‘Do you ever get a bad feeling about something?’ says Carl. ‘A bad feeling about something that’s going to happen?’
‘Sure,’ says Futh. ‘I used to get panic attacks on aeroplanes.’
‘I’m not keen on flying,’ says Carl. ‘I was once on a plane and had a really uneasy feeling and had to get off again. I don’t like being underground either. I avoid the tube and the Channel Tunnel.’
‘One time,’ says Futh, ‘I was flying to New York and while the plane was taking off I couldn’t stop imagining there being a fire or a terrorist on board and not being able to escape.’
‘What happened?’
‘Oh, nothing. It was fine, you know. I used a relaxation technique.’
Carl frowns and says, ‘But I mean, do you ever sense that something’s going to happen and then it does?’
‘Oh yes,’ says Futh. ‘Last Christmas, I visited my dad and his girlfriend, and I just knew he was going to be in a bad mood, and he was.’
Futh drives forward, off the ferry, following the car in front. They are waved on by officials in orange waterproofs. They sail through customs, passing others whose cars are being emptied, and through passport control. Then they are off, away.
Futh says, ‘And I know I’ll spend next Christmas with them too, and it will be just as bad.’
Carl nods, but he is still frowning. ‘Why don’t you spend the week in Utrecht with me and my mother?’
‘A whole week?’ asks Futh. ‘At Christmas?’
‘I mean this week,’ says Carl. ‘I’m attending this conference midweek but my mother would look after you.’
‘Oh,’ says Futh, and he is thoughtful for a moment before saying, ‘That’s very kind of you, but I have all my accommodation booked.’
‘My mother would love to have you stay and I’ll only be gone for a few days, I’ll be back on Friday evening. We could travel together on the Saturday. Are you on the late ferry?’
Futh says that he is and again he muses for a while before saying that he would like to but cannot.
Carl is quiet. He seems troubled and Futh wonders whether Carl is offended.
‘I’ll see you on the ferry though?’ says Futh.
Carl gives the slightest nod.
Futh hopes that his driving is not bothering Carl. In explanation, as they get onto the motorway, Futh mentions to Carl that he has not been driving very long and has not done much motorway driving. ‘And I’ve never driven abroad,’ he says. He accelerates, moving out to overtake the thundering lorries, his small car trembling in the middle lane.
Prior to taking a driving test in his forties, Futh had relied mainly on public transport and hitchhiking. When Futh left home, his father sold the family house and moved in with his sister, Futh’s Aunt Frieda. Futh, visiting, would hitchhike there and back and Frieda, who did not approve of hitchhiking, warned him to watch out for strange men.
‘And strange women,’ added his father.
‘Just be careful,’ said Frieda.
Futh thought that she worried about him unduly. When he was little, when he climbed on rocks, when he was reckless, trying to be like the other boys, she would say, ‘You’ll fall. You’ll hurt yourself.’ And then he would indeed fall and hurt himself and she would tell him, ‘You’re an accident waiting to happen.’
When she took him to the swimming pool, she made him wear armbands even though he told her he could swim. Sometimes he went to the river with Kenny, and later he went on his own. Frieda warned him against swimming in the river, because of the current and the weeds and the rocks, and there were parasites and diseases and God knows what in that river, she said, and every now and again someone drowned. When he last saw Frieda, some weeks before coming to Germany, she asked him not to go, not to drive all that way, not to walk all that way, not to go on his own. She telephoned the day he left to warn him to look after his feet, to keep his passport safe, to be careful. ‘Stay away,’ she said, ‘from that river.’
‘This is it,’ says Carl, peering through the windscreen, pointing out the turn they need to take, their route off the motorway and into Utrecht.
Futh follows Carl’s directions which take them to the far side of the city. They park by the kerb in front of an old three-storey house which has been divided into flats. Futh, out of the car, standing on the pavement, still feels the lurch of the ferry.
The front door has an intercom with three buttons, one of which Carl presses. There is a crackle and then a woman’s voice speaking what Futh assumes to be Dutch.
‘Mummy,’ says Carl, speaking in English for Futh’s benefit, ‘it’s Carl, and I have a guest.’ When the door makes a clicking sound, Carl pushes it open and Futh follows him inside.
They climb the stairs up to the third-floor flat, to a door which has been opened and left ajar for them. They enter and Carl closes the door behind them. Hanging up his coat and turning to take Futh’s, Carl calls, ‘Mummy?’ They walk through to the living room, Futh taking in the high ceilings, bare floorboards, wooden slatted blinds, sparse furniture, uncluttered surfaces, glass and leather and the smell of polish. Again Carl shouts, ‘Mummy!’ and the acoustics in the harshly furnished room are like those in an empty house or in a bathroom.
In the far corner, a swinging door opens and a woman comes into the room. The smells of coffee and baking follow her. She greets Carl with little air kisses while Futh stands waiting to be introduced. When Carl turns to him and says, ‘Mummy, this is our guest, my friend,’ Futh steps forward and kisses Carl’s mother on one cheek and then the other, smelling soap and flowers beneath the coffee and the baking.
‘I’m so pleased to meet you,’ he says.
‘You are very welcome,’ says Carl’s mother, turning away. ‘Come and sit down.’
The three of them walk over to an uncomfortable-looking sofa and Futh sits down in the middle. On a low table in front of the sofa stands a tray, from which Carl’s mother lifts a coffee pot. She fills three cups and passes the first one to Futh who takes it with a smile. She asks him about his journey and his holiday, and while he talks she listens and offers milk and sugar. Passing a plate of little pastries, she enquires about his wife, his children.
‘My wife and I have just separated,’ says Futh.
Expressing sympathy, she puts the plate of pastries down in front of him.
‘And we didn’t have children.’ He shifts his buttocks on the thinly upholstered sofa.
‘Perhaps that’s just as well,’ says Carl’s mother.
‘I keep stick insects,’ he says. ‘I wanted a dog.’ Angela had said no to a dog. She did not want to end up being the one who had to walk it every day. So he got stick insects. He is rather fond of them but he supposes that they have no sense of him, that they do not remember him from one day to the next.
Carl’s
