William Boyd - Ordinary Thunderstorms

“Which was?”

“ The Hydrangea House .”

“I don’t rememb—”

“You wouldn’t. It — I—was published by a small press: Idomeneo Editore. In Capri.”

“Capri? In Italy?”

“The last I heard.”

“Right,” Adam said. “At least you were published. No small achievement. To hold a book you’ve written in your hand, your name on the cover: The Hydrangea House by Gavin Thrale. Great feeling, I would have thought.”

“Except I was writing under a pseudonym,” Thrale said. “Irena Primavera. Not quite the same frisson.”

“Was it in English?”

“It wasn’t called La Casa dell’Ortensia .”

“Got you. Are you writing another?”

They had wandered away from the church and were heading up Jamaica Road.

“I am, since you ask. It’s called The Masturbator . Somehow I doubt it’ll find a publisher.”

“Hasn’t that been done already? Portnoy ’s —”

“My novel will make Portnoy’s Complaint read like Winnie the Pooh ,” Thrale said with some steel in his voice.

“But,” Adam said, “if you’re a published novelist, what are you doing at the Church of John Christ?”

“Same as you,” Thrale said, meaningfully. “Lying low.”

Both of them went silent for a while. Adam paused to remove a sticky coin of chewing gum from the sole of his right shoe. Thrale waited for him.

“I used to make a fair living for years,” Thrale said, musingly, “stealing rare books from libraries. Maps, illustrations. All over Europe — posing as a scholar. Some of them extremely rare. Then I was caught and had to pay my debt to society.”

“Ah.” Adam stood up.

“My big mistake, once I was released, was to think I could bamboozle the ladies and the gentlemen of the DHSS — or is it the DWP now? Whoever. Anyway, I was signing on, but simultaneously working at various menial jobs. Somebody ‘shopped’ me, I was spied upon — it’s a nasty world out there, Adam — and my benefits were stopped. I am being searched for — charged with fraud. I don’t intend going back to prison.”

“Hence—”

“Hence my enthusiasm for Bishop Yemi’s fascinating conspiracy theory.”

They had arrived at Adam’s bus stop.

“See you tomorrow,” Adam said.

“How are you getting by?”

“Begging.”

“Oh dear. Desperation.”

“What about you?”

“I’ve taken up my old trade. I steal books — to order, for students.” He frowned. “I just mustn’t get caught again.” His frown turned into a fake smile. “I go this way. I live in a squat in Shoreditch with an intriguing mix of young people.”

Adam watched him saunter off, then he searched his pockets to see how much money he had left. It was a fine evening: he might as well walk home to Chelsea — save a few pennies.

THE BURBERRY TRENCHCOAT LAY ON THE CRACKED CONCRETE OF THE Shaft’s № 2 underground car park. Mohammed stood looking down at it, concernedly.

“Don’t get him dirty,” Mohammed said.

Bozzy picked it up and placed it on a gleaming oil spill and then stamped and ground the trenchcoat into the muck with the heels of his shoes. Then he tried to set it on fire with his lighter.

“All right, all right,” Jonjo said. “Take it easy.”

Small flames burned palely on the familiar tartan lining of the trench.

“Fucking kill you!” Mohammed screamed at Bozzy.

“You already dead!” Bozzy screamed back. “How you going to kill me? Suicide bomb?”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Jonjo bellowed — and everyone calmed down.

Jonjo approached Mohammed, who flinched away from him.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Jonjo said. “Not yet, anyway…How did you get that coat?”

“Like I tell Boz,” Mohammed said. “Three, four weeks ago — I got minicab, right? I minicab driver, yeah? — it was late, I was just going down to the clubs, yeah? Then I sees this geezer, I thought he was pranged — but I see he got cut on his head, yeah?” Mohammed went on to tell his story: how this geezer said he lived in Chelsea and he needed to get back there, and Mohammed, liking the idea of a long journey and a big fare, told this geezer to step aboard. But, when they got to Chelsea, the geezer said he had no money, so he offered his raincoat instead as payment. Mohammed had been very happy to accept it.

“We drove to Chelsea, like. When he says he has to get his raincoat we was a bit suspicious — him being in the waste ground — thought he might be jerking us, thought he might do a runner. But he come back with it and I could see, like, it was a Blueberry raincoat. Class, man, no worries. One hundred quid, easy.”

Bozzy stepped forward and pointed his finger at the small space between Mohammed’s lush eyebrows.

“Lying cunt.” He turned to Jonjo. “We stripped the mim. He don’t have nothing left but a shirt and his knickers.”

“He had cloves on, man. I don’t take no naked man in my cab.”

“Lying cunt!”

Jonjo punched Bozzy extremely hard on his shoulder. Bozzy gave a sharp wheeze of pain and backed off, his arm dangling limp, dead.

“So you dropped him in Chelsea,” Jonjo said to Mohammed. “At a house?”

“Nah. He was sleeping rabbit, next by a bridge.”

Now Jonjo grabbed Mohammed by his throat and lifted him off the ground, his toes just able to touch the stained concrete. Mohammed’s hands gripped Jonjo’s iron wrist, desperately seeking purchase.

“Don’t lie to me, Mo.”

“I swear, boss,” he whispered, eyes bulging.

“Torture him,” Bozzy said.

Jonjo let Mohammed down. He coughed, raked his throat and spat.

“I drop him off. He go into this bit of like waste ground. He come out with coat and give it me.”

Jonjo felt a warmth spread through him. A patch of waste ground by a Thames-side bridge in Chelsea: Battersea Bridge, Albert Bridge or Chelsea Bridge — had to be one of those. Living rough, hiding out — no wonder Kindred had been so hard to find. He looked at Mohamnied, still spitting as if he had a fish bone in his throat.

“So he was sleeping rough by a bridge, was he?…” Jonjo said, benevolence making his voice go ever so slightly husky. He wasn’t going to hurt Mohammed any more. He didn’t need to. “Now, you tell me exactly what bridge you’re talking about.”

♦

Jonjo parked his cab in a small square and walked the half-mile back to Chelsea Bridge. He stood for a while at the railings surrounding the thin triangle of overgrown waste ground, checking to see if there was any movement, any sign of somebody hiding. When he was sure there was no one there he waited for the traffic on the Embankment to slacken and then vaulted over the iron railings. He roved through the triangle quickly — it was bigger than it appeared from the road, and along the bridge side there was a huge old fig tree, of all things. Approaching the triangle’s apex, moving away from the bridge, Jonjo found the undergrowth grew even thicker. He ducked under low branches and pushed through dense bushes and shrubs to find a small clearing. Three tyres were set on top of each other forming a rudimentary seat; under a bush he found a sleeping bag and a groundsheet; under another an orange box with a gas stove, saucepan, a bar of soap and three empty baked bean tins.

Jonjo prowled around a little further. Good cover from the road and the traffic on the bridge. The grass was bruised and trampled flat — someone had been living here for quite a while. He found an entrenching tool: there was no litter, faeces were presumably buried — quite impressive. He looked skywards, nearly dark, the light bulbs on Chelsea Bridge were glowing brightly against the purple-blue of the evening sky.