Ordinary Thunderstorms

26

TO STEAL FROM A blind man was almost as low as you could go. To steal a blind man’s white stick surely condemned you to the most nether and excruciating regions of hell — assuming hell existed, Adam said to himself, which of course it didn’t. This rock-solid secular rationality, however, didn’t remove the feelings of guilt he experienced each time he took the stick out with him. But needs must, necessity the mother of invention, and so on, he told himself: there was no doubt that the acquisition of the white stick — the white-stick Damascene moment — and the introduction of the white-stick routine had transformed his begging life and his fortunes. On two particular days he had made over £100, most days he begged £60 to £70 with ease. He was going to clear £1,000 long before the end of the month.

He had seen the blind man — the partially sighted man — in a coffee-shop and had observed the almost visible currents of concern that emanated towards him from other people around him. It was as if he were a kind of care-magnet — chairs were discreetly moved out of his way, couples parted to let him by, a steering hand — was laid gently on his elbow to direct him to the front of the queue. Adam sat, watching him order his cappuccino and muffin (a member of staff came out from behind the counter to place them on a table nearby), and the blind man haltingly came over and sat down. People’s conversations quietened deferentially as he passed. He folded up his stick (it had a little plastic ball on the end) and slipped it into the canvas bag he carried and that he placed on the floor by his seat. Then he ate his muffin and drank his coffee and while he was doing so Adam had his revelation — his begging revelation — he saw, at once, his begging future.

He was scraping by perfectly well on his ‘brown coins only’ appeal—£5 to £6 a day — a smart idea in itself, but it was a small smart idea. He needed to take begging to new heights, he required a quantum leap in his begging imagination, and he saw in this blind man and his white stick the road he had to follow.

So Adam stole this blind man’s white stick. He walked by his table, dropped his newspaper, bent down to retrieve it, picked the stick out of the bag and slid it up his jacket sleeve before strolling out of the coffee-shop.

The next day, Adam went to Paddington Station, wearing a shirt and a tie, his pin-stripe suit and a pair of cheap sunglasses bought from a thrift shop near The Shaft. With the stick unfolded, its white plastic ball-end grazing a zig-zag in front of him over the stone floor of the station concourse, he approached the big, elevated electronic display of departing trains. He chose an elderly woman to ask his question to.

“Excuse me,” Adam said in his politest, middle — class voice, “but am I at Waterloo Station?”

“No. Oh, no, no. You’re at Paddington.”

“Paddington? Oh my god, no. Thank you, thank you. Oh god. Sorry to bother you. Thank you.” He turned away.

“Can I help? Is there anything wrong?”

“I’ve been brought to the wrong station. I’ve spent all my money.”

The woman gave him £10 and paid for his Underground ticket back to Waterloo.

At Waterloo, Adam asked a young couple if he was at Liverpool Street Station. They gave him £5 for his Tube fare. Waiting half an hour, Adam then approached a middle-aged man, also in a pinstriped suit, and asked him if the trains to Scotland left from here.

“Bugger off,” the man said and turned his back on him.

But that was rare. In Adam’s experience, for every ‘bugger off, walk-away or blank ignoring stare he received four offers of financial aid. People thrust money on him, some were absurdly generous, offering to accompany him, buy him food, telling him to ‘take care’, pressing further notes into his hand.

On his first day begging as a blind man he made £53.

On his second day he made £79.

A routine soon established itself: he undertook a daily circuit of London’s railway termini and larger Underground stations — King’s Cross, Paddington, Waterloo, Victoria, London Bridge, Piccadilly, Liverpool Street, Earls Court, Angel, Notting Hill Gate, Bank, Oxford Circus. He also went to Oxford Street and shopping malls, farmers’ markets and museums — anywhere that people gathered and where he would be inconspicuous. Wherever he was he simply asked if he was somewhere else. People were kind and attentive, people were helpful and understanding — his faith in the essential good nature of his fellow human beings was hugely reinforced. He never begged more than once a day at any one location and steadily the wad of notes in his pocket grew. He paid Mhouse’s rent a week in advance; he went to the supermarket and came home with plastic bags full of food and wine for himself and Mhouse and treats for Ly-on. He bought a de-luxe Easy-Reading kit and began to teach Ly-on to read and write (it helped diminish the guilt, a little). In his second week of blind-man begging he purchased a new dark suit, three white shirts, a pseudo-club tie and a pair of black loafers in a sale.

And so when Mhouse scratched her nails on his door that night and offered him a lodger’s discount for sex with the landlady he was both ready and happy to oblige — money no object. She came to his bed five nights in a row. On the third night he asked her to stay — he liked the idea of them sleeping together in each other’s arms but she said a full night was,£100 so he demurred. Then suddenly, after five nights, she stopped coming. He missed her, missed her lean, quick body and her uptilted, dark-nippled breasts.

He had not had sex with anyone since that ill-fated night in the cloud-chamber viewing gallery with Fairfield — and before that there was a distant, dimming memory of making love to Alexa

— her tanned body, her white bikini-shadow, her lustrous blonde hair and perfect teeth. To have Mhouse in his arms, beneath him, to be inside her, to experience orgasm, was as close to happiness as he had known, recently — for the first time since the murder of Philip Wang he felt a sense of ease, of normality, of a stirring of human affection again — of need.

After a few days’ abstinence he said to her: “I’ll give you a hundred, for a whole night.”

“I don’t think so, John. It’s not, you know, proper. Ly-on will-know.”

“How come the other five nights were ‘proper’?”

“Well, sort of slam-bam-thank-you-Mam, you know. Quick as a flash. But I think he know something’s happened.”

That was true. After the fourth night Adam had come up behind Mhouse at the sink, put his arms around her, kissed her neck and squeezed her breasts. She’d turned and slapped his face, hard. Adam recoiled and in spinning away was provided with an image of Ly-on looking up from his book, shocked and worried.

“Don’t fucking never do that again,” Mhouse hissed at him in a fury. “This is business. Pure and simple.”

But was it? Adam wondered. That first night she had come into his room she had said she was ‘lonely’. He was lonely too

— sometimes he thought he was the loneliest man on the planet. And he had so liked holding her small, lithe body, feeling the warmth of her breath on his neck and cheek, feeling her squirm and rub herself against him. As the days went by and nothing further happened, Adam — growing richer — began to find living in the flat a near intolerable frustration. He resumed his visits to the Church of John Christ, choosing to eat his evening meal there in the company of Vladimir, Turpin and Gavin Thrale, happy to endure Bishop Yemi’s interminable sermons. But he still came back to The Shaft and lay on the mattress in his room, listening through the wall to Ly-on now reading simple stories to his mother. When all went quiet he would lie in the dark, willing Mhouse to slip out of bed and come and tap on his door, but it didn’t happen again.

Adam thought — vaguely — about leaving: why torment himself in this way? But something kept him there. The flat in The Shaft was a kind of home, after all, and he felt safe, for once. And Ly-on liked him — strange, listless Ly-on who turned out to be a quick learner — and if he left he wouldn’t see Mhouse any more, wouldn’t be in her company, watching television, eating bad meals together, laughing, talking. He wondered if he were becoming unhealthily obsessed with her…

♦

Adam sat in his room counting out £500 and then looped a rubber band around the thick wad of notes. That left him a float of almost £300 but he was beginning to feel uneasy about carrying such a large amount of money around with him. Luckily he’d thought of somewhere secure where he could bank it.

On the way out of The Shaft he heard a call.

“Hey. Sixteen-oh-three.”

He looked round to see Mr Quality loping towards him, hand held out in greeting. They had met a couple of times before when he had called round at the flat, delivering small packets to Mhouse — pills for her problems, Mhouse said. They slapped hands and gripped thumbs.

“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.

“It was when Ly-on was born. Like to show we one person, you know…I did small one on him, on his leg when he was baby. Boy, did he crying. But,” she smiled, radiantly, she believed it, “no one can separate us, now. Never.”

“Why are you called Mhouse?”

“My real name is Suri,” she said, spelling it for him slowly. “But I never like being Suri — so many bad things happen to Suri. So I change it.”

“To Mhouse.”

“Suri means ‘mouse’ in French language — someone told me.”

“Of course. But why do you write it like that?”

“I can write a bit. I can write ‘house’, yeah? I learn that. So,” she smiled. “House — Mhouse. Easy.”

Adam touched her breasts, kissed them, dragged his knuckles across her nipples, let his fingers trail down her flat stomach.

“Somebody offered me a job today,” he said. “£25,000 a year, and a car.”

Mhouse’s laughter was loud and genuine.

“You a funny one, John,” she said. “You know how to make me laugh.” She put the wine bottle down and pushed him gently, rolling him over on to his back so she could straddle him. She leant forward, twisting her body, letting her breasts touch his lips, his chin, a nipple grazing it, one then the other, and she kissed him, taking his bottom lip between her teeth and biting gently.

“I kiss you for free,” she said.

“Thank you,” Adam said.

Adam ran his hands down her lean back to cup her tensed buttocks. One hundred pounds to Mhouse, he thought, and a hundred to Mr Quality — worth every begging penny.