Us (17 page)

The honeymoon suite was the colour of a kidney. It smelt of lilies and some kind of citrus disinfectant and was dominated by an immense four-poster from which the canopy was missing, leading me to wonder what function the posts served, since they had no structural purpose. Black sheets, hot-pink bolsters, purple cushions and crimson pillows were piled in the absurd Himalayan ranges that now seem to be
de rigueur
, but in this case were presumably there to create a kind of pornographic soft-play area. In stark contrast to all the mahogany and velvet, a huge off-white Bakelite contraption stood adjacent to the bed on a raised dais, like the kind of specialised bath you'd find in an old people's home.

‘What is
that
?' said Connie, still giggling.

‘Our very own Jacuzzi!' I pressed one of the worn buttons on the control panel and the tub was lit from below by pink and green lights. Another button and the thing began to churn and grind like a hovercraft. ‘Just like our honeymoon,' I shouted over the roar.

Connie was quite hysterical now, as was Albie, entering through the adjoining door to laugh at our room. ‘You can really pick a hotel, Dad.'

I was feeling defensive. I had made the booking, and the hotel was meant to be a treat, but I did my best to remain good-humoured. ‘How's your room, Egg? Dare I ask?'

‘It's like sleeping in a vagina.'

‘Albie! Please …'

‘There's a massive picture of lesbians kissing over my bed. They're freaking me out.'

‘We have this masterpiece,' and Connie indicated a large tinted canvas of a spiky-haired lady fellating some fluorescent tube lighting. ‘I don't know much about art, but I know what I like.'

‘She's going to get a shock, licking that,' I said.

‘Isn't it outrageous?' said Connie. ‘So seedy. I feel like I want to wipe everything down with a damp J-cloth.'

‘Look,' I said. ‘Tea-making facilities.'

‘Kinky. I wonder what the breakfast buffet's going to be like?' said Albie.

‘Oysters,' said Connie, ‘and great trays of cocaine.'

‘Well, I like it,' I said. ‘It's boutique!' and I did my best to laugh along.

When everyone had calmed down, we stepped out to a pleasant café in the Noordermarkt, and sat in the square beneath the handsome church there. We ate cheese toasties and drank small glasses of delicious beer, trying out our Dutch accents, an accent like no other in the world. ‘It's a little bit cockney, a little bit sing-song,' said Connie. ‘And the “S”s have a “sh” sound to them. ‘“Sho – welcome to our shex hotel. If you require anything – handcuffsh, a courshe of penischillin …”'

‘No one talks like that,' I said, though it wasn't bad.

‘Nonshenshe. It'sh perfect.'

‘You sound like Sean Connery.'

‘Because, Egg, that's exactly how it sounds – it's a Germanic cockney Sean Connery.' And perhaps it was the beer at lunchtime, or the sun on our faces, or the charm of that particular corner, but it was as if the Petersens had decided that we liked Amsterdam very much, that it would suit us very well, after all, as a family.

Until then I really only knew the city in winter, in the rain. It had been raining on our first trip here, in November, nine months or so after we had first met, yet still very much during our prolonged probationary period. Connie had been endeavouring to incorporate me into her social life, with the caution usually reserved for releasing zoo animals into the wild. As part of the programme, we had gone to Amsterdam with Genevieve and Tyler, two friends from her college who had recently married. As artists, I'd presumed they'd be keen to see the Rembrandts and Vermeers, but they seemed much more interested in nodding their heads in various coffeehouses. Smoking cannabis held little appeal for me. I did my bit, but one puff of Purple Haze – or Cherry Bomb or Laughing Buddha – instilled a degree of anxiety and paranoia that was remarkable even for me. Certainly I felt no desire to giggle as the blood drained from my face and the dread took hold. I decided to leave them to it, and spent a solitary afternoon in the Anne Frank House instead.

This was shortly before Connie and I began to co-habit and my nostalgia for that first spring and summer remains undimmed. We saw each other every day, but kept separate flats, separate family and friends and social lives. There were those cultural excursions, of course, but if Connie felt the need to ‘have a late one' with her art-school pals, or go to a nightclub where things might ‘get messy', whatever that meant, then I would suggest she go alone. She rarely fought to persuade me. Sometimes I found myself wishing that she'd fight a little harder, but I did not protest. Once the party was over she'd always come and see me at two or three or four in the morning. She had a key by then – what a happy day that was, cutting that key for her – and she'd let herself in and climb wordlessly into my bed, body warm, make-up smeared, breath smelling strongly of wine and toothpaste and ‘social' cigarettes, and she would fold herself into me. Sometimes we would make love, at other times she would twitch and fidget and sweat, a restlessness that I put down to alcohol or some kind of drug use, though I knew better than to preach or pry. If she could not sleep we would talk a little, with Connie doing her best to sound sober.

‘Good party?'

‘The usual. You didn't miss anything.'

‘Who was there?'

‘People. Go back to sleep.'

‘Was Angelo there?'

‘Don't think so. He might have been, somewhere. We didn't talk very much.'

Which didn't make sense, if you thought about it.

‘And do you still love him?'

Of course I refrained from asking this latter question, despite it being foremost in my mind, because I valued sleep too much. Most people entering a relationship carry with them a dossier sub-divided into infatuations, flirtations, grand amours, first loves and sexual affairs. Compared to my sheet of lined A4, Connie possessed a three-drawered filing cabinet of the things, but I had no desire to flick through the faces. After all, she was here, wasn't she? At two and three and four in the morning, all through that wonderful first spring, that glorious first summer.

But there was no escaping Angelo. She had once believed, she said, that they were soul-mates, until it transpired that he had many other soul-mates dotted around London. Quite apart from the flagrant infidelity, his other offences were legion. He had undermined her confidence, jeered at her work, made remarks about her looks, her weight, screamed at her in public places, thrown things, even stolen money from her. There had been a mercifully brief allusion to him being ‘a bit dark in the bedroom' and certainly there had been physical fights, which shocked and angered me, though she insisted she had ‘given as good as she got'. He was a drinker, an addict, unreliable, belligerent, childishly provocative, rude. ‘Intense', she said. In short, he was everything that I was not. So what possible appeal could he hold for her now? All that was student stuff, she said. Besides, Angelo had a new girlfriend anyway, beautiful and cool and they had so many friends in common, they were bound to bump into each other, weren't they? No real harm done, nothing to worry about. I would meet him too, some day soon.

And so it came to pass, at the wedding of Genevieve and Tyler, one of those ferociously unconventional affairs – the bride and groom entering the reception on a motorbike, I recall and, for their first dance, pogo-ing wildly to French punk. No white marquee for Genevieve and Tyler. The party was held in a soon-to-be-demolished prosthetic limb factory on the Blackwall Tunnel Approach, and was a good deal edgier and more nihilistic than the weddings I'd been used to. I'd never seen quite so many angular people in one industrial space before, all under thirty – no jolly aunts in hats here – all enjoying a buffet of ironic kebabs. I'd taken a gamble on a new corduroy suit, and the heavy fabric on a warm September day, combined with a certain self-consciousness on my part, was causing me to perspire to a quite startling degree. Beneath the jacket, dark circles of sweat had formed. My contortions beneath the hand-dryer had had little effect, and so now I stood perspiring as I watched Connie talk to beautiful people.

I think I can honestly say that I've never met a biochemist that I didn't like. My friends and colleagues might not have been particularly glamorous but they were open, generous, funny, kind, modest. Welcoming. Connie's clan was a different proposition. Noisy, cynical, overly concerned with the appearance of things, and on the few occasions I had visited her shared studio – a garage, really, in Hackney – or went to private views, I had felt awkward and excluded, loitering at the edge like a dog tied up outside a shop. I had wanted to be involved in Connie's work, to show interest and enthusiasm because she really was a wonderful painter. But being with her artist friends drew attention to differences that I was keen to play down.

They weren't all monsters, of course. Artists are an eccentric temperamental bunch, with habits that would earn them short shrift in most labs, but that's to be expected. Some of them were, and remain, good friends, and several of them did make an effort at social events. But as soon as conversation turned to ‘what are you working on?' they would suddenly need to ‘go for a wee'. And so I stood there at the wedding, the human diuretic, in a puddle of malarial sweat.

‘Look at you, man! You need a salt tablet,' said Fran, Connie's old housemate. I was unsure of Fran's true feelings for me, and remain so even now that she is Albie's godmother. She has always had the particular gift of hugging and shoving away at the same time, like repelling magnets pushed together. Here she stepped back and brushed her cigarette ash off my arm. ‘Why don't you take this off?'

‘I can't now.'

She started tugging at the jacket buttons. ‘Come on, take it off!'

‘I can't, my shirt's too wet.'

‘Ah, I get it.' She placed a finger on my sternum and leant all her weight on it. ‘You, my friend, are caught in a vicious circle.'

‘Exactly. It's a vicious circle.'

‘Ahhhh,' she said, rubbing my arm. ‘Connie's lovely, lovely, funny, lovely boyfriend. You make her so happy, don't you, Dougie? You look after her, you do, you really do. And she deserves it, after all the bullshit she's been through!'

‘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.'

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.