The Light of Amsterdam (30 page)

Instinct told him that the worst thing he could do now was to do anything and so he simply set the bag with his son's leather jacket on the chair beside the television and, as Jack registered him in his peripheral vision, quietly asked, ‘
OK
?' Almost imperceptibly his son nodded then curled a little tighter, one hand pressed between his head and the pillow. But it was enough and he felt a surge of relief shoot through him. Taking off his coat and shoes he stretched out on the bed and glanced at the foetal fold of his son's body. He remembered the music he had heard in the church and for a few seconds it blocked out what seemed like the frantic screech of guitars, the caterwauling of some stiff-limbed marionette of a singer. Ten years ago he would have reached out his arm and embraced his son but now there was no arm long enough to bridge the gap that the intervening years imposed between them, so he too curled on the bed and tried for a moment to let nothing but his own weariness flow through him. Almost at once he felt sleep coming on and knew there was nothing he could do to stop it.

But there was no respite in his dreams and at one moment he was confronted with an art-history examination upon which his job depended but for which he had done no revision, then in another he was wandering lost in Vondelpark unable to find the exit, while all around him young men and women raced past him in their running gear with mocking smiles and shouting directions he couldn't understand. Then he was back in the church of his childhood looking up at the blue tableau instructing him to ‘Worship the Lord in the Beauty of Holiness' and a babble of voices telling him everything would be well if he could only find what this requisite beauty was, but the more he searched the more he struggled to understand its meaning.

When he woke some time later he felt a second's confusion about where he was and then in the gloom glanced towards his son who had loosened himself from the tightness of his shape and stretched into sleep. He had partly covered himself with the duvet and the now-silent television was a splurge of psychedelic colour from some music video. Even though his watch told him that he had slept for over an hour part of him wanted to fall back on the pillow and plunge into an even deeper and dreamless sleep. But they had the concert that night even though he was unsure if Jack would go, and if Jack didn't go then he couldn't go either because he wouldn't leave him on his own again. He reached for his book of Van Gogh's letters but needed more light and he didn't want to switch one on, so instead turned his eyes to the coloured flickering of the television. All his life Van Gogh had longed for what he saw as the ideal happiness of a family. He'd offer him a swap, a family for the paintings, see how genuine his desire really was. Hang a family round his neck and see what that did to his art. But he knew it wasn't his family that carried the blame for what had happened to his own painting. His work was distinguished only by its meaninglessness – apart from a very few early years, had he ever truly believed in it? And if he didn't believe in it then how could he expect anyone else to do so? It all just felt part of the game, something in which you attired yourself to fulfil the obligations of the role, wrapping yourself in abstraction that you used to suggest an intellectual depth but whose purpose was to mask the deficiencies of technique. Not embarrassing deficiencies but insistent enough to whisper that whatever talent you had would never amount to what you wanted it to be. He looked across at Jack, saw that even in sleep his back seemed pulled taut like the stretched string of a bow and how he had burrowed and scissored his legs under the warmth of the duvet. For a moment he thought that the very best thing they could do was to climb into their beds and not wake until the morning and then take the plane home, but no sooner had he done so than his son started to stir, giving one of those curious snuffles that made him sound like a small sleep-sodden animal emerging from winter hibernation.

He knew he had to be patient, that trying to hurry him would produce the opposite effect, so to avoid letting his son know that he had been looking at him he turned on to his back and stared at the ceiling which wore a melded transfer of confused light from the outside streetlights and the television. Although it pained and confused him to admit it the Van Gogh paintings had disappointed him a little but he wasn't entirely sure why. Perhaps it was because there were too many of them with too much intensity of colour, too much intensity of feeling. And intensity of feeling was something he had decided that he didn't want any more about anything. Now he only wanted to step into the respite of the shadows, not to be constantly confronted with scrutiny and situations that required responses that were outside the comfortable range of what he knew best. So they were going to take the secret garden of education and lay it open to accountability and every aspect of his job was to be measured and analysed. He didn't think he had any chance of producing the research he had burbled on about and there was a limit to how long he could rely on Stan's friendship to protect him.

Jack shuffled his legs under the quilt and then shivered his shoulders as if he was thinking of waking. He couldn't even begin to predict what his son's mood would be when he woke but the relief that the storm seemed to have blown itself out didn't prevent him from feeling irked by the fact that he had been tried and found guilty of failure, when all his son's frequent screw-ups were met ultimately only by forgiveness. And what would be his sentence? Pushed to the margins of his son's later life, their relationship marked by increasing indifference and even embarrassment until the gaps between their functional encounters grew ever longer. He asked himself if it mattered, if in the long run it was better that way than rubbing each other raw over memories that couldn't be changed. He looked at his watch – there was still plenty of time and he lifted the book again but as he glanced at the shadowed blur of words he knew it couldn't be read. He needed glasses.

A week earlier a young woman, not much older than his daughter, had told him that he needed reading glasses. Another test he'd failed. He remembered the way she slipped the lenses into the heavy metal glasses with the flourish of the magician. ‘Is it clearer with this one or with this one?' Sometimes he wasn't sure and then she gave him her gentle patience. Perhaps glasses would make him appear like a teacher. He had thought of asking her as an attempt at a joke but instead concentrated on trying to get his answers right. He remembered, too, how she had put her head close to his and shone her light in his eye, told him to look into it, and how it seemed as if she was gazing not into his eye but deep into his being, and how intimate it had felt. Perhaps glasses would change the way things looked. Perhaps everything would be clear.

‘What time is it?' Jack asked, the back of his hand sandpapering his cheek.

‘Six. Do you want to get something to eat in a while?'

‘Yes, but not Burger King.'

‘No, not Burger King. Do you want to go to the concert or would you rather give it a miss?'

‘Go of course – isn't that why you came? To see Dylan – isn't that why you came?'

‘Yes, but we don't have to. I know it's not exactly your cup of tea.'

‘I don't mind. Most of the early stuff is shitty but some of the new stuff is
OK
.'

He wanted to say that most people thought it was the other way round but instead he switched on his bedside light and started to look for his shoes. Jack slithered past him into the bathroom, his clothes crimped and wrinkled, a tuft of his hair sticking up from his head like an aerial from a roof. After savouring the relief of having his son talking to him again he tried to kindle some excitement about the concert which in many ways was the late fulfilment of a long-standing ambition, but there were too many other thoughts pressing against his anticipation for it to be successful. Going to the window he looked down into the street where two girls riding tandem on a scooter were engaged in what looked like an animated conversation, one waving her arm to emphasise some point. In the bathroom he heard Jack flush the toilet and a few minutes later he emerged, the errant tufts of hair plastered back into place.

‘Why don't you put your jacket on?' he said, pointing to the bag that still rested on the chair. ‘It looks cold out there.' He saw his son's uncertainty, probably reluctant to be seen to acquiesce to any of his father's suggestions, however sensible. ‘It's up to you,' he added, shrugging to provide the necessary leeway and to suggest personal indifference.

Jack considered, as if faced with a major decision, but then took the jacket out of the bag and put it on, letting his hood flop out over his collar. He was going to say that he looked good but decided that compliments would probably not be helpful and instead concentrated on getting his own coat on and ensuring he had the tickets safely stowed in an inside pocket.

‘Let's get something to eat,' he said.

‘Not that Burger King place,' Jack insisted again.

‘No, somewhere different. Turn the television off.'

Jack aimed the remote like a gun as if he was shooting the television into silence. In the lift they both studied their reflections in the mirrored panel. He wondered if there would be other fathers with their sons at the concert engaging in what they probably considered a rite of passage and he was curious to see the make-up of the audience. Then as they left the hotel he concentrated on finding them somewhere to eat, knowing that it was pointless to ask Jack for a preference and knowing that if the evening was to have any prospect of success it had to start well. As they headed to the Leidseplein he felt Jack tugging his sleeve and indicating a Chinese place and surprised and relieved that the choice had been made for him he was happy to join the short queue at the counter. In the front window, open to the street, two women stir-fried in giant woks, the leaping, guttering blue flames from the gas rings glistening their faces with a sheen of sweat. Jack stood close to the counter staring intently at the closest young woman. Her hair, pulled back from her face, was a dark river glazed by the overhead lights and wisps of neon and on the bare forearm that worked the contents of the wok was a green tattoo which tailed off into mystery under the rolled sleeve of her black blouse. They both stood watching as her wrist frantically flicked and circled, finally shuffling the contents into a cardboard container before sluicing the wok and starting the next order. He persuaded Jack to order for them both and when he had given their name they took their place at one of the long benches and watched the street outside.

A stag party went by where all the men were dressed as Santa Claus, some of them ringing bells and singing ‘Jingle Bells'. Soon it would be Christmas and that awareness stirred a new apprehension. Last year he had been allowed to have his dinner with Susan and his children but now they were divorced and of course Gordon had arrived on the scene. Susan had always been vague about her boyfriend's marital status and he didn't doubt that he trailed some complex family baggage in his wake but what did that matter if they chose to spend their first Christmas together? Where that left him was precisely nowhere except celebrating on his own in a flat above a flower shop. He shivered a little and the prospect wasn't warmed by the possibility that as a parental trade-off Caroline and Jack might come to him on Boxing Day which he already imagined as a stilted embarrassment that would surely flounder on the ineptitude of his cooking and his children's furtive watch-glancing. One of the Santa gang who had lagged behind jogged past them, wearing reindeer horns that flashed red light at their tips and carrying a brown sack over his shoulder. As two young women in short skirts drew level he stopped them and gave them something out of his sack that made them squeal with embarrassed laughter. Jack sniggered.

‘What did he give them?' he asked his son.

‘You don't want to know,' Jack said, still smiling.

He was sure he didn't but grateful that it had made his son smile, something about which he had long since conceded failure. Their name was called and without being asked Jack clambered back over the bench to collect their food at the counter. He suddenly seemed more confident, his diffidence in a new environment easing a little, as if he was finding his feet, understanding how things worked. It was even possible that he would come to like this place if in a completely different way to his father.

The food was good and from time to time as they ate they watched the young woman with the wok, the jade green of her tattoo quivered into motion by the light and the dexterous speed of her body. He didn't know what his son was thinking but he thought if he sat there much longer he could fall in love with her and in his imagination he walked up to her and told her that he would look after her all the rest of her life and that she would never need to work again if she would only come home with him. Why could life not spin into something better on the most crazy of impulses, on chance, on placing all your chips on the most unlikely of outcomes? He listened to Jack slurping the last of his noodles and crushing the empty drinks can in his clenched fist. Why did he always have to do that with his empty cans? It made him look brutish and, whatever he was, he wasn't that. So in silent opposition he lifted his own empty can and held it as if studying it, rotating it slowly so he was able to inspect it from every angle.

The young woman paused to fix a clip in her hair, wipe her brow and drink from a bottle of water. To capture the frozen stillness of that momentary beauty for ever, to lift it from the chaos and transience of time – there was nothing he wouldn't have given to be able to achieve that. But without letting the thought linger he told himself that perhaps his future life would be happier if he admitted finally that he was not going to be that artist and the part he had been chosen to play was to support and advocate those who could. She turned to take her next order from the little row of squares of paper and then was lost to him as the queue at the counter thickened.