‘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 been 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.
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.’
‘So what have you done, where have you been, what are you going to do? Tell me everything!’
‘The flower market, cycling around the canals. We’re going to the Van Gogh Museum tomorrow, and a canal cruise if we have time.’
‘That’s all the pretty-pretty tourist stuff — you need to see the other Amsterdam. We should all hang out! What are you doing right now?’
I felt, instinctively, that my itinerary was under threat. ‘Actually, we’re going to the Anne Frank House, then the Rembrandt House Museum.’
‘Well, we don’t have to,’ said Connie. ‘We can go tomorrow.’
‘Why don’t you guys go without us?’ said Albie, hopefully. Clearly the idea of the four of us ‘hanging out’ was as unlikely and awkward to Albie as it was to me. ‘Me and Cat want to go and explore.’
‘I really want to take you to the Anne Frank House, Albie. I think you should see it.’
‘I’m too tired to do much more, Douglas,’ said Connie treacherously. ‘Perhaps we should go tomorrow morning?’
‘No! No, it’s the Van Gogh Museum tomorrow. We’re leaving in the afternoon.’
‘Wouldn’t you rather see the real Amsterdam?’
No, Cat, dammit, no! I had no desire to see the real Amsterdam. We had reality back in Berkshire, that’s not why we were here; we had no interest in the way things really were. A perfectly co-ordinated schedule of sightseeing was unravelling before my eyes. ‘If we don’t go to the Anne Frank House today, the whole plan falls apart.’ I felt myself getting shrill.
‘Let us at least grab some lunch and chill out though, yeah? I’ve got a bike, and I know this amazing vegetarian buffet in De Pijp …’
Chickpeas like little balls of limestone. Some kind of bland, spongy curd cheese. Spinach like the algae on a Chinese beach, cold okra like a bucket of slugs. Necrotic avocado, sandy couscous, flaccid courgettes in a green-grey water sauce made from water. Kidney beans! Just plain cold kidney beans, exquisitely emptied from the can.
‘Isn’t it incredible? Who needs meat!’ said Cat who, the last time I saw her, had been stuffing her rucksack with bacon like some crazed taxidermist.
‘We ate a lot of meat in Paris. A lot,’ said Connie, shifting allegiance in the most audacious way.
‘I hope you didn’t eat foie gras,’ warned Cat, one finger pointed in my face.
‘No, just duck, steak, duck, pâté, duck, steak …’
‘And it was all delicious, I thought.’
‘Dad won’t eat anything unless it’s got a face.’
‘I don’t think I heard anyone complain at the time.’
‘It’s very hard to get top-notch veggies in Paris. Kind of bungs you up after a while, though, doesn’t it?’ said Cat, puffing out her cheeks. ‘Especially with all those baguettes. At least this bread has got some goodness in it.’ The bread was rubbery and dense like window putty, and sprinkled with the contents of the baker’s dustpan. ‘I’m going in again! Who’s coming for more delicious veggies?’ and off Cat and Albie hopped to the buffet bar, where the tea-lights beneath silver hoppers kept the food pleasingly tepid.
I returned to my plate with a sigh. ‘There is nothing here that, if you threw it against a wall, wouldn’t stick and slide down very slowly.’
‘Except the bread,’ laughed Connie.
‘The bread would ricochet off and take out an eye.’
‘Well, you did say you wanted to try new things.’
‘I only want to try new things that I know I’m going to like,’ I said, and Connie laughed. ‘Does she only ever eat from buffets, I wonder?’
‘Leave her alone. I like her.’
‘Really? You’ve changed your tune.’
‘She’s fine when she calms down. And look at them. It’s sweet.’ Over at the buffet, they stood shoulder to shoulder, trying to choose between norovirus and listeria. ‘Young love. Were we once like that, Douglas, I wonder?’
‘It’s three fifteen. If we’re going to get to the Anne Frank House we need to go now.’
‘Douglas, can we leave it be? Even the Gestapo didn’t want to get there this much.’
‘Connie!’
‘We’re spending time with Albie, doing what he wants to do. Isn’t that what you wanted?’
And so we polished off our watery curd, paid and mounted our bikes and spent the afternoon touring the outer rings of Amsterdam, Cat pointing out the amazing little bars, the squats where she’d stayed, the skateboard parks and huge estates and street markets. In truth much of it was perfectly nice and it was interesting, I suppose, to see where the Moroccan population lived, the Surinamese and the Turks. But as we looped back towards the centre, another destination became clear.