William Boyd - Ordinary Thunderstorms

Ivo loomed up and Ingram dutifully registered his brother-in-law’s preposterous good looks, once again. His blue-black hair was lightly gelled, and his stupid T — shirt was tight enough to demonstrate how lean his forty-something torso was.

“Having a good time?” Ivo asked. “Chilling?”

“Fabulous,” Ingram said. “Any chance of a bite to eat? I’m starving.”

“What do you think of my T — shirt?”

“I think it’s hilariously funny. You should wear it all the time. People will fall over laughing.”

“You don’t get it, old man.”

“It’s as old as I am, you fool. I saw one of those at the Isle of Wight festival in 1968. It’s so passe.”

“Liar.”

“Why are you wearing it, anyway?” Ingram said. “Aren’t you a bit past it yourself?”

“I’ve had 100,000 printed up. We’re going to sell them outside every club in the Mediterranean this summer. From Lisbon to Tel Aviv. Ten euros each.”

“Don’t ever let anyone stop you dreaming, Ivo.”

Ivo’s look was one of pure hatred for a second, then he laughed in a fake, hollow manner, Ingram thought, clapped him on the shoulder and walked away. Ingram found some hard, shiny, shardy crackers in a bowl and munched on them for a while until a chef in white kitchen regalia and a toque announced that dinner was served.

There were twenty-four around the large dining table at the front of the house on the ground floor. Tightly squeezed in, Ingram thought, but by now he was past caring, having quickly consumed his fourth glass of white wine as they waited interminably for the main course. This ghastly evening was finite, he told himself, it would end, he would leave and he would never accept an invitation to dine at Ivo’s again for the rest of his life. This thought consoled and sustained him as he waited for the food with the rest of the guests, noticing he was as far away from Ivo as possible (Meredith was on Ivo’s right), placed between a woman who spoke hardly any English and one of the sullen-faced, pretty girls. She had smoked three cigarettes since sitting down and they’d only been served an insufficiently chilled, over-garlicked gazpacho, thus far. Ingram glanced at his watch — ten past eleven — there must be a serious crisis in the kitchen. He was the only man at the table wearing a tie, he realised. Then he saw to his astonishment that Ivo had his mobile phone on the table beside his pack of cigarettes. In his own home, Ingram thought: that is sad . Tragic. He turned to the sullen faced, pretty girl — who was lighting her fourth cigarette.

“Are you a friend of Smika?” he asked.

“No.”

“Ah, a friend of Ivo, then.”

“Ivo and I went out for a while…”

Ingram saw she was growing annoyed at his failure to recall her.

“Ivo and I stayed with you and Meredith at your house in Deya.”

“Really? Right…Yes…”

“I’m Gill John.”

“Of course you are. Gill John, yes, yes, yes.”

“We’ve met…A dozen times?”

Ingram heaped his apologies on her, blaming his age, encroaching Alzheimer’s, fatigue, hideous work crises. He remembered her now, vaguely: Gill John, of course, one of Ivo’s old girlfriends, between Ludovine and Smika. He always went out with pretty girls, did Ivo — Ingram realising that it was one of the automatic benefits accruing to a preposterously good-looking man. And Gill John was indeed pretty, though her expression, posture and demeanour seemed to exude bitterness in some way, as if life had consistently let her down and she was expecting nothing to change.

“Oh, yes, good old Ivo,” Ingram said, not having a clue what to say to this young woman, simmering in her anger and bitterness. “Great lad, good fellow, Ivo.”

“Ivo’s a cunt,” she said. “Not a ‘great lad’ or a ‘good fellow’. You know that as well as I do.”

Ingram wanted to say: then why are you here at his birthday party? But he contented himself with: “Well, not a grade-A cunt. Grade-C, perhaps. Though as his brother-in-law I might be biased.”

She turned to look at him, squarely. Pale eyes, high forehead, lips a little thin, perhaps.

“You just prove my point,” she said.

“I don’t follow.”

“About what unites all men.” She laughed to herself, cynically, knowingly.

“I can think of a few common factors,” Ingram said, wondering how the conversation had suddenly taken this abrupt swerve. “But I suspect not the one you have in mind.”

“Internet porn.”

“Sorry?”

“Internet porn unites all men.”

Ingram accepted another refill of his wine glass from a patrolling waiter.

“I think your average Kalahari bushman might disagree,” he said.

“All right. All Western men with computers.”

“But what if you don’t have a computer? Your ‘unites all men’ claim has already lost some of its universal force. You might as well say…” he thought for a second. “What unites all men who own golf clubs? Love of golf? I don’t think so. Some men who own golf clubs find golf boring.”

Gill John lit her fifth cigarette. “Get a life,” she said.

“Or,” Ingram persisted with his analogy, rather pleased with it. “You could say: what unites all men who own umbrellas — fear of rain?”

“Fuck off,” Gill John said.

“In fact pornography is boring — that’s its fundamental, default problem. Women should take comfort from that.”

Gill John slapped him — not hard — just a little sharp slap with her fingers that caught his chin and lower lip. She turned away. Ingram sat still for a moment, his lower lip stinging. Amazingly, no one seemed to have noticed. Ivo had just left the table to see what was going on in the kitchen and all hungry eyes were on him. Ingram turned to his other partner. She smiled broadly at him — what could go wrong here, Ingram wondered?

“ O Rio de Janeiro me encanta ,” he said, unconfidently. Then Ivo’s mobile phone began to ring, with an annoying ring-tone taken from some heavy-metal guitar riff, and at that moment he reappeared.

“Sorry, guys,” he said to the assembled company, “but the tagine has cracked. We’ll only be another ten minutes or so.” He picked up the phone. “Ivo Redcastle…” He listened. “Yeah. OK.” He looked at Ingram with irritation. “It’s for you.”

Ingram left his seat and walked round the table thinking: who the fuck is calling me on Ivo’s phone? Meredith looked at him in hazy, tipsy surprise. Everyone else was talking, indifferent.

Ivo handed his phone over. “Don’t make a habit of this, right, Ingram?”

Ingram put the phone to his ear. “This is Ingram Fryxer.”

“Ingram. It’s Alfredo Rilke.”

Ingram suddenly felt chilly. He stepped quickly out of the dining room and into the hall.

“Alfredo. How did you get this number?”

“I called you on your own cell. The man who answered said you were with your brother-in-law.”

“Of course.” Ingram’s own phone was in his briefcase in the car outside with Luigi.

“I’m coming to London,” Rilke said.

“Excellent. Good. We—”

“No, not good. We have a serious problem, Ingram.”

“I know. Philip Wang’s death has set us—”

“Did you find this Adam Kindred?”

“No. Not yet. The police haven’t been able—”

“We have to find him. I’ll call when I arrive.”

They said goodbye and Ingram clicked Ivo’s phone shut. He felt small, suddenly, felt small and worried as he used to when a child, when events were too big and too adult to comprehend. That Alfredo Rilke should call him here at Ivo’s party only betokened serious problems. That Alfredo Rilke should come to London only underscored how serious those problems were. His brain worked furiously but no explanation came — only other worries, coagulating. He felt for the first time that he was no longer fully in control of his life — it was as if events were being ordered by an outside force he couldn’t master. Nonsense, get a grip, he told himself. Life is full of crises — it’s normal — this is just another. He looked through the open door to the kitchen and, as if to confirm his analysis, considered Ivo’s current crisis as the chef spooned stew from a shattered tagine into an orange casserole dish. He strode back into the dining room and returned Ivo’s phone to him.