The Light of Amsterdam (4 page)

He sat opposite him in the chair that had always been his own favourite. Jack didn't look at him which allowed him to take him in. He seemed a little older but still not much more than a child. His collar-length hair was black out of a bottle with the strength of its colour accentuating the paleness of his skin. His eyes were blue but sometimes like today they seemed paler, as if they had been faded by the sun. When he glanced down at the guitar, strands of hair slipped forward and curtained one of his eyes but he didn't flick them away or push them back with his hands that were thin-fingered and neat, papery and delicate in their skin. He was wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt. His arms were also thin and at his wrist he wore a little leather bracelet. The red bangles of scratches were slowly fading. He tried not to look at them but couldn't stop his eyes returning again and again.

‘How are you, Jack?' he asked.

‘Fine,' he said as his fingers lightly brushed the strings.

‘That's good.' Fine was a core word in his son's personal lexicon. It meant nothing, gave nothing away but painlessly fulfilled the obligation of communication. It was also a word used to avoid any form of commitment, that allowed the speaker to stay safely inside whatever world it was he felt safest in. Fine reached out to no one, provided no hook on which to hang a question, and gave no encouragement for further exploration. So everything was fine. Always fine. But for the moment all he could think to say was to repeat, ‘That's good.'

He watched his son pluck one of the chords with two fingers as if he was pulling back the string of a bow. On the television was a programme about Amelia Earhart's disappearance and old men were giving their theories about what had happened to her. Jack glanced at the screen from time to time but mostly his eyes rested on the guitar strings.

‘So how do you feel about your mother's idea of going to Spain?'

‘Don't know,' he said, glancing briefly at him.

‘Do you think you'd like to live in Spain or stay here?'

‘I haven't thought about it.'

He told himself that he had to resist saying all the things that were springing to his lips, all the things that were the obvious commonsense things that begged to be said and which he was being invited to say – it's time you did think about it because it affects you and sooner or later you're going to have to make an adult choice that could shape the future course of your life – but he knew if he did, he would sound like a schoolteacher and saying what was expected of him would only confirm that what he was saying was nothing at all. So carefully and without any trace of sarcasm in his voice he simply said, ‘Fine,' and when Jack looked directly at him he didn't make eye contact but stared at the television. They sat in silence for a few seconds that felt like a very long time and he imagined some future programme where old men offered their opinions about what happened to him. Just disappeared one day. Living on an island off the west of Ireland where he paints abstract paintings no one wants to buy. Went to Spain where he services swimming pools. Grew so weary that he couldn't lift his head up any more. Who would know? Who would care?

He glanced at Jack who was waiting for some homily that wasn't coming. The advantage was momentarily with him and knowing that in this game, intensity or passion were the illegitimate children of commitment, he tried to project a sense of casual indifference. It wasn't easy because he knew that sooner or later love would blow it out of the water. Love was the unavoidable spanner in the works, the thing that stopped you walking away and made your pretence of calm control a hopeless lie that ultimately would force itself free from the heart and into the words you didn't want to use. Had he imagined it or were Jack's eyes sharpening into focus? He strummed a chord with the first sign of vigour, the sound trembling in the air between them. It felt as if he was flying a plane over foreign and perilous seas. Thick cloud everywhere. He needed somewhere to land. There was writing on the inside of his son's forearm. Black spider writing like Chinese calligraphy on the white paper of his skin.

‘You know your mother's going to Spain for a weekend to look at some property? She wants you to stay with me. Just until she gets back.' He paused and tried to anticipate what was coming.

‘Why can't I stay here?'

‘Because she'd worry about you and probably wouldn't be able to get on with what she needs to do.'

‘I'm sixteen, Dad. I can look after myself.'

‘Of course you can, Jack. We both know that.' He was pleased to hear the word Dad but nervous at the rising indignation in his son's voice.

‘I don't need looking after. I'm not going to starve or anything.'

‘I know, Jack. But listen to me. Your mother's got herself a dream – it may come to nothing or it might: I don't know – but she needs to see if she can make it real and we both owe her, owe her big time, and we need to do whatever we can to help her check it out. And it's only a weekend. What do you say?'

Jack said nothing and instead shuffled into a new position on the seat. Even for a teenager who had made a unilateral declaration of emotional independence, guilt was still a heavy trip and he was pondering it, poking it with a stick the way you might poke a dead animal to check if any life persisted. Push on while the clouds reveal the possibility of land.

‘And, Jack, I have to go to Amsterdam. We can both go. It's a great city – a young city – and I think you might really like it. Just for the weekend. We'll stay in a hotel.' He didn't mention Bob Dylan – didn't want to risk the wheels coming off just when there was the possibility of making a landing. ‘What do you say?' No answer. ‘For your mother's sake.'

Jack curtained his face with more hair and plucked a single string. ‘I'll think about it,' he said, then reached out for the remote and flicked the channels.

‘Thanks, Jack. Your mother'll really appreciate it.' He stood up, keen to make an exit before the dice had a chance to throw against him, but something made him pause and ask what the writing said on his arm.

Jack glanced up at him and then, as if opening a book, revealed the white page of his skin. ‘It says, “People are shit”. It's the name of a song.' And then he closed the book and flicked more channels.

Back in the kitchen Gordon was about to tuck into the soup that had been set in front of him. Against the pink flag of his shirt the bowl looked small and white. There were little bits of potato and bacon cresting the steaming surface like sharks' fins.

‘What did he say?' Susan asked, her nervous hands hidden inside a tea cloth.

‘He says he'll think about it. I think it'll be
OK
.'

She saw him looking at the soup and her relief made her ask if he'd like to stay and have some. But he lied and said he'd better be going, that he had a few things to do. She nodded and smiled a thanks then came to see him out. They paused outside the front door which he discreetly touched briefly with his fingers and because she was standing on the step he had to look up to her.

‘We don't need to put the house on the market yet but it would be good to get a valuation, see what we're talking about.'

‘That's fine,' he said, thinking that if life could be divided up and shared as easily as the price of a house then everything would be simple.

But on this funeral day as he drove slowly and reluctantly back to his flat he sensed only the infinite complexity of what stretched ahead of him. He thought about the soup, knew how much he wanted to stay, even in a house where he wasn't fully loved. He thought of stolen blessings and the mess of potage that awaited him and, irrespective of what he had brought on himself, couldn't help but feel cheated out of things that were rightly his. He drove past council workers removing barriers and traffic cones, their yellow jackets luminous against the day's shadows. Windblown flower petals frittered up like confetti. George was starting out on his journey by now. He felt shut out, too, by his own son. If he would let him be his father there were so many important things that he could tell him, things that might help him face full-on the relentless storm of life. People are shit. Yes they are Jack, but some aren't and even the ones who are have some part of them that isn't, just as those who aren't have some part of them that is. As he drove he talked to his son, told him that nothing was simple. Except to the stupid and the dangerous. So, Jack, don't be frightened of uncertainty and confusion, it's our natural state. And as he headed along the embankment beside the dark skein of the river suddenly there was a single rower sculling the water, his oars twisting little curlicues of white. He pulled the car over to the pavement, got out and stood watching as the oarsman slowly disappeared into the dusk. He was taking George home. After all the public pomp and show of ceremony, the eulogies and the flowers, he was taking George home. If he were religious he would have said a prayer for safe crossing, a prayer for all their coming journeys, but instead he simply bowed his head for a moment then watched as the silent wake slowly disappeared and the street lamps began to sheen and smear the dark surface of the water into some new tremble of light.

Two

At this early hour of the morning the city still belonged to those whose job it was to prepare and dress it for the coming day, but as the light stretched itself awake they emerged from office blocks and stores already decorated for Christmas, lighting their cigarettes and setting out in small groups towards bus stops or pick-up points. Karen raised her collar and shivered then turned to see what was keeping Lisa and Pat. Huddled together with their heads almost touching they were trying to create a shelter from the wind that would let them light their communal cigarette. A post-office van with its lights on full beam hurried past, its exhaust a smoker's throaty cough.

‘This street is a wind tunnel,' Lisa complained, as the lighter spluttered out again.

‘What's the point?' Karen asked, hunching her shoulders. ‘Marty won't let you smoke in his taxi. He told me off last week for eating a packet of crisps.'

‘He's not here yet, is he?' Lisa said, clicking a furious Morse code on the lighter. ‘I think this is empty and I need a fag. He's getting like an old woman about the taxi. He'll be putting up net curtains soon.'

Karen went and stood at the edge of the kerb looking for a sighting of their lift. At the side of the City Hall yellow-windowed buses were already pulling in and discharging their dark silhouettes. A council cleaning lorry with huge, whirring circular brushes was scouring the opposite side of the road. On the front grille was pinned a bouquet of plastic daffodils. She let her toes move out over the kerb's edge and held herself in balance.

‘Here, one of those would get your work done pretty quick,' Pat said, pointing with the still-unlit cigarette at the vehicle. The driver waved his hand in greeting.

‘Here, girl, I think you've clicked,' Karen said. ‘It's freezing. Where's Marty? Should you phone and see where he is?'

‘Here he is,' Lisa said, taking her cigarette from Pat and slipping it inside her pocket.

The three women bunched up tightly at the side of the kerb as if waiting for rescue from a sinking ship and then as the taxi stopped they clambered in with Karen in the front and the two others in the back. The car smelled of air freshener.

‘Home, Marty, and don't spare the horses,' Pat told him, snuggling into the seat.

‘You going back to bed?' he asked.

‘Here, is that an offer?' Lisa said. ‘Because you're talking to the Three Musketeers and what one gets the rest has to get.' The other two women laughed as they angled their heads to the grey wash of city streets.

‘I never mix business and pleasure,' Marty answered.

‘You should try it some time,' Lisa said before asking if she could smoke.

‘No you can't – you know you can't.'

‘And I'm in a hurry because I've four kids about to wake up looking for their Coco Pops and me to get them out to school,' Pat said, ‘and after that there's a day's work to be done.'

‘I phoned the daughter this morning,' Lisa informed them, holding the unlit cigarette under her nose as if she was a connoisseur smelling a cigar. ‘Gabrielle's still cutting her teeth and keeping them up half the night.'

‘You phoned her again? You're pushing your luck,' Karen said. ‘If the supervisor catches you it's the sack.'

‘They wouldn't sack you for phoning your daughter?' Marty said as he weaved into a bus lane.

‘They would, Marty, when your daughter lives in Australia,' Lisa answered, and as the other two women laughed she put the unlit cigarette in her mouth. ‘And don't worry, I'm not about to light it. Wouldn't want your wee palace smelling of anything as disgusting as fag smoke.'

‘Here listen, Marty, have you heard about Karen?' Pat paused for dramatic effect.

‘She's not won the lottery on the sly, has she?' he asked, glancing at her before turning to give two fingers to a
BMW
that had cut in front of him.

‘I wish.'

‘She's going to Amsterdam, next weekend. What about that?'