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.
