gave them sweets and probably would have kept them with any encouragement; the way he had betrayed Susan.

‘It's not a plain cheeseburger,' Jack said after they had found a corner seat and he was holding open the bun as if in a court and a jury needed to be convinced. ‘It's not a plain one,' he repeated.

‘I asked for a plain one. You were there, you heard me.'

‘She mustn't have understood you.'

So this too was his fault. Suddenly he felt angry. He'd ordered his son a plain cheeseburger and they had given him something else. It wasn't right or fair the way they let people jump the queue and then gave people what they hadn't ordered. Something was bubbling up and, reaching across the table, he took the offending burger and stood. ‘I'll get it changed,' he said but immediately Jack stretched out his hand and pulled him back by the wrist.

‘It doesn't matter,' he hissed. ‘It doesn't matter. Give me it back.'

He had already noticed how Jack almost whispered in public and it suddenly struck him that one of his son's greatest fears was of drawing attention to himself, an acute self-consciousness that probably made this whole episode his idea of hell. So reluctantly he gave up the opportunity to redeem himself by asserting his right to have what he ordered and sat down meekly, and with an unspoken apology rattling round his head watched his son meticulously scrape every vestige of salad and dressing free from his burger, as if clearing it of toxic waste. Then they ate in silence.

 

 

The first thing they did was drop off their bags in their hotel. Although she had never stayed in a hotel she knew that it was too grand a word for where they were booked. They had been able to walk to it from the station and some of the girls had used it before. It was somewhere between a hostel and a boarding house and the rooms had three or four beds jammed in so tightly that there was hardly space to move between them.

‘We're only sleeping here, Mum, it's just somewhere to lay your head when you can't party any more.'

She nodded. At least there was a bathroom. There was a smell of food in the rooms and although there were No Smoking signs there lingered a sense that someone had done so very recently. A metal cupboard that clanged with hangers when anyone walked close to it was the only furniture.

‘At least we don't have to get changed,' Shannon said. ‘Just slip on a bit of lippy and we're off.'

The young women flounced in and out of the room, borrowing make-up and mobile phones, comparing money and generally unable to sit down or entertain any form of stillness.

‘Your turn, Karen,' Martina said. ‘I'll do you now. Come on, girl, let's get your war paint on.'

‘War paint?'

‘We're going to war, girl, and look out any man who gets in our way tonight,' she said, gently leading her by the arm towards the bathroom.

‘They'll be lucky if it's only their scalps they lose,' Lorrie squealed and other girls were pairing up and applying stripes and circles to their faces in garish colours. Ellie's phone rang and before answering it she told them it was her boyfriend checking up on her but Shannon grabbed it out of her hand.

‘Barry, you're looking for Ellie. Well she's not available and in fact the last time I saw her she was smoking blow with two black guys who said they could get her into films. You get yourself a fish supper and a video out of Xtra-vision. Nothing to worry about, Barry.'

Martina's hand was shaking as she joined in the laughter and she had to steady herself with a deep draw of breath before starting to apply the marks of war.

‘I'm too old for this,' she said.

Martina, who considered herself an artist, pulled her head back and held it at an angle while evaluating her creation. ‘You're never too old to party and if you say that one more time I'm going to tell Shannon her mother's a party pooper. There you go. Looks good?'

She stared at herself in the mirror and suddenly felt a little dizzy. She was in a foreign city, for the first time in her whole life far from home, and she was dressed as an Indian about to go to war. She thought of Mrs Hemmings, of the list of places she had given her, and wondered what she would say if she could see her.

‘Looks good,' she said, thinking it made her look like not so much a warrior as an old tabby cat. All she needed was whiskers.

A queue had formed at the bathroom door and as she passed them hands blessed her with their approval but already she had decided that coming was an act of foolishness, an expense she couldn't afford, and if she wasn't careful she would end up as an embarrassment to herself and a hindrance to her daughter. Shannon was applying her own decoration, holding a make-up mirror in that familiar angled poise of her hand. The marks she made were light and designed to accentuate what already existed. And in that moment she knew that her daughter was too often absorbed by appearance. Not just in herself but in everything. The whole wedding, even though it was to be in a registry office, was planned out in meticulous and increasingly expensive detail, starting with an endless deliberation over the colour and style of invitations and spinning out through place settings and flowers. She thought of the wedding dress they had bought and part of her resented its cold elegant beauty and the fact that she herself had never got to wear one. Perhaps afterwards when they had gone on honeymoon she would be able to try it on without telling anyone. Just once to wear the dress. She thought too of Wade and wondered if he would prove worthy and she shivered a little at the instinctive inevitable anticipation of failure that she was unable to disassociate from all future relationships between men and women. She wanted to ask her again if she was sure, if she was really sure, but knew she couldn't. Shannon was moistening her lips, satisfied at last with how she looked. And she found pleasure in her daughter's appearance. If she had been unable to give her child all the other things that some children received, she had somehow managed to create a physical beauty. And in the absence of so much else, why shouldn't her daughter make the very most of what life had given her?