William Boyd - Ordinary Thunderstorms

A gaunt-faced man in his sixties with long, thinning grey hair tied back in a pony-tail heaved himself out of his seat and reached for an arm-crutch before coming over to greet them. Adam noticed there was a wheelchair in the corner of the room. The man moved towards them with obvious difficulty, almost as if he were walking on artificial limbs.

“Dad, this is Primo. Primo, this is my dad, Jeff Nashe.”

“Good to meet you, Primo,” he said, extending and twisting round his left hand in greeting. Adam gripped it and shook it briefly and awkwardly, but Nashe held on to it. “First question: you’re not a fucking copper, are you?”

“I’m a hospital porter.”

Jeff Nashe turned incredulously to his daughter. “Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“At last,” Nashe said. “One with a proper job.”

Adam decided Nashe was a bit stoned as he finally let go of Adam’s hand. He was a strong-faced man with high cheekbones and a sharp, hooked nose, but wasted — he had bags under his eyes, his hair was thin and grizzled in its summer-of-love 19605 pony-tail. But Adam could see from whom Rita derived her bone structure.

“Coffee, tea or a glass of wine?” Rita asked.

“I wouldn’t mind a glass of wine, actually,” Adam said.

“Same here,” Nashe said. “Bring the bottle, darling.”

They settled themselves on chairs in front of the mute TV — a twenty-four-hour news channel, Adam noticed — Nashe kept glancing at it as he rolled himself a cigarette, as if he were waiting for a specific item to come up. He offered Adam his tobacco pouch and roll-up papers. Adam said no thanks.

“You can see I’m semi-crippled,” Nashe said. “Victim of an industrial accident. Seventeen years of litigation.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“No, you’re not. You don’t give a toss.”

He hauled himself out of the chair again and, not picking up the arm-crutch, crossed the room to the bookcase, at a fair pace, Adam thought, and returned with a book that he dropped in Adam’s lap.

“That was me before the accident,” he said.

Adam looked at the book, a large softback with the title Civic Culture in Late Modernity: the Latin American Challenge , and the author’s name, Jeff Nashe.

“Fascinating,” Adam said.

“Forty-two universities, polytechnics and colleges had that book on their reading lists in the 19705.”

Rita came through at this point with the bottle of wine and three glasses. She switched off the TV and replaced the book in the bookshelf.

“Sorry,” she said. “He always does that.”

“Because it’s important to me,” Nashe said petulantly. “I know he thinks I’m some kind of saddo, has-been loser. I don’t want your boyfriend’s pity.”

“He’s not my boyfriend and he doesn’t pity you,” Rita said with some heat. “OK? So sit down and have a glass of wine.”

He complied and Rita poured the wine. They all had a sip and Rita topped them up.

“So, Primo,” Nashe said. “Who did you vote for at the last election?”

♦

Up on deck there was a breeze coming down the river from the west. The leaves in Rita’s deck-garden stirred and rustled, the palms clattering drily, clicking like knitting needles. Rita and Adam were sitting in the middle of this makeshift shrubbery, up by the forward gun-emplacement, smoking a joint. The tide was rising and below him Adam could feel the Bellerophon beginning to heave herself off the mud.

“I don’t usually smoke,” Rita said. “And I shouldn’t let him wind me up like that. But I wanted you to meet him — just to let you know, put you in the picture. He was behaving fairly badly tonight — a bit too bloody pleased with himself — mostly he’s much easier with guests.” She inhaled and passed the joint to Adam, who puffed dutifully at it and handed it back. He couldn’t tell if it was having any effect.

“Sometimes I just need to get out of my head for a few minutes.” She exhaled and looked over at him. “Lovely evening.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” Adam said. “Don’t worry, officer.”

“Thank you, kind sir.” She smiled at him and inclined her head in a little bow of acknowledgement.

“What happened to your father?” he asked.

“He was a lecturer in Latin American studies at East Battersea Polytechnic,” she paused. “And one night he fell down the stairs to the library and badly hurt his back.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. He sued, they appealed, he won. He hasn’t worked since. That was the industrial accident.” She took a big hit on her joint.

“Latin American studies. So that’s why your brother’s called Ernes to.”

“Ernesto Guevara Nashe. I’m called after one ‘Margarita Camilo’—she was in the Sierra Maestra mountains with Castro’s rebel army. Margarita Camilo Nashe at your service.”

“Right,” Adam was thinking. So it’s Margarita…“So there’s a strong Spanish, Latin American connection in the Nashe family.”

“No, no, he’s never been to either Central or South America.”

“But he taught Latin American studies. And the book.”

“Let’s say there was an opening in academic life in the late sixties. A career opportunity. He was a historian who couldn’t find employment anywhere. They set up a Latin American studies department at East Battersea and they offered him a job…” She shrugged. “Suddenly he became a Latin American expert. To be fair he loved it — he was a kind of virtual revolutionary until he fell down the stairs.”

“Does he speak Spanish?”

“Do you?” She laughed loudly at the idea. “ Habla espanol, amigo! ” she said. The drug was beginning to work its narcotic magic. Adam was beginning to understand why Rita became a policewoman.

“I’d better go,” Adam said and stood up — and staggered as the Bellerophon heaved herself free from the Thames mud and was buoyant. Rita caught him.

Their kiss was, for Adam, a great, heady release — of pleasure, of desire for Rita. He felt a kind of fizzing through his gut and loins as her tongue searched deep into his mouth and he held her to him strongly. But at the same time as he was thinking this is wonderful — another part of his brain was saying: this is a bit sudden, all a bit rushed.

They broke apart.

“This is all a bit sudden, a bit rushed,” Rita said. “But I’m not complaining.”

“I was sort of thinking the same.”

“You could come back down below,” she said. “I’m a big girl — do have my own room.”

“Maybe not tonight, I think.”

“That is sensible, Primo Belem, wise man. Thank you. Yes.” She was high.

She walked him back through the marina along the gangways to the shore, holding on to his arm with both hands, her head on his shoulder. They kissed again, with more deliberateness, a more conscious savouring of their lips and tongues in contact. What was it about kissing? Adam thought. How could it seem so important, this meeting of four lips, two mouths, two tongues? Sometimes those first kisses can turn your head, Adam realised, recognising the absurd weakness in himself that made him want to have his head turned, to say something declarative to her, to register the emotion he was feeling. After two kisses? — ridiculous, he thought. He resisted.

THERE WAS NO DOUBT THAT THE NEW ADVERTORIAL WAS IMPRESSIVE, Ingram thought — and well designed, and classy, and highly effective. Two smiling, adorable, blonde children, a boy and a girl, looking up fondly at a really incredibly attractive — not to say stunningly beautiful — young mother, looking down equally fondly at them. The colours were lambent, radiant: golds, creams, the palest yellows. “AN END TO ASTHMA?” was the heading in bold, writ large, confident in dark forest-green. There was a sententious quotation from him, something about being a force for good in a dangerous world, signed Ingram Fryzer, Chairman and CEO of Calenture-Deutz, and even his actual signature underneath it. Where had they taken that from? he wondered. Then he recalled it was routinely reproduced on all the brochures the company sent out. Yes, everything about the advertorial looked big, caring, a brighter future almost within our grasp. This could be the life we all could lead, the pages said, implicitly: let’s not waste any more time, for the sakes of pretty children and beautiful mothers like these. We don’t want them to suffer.