The Light of Amsterdam (17 page)

‘So what would you like to do?' he asked, pushing one hand against the doorframe in too deliberate a study of nonchalance. ‘We can go for a drink, or get something to eat. Or just walk.'

‘Let's get something to eat. Can you give me five minutes?' As he turned back into the room she slowly closed the door. Her bag with her make-up was still on the bed but she didn't want to go back out, so instead she lightly splashed her face and then sat on the toilet. He had turned on the television and she could hear the sharp-edged staccato of voices as he flicked through the channels. Now that she was actually here, however, she was filled with doubt. Perhaps the idea had been the most foolish thing she had ever dreamed up and so far from anything else in her life that she should have dismissed it as complete madness. There was still time to call it off. Time to go back to the way things were and yet she knew she didn't want that either. She had to pull herself together, try to think less about things, the way she assumed those people in the square below were able to do. She flushed the toilet and patted her face dry, then pressed the towel tightly to her face to enjoy its consoling softness.

‘I don't think it's particularly cold but you should wear something warm,' he said when she came out. He was sitting on the end of the bed and continued to surf the channels as he spoke, then turned the television off and dropped the control dismissively. ‘We can get Sky news and not much else.'

‘Well, hopefully we won't be sitting here watching television,' she said, reaching for her make-up bag and lifting out a lipstick. She felt impatient to be out of the room and out of the hotel.

‘I'll get myself ready then,' he said, pushing himself off the bed. ‘What do you fancy? Chinese, Thai, Italian?'

She didn't answer at first and instead concentrated on putting on her lipstick then said, ‘I don't mind really. Let's go – it's too warm in here.'

But when he started to look at the radiator she told him he could sort it out when they came back. She watched him putting on his coat and running a hand through his hair in what was all the grooming he ever seemed to need. ‘You're keen,' he said, checking he had his mobile in the pocket of his coat.

‘It's just being cooped up in the plane and everything. That's all and we don't want to waste the time.'

They shared the lift with a young Japanese couple who smiled and made space for them. She looked at the black glossiness of the woman's hair, and the angular perfect symmetry of the cut. When the woman moved her head her whole hair seemed to flow in perfect synchronicity. Both wore what looked like identical Burberry raincoats and on the woman's feet were white trainers and little socks with red bows on the side which were curiously childlike, and everything on both of them looked like it had just come out of a crisp box. She wondered what they thought when they looked at her and then about how long they'd been married and how long it would be before they had children. When the lift reached the lobby there was an embarrassed shuffling little ceremony about who should leave first and much smiling and nodding of heads.

Outside the hotel he paused on the steps and opened his map. She walked on and skimmed the top of the water in the fountains with her fingers. She wished that for once he would put the map away and just walk and see where it took them. She didn't wish to be bound by the fixed parameters that were the normal constraints of their lives. He caught up with her and she guessed he was no wiser for all his map reading. Offering her his arm he pointed vaguely across the square. Cautiously navigating the constant flow of flaring yellow-windowed trams and both lit and unlit bicycles, they passed the small ice rink where some children and their parents scored and hissed the neon-coloured ice. The side streets were garlanded with Christmas lights and they set off down one that was crammed full of restaurants but she didn't want to pick somewhere too soon and so she urged him on when he paused to look at menus. It felt as if the whole city was only starting to come into the life it wanted for itself and that the working week was being swept away in a coming together of friends. There was an open invitation in it and although she knew that they would never take it up, the very fact that it was also extended to them made her feel lighter.

‘Look, there's the Indians!' he said, pointing to the bottom of the street, but she only caught a couple of their stragglers before they too disappeared. ‘Getting a bit nippy for those costumes.'

But every other girl who passed them seemed to have snubbed her nose at the growing cold of the evening and was dressed in a skimpy skirt and low-cut top. A few wore light shawls but the only people in coats were those of their age. It served to divide them into spectators and participants. And she could see already that there were lots of people like them, just strolling and looking while behind the windows of restaurants and bars there was the rising tide of life.

‘Are we going to eat?' he asked, teasing her with a little tightening of his arm.

‘Are you very hungry?'

‘I am if you are. I'm not really sure – you decide.'

Part of her complained privately when he decided things for her and part complained when he pushed decisions on to her. Perhaps she was too hard on him and as she glanced at him she was reminded of those things that she liked and as they passed another group of young women, dressed in a way that shouted their sexual attractiveness, it wasn't her husband she resented so much as these young girls who were so unrestrained in their assertion of themselves. She thought there was something insensitive about it to other women, women such as herself, and she wondered if it couldn't be done in a way that was less strident. But perhaps they would only come to understand that when they had grown older and time had left them with less to catch the eye of the world.

‘If you don't mind I don't think I want to eat a meal in a restaurant. I'd just like to get something from one of the street vendors or in one of those little fast-food places.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Yes, if it's
OK
with you. I don't feel like sitting down to a large meal at this time of night.'

‘The night's a pup, girl.'

‘It might be but we're not.' She glanced at him, suddenly curious. ‘How do you feel?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘About your age?'

‘I don't really feel any age, if that's what you mean. I feel fine, apart from my back complaining occasionally. But I'm careful about lifting things after I put it out that last time. How do you feel?'

‘Getting a little older, I suppose.'

‘Well neither of us is ready for our bus pass yet. So let's find you something to eat.'

They headed down a side street towards a canal and then she saw it, a small fast-food shop on the corner with some basic seating and a few Formica-topped tables. Apart from one customer at the counter it was empty.

‘Let's go here,' she said, tugging on his arm.

‘Marion, are you sure this is what you want? It's just a Smoky Joe fast-food shop. We could've stayed at home. Why don't you let me spend some money on you? It's supposed to be a treat after all.'

‘Look, it's empty – tonight I don't want to go somewhere crowded and noisy. Let's just get a few chips.'

She could feel his lack of enthusiasm but led him on. The owner greeted them with a smile and a slight bow while they stood and stared at the gaudy photographs haloing his head. He wore a white shirt that made her wonder how he had managed to keep it white and on both his cheeks there was a fine fritter of ridged scars. Then she ordered two portions of chips, two cans of Coke, and paid the few euros. The owner smiled again, indicating that he was about to close when they asked to eat in, but seemed to change his mind and told them that they could stay if they wished. She assured him that they would take it with them but he held his hands across the counter as if inviting them to take a seat in his restaurant. They sat at one of the red-topped tables and he brought them their cans of Coke, plastic forks and napkins. He smiled all the time and then she watched him pull the front shutter halfway down preventing new customers entering.

‘Tea at the Ritz,' Richard said.

But she was irritated by his words and wanted to tell him that a working man should respect another. The chips were brought in perfect little cones and he set salt and ketchup on their table and bowed his head again. There was something strangely perfect about it. Something powerfully real and true.

‘You wouldn't be treated as well as this in the Ritz,' she said and suddenly she felt bolder and, turning to the owner who was clearing up behind the counter, asked him, ‘What time did you start work at?'

‘Eleven, this morning,' he said, rubbing the top of the counter with his cloth.

‘A long day for you.'

‘It's long,' he said, nodding and smiling.

‘You have a family?' She felt free to be curious despite Richard's bowed silence.

‘In Africa. One day they perhaps able to come here.'

‘I hope so,' she said, thinking too of her own family who would soon assemble for Christmas. ‘You go home often?'

‘Two times a year.'

‘The chips are very good,' Richard said, raising his fork in a salute, and some of her earlier irritation ebbed away. Then as the man started to brush the floor her husband asked if she thought he owned the business, but she wasn't sure. She said she hoped so.

‘Some people have to work very hard,' she said and then there was a silence between them broken only by the voices of people passing outside.

‘We've always worked hard, too. Do you remember what it was like when we were just starting out and working every hour God sent us? But it can't be easy being far away from your family. Being on your own. I wouldn't like it.'

It pleased her to hear him value his family. It pleased her to sit in this about-to-close little fast-food place and feel a sense of connection to someone whose name she didn't know and would probably never see again and to share an understanding about work and about family. Her simple food felt seasoned with something precious and she felt a sudden largeness of heart. She watched the man making his final preparations for closing but saw too that he wasn't rushing them.

‘We shouldn't keep him,' she said and her husband nodded and gathered up the sparse debris of their meal and carefully placed it in a bin. It wasn't enough. ‘Give him something,' she whispered.

‘How much?'

She wished he hadn't asked. ‘Twenty.'

‘Twenty?'

‘Yes.'

‘Most expensive chips ever,' he said, slipping his wallet out of his pocket.

‘Please, Richard. It was one of the nicest meals I've ever had.'

They stood up and thanked their host and then Richard went to the counter and handed him the money with a quiet discretion that met her approval.

‘Good luck,' she heard him say as he tucked his wallet away. Yes, that was what was needed for them all now – good luck. Good luck and family. They bowed their heads as they dipped under the half-closed shutter and as they did so the lights went out behind them.

 

 

He searched for them as he always did when he arrived in this city but wasn't sure if the sense of exhilaration and anticipation was real or merely generated by memory. It was part of an increasingly blurred distinction between what belonged in the past and what continued to exist and more and more he found himself unable to discern which was which. There was no doubt, however, about what he had felt as a young man when he had first discovered the city as a student and it had nothing to do with drugs or sex. If anything it was almost Calvinistic, a heady intoxicating sense of freedom from the tyranny of real and imagined authority, of stumbling into a place where the tribal divisions of his home city seemed primitive and preposterous superstition. Let them all come to Amsterdam, let it be compulsory for every citizen to temporarily sojourn there and imbibe the knowledge that race and religion, colour and gender mattered little in the pursuit of happiness. Look at every street where every possible human permutation seemed to flourish and no head turned to stare or finger pointed. He was transfigured by the city. It was unlike anywhere he had ever been before. Despite his little money – he had slept out once in Vondelpark before the police had stopped it and he had been forced to find a hostel – he had felt himself momentarily part of something bigger and freer than he had ever known.

And there was the art of course. Enough paintings to last a lifetime and never be able to absorb them all. He had always thought of Amsterdam as a holy place and so it secretly irked him to hear others who knew nothing of its reality reduce it to some tawdry and cheap location for licence and excess. He didn't want stag parties to come here, he didn't want a hen party of empty-headed young women to disfigure its history and beauty with their raucous hedonism. If he were totally honest he didn't want to share it and instead wanted a Christ or a ruthless government cabal to drive the moneylenders out of the temple. So let the parties of stags and hens be taken from the airport and diverted to some simulation of their fantasy about the city. There was only one person he wanted to share its truth with and that was Jack. It might well have been foolish but he had started to think that this weekend could be the beginning of something better for them and that by bringing his son here the city might be able to work its power and free him from himself, or whatever it was that seemed to bind his spirit, and just perhaps it might stir his soul in the way that it had done for his father all those years ago. So as they left Central Station on foot, re-creating his very first journey, he glanced at his son who had already established a pattern of not walking beside him but about two paces behind his right shoulder that meant he had to twist his neck to see him, and was pleased to observe the curiosity and even a little trepidation in his eyes that surreptitiously scanned the throng.