Us полностью

‘Come on, Egg! Play along,’ said Connie. Like an advancing general, she traced her finger across the pages of the atlas. ‘Look — we’ll start in Paris, do the obvious stops: the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, the Monets and the Rodins. We’ll train to Amsterdam, see Rembrandt at the Rijksmuseum, the Van Goghs, then find our way — no planes, no cars — across the Alps to Venice, because it’s Venice. Back through Padua for the Scrovegni Chapel; Vicenza for Palladio’s villas; Verona — Verona’s lovely — see The Last Supper in Milan; Florence, for the Botticelli in the Uffizi and, well, just for Florence — then Rome! Rome is beautiful. Stop off at Herculaneum and Pompeii and finish up in Naples. Of course, in an ideal world we’d jump back and do the Kunsthistorisches in Vienna, then Berlin, but we’ll have to see how your father’s holding up.’

I was emptying the dishwasher and confess to being distracted by the low level of rinse aid as well as the ruinous cost of all this travel. But she really did seem very excited by it all, and perhaps it would make a change from our recent family holidays, the three of us restless, bitten and sun-burnt in some expensive villa or fighting for our tiny share of the Mediterranean coast.

Albie remained sceptical. ‘So, basically I’m going inter-railing with my mum and dad.’

‘That’s right, you lucky boy,’ said Connie.

‘But if it’s meant to be this great rite of passage and you’re both there, doesn’t that sort of defeat the object?’

‘No, Egg, because you’re going to learn about art. If you were serious about painting in those days, this was your training, your university. Same thing now. You can sketch, take photos, suck it all in. If you want to do it for a living, you have to see these things—’

‘A lot of Old Masters, a lot of dead white Europeans.’

‘—even if it’s just so you’ve got something to kick against. Besides, Picasso’s a dead white European, and you love Picasso.’

‘Can we see Guernica? I’d love to see Guernica.’

‘Guernica’s in Madrid. We’ll do it another time.’

‘Or you could just give me the money and I’ll go alone!’

‘This way it’s educational,’ said Connie.

‘This way you get out of bed in the mornings,’ I said.

Albie groaned and laid his head on his arms, and Connie took to twisting her finger in the hair at the nape of his neck. They do this, Connie and Albie, grooming each other like primates. ‘We’ll have fun, too. I’ll make sure your father schedules some in.’

‘Every fourth day, is that too much?’ I returned to the machine. Not just rinse aid, salt too; it was burning through the stuff, and I wondered how I might recalibrate the settings.

‘You can still meet girls and get drunk,’ said Connie. ‘You’ll just have to do it with me and your father watching. And pointing.’

Albie sighed and rested his cheek on his fist. ‘Ryan and Tom are going backpacking in Colombia.’

‘And you can too! Next year.’

‘No he can’t,’ I shouted into the dishwasher. ‘Not Colombia.’

‘Shut up, Douglas! Egg, sweetheart, this will probably be the last summer holiday we’ll have together.’

I looked up, striking my head sharply on the edge of the kitchen unit. The last ever? Was it? Was it really?

‘After this, you’re on your own,’ said Connie. ‘But for now let’s try and have a nice time this summer, shall we? This one last time?’

Perhaps she’d been planning her escape, even then.

When my wife told me that she was going with the turning of the leaves, did my life come to an end? Did I fall to pieces or fail to make it through the days?

Of course there were further sleepless nights, further tears and accusations in the lead-up to the trip, but I had no time for a nervous breakdown. Also, Albie was completing his ‘studies’ in art and photography, returning exhausted from screen-printing or glazing a jug, and so we were discreet, walking our dog, an ageing Labrador called Mr Jones, some distance away from the house and hissing over his head in fields.

‘I can’t believe you’ve sprung this on me!’

‘I haven’t sprung it, I’ve been feeling this way for years.’

‘You haven’t said anything.’

‘I shouldn’t have to.’

‘Springing this on me, at this time …’

‘I’m sorry, I’ve tried to be as honest as I—’

‘I still think we should cancel the Grand Tour …’

‘Why do we have to?’

‘You still want to go? With this hanging over us?’

‘I think so—’

‘A funeral cortège, backpacking through Italy …’

‘It needn’t be like that. It could be fun.’

‘If you want to cancel the hotels you need to say now.’

‘I’ve just told you, I want us to go. Why don’t you ever listen to—?’

‘Because if you’re really trapped in such a living hell—’

‘Don’t be melodramatic, love, it doesn’t help.’

‘I don’t know why you suggested it if you didn’t want to—’

‘I did want to, I still do!’ She stopped and held my hand. ‘Let’s put the other decision on hold until the autumn. We’ll all go on the trip, we’ll have a fantastic time with Albie—’