The Light of Amsterdam (32 page)

‘Marion, what in the name of God is going on? Have you lost your senses?' In the face of his unaccustomed anger she simply shook her head and knew she was going to cry. But he softened almost immediately. ‘Are you all right, Marion? Are you . . . ?' He hesitated, obviously unsure of what word he wanted to use. ‘Is there anything you want to tell me?'

She felt that if she tried to speak the tears would come and if they did she wasn't sure whether she would be able to stop them. He took her by the sleeve of her coat but not forcefully and led her to the corner table where he had a drink sitting. His outdoor coat was draped over the back of his seat. There were only a few other couples in the bar.

‘That looks like whisky,' she said. ‘You never drink whisky.'

‘Tonight I am,' and as he guided her to a seat, ‘and you're going to join me. I think we both need a drink.'

She didn't want him to leave her even to go as far as the bar as she stared at the honey-coloured glass. The bar was almost empty but it felt as if the faces in the photographs that lined the wall were all looking at her and she turned hers from their intrusive gaze and touched the coldness of his glass with her fingertips. He set a gin and tonic in front of her.

‘Drink that and then we'll go upstairs and talk and I've no idea what it is you're going to say but you're scaring the hell out of me and it's scaring the hell out of me even more trying to imagine what it is you're going to say.' He cupped his glass and held it for a moment in front of his chest before finishing the contents.

‘Richard . . .' she started, but he stopped her and told her it wasn't the right place and she was suddenly conscious of how important it was to him that things looked right and knew how much and how clumsily she had broken that precept. So she drank the gin and tonic and tried to avoid his scrutiny. She drank it more quickly than she should have but it seemed the first requirement of what she had already started to think of as her penance. As soon as she had finished he stood up and said they should go to their room. She hadn't eaten much during the day, the gin was swirling her head a little. The faces in the photographs were staring at her with accusatory eyes and then she felt the welcome slow burn of anger expiating the shame she was expected to feel.

‘I don't want to go up to the room.'

‘We can't talk here,' he said, looking round him as if they were the focus of the few people in the bar.

‘Let's go out and walk. We can talk as we go.'

He nodded his thanks to the barman and took her arm again as if frightened that she might suddenly try to escape. When they reached the steps at the front door he slipped on his coat and as he did so he checked to see that the map was in his pocket. Instinctively she took it from him and stuffed it in hers.

‘Let's just walk. We don't need a map.'

‘What if we get lost?'

‘Then we'll just ask someone. And I don't care if we get lost.'

‘Marion, have you been smoking the wacky baccy or taken something you shouldn't have? You're really worrying me and never in my life am I going to understand what earlier was all about.'

She walked a few steps ahead of him not caring where they were heading and suddenly it struck her that she wouldn't be able to put it into simple words, that it was a tangled confusion inside her head, but she had to try and find some means of making sense of it for him, unravelling it for herself. But she wasn't ready and there was no easy way opening up for her or offering itself as the right road to take.

‘Let's just walk a while and I'll try to explain but please, Richard, never once in all the time we've been married have you been angry with me and I've valued that more than you can ever know so if it's at all possible I want you to try not to be angry with me now.' The night suddenly seemed much colder than the earlier day had rendered probable and they were passed by people scurrying to their destination rather than walking. She stopped and looked him full in the face. ‘Do you think that's possible because I don't think I can do it without that.'

‘Marion, I'm worried sick about you, not angry. You go out and a young woman comes to the room and tells me that you've sent her and she's a . . .' he struggled incredulously to remember the word, ‘ “a present”. What in the name of all that's holy am I supposed to think?'

‘She was a present, I picked her for you. It was something I wanted to give you and then we'd go back home and everything would be the way it should be.'

‘What sort of present is that? And what do you mean “the way it should be”? What's wrong with you, Marion? There must be something you're not telling me. Are you ill?'

She slipped her arm through his and steered them down a narrow side street – she wanted them to walk away from the possibility of crowds, wanted to take the canal side, but there were too many parked cars so instead they headed down the middle of the deserted street, the tall shadowy houses looming over them illuminated only in scattered random patterns.

‘No, I'm not ill but there are things that are difficult to tell you and I don't know how to do it.'

In some of the basement flats lighted windows gave tantalisingly brief glimpses of interiors as increasingly conscious of the cold they walked faster, their heads involuntarily bowed a little by the sharp-edged wind. For some inexplicable reason she thought of the nativity scene she'd bought and her favourite part – the wise men bringing their gifts. She wanted to be in her own home again and arranging it on the hall table just as she had planned. She wanted to be on her computer where everything could be managed by the simple click of the mouse.

‘And let me get this right,' he hesitated, ‘I was supposed to have sex with this person whom I assume is a prostitute.'

She cringed at the ugliness of the word, blanched at the shame of having made him use it. The incredible dangerous foolishness of it reared up before her like a mountain that could never be climbed and which threatened to shadow everything that dared approach it. It was beyond explanation but she had to try.

‘Yes, it was supposed to be something I gave you and to be private between us and never talked about again.'

‘So I was supposed to do this thing and then we'd just go home and pretend it hadn't happened.'

She knew it sounded more and more deranged when he said it like that so she didn't answer and momentarily turned her head away towards the blackness of the canal that was salted sparsely with light.

‘But why, Marion? Why? – that's what I want to know. What possible reason had you for doing this?' And as he said this he pulled her lightly back by the arm so that she was forced to stop walking and face him.

‘Because you're not happy with me, because I'm not enough for you and because it's what you want.' It spilled out even before she knew she was going to say it and she was frightened by it and the uncertainty of where it might take them.

‘And what put this in your head – that I'm not happy with you?'

She stared at him and his head was framed by the large lighted window of a room in one of the old canal houses where the walls were painted a soft yellow and a young woman was standing with a wine glass in her hand. She searched for what to say, unsure of how much she could tell him without tipping what existed between them into a new and more precarious balance. And as she struggled to reach an answer he spoke again.

‘You think I don't love you, Marion?'

And she was momentarily angry that everything was to fall back on her, that she was the one who had to provide answers to every question.

‘I know you love me, Richard, but for a long time what I think you love best is the settled comfort of it, of what we give to each other that helps us both get by and which is solid and dependable. But do you love me in a way that's more than that? I don't really know and perhaps you don't either.'

A bicycle was coming, its light a white, blinking strobe. They stepped over to the water's edge suddenly aware that they had been standing in the middle of the road.

‘Marion, I don't know where any of this is coming from, or what it's all about, but it's shaking the life out of me and I don't understand any of it.'

But she was increasingly conscious that he hadn't yet said he loved her and she felt that if he were to do so now it would be too late. She didn't know if she could ever make him fully understand.

‘You didn't like her?' she asked suddenly as she stared down at the light-stippled blackness of the water.

‘I couldn't even tell you what she looked like and it doesn't matter what she looked like because I don't want to sleep with anyone except my wife. Except with you.' To emphasise the point he rested his hand on her shoulder. For a second she thought of shrugging it off but instead she turned her collar up as if to say that she could find her own warmth.

‘Let's walk, Richard. Let's just walk.' And without waiting for a reply she set off again, this time on the same side of the street as the canal. More cyclists passed them, some with lights, some with none. ‘I went skating today, on the Museumplein. I didn't think I would remember how to do it. I thought about when we took the children to the Ice Bowl and Judith took to it so quickly that the boys had their noses put out. I don't think she even fell once.'

He paused for a second as if unsure of where she was leading him then followed and when he spoke his voice came from behind her. ‘Ice-skating, Marion? You went ice-skating? You've done some pretty strange things since we arrived here. Do you think you're having some sort of breakdown? Did you fall?'

‘No I didn't, and I didn't bang my head if that's what you're thinking, and I'm not having a breakdown,' she said as he drew level but almost walking sideways and staring at her face.

‘You asked the man in the chip shop about his family and you made me give him the money – you have to admit that was a bit weird.'

‘I thought you understood why we gave him the money,' she said, meeting his stare with an intensity that she knew he wasn't used to and which she saw confused him. And now it was her turn to ask the questions. ‘And why did we do it?'

He knew it was a test of some sort and she watched as he searched for the right answer.

‘Because you felt sorry for him?' he ventured.

‘I felt sorry for him but just the way I feel sorry for everyone in the world and that's not the reason we gave him the money.' Perhaps it was the drink she had taken too quickly or perhaps it was something else but she felt a new sense of release as she told him, ‘We did it because it was the right thing to do, because it was kind and there isn't ever enough kindness.'

‘There was no harm in it,' he said and she was aware that his voice was edged with appeasement.

‘All my life I've tried to do the right thing and what happened this afternoon was me trying to do the right thing but sometimes even when that's what you're trying to do, it comes out wrong. I suppose sometimes it's hard to know what the right thing is. Do you understand?' Never in her life had she spoken like this and for a second she wasn't sure whether the voice was hers or belonged to someone else and there was a momentary sweetness in the freedom of not having to worry about what she might say next.

‘I think so. But why did you think the girl was the right thing? Do you think I'm that sort of person?'

‘You're a good person and when I thought of it I didn't think of it as a bad thing or that even for a second it would make you a bad person. It was just something I wanted you to have.'

‘But why, Marion? In God's name, why?'

They paused at the end of the street to allow a taxi to pass. There was a young couple kissing in the back seat, sliding gratefully into a tighter embrace as the car cornered. Across the street bristled a small working-class bar, its lace-curtained, bevelled windows fogged with heat and music. It felt as if the whole city was shut indoors, warming itself on friendship and laughter, a world from which they had excluded themselves. She knew she owed it to them both to try and put it into words.

‘Because, Richard, you like women and because I suppose I think that sooner or later you'll want to know the pleasure of one of them. And please don't say anything now that isn't true and I know, I know, that you wouldn't ever humiliate me or openly hurt me.'

‘So you think I'm running round looking for other women?'

‘Richard, that's not what I'm saying. This is very hard for me and the only thing I'm sure about is that after we've had this conversation I never want either of us to mention it ever again. Can you promise me that?' But as soon as she said it and had glanced at him to gauge his reaction, she knew he would promise anything that would bring her back to her senses, to the person he wanted her to be. She felt the need to force him towards some understanding so she pushed recklessly further. ‘Tell me how you feel about Anka.'

‘Anka?' He said it as if he had never heard of the name and in so doing only seemed to confirm what she already believed. ‘She's a nice girl and Celina is too and a very good worker.'