No Time Like the Present: A Novel (14 page)

That day the sessions’ range branched off, burrowed, dived in on trail of toxins beyond domestic examples, the food industry, cosmetics.—Industrial products—a loose term that hardly covers the pervasive products of nuclear power stations.—A delegate who so far had been withdrawn in perfect attention of others, stood up with his microphone and had to pause, applauded: he must be someone unapproachable in his, this field. Ignoring the accolade the man spoke with distant eloquence.—We are all afraid of extinction. That is what the nuclear threat is, to most people. The nuclear threat that is not the Big Bang is one that kills slowly. The state of world data, our information, let alone fully examined and assessed knowledge of the nuclear threat that is not a Big Bang, is incomplete and perhaps never will be. This symposium is an opportunity—obligation—to hear from our colleagues from many regions of the planet which compromise our engulfing environment, anything in the experience of their own country which will add to the data.—

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.

She’s telling him that she really wants a cottage, some little place she can fix up, of her own, although she loves the family-free-for-all she can always take friends to. A cottage nearer the city so she could even come down during the week for a night. But it doesn’t make sense, she supposes, while she’s going to be away, sometimes a post for several years—

When a flash sears across the road a leaping dark thing hare or dog and her voice become the mad swerve of her left hand over the steering wheel the speeding car heaves he grabs the arc of her arm to correct violent imbalance and she rights in a skid—whatever the creature was it’s escaped, her left palm falls rigid spread-fingered on his thigh as the speed shudders madly and her sane right hand gains control of the wheel. Drawing back his arm, his hand rests a moment on the hand on his thigh as on flesh that has taken a blow. Then she’s in charge, she doesn’t stifle the engine, stop the car, she drives them slowly out of the zigzag the tyres have ploughed.

—You didn’t touch it. It’s unhurt. I saw.—The assurance. Neither suggested they should have got out to make certain. It was true he saw it disappear into a thicket of bushes.—I don’t think it was a squirrel—was all she said. Are squirrels special, to her, among wild creatures.

As her car came to itself again, she cried out and turned to him with a twitching grimace—I apologise. I think you need a coffee, shall we stop at a village. Get ourselves together? We’re near now, about half an hour to go.—

—You handled it well, I’m the one to apologise for grabbing your arm like that, it must be bruised.—

—I’ll tell you after I’m in the bath, too much sleeve to roll up now. We were both pretty cool.—

They had coffee anyway at a rural stall, served by what the stranger would appreciate in the English countryside, a bright-faced old man with an accent of some region he hadn’t heard before; that one other time in England. There was a parrot in a cage, nibbling his bars at them. She spoke to it, Hi there Polly two cappuccinos please, and it cursed back in a hoarse invective learnt from some drunk—Shut yer fucking trap fucker FUCK-EER LOS LOS GET LOS—curses certainly lost in their buoyant laughter. All part of the incident on their way. It passed with the early dusk.

In light from the windows an old farmhouse appeared leaned against by two great bent trees he thought must be old oaks—Not so old—she discarded sentiment—my great-grandfather decided to try farming when he came back from that First World War with lungs messed up in a gas attack. My grandfather preferred the stock exchange and that was a good thing for the rest of us. It’s never been farmed since. Most of the land was sold off, of course.—

Seen for the first time as if come upon an unfurled painting, an orchard of some kind, a line of trees curving beyond a field where two horses switched tails in the company of (by comparison) an awkward donkey, the tree-line imagined as probably covering a stream; the house not thatched but with rural solidity enlivened by some obvious additions. There were three cars and a station wagon at homely angles on the grass, where shadow children in the light from the house darted between them after a ball.

—Ah, full house tonight.—She, recognising vehicles and children. Apparently it was customary no one, including herself, was expected to call that they were going to be there for the weekend. But he felt rather intrusive, just turning up with her, open house full house.—Is it all right?—She gave a call of mock surprise—Of course!—

His tote bag and her stack of whatever her kit was for the country were left in the car. Everyone was already around food and drink in a wide echoing room with a fire being fed rough logs in fooling competition by two teenage boys and a girl in sheepskin boots. He was taken by the hand to have it presented to a heavy man, evidently her brother, blond as the strands so restless this way and that over her forehead and cheeks due to what happened on the road; so the water-blondness was shared, not chemical. The brother Jeremy took the hand and then grasped its forearm male-welcomely (not the black double-shake,
eish
), although he didn’t seem to give much attention to registering the name of the one changing weekend cast she brought to open house.—The parents aren’t down—she asked.

The brother was the host, then.—Help yourself before everything’s gone—this family’s a ravenous lot. Wine’s there, beer if you’d rather. My sister’s always for Guinness, she knows where to find it.—Women came over from the long table of food. I’m Tracy…Ivy, Isabel. I’m this girl Lindsay’s Ugly Sister (a beauty); a small girl with her mother’s lipstick a purple scar on her mouth insisted, Who’re you…
Steve
, thanks…Steve Steve Steve, repeated in the parrot’s cadence.

It could be heard from his South African accent that although he wasn’t one of her foreigner friends (Domanski’s cried off, yes) he was some variety of colonial.—You here from Australia, mate?—Oh…this one or that among the men had a son or a cousin in South Africa, communications or was it automation, Cape Town. A young one dismissed the Square connection: his brother was down there with the Liverpool rugby team. A grey-locks woman with the presence of some other kind of achievement found herself beside him as he topped up his wine glass, there must have been something about him suggesting her supposition: Does he know the work of the artist from his country, Karel Nel, who recently had an exhibition in London, Cork Street, an extraordinary talent, astrophysics in art. He’d never met the painter but Jake had taken Jabu and him to an exhibition of the work at home. Among the jet and fall of voices, the mood stir of people enjoying food together, there was the momentary link of particular experience, an artist’s vision, between strangers.