The Light of Amsterdam (33 page)

‘I know that, Richard,' she interrupted. It was important to her that he was honest – if they came this far and stopped at the edge, sooner or later they would topple into freefall. ‘But what do you feel for her?'

‘I don't feel what it is you're getting at – that's ridiculous. As if she'd be interested in an old man like me.'

‘You're a handsome man and not so old – it's entirely possible she'd be interested in you – and your idea about the flower shop, what about that?'

When she played the trump card of the flower shop she felt a sense of triumph. In reply he took her hand, holding it and looking at it as if he was going to tell her fortune by reading her palm. ‘I never told you this but Anka has a name for me – it's something like Wujek. It means “uncle”, Marion. Uncle. That's how Anka sees me. As her uncle. I suppose you'd be happier if it was as her grandfather.'

‘And the flower shop?'

‘It just seemed a good idea. She's a hard worker, she'd make us money. But we'll bin that idea because I'm not going to do anything you're not happy with. And I'm not going to do anything crazy now or in the future because I'm very happy with what I've got and I don't want to lose it.'

She slipped her hand free from his and turned her face away. There was a mist seeping along the canal, softly smothering the small boats moored on the far side. It seemed to unfold and layer itself along the surface of the water then rise up round the buildings until edges and outlines blurred and the world was smoothed into an indistinguishable whole.

‘I can't say it any plainer than that, Marion.'

‘I think you could have,' she said and immediately felt she had been too hard on him. He had never found the words easy and if she was honest then neither had she, often telling herself that there were other and perhaps more meaningful ways to express what was felt. She wanted the mist to swallow her up, to soften the sharpness of her thoughts.

As they passed a bar an old man came through the door, releasing the interior's smell of smoke and beer, but what she wanted was the scent of those early-morning trees that she had brought into being and what she desired now was to be back in the world that was familiar to her. Perhaps Richard had been right and she was going through some kind of breakdown and whether he was right or wrong, nothing had worked out the way she had planned, so what was to be done? What was the way to retrace the steps that no longer felt as if they had brought her to where she wanted to be? Perhaps after all that young woman on the running machine had things better worked out than she had, perhaps she was gifted with a surer sense of direction than her own which stretched out uncertain and swaddled by the mist. She gave him her hand again in an offer of reconciliation and he took it without hesitation and perhaps that was enough, both now and for the future.

‘I think we should go back,' he said, ‘before this mist gets any worse and we end up falling into a canal.'

‘Just a little bit longer.' She squeezed his hand and knew she was frightened to go back to the room, to be alone in that confined space where a third person would hover between them like a ghost.

And so they walked on, turning down unknown streets at random, their shoulders instinctively huddled closer against the cold. Without a map. Then after a period of wordless walking she started to turn them in a direction she believed would lead them back and reaching a main intersection they were startled by the sudden warning bell of a tram that clattered round a corner and clanked past in a blurry smear of yellow light.

‘You need to have eyes in the back of your head in this city,' he announced and she knew that they had started to drift back into a world marked by familiar parameters and she wasn't sorry. It all felt too much now, a moment of madness that would sit in their shared memory until it either corroded itself with the rust of time or else would quicken into recurring life and, although never allowed to shape itself into words, would be seen and recognised in the eyes, be suddenly present in random moments of silence in a conversation. But despite her simple desire now for safety there was some insistent part of her that would not let it go, partly because she realised this was the only time when the thing that had lodged in her head for so long could find expression and that this was a door better not to have opened. But before it shut for ever she had to know. So as they gradually found themselves back in a vaguely recognisable part of the city she slowed their walk and tried to compose what she wanted to say. They had to step aside as a tight knot of football supporters lurched past in a clatter of hand-clapping chants, one of them waving a flag in slow, sweeping movements.

‘You didn't think she was pretty?'

‘I told you, Marion, I wasn't interested in how she looked.'

‘But you must have looked at her, even for a second you must have looked and imagined it.'

‘I don't know what you want me to say.' He shook his head slowly as if in exasperation.

‘You must look at other women, Richard.'

‘Of course I look, but looking and doing are two completely different things.'

‘You must compare them to me when you look.' She knew it was cruel and without purpose to punish him like this but once again she felt the strangeness of the power the words gave her.

‘No, I don't compare them to you and if I've done something bad or something that's hurt you then I'm sorry and all I know is that I didn't mean to. I know I didn't mean to, Marion.' And he swung her hand slightly forward before letting it fall again.

She believed him but said nothing as the hotel appeared in the distance. They were passing restaurants and bars that sat shoulder to shoulder and jostled for customers. Here the mist appeared to have been burnt away by the frenzied flare of light. There was loud disco music thumping from somewhere, a wavering modulation, its sharp descant of high notes piercing and tattooing the soft skin of the night. She thought she could hear Abba's ‘Dancing Queen' playing somewhere. It was the only thing that felt faintly recognisable from everything that throbbed around them. She hadn't danced since their wedding reception when she had clung to the memorised movements Lillian had taught her the day before. Lillian who was the dancer and the most full of life of them all, Lillian whose death had shocked them and emptied something from their own lives.

‘Do you feel you've missed out on something, Richard?'

‘Like what?'

‘You remember you told me you always regretted not going to the City Hall the night Clinton turned on the lights? Do you ever feel that all these people,' and she gestured vaguely with her free hand, ‘have been invited to the party and you're on the outside looking in?'

‘Marion, I'm sorry but I don't know any of the answers to these questions. Maybe I don't think about things enough, maybe I just think too much about going out and earning a living. When the children come at Christmas won't that be like a party and that's more than good enough for me?'

He loved his family, he loved her. She told herself it was enough. She wouldn't punish him any more; there would be no more questions. As they hurried across the road to the hotel, she noticed the Japanese couple a few steps in front, their raincoats bright against the night. They looked more like twin brother and sister and, following them up the steps, it suddenly seemed important to speak to them, to know something about them, because in a short while she would be returning to a life where such impulses would no longer be possible.

‘Richard, ask them if they'd join us for a drink. It's too early to go up to the room.' She pressed his hand in persuasion and watched him trying to decide what was for the best and whether this was another inexplicable aberration. She squeezed his hand again before she let it go. He hesitated. She wanted to tell him that it seemed a sin on a night like this, and even after all that had happened between them, to surrender the moment without trying to be part of something other than themselves. It was her fault, all her fault that their life had slipped into nothing more than the predictable rhythm of work. Why couldn't it change? Why couldn't they learn to dance or go skating or one of a hundred other things? Why couldn't they discover new friends who would help bring them out of themselves?

Whatever her husband really felt, he approached them with a polite confidence, his arms stretched wide, and she recognised the boyish smile edged with shyness that had made him so attractive to her in those early days. The couple looked at each other, spoke a few words to one another in Japanese and then accepted their invite, and as Richard gestured them politely towards the bar the young woman smiled again at her. After sitting at a table they exchanged handshakes and first names. Richard got the drinks – the couple wanted Diet Cokes while they both ordered coffees, still feeling the chill of their walk. She felt slightly drunk even though she knew she couldn't be and part of her wanted to stretch out her arms across the table to these two strangers who smiled a lot and spoke in slow but adequate English and hold them tight. She wanted to press their friendship into the patina of her life. They told each other their names twice but no one quite mastered the others'. The woman might have been called Hina but she wasn't sure and they didn't manage to identify much more than the cities they came from and their respective jobs. So they came from Osaka and he was an engineer. She asked them how long they'd been married and learned that it was five years and when in return she told them how long she and Richard had been married they nodded repeatedly and smiled, in a bestowing of their congratulations. Then they talked about the weather while she looked at how beautiful the young woman's eyes were and how they seemed so ready to quicken into a smile and if it had been possible she would have had her tell her everything about her life, about her husband and whether she wanted children. But instead when an awkward silence settled she told them about her skating but had to mime it before they understood and she was rewarded with laughter. She wanted to talk all night, not to have to go to their room, but after a while and her giving them her email address, the couple bowed almost formally before saying goodnight.

They were left in their pocket of silence until Richard said, ‘A nice couple. I'm not sure how much they understood.'

‘Would you like to go to Japan some day?' she asked.

‘I've never thought about it. It's a long way.'

‘All those cherry-blossom trees. It's supposed to be beautiful.'

‘Well then we better go.'

She looked at him to see if he was laughing at her but there was only seriousness in his face and then he drank from his cup of coffee and set it carefully back in its saucer in a way that said he was finished and she knew there was nothing now to detain them from the room. She thought of asking for another drink but knew it was pointless to postpone the inevitable any longer. Her eyes scanned the rows of photographs one last time but she did it so quickly that they blurred into one homogeneous whole like the school photographs the children brought home every few years where the entire school squeezed close together in tiered rows and where your own prodigy seemed to bleed into those all around them. In the lift he asked her if she was all right and he did it gently and genuinely with no trace of irritation or patronisation in his voice. She nodded that she was, afraid that if she spoke her voice would betray her nervousness, the sensation of everything falling away. She couldn't think of what she had done now without feeling that she had shamed something loose for them both so she tried to anchor herself by going over all the preparations she would have to carry out before Christmas, itemising the list of things to be done and finding a temporary comfort in those that were the most mundane.

In the room she hoped he would switch on the television but he went straight to the bathroom and closed the door. She turned off the brightness of the overhead light that felt too revealing and replaced it with the two bedside lamps, then despite herself she looked around again, bevelling everywhere with her hand, edging delicately with her fingers, looking for anything that deviated from her memory, for some trace of what might have been, only at the last second stopping herself from lifting the pillow to inhale its scent. Going to the window she looked out towards the square. The mist seemed to have breathed new life into itself and thickened again and it reminded her of that first night when the sea, a permanent watching presence, stretched grey and whispering outside their wedding room, echoing the murmuring of her heart.

‘I think it's got worse,' she said when he came back, lightly tracing her fingertips along the glass as if to feel the mist outside.

He came and stood behind her, resting his hand on her shoulder. Down below the lights bloomed in soft-petalled buds of colour, trying in vain to blossom against the grey mist silently pressing itself on the world. He gently touched the back of her neck with his fingers, parting her hair to touch her skin. She didn't know what she felt in the moment except that the only thing of which she was sure was what she had to do in the future. And again she pressed the list into her consciousness believing that if she did it carelessly or vaguely in her imagination now, then she would get it wrong when the time came. She wanted him to speak to break the pressure of the silence which felt more than she could bear but he simply stood behind her and looked at the encroaching tide that seemed to flow up to the very shore of the room. She searched for what she could say, for what might finally drown the day in their memories, but no words would come and so she was glad when eventually he spoke.