The Light of Amsterdam (7 page)

Relatives. That was a laugh. Couldn't get a space in the car park at Christmas, Easter and Mothers' Day and the rest of the year you could land a plane in it. And the more they didn't come, the more they compensated by talking about their sons and daughters, their nephews and nieces, their grandchildren who had all just finished university and were doing terribly well. But no one ever asked anything about her or her child who wouldn't have enough money when they were old to stay for a week in a place like this.

No one except Mrs Hemmings. She paused at the door of her room. Perhaps they should have asked someone else to clean it and suddenly it seemed like a trap where when she went in there would be a stash of money sitting on the dresser and if she were to touch it the secret camera would capture it all on tape, alarm bells ring and her guilt would be established for all the world to see. But when she entered everything looked as it always did with the shelves slightly buckled by their books and classical
CD
s; the desk with laptop and papers; the fat, mirrored wardrobe that contained the vast array of clothes, most of which would never be worn again but would never be thrown away or sent to the charity shop the living side of death. And the dresser that kept the jewellery box, the letters, the personal and legal documentation, the photograph albums. On the walls hung the two landscapes and the framed panoramic black and white photograph of staff and pupils standing in tiered rows.

She knew everything in the room intimately because she was Mrs Hemmings' most frequent visitor and because there was little that she hadn't been shown or been given to hold. Mrs Hemmings, a former headmistress of a Belfast grammar school for girls, was used to having people listen to her so in the absence of pupils or staff, she talked to her, felt it her duty to teach her things. So as usual and in breach of all the home's regulations that Mrs Hemmings refused to accept applied to her, she appeared in the doorway, dressed as if about to go out to a meeting of her Board of Governors.

‘Morning, Karen,' she said, still standing at the doorway, uncharacteristically hesitant. ‘I'm not in your way, am I?' It was a question she had never asked before and when she answered no in reply she didn't stop cleaning to look at her.

There was a moment's silence and then she lifted her face from straightening the bed cover and said, ‘I didn't take the bracelet.'

‘Karen, Karen, what has Weldon been saying? Because if she's accused you of taking it I'm going to see her right now. The one thing I told her was that you were above suspicion. Made it crystal clear but as you know the woman has problems listening. But I can assure you that I don't think for a second that you had any part in this.'

‘She didn't say outright that I took it but I felt she was thinking it.'

‘My dear, that's Weldon's problem – she doesn't think. We've both known each other for a long time and I'm a good judge of character. I know the people I can trust. And I can tell you that there's a number in here that I have serious doubts about. I just wonder what sort of vetting system they have in place – if any.' She came into the room, stepping elaborately over the vacuum-cleaner lead as if it was a major obstacle, and sat on the swivel chair at her desk, then turned to face her. ‘There aren't even any security cameras outside in the grounds or at the entrance. And perhaps she's forgotten that incident last year when someone walked in off the street and stole a handbag.' She brushed something from her trousers and then eased them up slightly over her knees the way an old man might do. She was wearing pop socks that finished too soon and which exposed the white flesh of her thin shins, mottled like the breast of a thrush. ‘And I wouldn't say this to anyone but I have my doubts about Clive. He came in here about a week ago to change a light bulb and he had a good look round. Taking things in, and he has the keys to every room, I'm sure.' She swivelled from side to side in her chair for a second then stopped and gripped the armrests, the ridged tendons on the backs of her hands tightening and the blue veins inking up in the light that was slanting in from the window. ‘Let's put this business about the bracelet to one side – I hardly ever wore the thing, to be honest.' She turned to face her desk and reached for her reading glasses. ‘Stop for a second and come and see. I've a piece in the paper today. Come and look.'

It was part of their daily ritual and one of the reasons it took twice as long to clean her room as anyone else's. She set the vacuum down and stood behind her, looking at the computer screen as Mrs Hemmings scrolled down. After years of writing letters to company directors and politicians about various shortcomings in their offered services and having received for her efforts nothing more than standard, impersonal and unsatisfactory replies, she had now discovered the ability to post replies to newspaper articles and the capacity to share her views with the world at large. So almost every day she posted or emailed her views on a range of subjects.

‘Here we are,' she said, leaning back in the chair and making the leather squeak. ‘It was an article about the examination system – the usual sort of rubbish.' There was her paragraph and as Karen scanned it she recognised similar phrases to the ones she had read so often – ‘As someone who has spent her life in education at the highest levels . . . What your writer fails to understand about education is . . .'

‘Very good,' Karen said after a suitably polite interval.

‘I don't know where they get these journalists but it's obvious they've never stepped foot in a school since they were children. Really, it's embarrassing some of the stuff they write.' She swivelled forward again. As she spoke Karen smelled her musty breath, the breath they all had whatever the mints and washes used, the smell that always made her think of rotting leaves in winter. Stepping involuntarily back she flicked her duster vaguely in the air as if she might have seen a cobweb. Then she went into the bathroom and started to spray and clean, finding relief in the scented chemicals. Mrs Hemmings was still talking but she turned on the taps and drowned out the words because now she didn't want anyone else's voice inside her head. There was a long, thin grey hair in the sink that she swirled away and the mirror above the washhand basin was pitted with misdirected hairspray which smeared when she rubbed it. She pushed the bathroom door almost closed and sat on the toilet but even then she could hear the high-pitched complaint of the computer printer. Something else she would have to take away and read for her education, for her improvement, because Mrs Hemmings thought of her as her last pupil and told her that she had the potential even at her age to make something of herself.

To make something of herself. She thought of the words as she flushed the toilet, sprayed and wiped it. Only more words she didn't fully understand. Part of her wanted to shred them like paper and scatter them to the air but what if just maybe there might be some possibility of something better happening to her? Knowing the right things, meeting the right person, being given the answer to the code. She remembered the way the city looked in the first light of the morning, brooding and hung-over from the night before, how the coldness seemed to thicken and coarsen the skin and seep into the bones, the way buildings were half lit, doormen locking the entrances after they left. It was always waiting to give itself to others, wearing its polished and pretty face for the ones that were only thinking of stirring from their sleep as she headed home. And perhaps she was to blame for the way that Shannon sometimes was, because she hadn't given her an example, something to aim at in her own life. Taking off her rubber gloves she dropped them into her plastic carrying bucket then washed her hands, her eyes fixed on the bottles and creams on the shelf under the mirror, all of them loud with their promises about rejuvenation and anti-ageing, their ability to hide blemishes. She tidied them and replaced a lid thinking of Shannon and the money she spent on her appearance and it made her look at herself in the mirror for the second time that day. Almost forty and nothing made. She tried to tell herself that bringing up a daughter on her own took all her time and energy but didn't succeed. Sooner than she wanted to think she would be old, the breath in her mouth stale like the leftovers from yesterday. She thought for a second that she saw her future face coming towards her in the mirror and turned away and as she did so noticed the crumpled dressing gown hanging on the peg behind the door with one arm pushed inside the shoulder. Instinctively she pulled it free then straightened and smoothed it flat. She felt it inside the pocket, recognised the shape almost immediately and, slipping her hand in, found it under a letter, its cold hardness nestling snugly on a bed of crumpled tissues.

‘Almost finished, Karen?' The voice made her start. She understood right away what had happened. Taking a bath before bed she'd dropped it in her pocket and forgotten about it. So it had been stolen. She was about to shout when the words stifled in her throat. The bracelet was beautiful, almost perfect, with its twisted band like plaited hair and its small blue stones. She thought of the desks and work spaces she had cleaned that morning with their trinkets and desk ornaments, the people in the photographs she looked at every day but who had never seen her or knew who she was. There was the sound of footsteps. It was Mrs Hemmings walking towards the bathroom door and in that second she took it all – the bracelet, the letter and the crumpled tissues – and dropped everything into her bucket and covered them with the duster and her cleaning cloths.

‘I'm not that messy,' Mrs Hemmings said, smiling. ‘Am I?'

‘I'm a little slow today,' she answered without looking directly at her.

‘Well look, Karen, I've printed out some must-sees in Amsterdam. You mightn't have time to do everything but who knows? Now make sure you get to the Rijksmuseum above all and see the Rembrandts – don't try to see everything, there's too much. I've printed some info about
The Night Watch
. And then there's his house and Anne Frank's house of course. It's all here.'

‘I'll have to see what Shannon and the other girls want to do as well.'

‘Of course but it's such a wonderful city that you don't want to miss out. It's a real opportunity to see things,' she said, pointing her reading glasses at the window as if the city was just beyond. ‘Think of me stuck in here for another weekend. But I've decided I'll not under any circumstances participate in any more of those inane so-called entertainments Weldon thinks up. Quite frankly they're an insult to the intelligence.'

For a second she thought Mrs Hemmings was going to ask to come with her on the trip so she pretended to read the pages she'd been handed but the moment passed and ended when they thanked each other. She watched the older woman sit down at her desk and put the arm of her glasses in her mouth while she contemplated once more the words she had given to the world. Then as she left her the final sound from the room was the rapid, insistent pecking of her fingers at the keys, until slowly walking away it was gradually replaced by the squeak of the broken wheel and the endless babble of far-off voices.

Three

She felt heatedly self-conscious and whatever way she considered it could find little dignity in this initiation. So as the young man blathered on about the respective machines and what they would do for her heart and her cardio-respiratory system, she thought only about why they felt the need to have so many mirrors in a place where people like her presumably came because they didn't like the way they looked. As he pointed out dials and adjusting mechanisms she furtively glanced at herself, once again thought herself ridiculous at the age of fifty-four to be wearing sportsgear whose very newness identified her as a novice, a supplicant striving for the physical blessing of her body, a blessing that had been denied her for more years now than she cared to remember. She wondered why she hadn't been given a female member of staff to show her how things worked and why it had to be this young man who she imagined must see it as a chore, akin to the constant testing of the water in the turquoise pool and the allocating of towels to guests, or any of the other mundane requirements of his job description. And in the mirror she couldn't see other people like her but young women with hard angular bodies that seemed to pulse and pump with a hatred of something and wanted to pummel the machines into submission and whose behinds were so tightly sculpted in black lycra that they looked like perfect little plums.

She wondered why she had to endure this public lesson and then remembered it was a requirement of every new member and to do with insurance. Presumably if she hurt herself or did some deep personal damage she alone would now shoulder the blame. The young man was called Paul and he called her Marion as if they were lifelong friends and he saturated her with instructions and facts that she couldn't possibly absorb so she constantly had to nod to show that she was taking it all in. He had a little twined coloured wristband and the tips of his hair were flecked with blond like a paintbrush that had been lightly dipped in gold leaf. He was talking about building things up, about taking everything gradually, of finding what she was comfortable with, and she wanted to tell him that she'd found that out a long time ago and none of it had anything to do with her body. She didn't believe in miracles and so despite the fervour of those all around her, including the young woman who ran ever faster towards her own image in the glass in what looked like a desperate attempt to meet the person she wanted to be, she did not believe that whatever she performed in this place would remap the landscape of her body. She was a formed continent, and only her dignity felt a sense of erosion as he led her to some kind of rowing machine and made her sit on the seat with his hand on her shoulder.