The Light of Amsterdam (42 page)

So her daughter didn't believe her mother would be able to deal with what she had discovered about herself. She felt the pain of that and wondered if she had ever done anything deserving of it but could not believe that she had. She knew it was important not to look shocked or make a fuss and although she had never said anything to her husband it was an idea that had sometimes lingered in the back of her mind.

‘Elise – that's a nice name. We'll need a present for her. It'll be hard when you don't know someone but we'll get something sorted. And we've plenty of room but we'll let Judith decide where's best.'

‘Marion, as long as she's happy?'

‘As long as she's happy.'

They sat talking about it and each hesitated before using the obvious word but when she did it first, it felt like they had taken a step forward and nothing felt shattered or pushed beyond what could be understood and accepted.

‘As long as she's happy.'

‘Yes, as long as she's happy.'

This was to be the mantra that would help them welcome their daughter home and open their house and family to her friend and as they walked back to their bikes her hurt and disappointment were softened by a sense of what felt like relief. Things could go forward now, nothing needed to be hidden or locked away in secret rooms. When she got home she would ring her and tell her how much she was looking forward to her coming back and how much she was looking forward to meeting Elise. That would be all she would need to say. While he fiddled with the locks she stood searching through the trees for the two figures but they had gone and in their place other families strolled and played, their laughter and shouts lulling across the water.

When they got back on the bikes and pedalled off, for a few seconds the air crimped a cold mask against their faces which then dissolved again as they found a rhythm. It was time to go back but she deliberately cycled slowly and then waved him to take the lead. She didn't want it to end too quickly and so she let a gap open up between them. All around her streamed the life of the city. She passed a husband and wife with what looked like identical twins in a stroller, their pride inscribed on their faces; a man running with a large dog on a lead; two grey-haired elderly women shuffling along as if miraculously powered by the pistons of their stick arms. A young woman with a short skirt and thick tights overtook her effortlessly with only one hand on the handlebars, the other hand bunching her confusion of red hair. No one stared at her or looked at her in any way that made her uncomfortable and she was grateful for that. She felt part of the city's inexhaustible flow and as she cycled on she turned her head one last time to catch the winter sun trying to tease and burnish the still sleeping surface of the lake into a newness of life.

 

 

He knew it would be hours before Jack woke and so he left him a note to say that he had gone for a walk. There was a sad stillness about the city which intensified his feeling that this journey was a requiem. Like so many other things that he had held on to too long he would let it go and try to step into the future, if not with enthusiasm then with less of his instinctive reluctance and fear. He would stop deluding himself with his secret belief that Susan would take him back and do whatever demeaning and inane things were required to keep his job. He would start to paint again, not because he thought he would ever produce anything that would take the world's breath away, but because it would be good for him. And it was just possible that it might arouse some interest or respect on the part of his son. Nor was he going to paint those abstracts where he only half-understood what it was he was trying to do; instead he would find a new style that was part of his future. Perhaps he should do figurative work and as the weak winter sun tried to assert itself he warmed himself with images of painting beautiful women, of painting any women. The girl with the wok and the sloe-black shock of hair. Magic them into beautiful life and receive their gratitude for his artistry. The sun slipped away, momentarily shut out by clouds. Perhaps better to start with still life. A bowl of fruit. More readily available and less expensive. Consumable afterwards. He told himself that if he could stop dreaming of doing big things then just perhaps he could get small things right, things on which he could build if he were determined enough.

He paused to let a nearly empty tram scuttle past almost apologetic for disturbing the stillness of the morning. The sun sidled out again and he knew he wanted to walk in the park one last time – it was where he had first fallen in love with the city all those years ago and it would be somehow rude to leave for ever without saying a farewell. He crossed the bridge where down below a canal boat was making its first tourist trip of the day, its smattering of passengers ensconced below the glass canopy. It was one of the things he had never done because it was too touristy but he regretted not having seen the city from the water.

As he entered through the gates he tried to think of that first visit rather than Jack's angry tirade of blame and accusation. He was sorry his son hadn't been able to see this place in the same way that he once had but Jack would have different memories of the city to nurture, not least his performance in the bar, the reliving of which still flooded his father with pleasure, if also a nagging apprehension that it might be a tantalising glimpse of something that would be deliberately hidden to him once more. Afterwards Jack had shrugged it off as no big deal and, reading the closing-down signs that were being posted, he had thought it prudent to limit his delight to a few simple compliments. He had already worked out that understatement and emotional minimalism were the correct technique, that he should avoid rising on any tide of emotion or intensity. Chilled out – this was supposedly the nirvana of teenage aspiration; and despite the instruction his son had given him on at least two previous occasions to take a chill pill he had mostly – setting aside the phone call to Kurt Cobain – managed to display the required degree of chill. But as he walked through the thickening flurry of weekend joggers he remembered the passions that he had felt as a young man in this place, the flame of which had threatened to consume him with its intensity. Then the world spun only on the optimistic possibilities of what had been nothing more than wishful dreams but he told himself there was a fundamental human decency and dignity about them which could never be completely undermined by their hopeless naivety. So now these men and women who cycled and jogged around him had mostly only individualised, self-preserving dreams because they lived in different times and knew the terrors of the modern world no longer let those former fragile things exist. And yet despite it all, when they could have gone to a thousand different places, they came there to the park and although he hesitated, the word he wanted to use was religiously, to share in the pursuit of staying alive.

He thought of sitting on a bench and watching it all flow past but already he felt ashamed of his sedentary life, of all the times he let self-pity snag and snarl him into a sort of paralysis. So he kept on walking, only just resisting the desire to run because he knew how soon he would come to an embarrassing and wheezing stop. That was another thing he was going to change. He'd get a pair of running shoes or a bike and try to get fit – he'd get them the same time he got his reading glasses and he'd breathe and see anew. He wondered if there was somewhere in Belfast like this where he could join with others on a Sunday morning in a pursuit of this life. He'd never do it on his own – he needed the galvanising spur of the collective – remembering how he had always despised those solitary joggers a little, thinking that they all looked like masochistic self-haters running from their fear of death. He looked up to see a couple he recognised from the plane, riding on hired bikes. So it was contagious, it could be done, and in his overcoat and purposeless walk he felt as if he was lingering outside looking in.

He passed a lake with an ornamental bridge and one with a little pavilion that he'd never seen used. There was a game of football going on with the players wearing individual tops so the pitch looked like a constantly changing pattern of colour. On that first time he had played football with strangers, listened to music, talked to people from other countries. But now it would no longer be possible to think of this place without seeing Jack and all his anger spilling out, of the sight of him taking to his heels, or hearing his own voice calling after him until he disappeared into the gloom. He passed the screened tennis courts where only the squeak of shoes and the regular
thwock
of balls being hit betrayed the games within. That was when he saw her at a distance and felt the pleasure of a familiar face amongst a city of strangers. She hadn't noticed him and he had the chance to observe her in detail and waiting close to the entrance to the café he wondered why she was always on her own.

She was walking quite slowly, clearly with no other purpose than to take everything in and pull the final pleasure out of her time in a city she didn't know. He guessed she was in her early forties and knew already that she was some kind of nurse. As she drew closer and the winter light laid bare her unmade face he gauged that her life had been one of work and there was something slightly poor in the clothes she wore, a sense that she had never spent much money on herself. There was, too, something indefinable about her that didn't blend in with where she was or the people around her but he was curious about her, about whatever it was that she always held back from view. And he found her pretty in a way that was quiet and not asking for anyone's praise. As he realised that she was happy to be unobserved, moving on the edge of everything around her, he felt as if he was spying on her but just as he resolved to drift away in a different direction she registered his presence and he raised his hand in an uncertain gesture of greeting.

‘We can't go on meeting like this,' he said, hoping that she hadn't seen him watching her. ‘I'm not following you, honestly.'

‘Where's Jack?' As she came close he saw that there were already two little wisps of grey in her hair just above her ear. Her eyes were blue but darker than the colour of his son's.

‘He's asleep and will be for a while. I've left him a note. I'm just getting some air before packing for home.' He didn't know why she always made him nervous and desperate to hide it by saying funny things. ‘He could sleep for Ireland. But where's your girl? Have the tribe expelled you? You're always on your own.'

‘Shannon's still getting her beauty sleep so I just thought I'd go for a walk rather than wait for everyone to wake up. I'm used to being up early so I find it hard to lie in and it's not helped when one of the girls I'm sharing with snores like a train.'

He was about to tell her that Jack had complained about his snoring but stopped at the last moment and then didn't know what to say. He rubbed his chin with his hand as the sounds of the tennis filtered out through the covered fence. He hesitated again.

‘Would you like a coffee? There's a nice café just behind us.'

‘I don't know. I'm just out for a bit of a walk. Getting my head showered.'

He accepted failure and tried to make it easier for her by saying that he understood and hoped that she would enjoy the rest of her walk then lifted his hand in another vague gesture, this time he presumed of farewell.

‘
OK
.' She touched her hair in a way that made it look as if she was trying to make herself presentable for going into the café and so he smiled at her and knew he should take the lead, pointing out a table for them and asking what she would like. In answer she asked him what he was having and he suggested they could have coffees with milk and a couple of scones. She nodded, tried to give him money which he refused and going off to get them was conscious as he walked away that he was presenting a good view of his bald spot and not entirely sure she would be there when he got back. There were no scones so he returned with the coffee and a couple of little biscuits. She tried to pay again, pushing money across the table, but he pushed it back as if they were playing a game and to appease her said that she could get the next ones. She didn't look at him, instead concentrating on her cup, and he searched for things to say, already starting to think that he had made a mistake.

‘So you're a nurse?'

‘No, I just work in an old people's home. Cleaning and helping in the kitchen and stuff. I'm not a nurse.'

He wasn't sure why he apologised and then worried that it sounded as if he thought he had made some embarrassing mistake so he quickly asked her if she liked it.

‘It's a job. Helps pay the bills. Old people's homes aren't the happiest places in the world.'

‘No, I don't suppose so.'

‘You do something with painting, don't you?'

‘Yes, I teach at the art college, for my sins.'

‘Is that a good job?'

‘Pays the bills,' he said, hoping that she would smile but she looked serious, a bit nervous.

‘And do you paint?'

‘I do a bit,' he said, thinking that his future intentions were enough to render his answer true.

‘What sort?' she asked, cupping the coffee in two hands as if she were frightened of dropping it.

‘I used to do abstract stuff but I'm doing figurative work now.' She was looking at him as if still waiting for his answer. ‘I'm painting people.'