All good pals and jolly bad company
Anita Brookner
AMSTERDAM by Ian McEwan Cape, £14.99, pp. 178 When three old friends — well, two friends and one intimate enemy — meet at a former lover's funeral and offer their glum condolences to the deceased's unin- teresting husband, George, they set in train a revenge tragedy which is ludic, heartless, and oddly lightweight. The friends are Clive Linley, a composer who is working on a symphony for the Millen- nium, Vernon Halliday, editor of a news- paper entitled The Judge, and Julian Garmony, a politician expected to chal- lenge the Prime Minister for the leader- ship. All are shaken by Molly's last illness, which began, sinisterly, with a tingling in the left arm before developing rapidly into full-blown helplessness.
In the days following the funeral both Clive and Vernon experience distressing, but possibly illusory, symptoms: a numb- ness in the arm in one case, on the right side of the head in the other. Braced by his all-purpose composure, Garmony seems most likely to ride out the storm. All are united by their indifference towards the widower, with his 'pleading' eyes. He happens to have an interest in Halliday's newspaper, but this does not seem important enough to win him any sort of respect. The friends disperse thankfully, each to his own concerns. Clive and Vernon trust each other well enough to beg a service of the other: rather than descend into Molly's condition they will see to it that a better end is ensured when the ultimate moment is perceived. Garmo- ny has no such qualms. He is, he thinks,. invulnerable.
The end, or what is to be the end in this oddly twilit narrative, can probably be intuited here, and is indeed indicated by the title. In Holland respectable doctors can be persuaded to administer the fatal dose. In Amsterdam Clive's symphony is due for rehearsal. So far, so equable. Then matters deteriorate with increasing momentum. The action is punctuated by intemperate phone calls, and the one moment of tension in the book comes as Clive, within reach of his final variation and coda, is interrupted by calls from Ver- non who is on to a story. Did Clive, on a walking tour in the Lake District, hear the voice of a woman in distress and fail to come to her assistance? Is this suspicious? (It may be.) But of greater significance are the repeated telephone calls. For the elu- sive theme continues to be just within reach, and there are only a few days to the rehearsal. A change of heart weakens Clive's resolve, or perhaps it is a genuine aberration: the symphony is doomed to remain unfinished, and with it Clive's crowning achievement. His revenge is to break with his friend, by means of an unforgivable postcard accusing him of moral turpitude as a journalist. Some pho- tographs have been found, and of course they are compromising. Molly is the pho- tographer; George has them in his posses- sion. Vernon will publish them and Clive will never speak to him again.
But all is not well with Clive. He may be slipping into madness. Certainly his light- hearted way with policemen and orches- tral conductors does not inspire confidence. His downfall is well within the reader's sights, as is Vernon's dismissal from his post. What brings the two former friends to Amsterdam is anybody's guess. We know about the rehearsal: that accounts for Clive's presence. But Ver- non's? This denouement seemed to me singularly weak. But then the whole text is surprising from a writer like McEwan, drab where it should have been authenti- cally nasty. Amsterdam reads as if it were something to be got out of the way before another important novel in the making. It is about blackmail, into which former allies can enter with surprising self-just- ification. But blackmail here is not based on bad faith and envy, as it usually is, but on a sudden whim, on the crudest of assessments.
For readers in search of a happy ending, and mindful of George's pleading eyes, there is a resolution of sorts. But — per- haps because of the book's odd length — much material is wasted. Characters are not properly defined, there are few land- scapes apart from that of the Lake Dis- trict, which is meticulously itemised; more important (though this fact should not be important), there are few women. Amster- dam reads like a barely outlined plot sum- mary, the sort that can be elaborated in a single session. Only that inconvenient tele- phone bell conveys an authentic note of horror, as a grand conception is jeopar- dised by the insistent ringing. These com- peting sounds might have created something more compelling than that part of the narrative which races towards its conclusion. McEwan is a master of even- paced nightmare. Amsterdam is little more than a brief bad dream.
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