‘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.
‘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.
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.
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.’