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
‘What is
‘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.
