William Boyd - Ordinary Thunderstorms

“Have you met him before?” he whispered to Meredith when he had a discreet moment.

“A few times.”

“He seems incredibly young.”

“He’s the same age as Forty. They work together.”

Maria-Rosa served his favourite supper: cheese souffle, lamb shank with pommes dauphinoises, strawberries with champagne sorbet. The conversation around the table was banal, light-hearted, forgettable. Ingram looked closely at his children, rather in the way his father had looked at him: Guy, thirty years old, handsome, talentless; Araminta, starveling-thin and, to his eyes, almost visibly twitching with nerves. Perhaps his father’s ruthless objectivity was infecting him, but he realised anew, with no particular shock or guilt, that he didn’t much like Guy and Minty — he cared for them, but he didn’t much like them, to be honest, nor was he much interested in them. Only Fortunatus interested him — squat, muscley Forty, already seriously bald in his early twenties — gay, of all improbable things, the only one of his children who never asked him for anything, the only one he loved and the one who would not return it.

“I saw Gramps today,” Ingram said to him. “You’re working at Trelawny Gables, he said. What a coincidence.”

“He got us the job,” Forty said.

“Really?…” This required further thought. “So, Forty, how’s business?”

“Dad, please, it’s Nate.”

“I can’t call a child of mine ‘Nate’, I’m sorry to say.”

“Then you shouldn’t have called me Fortunatus.”

“‘Fortunatus Fryzer’,” Meredith said, “it’s a wonderful name.”

“It sounds like a medieval alchemist,” Forty⁄Nate said.

“You know why we called you that, darling,” Meredith continued, quietly.

“Yes. Why is so?” Rodinaldo said — his first words of the evening, Ingram realised.

“He nearly died when he was born,” Ingram said, remembering, his throat tightening as if by reflex. “We thought we’d lost him.”

“And I nearly died too,” Meredith reminded him, with some ferocity. “We were both very lucky.”

♦

After dinner, Ingram was drawn aside by Guy, who asked him to invest £50,000 in a classic car business he was starting up.

“What do you mean ‘classic cars’?”

“We buy them, do them up and sell them at a profit. You know: Citroen DS, triumph Stag, Ford Mustang, Jensen Interceptor — modern classics, timeless.”

“What do you know about classic cars?”

“A bit — well, not much. Alisdair’s the real expert. There’s a huge market in these cars, huge.”

“Don’t you need a garage, a warehouse?”

“Alisdair’s working on that. We just need some seed money — get us going.”

“Been to a bank? They lend people money, you know.”

“They were very unhelpful, really negative.”

Ingram said he would think about it and excused himself and went off to his dressing room to drink more Scotch, he rather wanted to be drunk this evening, semi-lose control, for some reason. On his way back down the stairs Minty was waiting for him on a landing. She said she needed £2,000, cash, tonight.

“No, darling, it’s impossible.”

“Then I’ll go down to King’s Cross and sell myself to someone.”

“Don’t be silly and dramatic, you know I hate it.”

She began to cry. “I owe this person money. I have to pay him tonight.”

Ingram went back up the stairs to his bedroom, opened the safe and returned with,£800 and almost $2,000. Minty seemed suddenly calmer.

“Thanks, Daddy,” she said. “I’d better go. Happy birthday.” She gave him a swift peck on the cheek. “Don’t tell Mummy, please, not a word.”

“Pay me back whenever you can,” he said to her as she trotted down the stairs, with more bitterness in his voice than he meant.

He followed her slowly down to the hall where Forty and Rodinaldo were putting on their jackets and rucksacks, not lingering either.

“Happy birthday, Dad,” Forty said and gave him a hug. For a second Ingram had his arms around his son before he broke free.

“All going well with the gardening?” Ingram asked.

“Yeah, fine.”

“I’d like to invest in it. You know: help you grow. Ha-ha.” Ingram realised he was finally a little drunk — the Scotches and all the wine.

“We’re very happy as we are. Small is beautiful.”

Rodinaldo nodded. “Nate and me, we can to be everything that we wan’.”

“Lucky you,” Ingram said. “Remember the offer’s on the table. New spades, new van, new…” He couldn’t think what else a gardener might need, for some reason. “Anyway, I’m here.” He felt drunken tears form in his eyes as he watched his youngest son pulling on some form of camouflage jacket. He wanted to hug him again, kiss him, but he stepped back and raised his hand in casual farewell. Meredith put her arm round his waist and squeezed discreetly. Ah, Ingram thought, just time for a PRO-Vyril.

As they went upstairs to their bedrooms the phone rang.

“I’d better get it,” Ingram said.

It was Burton Keegan.

“It’s very late, Burton,” Ingram said, keeping his voice deep and calm.

“We need to meet — tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

“The world’s still turning, Ingram.”

BOZZY HANDED OVER ADAM KINDRED’S mobile phone and his wallet containing his credit cards.

Jonjo fanned them out. “They’re all American — except one.”

“Yeah. We was going to come back to him — get the pin numbers. Zaz kicked him too hard, so we was a bit, you know, emotional. That’s why we left him. When we come back — he gone.”

“Stop moving around like that. Getting on my nerves.”

“Sorry, bruv. Flat.” Bozzy tried to hold himself still.

“And don’t call me ‘bruv’. I’m not your brother — not in any sense of the word.”

“Safe. Check it, boss.”

Jonjo put the cards and the phone in his pocket and gave Bozzy a couple more twenty-pound notes. From another pocket he drew out a roll of printed copies of Kindred’s wanted advertisement and handed them over.

“Go round the estate. Show this to people and ask if they saw him that night.”

Bozzy looked at Kindred’s picture.

“That was the mim we jacked, yeah?”

“Yeah. He’s wanted for murder. Killed a doctor.”

“ Cunt .”

“Ask around,” Jonjo said, then looked at the soles of his boots — he had stepped on something moist and sticky. He wiped the mess off on one of the mattresses.

“You want to burn this place,” he said. “I’m not meeting you here again, got it?”

“Got it, boss.”

“Find him,” Jonjo said. “Somebody on this estate knows where Kindred is.”

WHEN YOU HAVE NOTHING, Adam thought, then everything, the tiniest thing, becomes a problem. In order to begin his begging life he had been obliged to steal — steal a felt-tip pen from a stationery shop. Then on a rectangle of cardboard ripped from an empty wine case outside an off-licence he had written with the stolen felt-tip: ‘HUNGRY AND HOMELESS. SPARE A PENNY. BROWN COINS ONLY’

On his first day he had settled down outside a supermarket on the King’s Road. He sat cross-legged on the ground outside the main entrance and propped his sign against his knees. Almost immediately, people began giving him their brown coins, as if relieved to get rid of their annoying small change, the near useless, purse-filling one- and two-pence pieces. Adam was pleased to see how logical his reasoning had been: there is nothing more irritating than heavy pockets and purses full of small-denomination coins. ‘Buddy can you spare a dime’ had been his inspiration. He took his jacket off and spread it in front of his knees so that potential donors could toss their coins on to its material rather than risk contact with his grubby, black-nailed hand. In thirty minutes he had made £3.27. He filled his own pockets with pennies and tuppences — there was the odd five-pence piece as well — and someone had given him a pound, impressed by the modesty of his need and the politeness of his demand.