William Boyd - Ordinary Thunderstorms

♦

It had been good to cry, he told himself, later: it was a salutary release of emotions, very necessary after everything he had been through — the mugging, the trauma of that first surprise attack, the relief of rescue, then the trauma of the second attack. At the darkest hour of the night he left the triangle for the first time in days and went into Chelsea to scavenge. He felt better, calmer and more determined, as he rummaged in dustbins and scampered cautiously down empty streets, peering in basement wells. It was amazing what people left out in their rubbish. By dawn he had managed to acquire a newish, white denim jacket (one breast pocket disfigured by a stain of black ink, as if from a leaking biro), a pair of golfing shoes that had been left on a back step — a little tight but more tolerable footwear than the flip-flops. He had also eaten from the rubbish bins of fast-food franchises — cold chips, the end of a kebab, half-inches of cola and other fizzy drinks remaining in the bottom of tin cans. He returned to the triangle belchingly replete and newly attired — he almost looked normal, he thought. But what was uplifting him was the realisation that he could survive, now. It was as if the roasted gull-meat had strengthened and emboldened him in some way, had given him new resolve and heart. He had some of the squawking cheek and strutting arrogance of a big white seagull. Once the scab on his forehead had healed and disappeared he would venture forth with more confidence and range more widely. Perhaps, he thought, and this was a measure of his new frame of mind, he might even take Mhouse’s advice and go to Southwark and see what help the Church of John Christ might offer him.

IVO, LORD REDCASTLE STOOD AT HIS OPEN FRONT DOOR WEARING A T — shirt that read: ‘FULLY QUALIFIED SEX INSTRUCTOR — FIRST LESSON FREE’. Ingram said nothing, affecting not to notice that anything was out of the ordinary.

“Ingram, baby,” Ivo said, “you made it.”

“Is Meredith here?”

“She is indeed— mi casa — su casa .” Ivo didn’t move, standing squarely in the doorway, clearly expecting me, Ingram thought, to comment on his stupid T — shirt. He could expect in vain.

“Do I have to push past you? Is that the idea?” Ingram said. “Shoulder charge? Wrestle you to the ground?”

“Very droll. Come on in, you old wanker.”

Ingram entered the wide hall of Ivo’s Netting Hill house

— stripped pine floorboards, a huge stuffed grizzly bear in the corner wearing a pork pie hat and, on the wall, some erotic felt-tip drawings by Ivo’s latest wife, Srnika. Ingram glanced at them, noting breasts, vulvae and various types of penis, flaccid and erect. Climbing the stairs towards the drawing room, Ingram passed a series of black-and-white photographs — the usual suspects, Ingram thought: Bill Brandt, Carrier Bresson, Mapplethorpe, Avedon — astounding how they had managed to retain, in minds like Ivo’s, the idea that these perfectly fine but over-familiar images were still ‘cutting-edge’. His spirits declined further as he ascended, hearing the volume of the babble emanating from the knocked-through rooms on the first floor. Six was the ideal number for a dinner; eight at a pinch — anything above that was a complete waste of everybody’s time. A young man in a shot-silk Nehru jacket stood at the door holding various coloured drinks on a tray.

“Any chance of a glass of white wine?” Ingram asked.

“No,” Ivo said. “Pick a colour: red, yellow, blue, green, purple.”

“What’s in them? I have allergies.”

“That’s for me to know and your allergies to find out.”

Ingram chose a purple drink and followed Ivo into the reverberating room, seeing, and immediately changing course towards, his wife, Meredith, somehow absurdly, ridiculously pleased to see her — he was already hating this evening with unusual intensity — though as he approached her he noticed a roseate glow on her cheeks, always a give-away about her alcohol consumption.

“Hello, Pumpkin,” he said, kissing her. “We can’t stay long, remember?”

“Don’t be silly, it’s Ivo’s birthday.” She squeezed his bum and winked at him and Ingram thought, a little wearily, thank the gods for PRO-Vyril, one of Calenture-Deutz’s more successful drugs. It treated erectile dysfunction — slogan: “unmatched act duration”—not up there with Cialis or Viagra or Foldynon but a nice steady earner for the firm all the same. It worked very well for him, also, Ingram acknowledged, some sort of individual metabolic conformity with the chemicals occurring, he supposed. After a couple of PRO-Vyrils he felt he could take on anyone, or indeed anything, for an hour or so. He and Meredith made love fairly regularly for an old married couple with a grown-up family, he reckoned, though it was always at her behest. He had never figured out what made her randy — there was no discernible pattern, but she always contrived to give him a few hours’ warning when the mood came upon her — like the phases of the moon, he thought: something, somewhere, triggered her off. They slept in separate bedrooms divided by their dressing rooms and bathrooms, but all with connecting doors. Ingram actually quite enjoyed the sessions — though it was more a matter of mechanics, thanks to PRO-Vyril, than passion, and was a distant world away from his Phyllis encounters.

He held Meredith’s hand for a few seconds, reassured. She was a petite, slim woman with well-cut white-blonde hair and a slightly too large head for her body. This and her snub nose and widely spaced eyes made her seem, from some angles, a doll-like creature and, as if as a result of such a perception, she tended to affect, in company, a bubbly, nothing-gets-me-down, climb-every-mountain demeanour. But Ingram knew that she was a tougher and shrewder individual than the image she presented to the world. At moments like these — in the braying hell of Ivo’s party — he felt very glad that he was married to her.

“It’s been a long and trying day, my darling girl,” he said, in a low voice. “So the sooner we leave, the sooner we can—”

“Message received, over and out,” she said, smiling warmly.

“Lady Meredith Fryzer!” a man in a black T — shirt (with the same inane message as Ivo’s) shrieked at her, and took her in his arms. Ingram turned away, set his untouched purple drink down on a table and sought out the young waiter at the door and repeated his request for a glass of white wine, if that were possible, thank you so much.

He surveyed the room — no one was interested in him, a grey-haired, soon-to-be fifty-nine-year-old man in a dark suit and tie — and wondered who all these friends of Ivo were. Some of the men were clearly older than he (grizzled, bald, with patches of beard) but were dressed as adolescent boys in faded, ripped T — shirts, baggy low-pocketed trousers and unlaced trainers — he wouldn’t have been surprised if they had been carrying skateboards under their arms — still, as his gaze swung here and there, he saw there were also quite a lot of slim pretty women in the room, but all with slumped and sullen faces, or with watchful, guarded expressions, as if they expected a cruel joke was about to be played on them and they were going to be mocked in some way.

His white wine was brought to him and he sipped it with unusual gratitude, standing against a wall by the door, feeling the fatigue leave him a little. He thought he recognised an actor and someone else who was on TV as the people milled around — and there was a clothes designer. Yes? No?…He had no idea. He hardly watched television or read magazines, these days. Idly, he picked up a little bronze maquette from a table and thought it might be a Henry Moore — quite pleased that the name came to mind — and wondered again how Ivo managed to live so well for someone with no visible means of support apart from the £80,000 a year Ingram paid him as a non-executive member of the Calenture-Deutz board. Ivo and Meredith’s father, the Earl — the Earl of Concannon — had no money left and lived in a large modern bungalow outside Dublin. The family seat, Cloonlaghan Castle, was derelict and millions would be required to make it habitable. He suspected that Meredith gave Ivo money, on the sly, thinking he wouldn’t know — she was very fond of her younger brother, for some reason, forgiving him every trespass and humiliation. Smika, Ivo’s wife number three, had no money either (unless there was some trade in her erotic drawings). What had happened to Ludovine, the second, French wife? Tiny, feisty, with spiky orange-yellow hair — Yes, Ludovine, Ingram had liked her (he had paid for the costly French divorce, he now remembered). Ah, here was Ivo, heading towards him.