William Boyd - Ordinary Thunderstorms

“You’ve got to stop sending me these texts, Fairfield,” he said. “I keep deleting. But you keep sending.”

“Why should I stop? I love you, Adam, I want to declare my love to you, all the time, every moment of the day.” She lit a cigarette and blew the smoke considerately over her right shoulder.

“Why? Because…Because they can be traced…They, they, they, you know, might be used against me by Alexa.”

“But I’ve already spoken to Alexa.”

Adam knew it was all over then and he felt a kind of shrinking in him, a withering of his spirit. One stupid mistake — one lapse, one near-unconscious answering of an atavistic sexual instinct — that was all it took to put a perfectly secure life, a fairly happy and prosperous life, in free fall. Tell Adam and Eve about it, he thought, with some bitterness, some self-reproach. And he was sure nemesis was just around the corner — merely a matter of time. So he put his mind in neutral as Fairfield ordered ice cream and he watched her eat it, watched her lick her spoon provocatively, smiling at him, talking of their next date — a motel? A whole night? — their future, before a small commotion at the restaurant’s door made him look up to see Brookman Maybury and some officer of law beside him striding across the courtyard, advancing on their table. Adam was served with a restraining order and told that he would never see his wife again: Alexa was filing for immediate divorce.

He left the bus at Sloane Square and walked soberly down Chelsea Bridge Road to the river, thinking back, gloomily. The divorce and potential scandal had obliged him to resign his associate professorship (Brookman Maybury was a major donor to MMU, there was an athletics scholarship in his late wife’s name). Brookman had made it absolutely, unwaveringly clear: resign or you’ll be charged with gross moral turpitude — you’ll never work in any educational institution again, let alone an American university where you’d be free to prey on your young women students. So Adam had resigned his associate professorship and thought — go back to England, start again, and had applied for the job at Imperial College. And look where that had landed him, he thought with renewed bitterness…

It was a cloudy, breezy day and the river was low, the tide beginning to flow back upstream. From the middle of the bridge Adam had a good view of the triangle — the long thin beach was exposed and there was the fig tree and all the familiar components of what had been his small three-sided world. He checked that nobody was watching the place, waited a few more minutes, walked back round to the Embankment and climbed quickly over the fence, pushing his way through the branches and the bushes to the clearing. Someone had flung the tyres here and there and his sleeping bag and groundsheet had gone — maybe the police had taken them?

He checked his bearings and found the spot, ripping back the turf — the grass was rooting again — to expose his buried cash-box. Inside was Philip Wang’s dossier, the instructions he’d been sent on how to reach the interview room at Imperial College, a taxi receipt, his small A — Z paperback street-map of London, a Grafton Lodge memo pad with some phone numbers jotted on it, a list of flats for sale from an estate agent that he’d visited — all that remained of the old Adam, he realised, the meagre documentary residue of his former life that he’d been carrying in his coat and jacket pockets that fateful night…He deposited his £500 wad of notes, closed the box and stamped the turf down. This was how all banks and banking began, he supposed, a simple store for excess money. And look how far we’ve evolved…

♦

By coincidence, Bishop Yemi’s sermon that night took as its starting point a text from ‘The Book of John’, Revelation chapter 14, verse 14—‘Use your sickle and reap because the harvest of the earth is fully ripe’—one that he employed as a vehicle for exploring, at great length, some of the merits of globalisation.

Mrs Darling was serving the food that evening — a surprisingly good Lancashire hot pot — and she greeted him with particular warmth.

“Lovely to see you, John,” she said. “Bishop Yemi would like a word after supper.”

What did this mean? Adam wondered, suspiciously, as he took his plate over to the table to join Vladimir, Thrale and Turpin. Turpin had been absent for over a week and was very vague with his replies. He’d been ‘out west’ to see a wife of his in Bristol. It hadn’t been an enjoyable experience — one of his daughters had gone to the bad — and his mood was correspondingly morose and taciturn.

In strong contrast to Vladimir, who was in a state of high excitement, having finally been provided with his passport, an object that was passed discreetly round the table. Turpin wasn’t interested. It was Italian, Adam saw, and noted that Vladimir’s new name was to be ‘Primo Belem’. The photograph, over-lit, slightly blurry, did look remarkably like Vladimir: the original Primo Belem — the late Primo Belem — also had a shaven head and a goatee, a fact that made them generically identical. All men with shaven heads and goatees look vaguely related, even like brothers, Adam realised.

Thrale was particularly interested, however, asking if such passports could be had for less than 1,000 euros — Adam could see a plan forming — and Vladimir promised to ask his contact. There was something valedictory and unsettling about this last meal together. Vladimir⁄Primo was about to leave and re-enter the real world as a legitimate member of society. He had found a small one-bedroomed flat on an estate in Stepney; he had been interviewed for a job as a hospital porter; he had opened a bank account and applied for a credit card. He shook hands with everyone as he left, accepting their empty wishes of good luck and responding with equally empty promises that he’d stay in touch.

But he drew Adam aside before he left and handed him a slip of paper — on it was written his mobile phone number. Adam found this depressing: he wondered if his own circumstances would ever allow him to own and operate a mobile phone again — it was a pang-inducing reminder of how basic and circumscribed his life was.

“Call me, please, Adam,” Vladimir insisted. “You come to my flat, we smoke some monkey, yeah?”

“That would be great,” Adam said. “Take care.”

Their farewells were interrupted by Mrs Darling, who led Adam away up a staircase at the back of the hall to Bishop Yemi’s offices. There, Adam found the bishop wearing a dark three — piece suit and bright amber silk tie, his cornflower-blue shirt sporting a contrasting white collar — the effect was detabilising: he looked like a prosperous, if slightly flash, businessman. In his lapel buttonhole Adam saw a tiny gold pin that said ‘John 2’—the pastor had kept his badge of office.

“John 1603,” Bishop Yemi said, clasping Adam’s hand in both his. “Sit down, my brother.” Adam sat, noting the river view from the office windows, the tide flowing in and, across the brown water, the prospect of the expensive apartments on Wapping High Street.

“I have chosen you, John,” Bishop Yemi said. “You are my chosen one.”

“Me?” Adam said. “What for?”

Bishop Yemi explained. The Church ofjohn Christ had recently been endowed with charitable status — they were now a registered charity with all the tax benefits that ensued from that. Moreover, they had been awarded a large grant from City Hall’s ‘Outreach for Kids’ programme, sponsored by the Mayor of London himself. The Church ofjohn was opening a creche, a pre-nursery infant school, an office to provide free legal and medical counsel, an agency for fostering the disadvantaged young and, the jewel in the crown, an orphanage in Eltharn for under-twelves.