(1) Prologue: ‘Be Careful in Amsterdam’ 2 страница

Was this revelation – that her father was a petty thief – what Justine had wanted to keep from her? Did it stop him being who he’d always been? She didn’t want to believe it. She refused to think of him as anything other than he was.

They were at the water’s edge now – a thin strip of bubbles glinted and popped on the dark sand. Then the water retreated and began to build before it came back.

‘But there are some things I do regret from that time of my life, Edith. I hurt some people. I do regret that.’

‘What do you mean?’ Edith felt a grip of panic – was there something more serious he was about to divulge?

‘I just want to say I was sorry for what I did to them. That I’m still sorry. But maybe it’s too late for that. Too long ago. And it might, after all, not be the right thing to do.’

He seemed to be talking in riddles. Edith had an urge to press him, to make him draw a clearer picture. But something stopped her tongue in her mouth – the sense she had that he couldn’t quite see it all plainly himself. It was a piece that needed more work.

For the first time since the previous night, she felt a little relief. If she hadn’t understood what was going on between her parents, at least she understood what was stopping Edward spelling it out. Perhaps that was what being eighteen was about.

‘Right – a swim?’ Edward shook himself and began to pull his shirt over his head.

Edith hesitated. Even with the searing afternoon heat, she knew the Pacific water would be cold. And right now she felt she wanted a little time alone. Time to turn things over in her head.

‘You go on in. I’m going to catch a bit of sun, first.’

‘OK, honey. But don’t spend the holiday worrying. Nothing’s changed, believe me.’ He threw his shirt at her so it landed on her head.

She pulled it off, laughing, and watched him scamper into the shallows, slowing down as the water deepened. Then as the next wave rose up, as if to make a grab for him, he dived beneath it and disappeared, his wake erased by the surf. Above, a cloud blew apart in the sky. The sun dipped lower, beyond its reach.

Edith spread out the towels, folded Edward’s clothes into a pile, and pulled off her top and shorts. Stretching out on her back, she spread her arms out, palms up. The cove was totally deserted. The sky now completely blue and she began to feel herself properly relax. Her father was right. However much she wanted to know what her parents weren’t telling her, she couldn’t spend the whole holiday worrying about it. People argued. That’s what they do. She would just have to learn to deal with it.

A wave slapped down and covered Edith’s feet. She woke up with a start. It was much cooler and she was lying in wet sand. The tide had come in and the towels and clothes were sodden. She jumped up, heavy with confusion and drew back towards the outcrop.

She scanned the horizon, but couldn’t see anyone. How long had she been asleep? The sun seemed much lower in the sky, the wind was stronger and the sea was stirred up. Where was her father?

She dropped the towels beside the bike and jogged back down to the water. Either side of the cove the incoming waves frothed high up the rocks then lurched back out, slapping those that followed. In between the headlands was the sinister, apparent calm of the rip. But Edward was a strong swimmer and he knew the perils of this bit of coast. He wouldn’t take any risks. He must have come out, seen she was asleep, and gone off exploring. She stood still for a moment, controlling her breath.

And then she saw him. He was trying to pull himself up on a rock on the north headland, the most turbulent part of the cove, where the waves broke and the rip prevented even the strongest swimmer from making it back to the beach. He was struggling.

Edith tried to call out but her voice didn’t seem to work. She watched him try to haul himself up. And then she saw something she’d never seen before. His face was taut with panic.

She found her voice: ‘Dad!’ she called. She was in the water, now, already up to her waist. She made a shape to dive in, but she before she could, a wave crashed into her powerfully, knocking her off balance. She scrabbled backwards before the next wave sucked her out. How could she even reach Edward, let alone bring him back to the beach? She would be pulled out to sea herself.

She stood back and tried to focus. The cove was still empty. There were no boats out at sea. She was the only one who could help him. Her heart was thumping so loudly it made it difficult for her to think. Another scan of the cove and she hit upon an idea. There was a goat track winding out onto the headland. If she could climb down from there, she might have a chance of reaching him.

‘Hold on, Dad,’ she screamed. ‘I’ll throw something down to you. Just hold on as long as you can!’

She ran back to the bike, and took the beach towels and their shirts and quickly tied them together to make a rope. Looking up she saw a wave crash over Edward. One of his hands came off the rock.

She ran up the steep incline and over the top of the cove, jumping over rocks and crashing through bushes. Her bare feet were pounded and cut by loose stones, but it was as if another person felt the pain. At the peak of the climb, she covered a stretch of yellowed grass. Her soles welcomed the softness, as if they didn’t know the urgency of what was happening. The waves were more distant now too: she could hear her own breath. Feel the burn in her calves and thighs. For a second her body almost stopped. This wasn’t happening. It seemed too stupid. Too demanding of her.

‘Come on,’ she urged herself, pushing her legs to move faster. Opening her eyes wider so that she did not miss her footing and lose precious seconds.

At the top of the descent onto the headland, she caught sight of Edward’s face. His blond hair was dark against his head. There was blood on his cheek. He was grimacing with the effort of just keeping from being drawn back out to sea.

Reaching the end of the goat track, Edith threw the rope of towels and shirts ahead of her down the rock face. She had to be careful now. To have any chance of the rope reaching him she had to climb as far down the cliff as she could. Some twenty feet of large boulders stretched below, dizzying her already pulsing head. She dodged the image of her body falling onto the rock that her father was gripping.

She stepped down, one rock at a time, careful to get a foothold at each step. Halfway down she nearly put her hand in an old gull’s nest: feathers stuck to its side, the cracked half of an empty egg. Edith found herself staring at it for a moment as her thigh muscles twitched.

Moments later the power of the waves were splashing just below her. The spray coated her shins. The scent of mashed kelp and guano surrounded her. She reached down to pick up the rope and shuffled to the edge. But her father was gone.

She stood and scoured the sea, expecting at any moment to see his bloody head. But nothing.

Think straight, she said, he might have swam back to safety. Think straight. Think adult. You’re all he’s got.

The sun had set by now. It was going to be dark very soon. Still there was no-one else around. Not even a distant figure.

Somewhere inside her, a little girl sobbed and wailed and lay down, desperate for a consoling hand. For her father to appear at the top cliff, wet and bruised, but still strong enough to pull her back up. Edith ignored her. She had no time to indulge her now. If Edward had given up and been pulled out to sea – or even if he had managed to swim back to the beach – he would still need her help.

Leaving the towels behind, she began the long climb back up the rock face, her legs feeling like they would fail her on each and every step.

At last she was re-crossing the grass, then tumbling back down to the cove, reckless about her own body now. But with every step, with every new empty yard of sand, her heart grew tighter. Edward was nowhere to be seen.

The bike was still lying at the foot of the outcrop, a silent observer of the tragedy. She dragged it up. It would play its part. There were boats. There were fishermen. They congregated in the evenings around a flotilla of upturned craft between the villa and the pueblo. If she could reach them as soon as possible, Edward still might have a chance.

Mounting the bike, she pushed against the sand, her legs now searing with pain, then stood up on the pedals to ascend the steep track out of the cove. Only when she was bowling downhill towards the villa did she allow herself a moment to stop and get her breath. Her chest was racked with pain and she was coated with a film of sweat and dust.

Passing the villa at speed, she glanced over. No car. Justine and Leila were still in town. For the first time a sob grew in a chest and swelled in her throat, forcing the tears up into her eyes.

By the time she reach the flotilla, her eyes were streaming. There were four small figures crouched in the distance. Blinking, they became eight, sixteen, more. But blinking again, they were only four – small and helpless against the implacable ocean. For a moment Edith was tempted to give it up, to save herself the pain and suspense. To believe her father had drowned.

The men were deep in conversation, their backs to her. She shouted but, huddled together, smoking and talking, they didn’t hear. As she grew closer she raised an arm, trying with hand signals to convey urgency, to mobilise the men without the delay of explanation.

‘Please!’ she shouted. ‘Por favor!’

And at last they turned. One of them stood. One of them ran to turn over his boat.

They took out their boats and searched, the small network of fishermen. Their wives searched in the shallows behind the rocks towards the far side of the cove, gliding slowly in canoes, their paddles suspended while they looked. Then another sweep, a change of direction. They instructed their children to run to the next village and alert the mothers and wives who sent out more fishermen in more boats. All came back empty.

Someone called the Mexican Navy, there being no coastguard, and soon the waters all around the little village were heaving with small craft.

And this was how things went that first night, with Edith standing on the periphery of small groups, listening, imperfectly distinguishing speculation on winds and tides and currents. Everyone had a terrible story to tell. She understood little, but enough to leave her without hope.

She was sitting on the terrace, wrapped in a blanket, when Justine and Leila finally returned. The villa’s cleaner, Maria, stopped clicking her rosary and murmuring her prayer and stood, a warm hand on Edith’s shoulder.

Justine was out of the car, taking one, then two confused steps towards the house. Then breaking into a run as she understood that some horror had occurred. She clasped Edith to her, crushing her face into her belly.

‘Just tell me.’ she gasped. ‘Just tell me.’

(4) The Manifesto

Neither Justine, nor Leila, and not even Edith, entered Edward’s studio again that year. Once or twice Edith crossed the yard and approached the door, even getting as far as putting a trembling hand on the latch. But each time, after a squint through the opaque window, a glimpse of a corner of a painting, the trace of pungent paint, she let her hand drop and turned away. What had always been her place of refuge, with its bouquet of piquant and earthy smells, its stacked canvases and papers, its paint-spattered floor, was now just a reminder that Edward had gone.

In the fall, while the house was still a quiet place, and the blinds seemed to be half-closed in grief, Justine contacted the galleries who were working on Edward’s behalf. And someone, somewhere – Edith wasn’t sure who – co-ordinated a visit. It was like the funeral all over again. Justine sat in the living room, straight-backed and calm, below Edward’s sketch of her younger self, looking for all the world as if she were posing for a painting of the tragic widow, more beautiful than ever. And in that moment Edith hated her. Hated her, she knew, because she could not understand. And she could not understand because Justine would not say.

In the weeks and months after Edward’s death, Justine had retreated. She rose every day, she cooked and she cleaned, shopped for groceries and had her hair done. She greeted every expression of sympathy with just the right, gentle smile, the correct double-blink and the appropriate dip of the head. But she did not engage. Not with anyone. Not with her friends, not with the few members of her family that visited, not with Leila, as far as Edith could see. And not with Edith herself.

So when Edith saw her, seated among the assembled luminaries of the art world, Edith wanted to tug at the perfect black dress Justine wore like a simulacrum of true grief, wanted to snatch at the understated necklace Edward had given her as a wedding present, grab her just-so hair and scream into her face, ‘Cry, damn you! Wail and cry. He’s dead! We’ll never see him again!’

But Edith had another sharp and nasty desire. Something that burned her so she had to jump up, leave the room and stand for moment on the staircase landing. She was desperate to ask what that last argument had been about. What was it about Edith that had been so divisive? That had made the last words her parents’ exchanged so bitter? What had left Justine in this numbed, zombie state?

Edith heard movement in the living room, and a moment later, from the landing window, Edith saw the group of dealers, curators and art-writers troop across the lawn to her father’s studio. They entered in single file, looking expectant, raising their hands to point. A light went on.

Edith felt a hand on her shoulder. It was her mother, standing close. The bright lights of the studio, which had always comforted Edith as she had gone to bed while her father still worked, threw shadows onto the lawn, and revealed the movements and decisions taking place inside. Edith leaned against her mother. How could Edith tell her how to grieve? Edith had lost a father. Justine a husband. A partner. A friend.

Various dealers and galleries and experts bought the majority of Edward’s unfinished work. Specialist removals firms pulled into the drive, carried out the canvases wrapped in sheets, loaded them into their trucks with care, then pulled out again. Finally, everything that was of interest or of value to the art world had gone. And Justine and Edith ventured into the studio.

‘We’ll have a yard sale,’ said Justine, throwing her hand out to indicate the variety of objects that had found their way into the studio over the years. ‘And maybe Leila can take the paints into school. It would be a shame for them to go to waste.’

The large room looked blank and hollow to Edith without its stacks of canvases. Without her father standing in the centre, the skylight illuminating his latest endeavour. She drifted over to the sink, where the brushes were lined up neatly in the pots, exactly as she’d left them five months before.

‘This can go for a start. Why he kept it I’ll never know.’

Edith turned round to see what her mother was talking about. Justine was standing near the door with the omafiet, ready to wheel it out.

‘You can’t get rid of that! He loved that bike!’ Edith knew her voice was too loud, too high and too hectoring.

Justine looked startled. Her serenity was suddenly cracked. ‘No he didn’t. It was just a silly souvenir he held on to from Amsterdam.’ She tried to bump it over the doorsill, but the wide handle bars prevented her.

Edith dropped the brush she was holding and stormed over to the doorway. She grabbed the omafiet by its big leather seat and pulled it towards her.

‘Edith! Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘You’re the one being ridiculous. This bike was really important to him.’

Justine’s face tightened and her lips pressed into a hard line. She blinked and nodded her head furiously and pushed forward with the bike, ramming it into the doorframe in her attempt to get through the door.

‘Mom. Stop it. He told me. The day he died, he told me about what he did in Amsterdam.’

Justine swivelled round and made as if to lurch towards Edith. But she was trapped between the door and the bicycle frame, unable to move back or forward. ‘What did he tell you?’ Her tone was fierce.

Edith backed away, alarmed, and loosened her hold on the bike. ‘That he stole it when he was in Amsterdam. That he’d been a thief. Him and his friends.’

‘A thief?’ Justine screwed the handlebars around, trying to untangle herself.

Edith didn’t consider herself brave. She was always second to do anything. Always waiting to identify dangers by what happened to the more courageous. But now. Now she had seen her father drown. Now she had tried to save his life. She had acted and put herself at risk. She tightened her hold on the bike again and stood up straight.

‘Isn’t that what you didn’t want me to know?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Justine wrenched herself loose from the bike, pushing past the handles in a way that looked painful.

‘Mom. Tell me.’

But Justine was halfway across the lawn. ‘Keep it. Throw it. Do what you like with,’ she shouted back over her shoulder.

Edith stood where she was, until the bike became too heavy for her out-stretched arm. She released it from the doorway then wheeled it to its usual place against the wall. She hadn’t meant to hurt her mother. She just wanted answers.

But how could she ask, when it provoked such a reaction?

She looked around the bare room. Everything seemed out of place. Only the paints and brushes were neatly arranged. Perhaps it fell to her to create some order and decide what was to be done. She had almost been her father’s studio assistant, after all. She would know better than Justine about what went where, what to keep and what could be thrown out. Maybe this way she could do something to honour her father. To help Justine through her grief. To work through her own.

When she returned to the house later that day, it was as if her argument with her mother had never happened. Justine had reassumed her serene widow mantel. She called Edith ‘honey’ and smiled at her as she served her meal, talked about Leila’s school day and fussed a little about laundry.

‘I made a start on the studio,’ said Edith, following her mother’s casual cue, careful not to make it sound like a challenge.

Leila looked in fright from Edith to Justine. She had clearly heard their shouting match from the house.

‘That’s great, honey,’ said Justine. ‘It’s a real help. You spent more time in there than us, anyway.’

Edith smiled. She’d got that right, at least. ‘Leila, Mom was saying your school might want the paints – pity for them to go to waste.’

‘Sure.’ Leila still looked a little scared.

‘I’ll box them up. Let the art teacher know they can pick them up next week.’

Over the following days, Edith spent most of her time in the studio. She worked slowly, taking pleasure in examining Edward’s life. Not wanting to skim over any part of it. Thinking what choices he would make, and when he would nudge her to make a choice herself.

But there was another reason she took such care – a reason she did not admit to at first, and the reason she felt so pleased to be doing without Justine looking over her shoulder. She might just find something more about Edward – about Edward and Amsterdam – that might shed some light on the secret Justine was so determined to keep. So she looked inside every box, riffled through every stack of sketches, leafed through every book and pulled out every drawer. I’m just being thorough, she thought to herself. But as the days progressed, her task became a quest.

Her care and method were rewarded at the end of the second week. In the bottom of a crate of what looked like mementos – papers from Edward’s childhood that his mother must have saved, report cards and an essay written in Dutch that seemed to have received exceptional marks – Edith found a shoebox with the word ‘Collective’ scrawled on its lid in a father’s familiar hand.

She took it into her corner, her throat tight and her hands not quite steady. After sitting for a few seconds with the box on her lap, she finally pulled at the lid. It wouldn’t come off at first, and brought the box with it. She gave it a shake and the lid came loose – the scent of must and ink and water colours, and something else, something green and sea-like filled her nostrils. The scent of Amsterdam, she thought, and shook her head at herself.

Inside there were just papers. Some were written on, but most of them were sketches – in pencil, charcoal and watercolours.

On top was a document, written in English and entitled ‘Manifesto’.

We, the members of The Collective, on this day of November the 9th, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall falls, commit ourselves to the following manifesto:

1. Good artists borrow, great artists steal

2. Take your work seriously, never take yourself seriously

3. We take our call to arms from William Shakespeare: ‘O! For a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention’

4. Never sell out. If people understand your work, you’ll eat well your whole life. If people don’t understand your work, you’ll die with the satisfaction that you worked in your own way, according to your own rules.

5. Remember the Muse. Love her, contemplate her, celebrate her. Fight for her.

At the bottom were four flamboyant signatures: Edward Frank, Jaap Knol, Rafael Von Kamp, and Nigel Hutchinson. Edith’s arms prickled with goose pimples. Here was her father, alongside people she’d never heard of. People he’d never spoke about.

She put the manifesto on the floor and looked further down the pile. There was a series of sketches – all painted in grey and blue watercolour in her father’s familiar style, the simplest strokes managing to capture and express a face, a body, a person. It was exactly the method he’d used to portray Justine in the painting that hung in the living room.

At the bottom of each sketch was Edward’s signature, and the name of the sitter – Jaap, Nigel, Raf, Me. The self-portrait was clearly done in a mirror: a slim, younger version of her father, one she had never known, held a brush in his hand and stared out of the page at her. Under these portraits, wrapped in a piece of tissue paper, was a sheet of studies in charcoal. The dust trickled off into Edith’s lap and blackened her fingers as she took the sheet up. It was rare for Edward to use this medium – he had always preferred paint – but the studies were unmistakably his. They depicted a woman, sitting and standing in various positions, but never with a clear image of her face. The Muse was written at the bottom of the sheet.

There were also sketches of groups: Jaap and Raf; Nigel and Raf; Me and Raf; Lies and Nigel; Lies, Nigel and Raf. One simply named ‘The Collective’. This seemed more to focus on forms – faceless figures of several men and women –standing and sitting, with arms draped round each other’s shoulders. And in the foreground, picked out in clear, dark ink, drawn over the fading shades of the water-colour figures was a bicycle. Edith lowered the sketch and looked over at the omafiet, leaning quietly against the studio wall. It was the same bike, it had to be.

There was not much else in the box. Cuttings from Dutch newspapers, which Edith couldn’t understand. Here and there she saw a name that matched someone in the sketches. Perhaps they were reviews of early art shows.

Edith laid all the sketches out in a grid on the studio floor and sat back on her heels. She was disappointed. This only corroborated what Edward had told her in Mexico. It did little more than fill in some of the gaps. But what had she thought she would find? Why had she felt such keen anticipation before she’d opened the box?

It was evening outside, and across the lawn, the kitchen light had been turned on. Leila was at the table doing her schoolwork. Justine must have just got home – she was taking groceries from shopping bags and putting them in cupboards. They were chatting as they worked. Leila stood up and grabbed a chocolate bar out of one of the bags. Justine turned, smiling, and took it out of her hand.

‘Supper’s in half an hour.’ Edith read her lips.

Her mother was a beautiful woman. At this distance her fine-boned face, large eyes and slim figure made the mundane task of putting away the groceries look like a piece of ballet. But Edith thought she saw something else. Not age – Justine’s beauty was too strong to be touched by it. It was grief. It sat delicately – even in her smile, in the shape her figure made as she bent and straightened, taking vegetables to the chopping board. Edith couldn’t ask anything more of her. If she were to find what she was looking for, she would have to do it alone.

She slowly picked up the sketches and placed them carefully back in the box. What had happened all those years ago in Amsterdam? Who had Edward hurt? And why had he so regretted taking the bicycle away? The bicycle that seemed so important, it took centre stage in the group.

Replacing the lid of the box, it occurred to Edith that at least now she had some names. With her father gone, and her mother out of bounds, she had somewhere else to start finding answers. But to what questions? If she could piece together those, maybe that would be the beginning to a journey towards something like the truth.

She held the box to her chest and looked back at the kitchen, a vague idea beginning to form in her mind. Leila had packed up her books, and was putting plates and cutlery on the table. Justine was half-obscured by a cloud of steam from the pan she was stirring.

They would be fine, Edith thought, if I take a trip. Her heart took a little leap. Would she be fine? If she took a trip – a trip to Amsterdam?

(5) What do you think’s going to happen?

It took several days for Edith to summon the courage to announce to her mother her intention to travel to Amsterdam.

She raised the subject after dinner one night, and Justine’s face at first assumed the horrified scowl Edith had seen during the argument over the bicycle. Her ‘What? Why?’ were said with the tone she had used during her argument with Edward in Mexico. But then she quickly controlled herself.

‘Honey. I never thought of you as a traveller.’

‘Well. I wasn’t. But I’ve got this year out now. I thought I should do something with it.’

‘But Europe – Amsterdam? It’s a long way. Who are you going to go with?’

‘Myself. It will be good for me. I think if I went with someone it would spoil it. I want to see where Dad lived, and anyone else just wouldn’t understand.’

Justine had frowned, looked out of the window. It seemed to take her a long while to think about the simple question she came up with next.

‘And what will you do while you’re there, do you think?’

Edith was already prepared for this. ‘Look at the art galleries. Hang out in cafes. You know. European stuff.’

Justine nodded and resumed her study of the dark back yard.

Edith remained silent. She hadn’t ever told a full-out lie to her mother – to either of her parents. And she didn’t really want to start now. She certainly did intend to have a look around the Rijksmuseum, as well as the Van Gogh and other galleries. But she didn’t feel she could tell Justine the real reason behind her trip. She didn’t feel she could reveal anything about the file she had started to compile on The Collective – or her internet searches about Jaap Knol, Nigel Hutchinson and Rafael Von Kamp.

And Justine’s quiet reaction confirmed her fears. Just as she draped the deep, cutting hurt of her grief with a shroud of unassuming dignity, Edith could tell that her still, thoughtful face now concealed an ocean of misgiving about Edith’s trip to Amsterdam.

But why couldn’t she voice them? Edith almost touched her arm, waking her from her reverie. ‘Why are you so unhappy about me going there?’ she could have said. But still Edith didn’t feel she could ask such open questions. Not now. Not without Edward here. She couldn’t bring herself to remind her mother of almost the last things Edward and her had said to each other. She couldn’t ask: ‘What did Dad do in Amsterdam that you don’t want me to find out?’

The following week Edith was picking up the mail, when an envelope stopped her on the path: the colourful stamp and postmark were from the Netherlands.

It seemed that people didn’t feel they should use email or phone calls to express their sympathy to the Frank family, so old-fashioned envelopes had piled up in the mail box in the first few weeks after they had arrived back in Boston. And still, several months later, there was a regular flow of elegant notes from art afficionados from around the world.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-04