2009 - Ordinary Thunderstorms (23 page)

“You still here, man?” Mr Quality said.

“Yeah, keeping busy.”

“Like little Mhousey, yeah?”

“We get on OK. And little Ly-on—nice little bloke.”

“You stay, you have to pay me rent. £100 a month.”

“I pay Mhouse rent.”

“Not her apartment, man. It mine.”

“I’ll pay you tomorrow,” Adam said, “OK?” The wad of notes in his pocket felt as heavy as a brick.

“You make me very happy, Sixteen-oh-three.”

Adam took the long bus journey to Chelsea, happy to have the chance to think. He thought about Mhouse and Ly-on and the strange new life he was living with them. And he rather marvelled at himself- at his ability to adapt, almost to thrive in this hostile and unforgiving world. He wondered what Alexa would have made of this new Adam; he wondered what his father and his sister would think. He deliberately didn’t bring his family to mind, if he could help it—better to keep them parked on the rim of consciousness. He was sure he was never out of
their
minds; what must they imagine had become of him? Son and brother lost for ever. He could think calmly about this because he felt he had changed in some paradigmatic way: the old Adam Kindred was being ousted and overwhelmed by the new one—shrewder, more worldly and capable of survival. It was like
Homo sapiens
brushing aside the Neanderthals…This gave him pause, this notion: perhaps he wasn’t quite so happy to wave goodbye to the old Adam, after all. He shouldn’t have thought of Alexa, he realised, as image after image of her came swimming uninvited into his mind, and he could hear her husky, throaty voice in his ear. In fact it had been her voice that attracted him initially—as if she were recovering from laryngitis—and was the first thing about her he had become aware of when he had telephoned her office to enquire about an apartment for sale not far from the university in Phoenix. She had been the realtor when he eventually bought it. The physical presence of Alexa—the thick blonde hair, the tan, the briskness, the teeth, the glossy lips—almost contradicted what her vocal chords seemed to infer. It was as if he had been expecting some stout, heavy-smoking lounge-singer and instead had been presented with this glowing prototype of American pulchritude. But the disparate juxtaposition of voice and persona had its own telling appeal. There had been problems with the sale that necessitated further meetings, cell-phone numbers had been exchanged, and when the sale had gone through they had gone to a bar together to have a celebratory drink. They had shared a bottle of champagne, Adam walked her to her car, they kissed. That was the beginning: swift courtship, society marriage, the new house gifted by widower Dad, the talk of a family.

The end came, suddenly, unexpectedly, two years later, when Fairfield had called Alexa up, two days after the sex in the cloud chamber, sobbingly declaring her eternal love for Adam, begging Alexa to let her husband go free. Covertly Alexa had read the undeleted texts on Adam’s cell-phone and printed them off. Brookman Maybury himself had stood beside the attorney when the divorce proceedings were initiated and when Adam learnt how the baleful course of events had unfolded. Alexa was not present, her father acting as cold, stern proxy for his shattered, ill, medicated daughter, his eyes glowering at Adam beneath the folded strata of his acropachydermous brows. Adam tried to stop thinking—but the memory of his last meal with Fairfield elbowed its way remorselessly into his mind.

Three days after the cloud-chamber moment, they met on campus and had gone downtown in Phoenix to a large, anonymous mid-scale restaurant for supper. This restaurant had an open-air courtyard and was popular, therefore, with smokers. It served copious surf and turf, all the shrimps you can eat in a bucket, whole chickens with free fries—and, after they had eaten (Adam wasn’t hungry, barely touched his food), Adam had tried to put his ‘damage limitation’ plan into first gear. The more he made the reasonable case—a moment of madness, inexcusable behaviour on his part, let’s be friends—the more Fairfield said she loved him, wanted to spend her life with him, bear his children.

“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.

“Congratulations,” Adam said. “But what’s this got to do with me?”

“I need an executive, a right-hand man, someone who knows the church, knows its doctrinal inclination.” Bishop Yemi smiled modestly.

“No crucifixes,” Adam said.

“Precisely. Our Lord did not die on a wooden cross. The radiant sun of Patmos is our new logo.”

“I’m afraid I—”

“I cannot forsake my pastoral duties entirely.” Bishop Yemi ignored him. “I need someone to represent the church—my proxy—to all these new administrative bodies. And I have chosen you, John 1603.”

Adam repeated that he was very sorry indeed—hugely flattered, honoured, even—but the answer had to be a reluctant no. He blamed his fragile mental health, the numerous recent breakdowns, and so on. It would be impossible: he would hate to let down the church.

“Never rush to judgement, John,” Bishop Yemi said, “I refuse to take ‘no’ for an answer—it’s my guiding principle in life. Think about it, take your time, my brother. We could be a great team and the rewards—spiritual and financial—will be considerable.” He hugged Adam at the door, warmly.

“I need intelligence, John, and this you have in copious supply. I have searched among the other brothers and I know you are the one. The starting salary is £25,000 a year. Plus car and expenses, of course.” He smiled. “Use your sickle, John.”

“Sorry?”

“Use your sickle and reap because the harvest of the earth is fully ripe.”

That night, when he returned to the flat, Mhouse was waiting up for him. She kissed him on the lips—just a smack—but she never kissed him any more, since that first time she had slid into bed beside him.

“What’s going on?” he said.

“Fancy an all-nighter?”

After they had made love they both felt hungry; Mhouse found some prawn-cocktail-flavoured crisps and Adam opened one of his bottles of wine—a Californian Cabernet Sauvignon. Mhouse sat on the mattress, cross-legged, facing him, munching crisps and drinking wine from the bottle. It was like a midnight feast, Adam thought—then, a second later, the school analogy seemed absurd. There were no naked midnight feasts at school, Adam realised: young women did not sit opposite you, naked, cross-legged, during school midnight feasts.

He placed his finger on her ‘MHOUSE LY-ON’ tattoo.

“When did you do that?” he asked.

She had other, more conventional tattoos: a jagged, two-pronged, lightning bolt on her coccyx; a multi-petalled flower on her left shoulder; a constellation of stars (Orion) on the instep of her right foot. They had been done professionally in tattoo-parlours: ‘MHOUSE LY-ON’ was all her own work.