Nadine Gordimer - No Time Like the Present

From the apocalyptic to nuclear detritus shit. There’s a murmur: all there in their books, but the famous speaker catches it. — We’re here to make what’s dispersed cogent. — The Chair professor of the sessions smiles in acquiescence and lifts curved open hands of a familiar deity.

Several stirrings, someone gets to rise first and tells of the endangered plant species in her part of the environment, ‘engulfing’ has a literal rather than a conceptual association there (an acknowledging grunt from her neighbouring professor) with nuclear waste pollution of water stunting the growth of plants and crops.

Water becomes the element that engages. (It’s represented here iced, in plastic bottles all along the conference table.) An English professor — Chernobyl suffocated, the prevailing awareness of nuclear effluent is what you breathe, not what you may ingest, swallow. — A gesture to the delegate who comes from the habitat where crocodiles die in polluted rivers, that chain of life being broken.

He doesn’t have to compose what he tells, as he did with his maiden slot of presentation; the facts are ready to mind. He can tell: a nuclear power plant near the coast, yet another in the drive for development of industry, will produce a huge thermal discharge of scorching water from condenser cooling which will alter the sea temperature, destroying kelp. Chemicals and biocides used to treat the nuclear plant’s piping will put this thermal and toxic discharge into the marine environment killing larval fish — a massive trauma will disturb the seasonal migration of whales.

He’s taken up the demand in habit from way back in the Struggle of responding to what is expected of him in discipline of a given situation.

In the foyer after the session ends he is jostled by further questions, is hearing comparisons with the state of nature in this one’s group of islands, and that, interjections of the capability or not, of climate to alleviate conditions, Lindsay Wilson has looked in, her duty to the institute to monitor activity, and finding herself near him half-turns to confirm casually — You’ll be ready round two on Saturday afternoon?—

She’s right.

He hasn’t called the friends of the other stay in London.

That gesture of the turned head caught peripherally in the foyer gathering: the parents keep open house, she and her little contingent. If it was spring in the Northern Hemisphere it was cold (in his experience, of African seasons) as he was delivered out of the hotel by the revolving doors. He hunched in the corduroy jacket that was his all-season protection at home. Her car was drawn up, she waved him to it with the bright bobbles of her woollen cap beckoning. The car was empty. No one else from the hotel followed or was waited for, apparently. She didn’t pause. Snapped her seatbelt.

— Domanski’s cried off. I think he’s found some long-lost love he thought had left for Peru or somewhere years ago. So many among you — the delegates, belong to some country other than the one they live or have done their work in.—

— Yes, that’s been the benefit of wars and revolutions, at least for those countries.—

She laughs at the off-beat idea, in a country that won all its wars. Since how many centuries? Invasions? The Vikings? No one had to flee to somewhere else. Except to establish England far and wide.

There is an attitude in walking when the body knows the direction, the muscles and nerves tuned towards it. Same thing with driving, there’s a delicate known objective in the handling of the vehicle. Is she headed for the right street where she’s to pick up the Beard. But the impulses that subconsciously control the handling of the car are directed out of the lefts and rights of neighbouring streets, she’s turning to a highway. The Beard is not waiting at some host’s house. Nothing said but that’s evident.

She gossips playfully about the delegates in the way natural between people who are of the same generation — well he’s a bit older than she is but they’re of the same era, in the same relation to the ageing, some really old academics at the conference. This one wants an exercise bicycle in his room although, poor old dear, he stumps along on a stick, that one wants an appointment at a special audio clinic for tests on his hearing aid he’s told are unique. — I’m a bit like an up-grade air hostess, nurse, attendant, if I don’t serve the food I take instructions about it. And not only from the old ones — Adrian Bates must have only a soy-based diet — imagine the chef’s face when I arrange that.—

It would be tempting to confirm it makes him an exceptional dancer, doesn’t it.

The countryside is coming to life, the magnificent trees shivering new leaves and some pools of rain have the stillness of melted ice. — At our place it’s what we call mild in England. No longer spring runny-nose. — She takes a detour through a cathedral city to make the journey cultural. Its stone grey is a statement of splendid authority disguising itself as beauty. — No wonder you Brits conquered half the world.—

— Are you religious?—

— Religions cause too much conflict.—

The subject doesn’t have to be heavy. — I’m a divorced Catholic, lapsed. Think that’s all right, with God.—

She’s someone who doesn’t find questions intrusive; free of ever having had anything threatening, to hide from — what an easy pleasure to be with. What’s called: relaxed. Cool.

— Have you always, I mean only, done this sort of public relations work, conferences, academic stuff?—

— I’ve tried a few — what, occupations. After university.—

— What’s your degree? Let me guess. Social studies. Languages. I heard you in Italian, French.—

— Wrong. BSc. I’m one of you, but as I’ve said, it was the wrong choice, I’m interested in us —people. Yet it looks good on my CV for the head of the faculty to have as public relations woman someone who’s an initiate, at least. It won’t be my lifelong career, that’s for sure.—

— What d’you plan will be. — Wrong verb, her head lifts back briefly as she drives, she’s not one who plans or has forces incumbent. — I’ve run a resort club for deep-sea diving in the Bahamas.—

— How would you have learnt to bring that off!—

— With someone else, it was a sweat in more ways than one, the heat, the catering and the risk that a careless client mightn’t surface on occasion, but it was fun. Until the cash…and other things ran out. I’ve had a year with the British Council in France… — And as if he had given an expected response — Oh and now, there’s a chance I could go with a trade commission to China.—

— So you’re taking a Chinese phrase book home for the weekend.—

— You’ve hit upon a good idea, I should have one. All I’ve done is eat more often in Chinese restaurants and tried out on the waiters my stabs at pronouncing the names of the dishes. They don’t laugh, they seriously instruct me.—

There was no sense of obligation to keep a conversation going, and short silences interspersed while he followed the fields, the villages no longer the children’s toys expected but the supermarket beside the pub, and she was at ease in some aspect of her present, which happens to be that of driving her car, activity as unthinking as breathing.

— You’ve always taught? In a university. You were sure of what you wanted.—

— I was in a paint factory. An industrial chemist, safe place for me at the time.—

She, beside him, will take this to mean earn his bread, any one way or another, while young, free, undecided. Don’t spoil this pleasant ride with a somehow compatible stranger, the whole spiel. She doesn’t couldn’t suspect; she knows him as a conference delegate who went to the same kind of school, English formula, to shed naturally — for adulthood, as she had. That what? — abstraction, Nazism, Fascism, apartheid , history she maybe once demonstrated against in Trafalgar Square, she had the choice; and now she has no choice but to accept without fuss there is some danger she might be blown up banally in that other Underground, the tube train, by an unknown from al-Qaeda. An unknown among the immigrants she surely meets in her present career as go-between for the democratic institute and society. Don’t open the car to all that. There’s just the fresh nostril-widening of breath coming in by the driver’s window lowered.