The Light of Amsterdam (28 page)

‘And Gordon's a total tosspot!' Jack almost shouted, waving his hand as if the thought was buzzing round his head and could be chased away.

‘Yes, he is, Jack.' But where once being able to confirm such a judgement would have given him satisfaction, now there was only the accentuated pain that he was the cause of the tosspot being inflicted on his family. So although conscious of its inadequacy as a response he added, ‘I don't think your mother will marry him.'

‘You don't know that. You don't know anything about her any more.'

He watched his son shuffle his feet as if he was about to take off but was uncertain about what direction to take. A middle-aged woman jogged past them with a dog on a lead, its tongue lolling from the side of its mouth.

‘If there was anything I could do to make it up to your mother I would do it, Jack, because the one thing I know is that I never meant to hurt her. Not even for a moment did I mean to hurt her.'

‘So why did she end up crying every night and coming up with some stupid, weird idea about going to live in Spain?'

‘Your mother's moved on, Jack – she doesn't want me back. She wouldn't have me back even if I got down on bended knees and begged. Not even if I begged, Jack, because she wants a different life now and I'm not a big part of it any more.' And suddenly he thought of coming to this same place all those years ago and thinking he had stumbled into a Garden of Eden where the life-changing power of love was waiting to be unleashed and imagining how he would return some time in the future with the ones with whom he had found that manifestation of love. But now what he had brought here was a trail of debris, the scattered fallout from a love he had destroyed, and he knew he could never come back again without the memory of this moment imposing itself on what had gone before. He felt as if he was the serpent who had dealt in the forbidden fruit and was desperate to try and salvage something.

‘You don't have to go to Spain if you don't want to, Jack. You can stay with me – I'll get us somewhere better to live. Somewhere you can have your own space.'

‘I don't want to live with you. I don't want to live in Spain. You don't understand.'

But he did understand – his son wanted everything to be the way it was before, to get in some time machine and travel back to where he felt safe, back to a place for which he'd never really shown much outward affection. And it wasn't in his power to make that happen. But he knew that in this moment he was talking to a child, a hurting, needy child, who, if only he would let him, he would put his arms around and say that everything was going to be all right. Say it over and over again until they both believed it. And then he'd look for some dock leaf whose healing properties would be able to salve the pain. But nothing was going to happen as in the manual, as in the wish-it-better world. And he remembered the Van Gogh letter he had read that morning while Jack had slept, the one where he had written about trying to express the terrible passions of humanity, and as he looked at the deeply etched anger of his son's face he wondered what colour could ever hope to capture the passions that swirled there.

He didn't know what to say so he said it again, ‘I screwed up, Jack. I screwed up.'

‘What's the point of saying that if you don't do anything about it?' And now his son was pointing at him as if he was the child, the one needing moral instruction. Then suddenly, as if unsure what was best to do, he flung the bag containing the leather jacket at his feet and, turning, ran off, only the difference in his clothing preventing him from merging with the joggers.

‘Jack! Jack!' he called but his son ran on and didn't look back. People were staring at him but he didn't care and it was his anger now that wanted words and as more faces turned towards him he heard himself shouting, ‘Stuff happens, Jack! Stuff happens!' Then with his hand shaking he bent down and picked up the plastic bag, at the same time watching while his son disappeared into the fading light of the day.

He was frightened now, frightened of losing his son in a strange city, but he didn't know what to do and as he stood in the flight path of joggers he felt weighted and rooted to the spot. Jack had already disappeared and he knew there was no way he could catch up with him and, even if that had been possible, what could he say that would assuage his son's anger or convince him that he could make things return to the way he wanted? He had a key to their hotel room and probably after a while that was where he would return and perhaps it was no bad thing to let him have some time on his own, time to calm down and regain some equilibrium. But the bitterness of the moment pressed against him and the memory of his son's anger seemed to shape and colour everything he saw. He turned and walked back towards the entrance gates, and ideas, stupid, desperate ideas, flooded through him, so perhaps this was a time when their best chance of connecting was on the bedrock of their gender, and instead of the Dylan concert he should take his son to one of the coffee houses and smoke themselves into an accordance or hit a bar and drink themselves mutually forgiving. Perhaps there was too much thinking when what was needed was a sudden blast of some unmoderated indulgence that would breach the dam of what separated them.

But as he walked through the dropping dusk even the plastic bag with the leather jacket felt increasingly heavy and the hand that held it colder. And he wondered if he could tell Jack about his own father, how nothing ever passed between them except indifference, of how their parallel lives never touched or connected in any way except for those rituals demanded by convention. But what good would that do or any of the other stupid ideas his apprehension had conjured up? And what if Jack called his mother and told her he was on his own in Amsterdam and cried down the phone? That was something too terrible to be contemplated and would confirm for ever his hopeless inadequacy as a parent and a human being.

He had reached the entrance to the park and he paused and looked back at what he had once considered to be the green garden of a new and better world and he felt the loss of that and the loss of something else for which he had no name.

Ten

She was very confused now and unsure of what she should do. Going off like that made it look as if she was the one in the wrong, rather than Shannon. It was something her daughter might do in a strop but she had always been the one who stayed steady and dependable, patiently waiting for a return. She felt forced into a role with which she wasn't familiar and although at first it had been intensified by being in an unfamiliar city, at least now she knew that she could survive in it and that it wasn't going to consume her. Pausing for a few minutes to watch the skaters on the ice she thought of the painting of the girl reading the letter. By being painted the girl had been taken notice of by someone who saw something that was important, but when she thought back to the morning she had picked up his letter from the hall carpet, the back of her hand momentarily wearing a little transfer of colour, no one, apart briefly from her father, had been there to share all that it had meant. She felt the sudden bitterness of the loneliness that had been her lot on that day and despite whatever support a few close friends were later able to offer, it was a loneliness that had endured right through the pregnancy and even the birth itself, ebbing away only when her child was finally placed in her arms.

Shannon's secret and what she had told her in the restaurant felt as if that moment had been ripped away again and in its absence flowed the same almost overwhelming sense of loneliness, made even more acute by the belief that what she had been able to protect herself with had been lost for ever. She was cut once more by the sharp-edged unfairness of the world and was tempted to think that it was caused by something bad about her. She remembered the bracelet that rested in her pocket and wondered if this was her punishment but told herself that everything had already been set in place long before she had taken it. There was part of her, too, that believed that if she hadn't been given things fairly then it was not a crime to try and make amends for that unfairness. She would have done anything for Shannon, she had done everything that anyone could do to provide for her, and not just provide, but to give her the things she wanted whatever their cost and despite what she herself thought about their worth. So what was left for her now? Out on the ice mothers and fathers formed hand-held chains with their young children and skated in wavering lines. All she had was Shannon and now she felt that she no longer had even this, so what should she do? She walked on, conscious for the first time of the cold. She should go back and try to talk, see what could be sorted, what could be fixed even in the short term. The alternative she knew was to be left with nothing even though she understood that what they shared could never be restored to the way it was before.

Cars and trams and bicycles – she wondered what Marty would think of driving his taxi here, of the endless possibilities of being cut up, of the names he would have to call, the gestures he would have to make every day. She thought too of his self-invite and wondered if she had declined it too quickly. Beggars couldn't be choosers, she tried to tell herself, but a stronger voice refused to think of herself as ever begging. She had always held on to some residue of pride despite it all, held it tight even when she worked at jobs that the world considered menial. So she knew she wasn't going to give that up for Marty and not even for Shannon.

She stood on the edge of the pavement not quite sure which way she should be looking and deciding that she would wait to cross until the others standing beside her led the way.

‘Taking time out?'

The Belfast accent made her jump a little. It wasn't what she expected to hear. It was the guy on the aeroplane and she tried not to blush at the memory of holding a stranger's hand.

‘Do you want me to hold your hand or are you
OK
with roads?' he joked.

‘I do roads
OK
,' she said. ‘It's just planes freak me out.'

‘If it's any consolation I don't do needles. A nurse comes anywhere near me with a needle and I start to feel faint. So where's the rest of the tribe?'

‘Taking time out before they hit the bars tonight.'

‘Before they hit the warpath. And you survived last night?'

‘Just about, just about.' She kept her eyes on the road, suddenly wary of tripping on the tram rail. ‘Where's your boy?'

‘Gone off on his own for a while – I think he got fed up trailing round after his dad.'

They reached the opposite pavement and paused, both momentarily confused whether it signalled the end of their conversation.

‘So you've been shopping,' she said, pointing at the plastic bag.

‘It's Jack's – he got tired carrying it. It's a leather jacket he bought in the market. He actually managed to haggle for it.'

‘Are you not worried about him being on his own?'

He looked at her and rubbed his hand across his mouth as if suddenly unsure whether to gag the words forming. She was sorry she had asked the question as now it sounded like she was suggesting he was a poor parent but she didn't know how to apologise without making it worse, so instead she said, ‘He'll be fine,' and lifted her hand in a gesture that was meant to be a goodbye.

‘We had a row,' he said. ‘He's angry with me about family stuff.'

She hesitated. It was none of her business. She had more than enough of her own to worry about. He blew into his free hand to warm it and she was conscious again of how cold it was becoming.

‘Family stuff is always complicated,' she said, shivering slightly at the thought of the cold as much as its reality. That was all she had to give him and she turned to make her way back to the hotel without being totally sure if she was heading in the right direction.

‘I split with his mother. He blames me.' He was staring at the bag, not meeting her gaze.

‘Kids always need someone to blame,' she said. ‘So where did he go?'

‘I guess back to the hotel. I'm not sure. At least your girl's too old for this kind of stuff.'

‘Don't you believe it,' she said, shaking her head. ‘Is your hotel far?'

‘About fifteen minutes. Where are you staying?'

‘Somewhere near the station. Bit of a dump really. It's this way, isn't it,' she said, pointing her hand vaguely.

‘I'll walk with you – I can go part of that way.' He hesitated. ‘If you like.'

She hesitated, too. It was getting darker and she wasn't entirely confident that she could find her way back. ‘
OK
,' she said. ‘It's getting colder.'

They crossed the bridge and the water below was beginning to strut with its painted decoration of neon. He talked to her light-heartedly about Amsterdam and she knew he was drawing a veil over what had happened with his son and she was glad because she didn't want to hear about his problems, knew that because he was a man he would present himself as the victim and she had no reserves of sympathy. Soon she would have to meet her own child and she didn't yet know what it was she would say or what might be said to her. He walked a little quickly but it helped warm her against the cold. A group of women appeared in what looked like traditional African dress, swirls of yellow and turquoise, coiled turbans on their heads and their arms laden with parcels and babies. A young woman cycled by with a child strapped in a seat behind her and a small dog in the basket in front. They passed a shop with exotic arrangements of flowers in tall glass vases and offices where women in elegant suits stood chatting at desks.