David Nobbs - Obstacles to Young Love

Nobody else buys anything.

Naomi wonders if bartering with cigarettes is the derivation of the phrase, ‘It costs a packet.’ She must remember to find out when she gets home.

Home. Why does the word send a shiver through her? Is she no longer looking forward to home life with Simon?

There’s some embarrassing fooling around with blow darts, and the charade is over. The travel agent, in generous mood, offers the villagers all his fish hooks. They don’t want them. They use nets. He shows for the first time a softer side. He seems genuinely disappointed. Not hurt, just sad. Naomi wonders if there is a woman in his life, or if the alligator teeth are for his mother.

The walk back is slow, as the heat and humidity rise. Naomi and Timothy find themselves walking side by side. Whether they have planned this or whether it’s chance is not obvious even to them.

‘I want to thank you for having the courage to come and tell me that dreadful day,’ says Timothy. ‘I think it really made a difference. Left me with a bit of self-respect.’

‘I hope you got over it quickly.’ But not too quickly, perhaps.

‘I didn’t. It took months.’

‘How long after…me, did you meet Maggie?’

‘Best part of two years.’

‘And how are you now? Really happy? You seem it.’

‘Oh, yes. Maggie’s lovely. You? Everything all right?’

‘Absolutely. Can’t you tell?’

‘Er…yes.’ He hesitates. He wants to confess something. Naomi isn’t sure if she wants to hear it. ‘The…er…not everything is…I mean, it’s different from you and me. It’s…’ His dark face colours slightly, and seems to swell with embarrassment. ‘I mean, we do have sex. I mean, it is our honeymoon. But not…’

‘Everything we did?’

‘No. That was actually a bit special, Naomi.’

‘Well, thank you, but…it was one night.’

‘I know, but still it was a bit…you know. In fact, I can’t believe what I did. I don’t expect I’ll ever do it again. It seems, somehow, with Maggie, you know, something we just wouldn’t do.’

She wants to blurt out, ‘Can’t say I’m surprised,’ but keeps it to herself.

‘…Anyway, I suppose our relationship is more…spiritual.’

Why on earth is he telling her all this? He obviously needs to. She finds that very encouraging. This worries her. Why should she be encouraged by it?

‘Talking about spirituality, how about you? Are you…do you still not believe?’

‘No.’

‘You don’t not believe or you do not believe?

‘I don’t believe.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why should you be sorry?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Why the hell should you be sorry?’

‘I wish you wouldn’t be flippant about hell.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’

‘And God.’

‘Oh, Timothy. Loosen up.’

‘I’m not good at that. Sorry, but what have I done wrong?’

‘You’ve patronised me because I’m an atheist.’

‘Oh, you’re not even an agnostic any more. That’s a bit arrogant, isn’t it? Being so certain that you know.’

Naomi has never called herself an atheist before. She has believed that she is an agnostic. But she wants to make Timothy angry. She needs to make him angry.

‘I don’t believe this,’ she says. ‘I can’t believe you people. What are you if not being so certain that you know? That’s what pisses me off about you. You think I desperately want to believe and have failed. I don’t particularly want not to believe, but it doesn’t put me in some sad class of disappointed failures. The reason I don’t believe is that I can find no evidence of a compassionate pattern in life, and it doesn’t mean that I’m any more wicked than you or any less sodding spiritual than you. Oh, what a fucking good decision I made walking out on you, you fucking prig.’

She charges angrily after Simon, but he is disappearing at a fast sulk.

Soon they are back at another perilous narrow bridge, high above the piranhas. Ahead of them is the lodge. It has taken less than five minutes. They realise that the village is almost right opposite the lodge. The five bangs on the gong meant, ‘There are only five of them. No need to try too hard.’

At the lodge, Simon is waiting with a face like the thunder that is beginning to threaten once again.

‘Rather an argument, I see,’ says Simon. ‘Bit of tension.’

‘So?’

‘I didn’t know you still cared enough about him to bother to be angry. I see that I was wrong.’

He is right, of course, which annoys her. She has been feeling pleased with herself for managing to end the meeting with Timothy angrily. It was sad for him, but necessary for her. She wished that she hadn’t sworn, but the future would be difficult to bear if she’d ended on friendly terms with him.

After an early lunch they set off for the boat back. The German, who is staying for another night and is scheduled to have a four-hour jungle walk that afternoon, shames them by walking with them to their boat to see them off.

‘I expect there will be a few more people on today’s boat,’ he says hopefully, ‘and some of them will probably be taking the four-hour walk with me.’

As they watch today’s thatched boat nosing towards the landing stage, he says a rather strange thing.

‘Don’t think too badly of Peru.’

Naomi likes him for that as much as for anything.

There are no tourists on the boat, none. He will be alone for his four-hour walk, alone for his second candlelit dinner, alone for Basilio’s limited repertoire on the guitar all over again. Naomi’s heart goes out to him, and she never even found out his name.

They shake hands with him, politely. His handshake is perfect, firm yet not too firm.

They enter the boat.

He stands on the landing stage, a stiff, erect figure, curiously forlorn and vulnerable.

The boat begins to move. He waves as if they are old friends whom he is going to miss. They wave back.

Just before he is out of earshot, they see him shout. A moment later, his words arrive over the brown water.

‘I will insist on the full four hours. I will not accept short measure.’

Timothy and Maggie move to a seat near the front of the boat.

Naomi sits down quite far from them, in the middle of the boat.

Simon marches right to the back of the boat, and plonks himself defiantly into a seat. God, he’d be cross if he knew how young it makes him look, thinks Naomi.

The journey back, against the flow, takes longer than two and a half hours and feels as if it takes for ever. None of them would have wished not to see the Amazon, but none of them will ever go for a week’s cruise on it. It just rolls on and on for ever, a slow, brown streak among the endless rainforests.

As they make their way off the boat to get onto the minibus back to their hotels, Timothy approaches Naomi.

‘So,’ he says, ‘this is goodbye.’

‘Yep. Sorry it ended in a row.’

‘One last kiss:’

‘It’ll have to be a very quick, casual one. Simon’s furious.’

‘Really? Maggie won’t mind at all. She hasn’t got a sensitive bone in her whole body.’

He means it as a compliment.

At the last moment Naomi relents, holds her cheek against his, tries to put a real feeling of warmth and affection into it. After all, it will probably be the last kiss they ever have.

They’re late. Lunch is ready. It’s annoying.

William offers a second glass of sherry. This is very unusual, but they can’t just sit around with empty glasses, waiting. It embarrasses him to have to do it, he’s not a drinker, so he has to pass a little comment. ‘It is New Year’s Day, after all,’ he says. When he’s finished pouring he stops for a moment in front of the picture over the piano. It shows a Norfolk wherry sailing away from the staithe at Wells-Next-the-Sea. Naomi knows that, just for a moment, her father is sailing away from a staithe somewhere, and is happy. This worries her. She has become more sensitive to atmosphere over the years, and senses that something is afoot today. She feels uneasy, edgy, tense.