Through Dead Eyes (9 page)

‘Have you had enough?’ she asked.

‘I have,’ said Alex’s father. ‘I’m stuffed.’

‘Me too,’ said Alex.

‘But don’t let us stop you,’ said Alex’s father.

‘No, no, no,’ said Saskia with a chuckle. ‘We have to watch our weight, don’t we, Angelien?’

Angelien looked at Alex and shook her head witheringly. Saskia ignored her and waved to the waitress and asked for the bill.

‘You must let me pay,’ said Alex’s father, grabbing the bill as it was put down on the table.

‘No, no –’

‘We insist,’ said Alex’s father. ‘Don’t we, Alex?’

Alex grinned.

‘Yeah, we do,’ said Alex.

‘Well if you are sure,’ said Saskia. ‘Thank you.’

‘Thanks,’ said Angelien.

‘Nonsense,’ said Alex’s father, handing his card to the waitress. ‘It’s the least we could do.’

Chapter 9

A large group of raucous and drunken Englishmen lumbered by as Alex and his father walked back to the hotel. Alex could hear them swearing and laughing, their harsh voices slapping against the buildings. It was worse somehow, being able to understand them. There were groups of drunken men all over Amsterdam, but only the English ones made him feel embarrassed.

‘It’s not too boring for you?’ asked his father. ‘All this socialising with people you don’t really know? I’m sorry we haven’t had more time together.’

‘That’s OK, Dad,’ said Alex. ‘And I’m sorry about the stuff at school. I know you were ashamed of me and everything.’

His father came to a sudden halt and grabbed Alex’s arm. ‘I was never
ashamed
of you, Alex,’ he said. ‘I was worried about you, annoyed at you even – but ashamed? No.’

‘Thanks, Dad,’ said Alex. ‘I know I’ve caused a lot of trouble. I’m really sorry.’

His father put his arms round him and hugged him.

‘We’ll get by, won’t we, eh?’ he said. ‘They try to put us down but we get back up again, don’t we?’

‘Yeah,’ said Alex.

‘It’s been a rough time for us both,’ said his father.

‘I know, Dad.’

‘Even so, I know it must be a bit awkward with Saskia and Angelien.’

‘No, Dad,’ said Alex. ‘It’s fine.’

And it was fine. He surprised himself at how relaxed he felt around Saskia and Angelien after such a short amount of time.

‘She’s not banging on too much about the Golden Age, I hope?’ he asked. ‘Angelien? Some historians can be real bores about their subject.’

Alex smiled to himself. His father clearly didn’t count his own obsession with the Second World War as part of this problem.

‘I find all that stuff about merchants and guilds a bit dry to be honest,’ said his father. ‘Oh, I know we are supposed to be fascinated by Amsterdam back then, but when you are a historian some things grab you and others don’t. It’s hard to explain.’

‘Actually . . .’ began Alex.

He wanted to tell his father about the paintings and about the strangeness surrounding the mask but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

‘Yes?’ said his father.

‘Nothing,’ said Alex.

His father always scoffed at anything that smacked of the supernatural. So did Alex normally, for that matter.

Alex’s mother had a much more open mind on that kind of thing and his father would give her a hard time about it. For the first time in a long while Alex found himself wishing that he could tell his mother about this, knowing in his heart that she wouldn’t make him feel foolish for speaking about it.

‘Well don’t be bullied, Alex,’ said his father. ‘There are all kinds of fascinating aspects to Amsterdam and they don’t all revolve around the Golden Age and merchants and guilds. When I’m free, we’ll go to the Anne Frank museum. We can’t have you come to Amsterdam and not go there.’

The reflections of the hotel and the houses either side of it were swaying back and forth on the black waters of the canal. Lights were on in the windows and these too moved gently on the surface, doubling the effect and making the whole street look brighter and more cheerful than Alex had ever seen it by daylight.

The receptionist gave them their keys and they climbed the stairs to their rooms, saying goodnight on the landing. Alex opened his door, turned on the lights and slumped down on to his bed. As he pulled off his jacket and felt his mobile phone in his pocket, he thought about calling his mother.

But as soon as he touched his phone he knew that he could not call her as if everything was cool again. Everything wasn’t cool. Not by a long way.

Alex got into bed and reached over for his book. He was reading
The Big Sleep.
His father had recommended it and normally that would put him off, but he had recently seen the film and liked it and he thought he would give the book a go.

He liked the way the private investigator Philip Marlowe talked and the way he handled the daughter of his rich client. Alex wished he could be like that. Marlowe never seemed to let people get the better of him. He always seemed to know the right thing to do, the right thing to say. There were a few people he wouldn’t mind punching on the nose either.

But Alex was never going to be like that, he knew. He was going to be like his father and maybe that wasn’t so bad. Women like kind men, his mother had told him once; they liked gentle men.

Maybe they did, thought Alex. Some women did, probably. But what about Carl Patterson? There was nothing kind about him. Molly didn’t seem to mind. And Dirk? How kind or gentle was he?

Alex had a sneaking suspicion that women also liked tough men – men like Philip Marlowe. Being kind was OK as far as it went, but sometimes it seemed like weakness.

He found his place in
The Big Sleep
and settled down beside the lamp to read. But he could not concentrate. Angelien’s smiling face in the Rijksmuseum filled his thoughts. It loomed large in his mind, as though she was standing improbably close, her lips close to his face.

But though this image was a very attractive one, frustratingly, it kept slipping out of focus and the background would sharpen until it was revealed in hyper detail. Past her ear, over her shoulder, he found himself straining to look at the paintings.

As his eyes moved down the page, so his mind would wander back to the Rijksmuseum and the paintings. He realised that he wasn’t taking anything in, so he replaced the bookmark and set it down on the table next to his bed.

He looked across at the chest of drawers where he kept the mask. He looked at the clock and once again returned to the Rijksmuseum and the strange moonlit painting of the girl and the children in the street. The image of it had infested his mind. It was more than a memory of a painting; it had become more like a thought or a memory of something he had actually experienced himself.

Alex got out of bed and padded quietly across to the chest of drawers. He could hear the soft rasp of the clock and the distant murmur of the traffic in the city centre.

He picked the mask up and turned it over in his hands. The inside was smooth and probably made smoother still by years of being worn. Alex ran his fingers along the wood and thought of Hanna and her ruined face and the fire-scarred flesh of it touching the surface as his fingertips now did.

Again he had the sudden, disturbing sensation that he wasn’t alone in the room. He knew if he turned he would see nothing there. It was worse somehow – knowing there was nothing there and yet knowing, just as certainly, that there was.

‘Why did you want me to buy this?’ said Alex. ‘What am I supposed to do with it?’

Alex’s voice sounded loud in the silence, even though he spoke in little more than a whisper. He had a horrible feeling that he would hear a reply, but none came. He breathed a long sigh of relief.

He held the mask up to his face and peered through the eyeholes. The view was unexpectedly dark, as if the holes were somehow blocking out the light. He could barely see a thing except the faint glimmer of light catching the clock on the chest of drawers.

Alex lowered the mask and the light flooded back in. He heard a noise outside and wandered over to the window.

Looking out, Alex could see a man and a woman walking beside the canal. The woman was walking away quickly. The man called after her and she turned, her face catching the light from the lamp nearby. She stopped, putting her hand to her face.

The man approached slowly. Alex could hear his voice, though he couldn’t understand the language. But he could hear the apologetic, pleading tone.

The woman let him approach and he reached out to touch her arm. But she pulled away, turning on him fiercely and shouting, her voice breaking as she began to sob.

The man stood, head bowed for a little while, but then he reached out again. This time the woman didn’t pull away and the man moved closer. They embraced and kissed and held each other for a few long moments before moving off again, hand in hand. The patter of their footfalls became steadily more distant and quiet.

Once again Alex felt a little self-conscious at spying on such an intimate moment and, looking away, became aware once more of the mask in his hand. He put the mask to his face and looked through the window again.

As before, the view was darker but he found that his eyes did get used to it after a few moments. But as they did adjust to the gloom, Alex saw that the view was not simply darker, it was different. The effect was unsettling, disorientating: he felt himself leaning as though the floor had moved, as though the room was now a shipboard cabin, and the ship was riding a large swell.

He reached out and placed his hand on the wall for support. How cold it felt. He looked out of the window. There was a cold blue sheen to the whole scene.

The canal-side was devoid of cars and the parking places that would have been crowded with them were not there. The view was recognisably the same and yet utterly different.

The shops on the opposite side of the canal were not there. Their warm yellow lights no longer twinkled in the ripples and eddies of the canal below.

It wasn’t simply that they had closed up or suffered some power cut – they were not there. The illuminated signage, the wide windows – it was all gone, replaced by the weathered wood of warehouse doors. It couldn’t be, he knew that – and yet it was.

A pulse hammered in his temple as he tried to make sense of it. And then he was aware of movement out of the corner of his eye. Dark shapes were moving in the shadows of those dark canal-side streets.

Then out into the pools of moonlight came the children, scampering along the cobbles. It was just like the painting of Hanna in her mask. He looked up. Even the big, bone-coloured moon was there.

Somehow, some way, he was seeing the past through the mask. He was seeing the world that she saw when she stood at her window. Alex knew that there was more to it, even, than that. He felt that he wasn’t just seeing what Hanna was seeing, but seeing
as
Hanna – seeing with a combination of her mind and his.

The children ran and skipped and played leapfrog. One moment they appeared to be moving in slow motion, the next they seemed to flicker across the scene like blue flames or scuttle with the horrible efficiency of insects.

But, slowly or swiftly, their destination became clear as they gathered one by one in the street outside the hotel. They huddled as though in deep discussion, though Alex could hear no sound. Then all at once they turned their faces to look straight at him.

Alex snatched the mask from his face, blinking against the welcome street lights and electric glare that burst in on him from every side.

He walked to the chest of drawers, replaced the mask and put on his bedside light. He got into bed, closing his eyes immediately, not casting even the swiftest glance towards the hidden mask.

Chapter 10

Alex woke and looked around the room, blearily at first, sleep still clouding his mind. But then the memory of what he had seen through the mask came back and he sat bolt upright, looking over to the chest and to the mask he knew was secreted in the drawer.

He took faltering breaths and his heart thumped. The vision of the world glimpsed through the mask swept back in on him with horrible suddenness, like a smothering black blanket.

The ghostly images punctured the mundane reality of his hotel room with their inky shadows and wash of moon glow: those pale children gathered in the street outside his hotel.

Alex got out of bed and walked to the window, hesitating before pulling back the curtain. The modern world was mercifully restored. All was as it should be.

The shops were already open across the canal. A delivery van was unloading. A cyclist pinged her bell as she rode past, white headphone leads against long black hair.

Alex rubbed his eyes and pulled his fingers down his face, dragging the sides of his mouth down as he did so. He looked at the drawer where he kept the mask, but only briefly. Then he got dressed.

At breakfast, Alex’s father asked him if he was all right, saying that he looked pale. He told him that he hadn’t slept well, that there was an argument in the street outside.