Us

  ‘Where is she, by the way?’

  ‘She’s over by the DJ, talking to Angelo.’

  And there he was, leaning over her, his arms braced on either side as if preventing her escape. In fairness, she didn’t seem too keen to leave, laughing as she was, touching her hair, her face. I picked up two bottles of beer and approached. In honour of this very special day, Angelo had ironed his mechanic’s overalls and shaved his head, and he ran both hands over his scalp as he followed Connie’s look and watched me approach.

  ‘Angelo, this is Douglas.’

  ‘Wotcha, Douglas.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Angelo.’ Keen to avoid awkwardness or rancour, I had decided to adopt an amiable, amused demeanour, pointedly relaxed, but he took both my hands, which were encumbered with beer bottles, and pulled me close. Angelo was my height but distinctly broader, his eyes unblinking, very blue, a little crazed – the much-vaunted ‘intensity’, I suppose, turning our conversation into a staring competition.

  ‘What’s up, my friend? Are you nervous?’ he said as I looked away.

  ‘No, not at all. Why would I be?’

  ‘Because you’re sweating like a bastard.’

  ‘Yes, I know. It’s this jacket. Bad choice, I’m afraid.’

  He was holding my lapels now. ‘Corduroy. From the French, “cord du roi”, cloth of the king.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Well, I’ve taught you something. A noble fabric, very regal. And it’s always good to hear your trousers when you walk, so people know you’re coming. Means you can’t sneak up on people and BOO.’

  I jumped and he laughed. ‘Angelo,’ said Connie. I was aware of being bested by this man, and of hating him with a venom that I found new and invigorating.

  ‘Clearly Connie’s a lucky lady,’ he continued. ‘Lucky to be shot of yours truly, at least. I presume she’s mentioned me.’

  ‘No. No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Angelo grinned and reached for the knot of my tie. ‘Here, you’re coming undone.’

  ‘Angelo, leave it, please,’ said Connie, a hand on his arm. Angelo stepped back and laughed.

  ‘Well, we should hang out, yeah? The four of us. That’s my girlfriend, over there, Su-Lin,’ and he indicated a girl out on the factory floor, dancing in her bra and a deerstalker hat. ‘Here …’ and he mopped my forehead with a greasy napkin, tucked it in my top pocket and loped off, howling.

  ‘He’s really drunk,’ said Connie. ‘He gets a bit manic when he’s drunk.’

  ‘Well I liked him. I liked him a lot.’

  ‘Douglas …’

  ‘I like the way he doesn’t blink, it’s very attractive.’

  ‘Don’t start, please.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The rutting-stag thing. He was a big part of my life, a long, long time ago. The important word is was, he was – past tense. He was what I needed at that time in my life.’

  ‘And what do you need at this time in your life?’

  ‘I’m not even going to answer that.’ She took my hand. ‘Come on. Let’s go up to the roof and dry you out.’

  71. firsts

  The early days of any relationship are punctuated with a series of firsts – first sight, first words, first laugh, first kiss, first nudity, etc., with these shared landmarks becoming more widely spaced and innocuous as days turn to years, until eventually you’re left with first visit to a National Trust property or some such.

  We had our first major argument that night, a significant landmark in any relationship, but upsetting nonetheless because everything up to that point had been, well, bliss. I’ve made that point, I think. Just bliss.

  As usual, Connie had been drinking – we had both been drinking – and was dancing now with no clear intention of ever stopping. She was always an exceptional dancer, did I mention that? Self-contained, rather aloof. She had a particular face when she danced, intent and inward-looking. Lips parted, eyelids heavy. Frankly, there was something rather sensual about it. At a family wedding, I was once told by my sister that I danced like someone wrestling with a bout of diarrhoea, clenched and anxious, and so I had chosen not to light up any dance-floors since. Instead I leant against the wall and ran through a mental list of all the things I wished I’d said to Angelo. He was still there, of course, dancing with a champagne bottle in his hand and Su-Lin riding on his back.

  It was time for me to go home. I crossed the floor to Connie.

  ‘I think I might head home,’ I shouted, over the clanging music.

  She steadied herself with her hand on my forearm. ‘Okay,’ she said. Her make-up was smeared, her hair sticking to her forehead, dark patches on her dress.

  ‘D’you want to come with me?’

  ‘No,’ she said, and pressed her cheek to mine. ‘You go.’

  And I should have gone, right then, and waited for her at home. Instead …

  ‘You know, just one time, you might at least try to persuade me.’

  She looked puzzled. ‘Okay. Stay. Please.’

  ‘I don’t want to stay. I’m not talking to anyone. I’m bored. I want to go.’

  She shrugged. ‘So go. I don’t see what the problem is.’

  I shook my head and began to walk away. She followed. ‘Douglas, if you don’t tell me what’s wrong, I’ll have to guess.’

  ‘Sometimes I think you’re happier when I’m not around.’

  ‘How can you say that! That’s not true.’

  ‘So why do we never go out with your friends?’

  ‘We’re here, aren’t we?’

  ‘But not together. You bring me here then walk away.’

  ‘You’re the one who wants to leave!’

  ‘But you’re not exactly desperate for me to stay.’

  ‘Douglas, you’re an individual. Go if you want, we’re not joined at the hip.’

  ‘Because God forbid we should be that close!’

  She tried to laugh. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand – are you angry because I’m having fun? Is it because Angelo’s here? Don’t walk away, explain it.’

  We were in a concrete stairwell now, storming down the flights past furtive guests kissing or smoking or doing goodness knows what. ‘Why do you never introduce me to your friends?’

  ‘I do! Don’t I?’

  ‘Not if you can help it. When we do go out it’s just you and me.’

  ‘Okay then, because you wouldn’t enjoy it. You don’t want to go clubbing or stay up all night, you’re too worried about work so I don’t invite you.’

  ‘You think I’d spoil the fun.’

  ‘I think you wouldn’t have fun, which means I wouldn’t have fun.’

  ‘I think there’s another reason.’

  ‘Go on then.’

  ‘I think you’re embarrassed by me sometimes.’

  ‘Douglas, that’s ridiculous. I love you, why would I be embarrassed by you? Don’t I come home to you every night?’

  ‘When there’s no one else around.’

  ‘And isn’t that better? Just the two of us? Don’t you love that? Because I do! I fucking treasure it, and I thought you did too.’

  ‘I do! I do.’

  We found ourselves out on the street, a wasteland really, the buildings in various stages of demolition. On the roof of the factory above us, there was laughter and music. Faces peered down. Perhaps Angelo was watching us too, down here amongst the breezeblocks and paving slabs, our argument losing its momentum and starting to seem foolish.

  ‘Do you want me to come round later?’ she said.

  ‘No. Not tonight.’

  ‘So do you want me to come right now?’

  ‘No, you have your fun. I’m sorry if I got in your way.’

  ‘Douglas …’

  I began to walk away. The sky was darkening. Summer was over, autumn on the way. It was the last good day of the year and I felt, for the first time since we had met, the old inexpressible sadness of life without her.

&
nbsp; ‘Douglas?’

  I turned.

  ‘You’re going the wrong way. The train’s in that direction.’

  She was right, but I was too proud to go back past her and it was only as I wandered through the rubble, clambering over fences pursued by Alsatians, hugging the crash barriers of dual carriageways as lorries stormed by, hopelessly lost, that I realised our first argument had masked another first.

  She had told me that she loved me.

  It was the first time anyone had said the words without some qualifying clause. Had I imagined it? I didn’t think so. No, it had definitely been there. I might have clicked my heels with joy, the first person to have done so on the Blackwall Tunnel Approach, but I had bodged the moment, so tangled up in petulance and self-pity, so befuddled with jealousy and alcohol that I’d not even bothered to acknowledge it. I stopped and looked about me, trying to get my bearings, then began to walk back the way I’d come.

  For such a large building, the factory was proving quite elusive and after half an hour of wandering through the wasteland, I’d begun to think that I would be too late, that the reception would be over. Just as I was about to give up and find the nearest tube, I saw three bursts of light in the night sky, the sound booming after. Fireworks, a rocket exploding over the factory like a rescue flare. I turned and ran towards it.

  They were playing ironic slow songs now; it was ‘Three Times a Lady’ as I walked in, if I recall. Connie was sitting alone on the opposite side of the dance-floor, elbows on her knees. I walked towards her and saw her smile then frown in quick succession, and before she could speak I said:

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m an idiot.’

  ‘You are, sometimes.’

  ‘And I apologise. I’m trying not to be.’

  ‘Try harder,’ she said, then stood and our arms were around each other. ‘How could you think those things, Douglas?’

  ‘I don’t know, I get … nervous. You’re not going anywhere, are you?’

  ‘I wasn’t planning to, no.’

  We kissed, and after a while I said, ‘You too, by the way.’

  ‘You too what?’

  ‘I love you too.’

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I’m glad that’s settled.’

  The following January, some eleven months after we had met, I drove Connie in a hired van from Whitechapel to Balham, checking the rear-view mirror as if looking for pursuers, with the hope and the intention that she would never leave my side again.

  72. erotic realism

  We passed an uneventful night in our honeymoon suite. On our return from an early supper in a Jordaan café, I filled up the Jacuzzi in the hope that Connie might join me. ‘Let’s fire this baby up!’ I said, and clambered in. But the sensation was rather like being thrown into the propellers of the Portsmouth to Cherbourg ferry, and the noise disturbed Connie, who had got into bed early to read.

  ‘Care to join me?’ I bellowed coquettishly.

  ‘No, you have fun,’ she said.

  ‘I’m setting it to turbo!’ The roar of jet engines. ‘IT’S VERY RELAXING!’

  ‘Douglas, turn it off! I’m trying to read,’ snapped Connie and returned to her book. Despite the pleasant day, we had not quite shaken off the scene on the train and I reflected, not for the first time, how our arguments seemed to have a longer half-life these days. Like colds and hangovers, they took an age to shake off and the reconciliation, if it came at all, didn’t have quite the same decisiveness that it once had. I climbed from the infernal machine, we set about jettisoning the great piles of velvet pillows and silk cushions, and closed our eyes. The next day was the Rijksmuseum, and I would need my wits about me.

  73. saskia van uylenburgh

  For a feeling of true righteousness and invulnerability, there’s nothing quite like riding a bicycle in Amsterdam. The traditional power relationship with the car is reversed and you’re part of a tribe of overwhelming numbers, sitting high in the peloton, looking down on the bonnets of those foolish or weak enough to drive. Here people cycled with a reckless swagger, talking on the phone, eating breakfast, and on a bright, beautiful August day, our bicycles purring and rattling down Herengracht to the Golden Corner, there seemed no better place to be.

  To the right, the Rijksmuseum. There is, I suppose, no set template for a national museum, but even so, I was struck by – not its plainness, but its lack of pretension. No columns or white marble, no Classical aspirations, none of the Louvre’s palatial splendour but a kind of municipal functionality; a fine train station or an ambitious town hall.

  Inside, the central atrium was immense and luminous and I felt – we all felt, I think – a renewed enthusiasm for the Tour. Even Albie, red-eyed and smoky-smelling from last night’s unspecified adventure, was enlivened by it all. ‘S’nice,’ he said exultantly, and we strode on to the galleries.

  That was a good morning. At occasional moments, Connie even took my hand, a gesture that I associate with either youth or senility, but which here seemed to signify that I was forgiven. We went from room to room with the same glacial slowness I’d experienced at the Louvre, but I didn’t mind this time. As well as art, there was an immense model galleon the size of a family car, glass cases full of ferocious weapons and, in the Gallery of Honour, the most extraordinary room of paintings. I am, as I think I mentioned, no art critic, but what was striking about Dutch art was how familiar and domestic it all felt. No Greek or Roman gods here, no crucifixions or Madonnas. Kitchens, back gardens, alleyways, piano practice, letters written and received, oysters that seemed wet to the touch, milk captured in mid-flow so accurately that you could almost taste it. Yet there was nothing banal or drab about any of it. There was pride, joy even, in the everyday scenes and portraits of real personalities, flawed and vain, muddled and silly. Pudgy and coarse-featured, the older Rembrandt was not a handsome man and in Self-portrait as the Apostle Paul, he looked frankly knackered, eyebrows raised and ruined face crumpled with a weariness that I recognised all too well. Recognition was not something I had felt in front of the saints, gods and monsters of the Louvre, splendid though they were. This was great art and the postcard bill was going to be immense.

  In an imposing dark blue room the three of us sat, elbow to elbow, in front of The Night Watch, which, my guidebook said, was probably the fourth most famous painting in the world. ‘What do you think are the top three?’ I asked, but no one wanted to play that game, so I looked at the painting instead. There was a lot going on. It had, as my father would say, a good beat, a good tune, and I pointed out all the little details – the funny expressions, the jokes, the gun going off accidentally – that I’d picked up from the guidebook, in case Albie missed them. ‘Did you know,’ I said, ‘that Rembrandt never gave it that name? The scene isn’t really happening at night. The old varnish darkened and made it gloomy. Hence The Night Watch.’

  ‘You’re full of interesting facts,’ said Connie.

  ‘Did you know the painting contains a self-portrait of Rembrandt? He’s right at the back, peeking over that man’s shoulder.’

  ‘Why not put the guidebook down now, Douglas?’

  ‘If I had one criticism to make of it—’

  ‘Oh. This’ll be good,’ said Albie. ‘Dad’s got notes.’

  ‘If I had one criticism it would be the little girl in gold.’ In a shaft of light, a little to the left of centre, a girl of eight or nine is beautifully dressed in exquisite robes with, somewhat anomalously, a chicken tied to her belt. ‘I’d say, “Rembrandt, listen, I love the painting, but you might want to take one more look at the little girl with the chicken. She looks really, really old. She’s got the face of a fifty-year-old woman, it’s quite disconcerting and it draws attention from the centre of the—”’

  ‘That’s Saskia.’

  ‘Who’s Saskia?’ said Albie.

  ‘Rembrandt’s wife. He used her as the female model for lots of his paintings. He was devoted to her. So they say.’

  ‘Oh. Really?’ There had bee
n nothing about this in the guidebook. ‘D’you think she thought it a bit strange?’

  ‘Maybe. Perhaps she would have liked it, her husband imagining her youth, before he met her. Anyway, she probably never saw it. She died while he was painting it.’

  This all seemed very unlikely to me. ‘So, either he painted it while she was dying …’

  ‘Or he painted her face from memory.’

  ‘His older wife dressed as a young girl.’

  ‘In loving memory of her. As a tribute, after she’d gone.’

  And I didn’t quite know what to make of this, except perhaps to note that artists in general really are very strange.

  74. the real amsterdam

  We didn’t leave the museum until early afternoon, exhausted but inspired and with our schedule still in good shape. Sitting in the Museumplein, I identified several local lunch options, but Albie seemed engaged in some electronic conversation, giggling over the screen of his phone for reasons that became clear as I felt two fingers jab into my spine.

  ‘Don’t move, Petersen! Buffet police! We have reason to suspect you’re carrying a concealed pain au chocolat.’

  ‘Cat! Well, what a surprise!’ said Connie, a little tightly. ‘Albie, you trickster.’ Albie was grinning in an unlovable way, delighted at the playing out of his brilliant little joke.

  ‘I followed you – all the way from Paris! Hope I didn’t freak you out there, Mr P., it’s just Albie told me where you were and I couldn’t resist. Come here, you beautiful boy!’ and here she grabbed our son’s face with both hands and gave him a smacking kiss that echoed across the park. ‘How’s the ’Dam? Are you having a wild time? Isn’t it an amazing city?’

  ‘We’re having a very nice time, thank you—’

  ‘Yeah, Albie told me you’ve checked him in to some kinky knocking-shop. Sounds hysterical.’

  ‘It’s not kinky,’ I said patiently, ‘it’s boutique.’