Us (30 page)

Doubts had begun to assail me. I knew from Albie's call to the hotel that he and Cat had been heading this way, but what if they had changed their minds, or left already? In need of reassurance, I searched for

an alchemist, tossing ingredients into a cauldron in the vain hope of finding gold. I searched for

I saw things no man should ever see, but I did not see my son. Taking a more direct approach, I searched for Albie Petersen. Ever the contrarian, Albie was not a slave to social media and, besides, his accounts were locked. But his friends were not so cagey or discreet and I found that I could easily fill the screen with snaps of my son; at parties with a cigarette dangling blatantly from pouting lips, on stage with his terrible college band (I had been there but couldn't bear to listen, had sneaked out to check the car was locked, had stayed in the car). Here he was as a Nazi in
Cabaret
(I was working late that week) and here with a girlfriend that I vaguely remembered, the one before the one before, a lovely quiet girl, heartbroken now I imagined, my son her first love. Here he was lounging on some riverbank on an overcast day in some previous summer, his body bony and pale and visibly goose-bumped, then, in a series of consecutive snaps, arms and legs wheeling as he let go of a rope swing and plummeted into the river. I laughed at this, my neighbour glancing from my face to the screen, which I changed quickly, double-clicking on some of Albie's photographic work from an online exhibition: a dilapidated shed in an allotment, a close-up of tree bark, and a rather good portrait in high-contrast black and white of two elderly men on the same allotment, their faces extraordinarily gnarled and wrinkled, creased deeply like the bark, which was the point I suppose. I liked this one, and I resolved to tell him that I liked it if and when I found him.

I would never find him, I knew that now. The quest was absurd, a delusional attempt to salvage some dignity from this whole disastrous trip, to make amends for years of fumbling, mumbling incoherence. People travelling in Europe do not bump into each other, it's just not possible. If he returned, and surely he would return eventually, he would do so in his own time. The image that I'd cherished, that I would carry him back to my wife like a fireman emerging from a burning building, was a vain and self-indulgent fantasy. The only reason I remained in Europe was because I was too scared and humiliated to go home and face the future. I closed the page of images of Albie.

The YouTube searches remained open underneath. I would try one more time. I typed in
pompidou paris accordion cat street performer
, flicked though screen after screen of beat-boxing flautists, Siamese cats on piano keyboards and depressing clips of living statues, and there in the bleak, uncharted depths of the fourth page of search results, was Cat in an unseasonable velvet top hat, playing ‘Psycho Killer' on the forecourt of the Pompidou. ‘Yes!' I said out loud.

I let the video play, the four hundred and eighty-sixth person to do so, and read the prose beneath.

Saw this gr
8
busker wen in Paris. She great, she crazy buy her Cd Kat play rock accordion –styl!!!!!

Underneath, another contributor was in a more critical mood:

haha she sing like u speak English … i.e. wewy wewy painful where u lurn English dum boy hahaha

The debate continued in Socratic form for several exchanges. The video, I noted, was two years old. No matter. I had made a small breakthrough: Cat was a Kat.

Encouraged, I began my search again:
kat accordion cover version, kat street performer
and found her once again, sitting on a bed in a crowded, candlelit room. Melbourne, apparently. The video had been uploaded some six months before, had been viewed a modest forty-six times and consisted of a spirited rendition of ‘Hey Jude', with the other party guests banging beer bottles together, playing the bongos, etc. The video was twenty-two minutes long and seemed unlikely to ‘go viral'. Had I been immortal I might have watched it all, but there was no need because in the description I found:

Our old friend Katherine ‘Kat' Kilgour from Theatre Factory still singing the songs and doin' her thang. Love u Kat Babe, Holly

Kat Kilgour. I had a surname, and not a Smith or Evans either. I searched again, striking a rich seam now, linking from one video to the next until I found what I'd been searching for.

In an Italianate square, in blazing sunlight, Kat and Albie perched on the steps of an ornate church, singing ‘Homeward Bound',
the old Simon and Garfunkel song. A strangely old-fashioned choice of song, as distant in time to my son as the Charleston was to me, but part of the very small cultural legacy that I had passed on to Albie. Connie had never cared for Simon and Garfunkel, thought them too middle-of-the-road, but as a small boy Albie had loved them, and on long car journeys we'd play the
Greatest Hits
, Albie and I singing along, much to Connie's irritation. Had he suggested the song to Kat, or vice versa? Did he even think of it as something that he'd taken from me? Did he want to come home?

‘Too loud!' said the war-gaming boy to my left, and I realised that I had been singing along too. I apologised, pulled on a pair of greasy headphones and turned my attention back to the video, posted two days previously and viewed a modest three times. The description, while at least literate, provided no further assistance. ‘Saw these guys on our tour of Italy and talked to them afterwards. She's called Kat Kilgour and she's really talented!!!' And what about Albie, hm? In truth the harmonies were experimental, the crowd small and indifferent. Still, I felt such pleasure in seeing him again. He looked well. Perhaps not ‘well', exactly – skinny and hunched and none too fresh – but he looked exactly like a student backpacker should, and he was safe.

But where was he? I played the video once more, a detective looking for clues. The church, the café, the pigeons, the square, the tourists – it might have been anywhere in Italy. I freeze-framed, took screen grabs, zoomed in on Albie, his clothes, his face, looking for goodness knows what. I zoomed in on the faces of the few indifferent tourists, on the shop fronts and walls in case of street names, I let the video play and play again, grabbing shots at key moments until something drew my eye to a knot of people coming into frame in the final seconds, a man crouching at a café table to confer with a tourist, a striped T-shirt, a black hat with a ribbon.

A gondolier.

‘Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!'

Taking full advantage of my online anonymity, I left my comment – ‘You guys are excellent! The boy in particular! Please, please stay in Venice!' – then emailed myself a link to the page and hurried back to the
pensione
, hobbling but in high spirits. Tomorrow was the day that our pre-paid reservation at the hotel came in to force. Lured by the offer of free residency in a nice hotel, chosen for its comfort, convenience and romance, might not Albie take the room? Connie had been calling him from our home in England. Clean sheets, a shower, no parents, a chance to impress his girlfriend with one of her beloved buffet breakfasts? I felt certain he would come. All I would need to do was take a seat at a pavement café nearby and wait. What I would say, other than sorry and come home, remained a mystery, but I would have got something
right
for once.

Pausing at reception, I wrote a note on the back of a flyer for The Vivaldi Experience.

Freja, apologies for my rudeness today. You must think me unhinged, and you are not the only one to do so. Please let me make amends by buying you dinner tonight, then perhaps I can explain a little too. If the idea does not appal you I am in room 56, the super-heated cupboard near the roof. And if I don't hear from you by eight p.m., it was extremely nice to meet you. I enjoyed our trip to the ACCaDEMia very much! Best wishes, Douglas

Before I could reconsider, I handed it to the receptionist for the Danish lady travelling alone. Freja Kristensen?
Grazie mille
. Then I climbed the stairs stiffly and sat heavily on the bed. The treacherous running shoes were removed with a queasy sucking sound. Where was their promised comfort now? Despite my best efforts with bandages and plasters, my feet looked as if they'd been eaten by crabs. The blisters on the knuckles of my toes had burst, the new flesh rubbed raw, and on the soles of my feet dead skin hung down like tattered flags. Swelling rendered my other shoes, a pair of serviceable brown brogues, unwearable, and so I did my best to patch my wounds while I waited for my lady friend to call.

It was not a date, of course. We were merely two travellers taking temporary comfort in each other's company. But I realised, unwrapping a new shirt and combing my hair, that I had not eaten a meal with a woman other than my wife for perhaps twenty years. It was all very strange and I resolved to be extremely casual about the whole business, selecting in advance a small, unpretentious trattoria that I had noticed on my hike around the city; pleasant but functional and not too cluttered with red candles or gypsy violins.

Freja, on the other hand, seemed to have gone to some effort. She was waiting in the lobby, subtly but effectively made up and wearing a rather snug skirt and the kind of off-white satin shirt that one might really only term a ‘blouse'. She looked fresh, healthy and tasteful, and yet I found myself instinctively wanting to do up an extra button, and I wondered if I might be the only man in the world to have dressed a woman with his eyes.

‘Hi,' I said, pronouncing it ‘haaaiii,' giving that difficult word a little Scandinavian twist to be more easily understood.

‘Good evening, Douglas.'

‘You look nice,' I said, silken-tongued.

‘Thank you. I really do like those shoes. They're very striking and bright!'

‘“Box-fresh” is the correct term, I believe.'

‘Have you been playing basketball?'

‘Actually, they were meant for walking, but they've attached themselves to my feet like some awful alien parasite and now they're the only thing I can wear.'

‘I like them,' she said, placing her hand lightly on my forearm. ‘You look very fly.'

‘My skateboard is parked outside.' I took her arm and hobbled towards the door and out into the kind of warm, hazy evening which is sometimes labelled ‘sultry'.

We headed east through the
sestiere
of Castello, the tip of the tail, walking the back streets and enjoying the feeling of belonging that the serious traveller enjoys when the day-trippers have returned to their coaches and cruise ships.

‘You don't even need a map any more.'

‘No, I'm almost a local.'

We emerged at the immense gates of the Arsenale, the walls crenellated like a toy fort. I'd read about this in the guidebook. ‘The great innovation of the Venetians was to mass-produce ships in kit form, standardising all the parts. It was here that the shipbuilders of Venice amazed Henry IV of France by building an entire galleon—'

‘—in the time it took him to eat his supper, and thus was the modern production line born,' said Freja. ‘Except I think it was Henry III of France. We have the same guidebook.'

‘God, what an old bore I am,' I said.

‘Not at all, I'm the same. I think it's good to have a desire to educate. Perhaps it comes of having children. My husband, ex-husband and I, we used to drive our daughters to distraction, taking them to ruins and cemeteries and dusty old galleries. “Here is Ibsen's grave, here is the Sistine Chapel … Look! Look! Look!” when all they really wanted to do was go to the beach and flirt with boys. Now they're older they appreciate it, but at the time …'

‘That's how we were meant to spend this summer. My wife and I were meant to be taking my son around all the great galleries of Europe.'

‘And instead?'

‘My son left a note and ran off with an accordionist. My wife is in England, thinking about leaving me.'