by David Nobbs
‘Have you ever had an orgasm, Paul?’
Naomi says this to shock Simon. She is sorry to have to shock Padre Pablo, but there is something about Simon today that makes her really want to shock him.
Simon is shocked, but Paul isn’t, not remotely. He smiles, and replies very casually, so that the waiting guests might think he was saying, ‘Jolly good maize, this,’ or, ‘Pity England didn’t qualify for the World Cup finals.’
‘Hundreds,’ he gleams. ‘Not that I’ve kept count. Nobody ever pretended that celibacy was easy, or that priests are sexless freaks. Each time I have one I remind myself that if I hadn’t taken Holy Vows I might be doing it with a beautiful woman and not just with my veined old hand.’
A small child enters with a bowl, a child much too small to realise that they are superior beings who eat alone and undisturbed. Several appalled adults rush in and remove the child, who doesn’t cry. They learn to accept life’s restrictions at an early age in this land.
‘Actually, Naomi, I have grave doubts about celibacy. It’s too difficult except for saints. And it separates us from our parishioners and makes us less able to understand their problems.’ He smiles at her and there is naughtiness in those deep, understanding eyes. ‘Besides, you remind me of what I have missed.’
Simon raises his eyebrows in surprise but Naomi knows that there is no lechery in the remark, and accepts the compliment gracefully.
At last Paul thinks that they have eaten enough, even though their bowls are far from empty. They mime their delight, and the fullness of their stomachs, and there is laughter.
They shake hands again with every single person, and every adult thanks them for coming.
And every adult is glad that they are going.
They walk down the great hills in silence.
That afternoon, in the warm sunshine, Naomi, Simon, Paul and Greta sit in the garden of the Parish House, the Parroquia. Greta is German. She’s training to be a nun. She is of medium height and slim, with straight, sandy hair. She has a disappointed face and strikingly good legs.
The Parish House is on the little main square of the village of Baños del Inca. On the other side of the square are the hot baths. The water in the streams round the village is so hot that every morning Simon has to collect a bucket of hot water from one of them, carry it home and mix it with at least the same amount of cold, before he can shave with it. Simon and Naomi go over to the public baths every morning, and have a hot bath together in a space big enough for a football team. Twice they’ve made love in the hot baths. It’s their delayed honeymoon, after all. But today for the first time Naomi doesn’t feel that it’s quite like a honeymoon. Today for the first time Naomi is not in paradise. Today for the first time she cannot be content with small talk.
‘You Catholics are so caring about the poor,’ she says. Simon glares but she takes no notice. ‘How much better their lives might be if there weren’t so many of them.’
‘To which of them would you deny the joy and excitement of existence?’
‘That’s nonsense, Paul. A person doesn’t exist until they’re conceived. Birth control doesn’t deny any actual person life. It just makes life better for those who are conceived. The arguments for birth control are overwhelming. How can you not see it?’
Simon thinks how young she looks. She hopes his uncle will forgive her because of this.
‘Of course I think about these things,’ says Paul. ‘And I’m not unsympathetic to your views. I’m what they sometimes call a worker priest, Naomi, and as such not always entirely popular with my superiors. I have to tread carefully, but I can assure you, I and many others of my kind turn a blind eye.’
‘For…’ She is going to say, ‘For God’s sake,’ but she stops. Simon smiles to himself as he witnesses the battle between her passion and her manners. ‘Sorry, Paul, but I just don’t think a blind eye’s enough,’ she says quietly. ‘The message needs to be shouted from the rooftops.’
Paul smiles. Suddenly he looks weary. Perhaps he has faced enough of the world’s poverty.
Greta, who has listened intently, moving her gaze back and forth like a spectator at Wimbledon, crosses her legs. Her skirt is tight and the stretched material makes just the faintest rasp. Simon turns to look at her legs, and Naomi notices, recalling suddenly how Timothy had only ever had eyes for her.
She hasn’t given a thought to Timothy for months, and now she’s thought of him twice in one day.
She wonders where he is.
She would be shocked if she knew. He is also on his honeymoon, and he is also in Peru. He was married eight days ago, in Coningsfield, in the church where he was confirmed and from which Naomi ran so dramatically. Tommo, who failed to get into medical school and so had little hope of becoming a gynaecologist, was his best man, and was surprisingly nervous when making his speech. Dave Kent managed an afternoon off from his dad’s greengrocer’s. Steven Venables was amazed to be invited, but Timothy explained that Christians believe in forgiveness. He suggested Peru for their honeymoon. Peter Shaffer’s play had given him an interest in the country, and Maggie hadn’t needed much persuasion. She wasn’t one for lying around on beaches. Her naked body was known only to her and her Maker, and she was having a bit of difficulty in letting even Timothy in on the secret.
And now here they are on a train from Puno to Cusco. The train has run along the shore to the head of Lake Titicaca, which died gently in a salt-bed of mud and reeds. There were wading birds everywhere, including egrets and birds that looked like a South American species of curlew. Timothy thought briefly about Naomi’s curlew. He wondered if she still kept it on display. He wondered who the handsome young man in the photograph in her room had been, and why she had refused to tell the truth about him. He wondered if she ever thought of him, of Romeo and Juliet, of their nights is Earls Court. But it was only a passing thought. He has long ago recovered from his Naomi-itis. In all probability he will never see her again.
They have found the great Andean Altiplano breathtakingly lovely. The emptiness of the land, the great wide skies, the bare hills, the thatched adobe villages, the silver ribbon of river in the plain.
There have been cheese sandwiches for elevenses. A three-course lunch of avocado, beef stew and a banana has been served throughout the train. As they ate, the train had still been in sunshine, but dark clouds had sat on the high peaks like cowboys’ hats. And one lone cowboy had stood in the empty land, miles from anywhere, and watched the train go by just as every passenger had been eating a banana. Timothy has wondered if the man had ever seen a trainload of people all eating bananas before, and what he had thought of it. But he hasn’t mentioned it to Maggie. It wasn’t the sort of thing that interested her.
Now the train is descending into the valley of the Vilcanota, which becomes the Upper Urubamba, which becomes the Lower Urubamba, which becomes the Vilcanota again. Anyway, they are all tributaries of the mighty Amazon. Timothy and Maggie are going to visit the Amazon before they return home. Well, Roly Pickering is not too well, and his eyesight is bad. One day quite soon the board in the garden of number ninety-six will state ‘T. Pickering – Taxidermist’, and then Timothy is going to be busy. They may never get another chance.
More cheese sandwiches appear throughout the train. The countryside is much more fertile now. There are picturesque, tightly grouped villages, huddled against the hostility of the world. There are eucalyptus trees in abundance. And all the way the river rushes with them.
Twilight falls. The train stops. Somebody gives them the unwelcome news that on this very train last week, forty-six people were killed by bandits.
The delay is interminable. It’s now dark outside, and the lights inside are dim and unencouraging. More cheese sandwiches appear. An American further up the carriage calls out that they will not be allowed to move until all the cheese sandwiches have been eaten. The laughter is distinctly hysterical. Maggie doesn’t laugh. Timothy suddenly realises that she almost never laughs. Not t
hat he wants her to. They are dedicated to seriousness. They face life sternly, hand in hand.
An American lady wants to go to the toilet but is told that the door at the end of the carriage is locked, so that thugs can’t get at them. This locked door will hardly save them from bandits, though. It has a huge glass pane running almost its entire length. Or appears to have. When the conductor steps right through it, they realise that there is no glass.
‘Don’t worry,’ says the conductor. ‘We have armed guards protecting you.’
This does not reassure them.
Suddenly, stubby fingers scrabble at a window. Timothy’s heart almost stops. Goose pimples run right down his back. He holds out his hand to comfort his bride. Are they to die after eight days of wedlock?
But Maggie doesn’t need comforting. She’s facing her Maker with a grim face, set in the granite of her courage. She is a sight to discourage all but the most desperate of bandits.
But the stubby fingers do not belong to a bandit. Somebody manages to hoist the owner of the fingers up until she can see into the train. The fingers belong to a short, stubby Indian lady. She is possibly the world’s unluckiest seller of cheese sandwiches.
There is laughter throughout the crowded, tense carriage. Timothy and Maggie are outraged by the cruelty of the laughter, but even Timothy cannot avoid a slight amused tremor. He looks out of the window, lest Maggie spots it.
The explanation for the delay turns out to be extremely banal. The engine has broken down.
Naomi sits in the bar of the Hotel de Turismo in Cajamarca. She has been buying little knick-knacks for her friends at drama school. Simon wants her to get presents for his friends too. He’s happy to pay but can’t be bothered to look. It’s just one more little stain discovered on the shining surface of his perfection.
The bar has dim lights, bare tables and one other customer. He smiles at her.
‘May I join you?’ he asks politely.
‘I’m expecting my husband,’ she says hurriedly.
‘Oh no, I am not trying to…I am German. I am a travel agent. I am on a fact-finding mission to improve services to my clients.’
‘Well…fine…I hope I can help.’
He moves over to her table, bringing his beer. He is tall, stiff, flaxen-haired, quite good-looking in a rather inanimate way. He looks like a well-made waxwork of himself.
‘The North of Peru is neglected,’ he begins. It’s his idea of introductory small talk. ‘But it is much more interesting than the South. Most of the South is very overrated. Lake Titicaca, for instance, is very boring. Don’t go there.’
‘We’ve been there.’
‘What did you think of the Chullpas of Sillustani?’
She has never heard of them. What are they? People? Liked him, hated her? ‘I…er…I haven’t actually heard of the Chullpas of Sillustani.’
He jerks his head upward like a frightened thoroughbred. He is astounded. He is contemptuous.
‘What?? But they are the most interesting of all the funerary towers in which the Aymara buried their nobles.’
‘We didn’t actually see any funerary towers,’ she admits.
‘What? But the funerary towers are the only thing of interest in the whole area around Lake Titicaca.’
‘We missed them.’
He is shocked, but he rallies.
‘You didn’t get a boat to one of the reed islands, did you? They are tourist traps.’
‘We did.’
Her coffee arrives, with three slices of sweet apple on a separate saucer. There has been some little extra gift everywhere they have been in Peru.
‘But not the first island? That is a complete sham.’
‘We went to the first island.’
‘But you didn’t buy a mat?’ he asks with dimishing hope. ‘Those mats are phoney. The women tell you that they represent, in pictures, their life story. They do not.’
‘We bought a mat.’
He is silent. This is too difficult for him to bear.
Where is Simon? He should be here by now.
She begins to talk non-stop. It’s the only way to avoid being lectured by him. She talks about Cusco, about the poverty she has seen: an old woman asleep on a pavement beside her wares, which consisted entirely of spring onions; a little boy selling cigarettes one by one; a sweet, pale girl, aged about nine, trying to make a sale in a café, holding out her complete stock on a tray – two toilet rolls. She contrasts these scenes with a description of a treasure she saw in the magnificent La Merced church in the city. It was a representation of the sun, with topazes, emeralds and pearl mermaids, and, at its shining centre, fifteen hundred diamonds.
‘These contrasts are all too easy to make,’ says the German dismissively.
‘But true and obscene just the same.’
He shrugs. He is not pleased. Where is Simon?
He asks her where they are going next.
‘We’re going on a bit of a farewell tour with Simon’s uncle, who is a priest, and then Simon and I hope to be off to the Amazon.’
‘Don’t. It is a very boring river.’ He pauses. ‘But if you do go, don’t go to Iquitos. It is a very boring town.’ He pauses again. ‘But if you do go to Iquitos, don’t go on a trip to any of the jungle lodges. They are a real waste of time.’ He pauses again. Naomi glances out of the window, and an icy blast runs through her veins. She barely hears the last piece of the travel agent’s advice. ‘But if you do go to a jungle lodge, don’t go to the first one. That is a very boring lodge.’
Simon has walked into view with Greta. He kisses her cheek. She walks on, he turns and approaches the hotel.
He orders drinks – a beer for himself, an Inca Cola for Naomi. The German refuses the offer of a beer and says that he has to go. Even when he has gone, Simon doesn’t mention Greta.
‘Had a nice time with Greta?’
Naomi doesn’t like this new sound in her voice. She wishes she could swallow the words back.
‘What do you mean? I met her, that’s all. We walked a bit.’
‘Do you usually kiss nuns you hardly know?’
‘Yes, I’m the secret nun kisser of Basingstoke. I give myself ten points per nun, and fifty for a Mother Superior. No, of course I don’t. But she showed me one or two things and I was grateful and…I kissed her.’
‘You fancy her.’
‘I do not. What the fuck is all this? What’s got into you?’
Doubt. That’s what’s got into her. Not a very serious doubt. Just the very slightest dent in her conviction that she has done the right thing in marrying him.
A minibus collects Naomi and Simon from their hotel in Iquitos at nine twenty-five. Already, the heat and humidity are stifling.
There are three other passengers on the bus – Timothy, Maggie and the German travel agent.
Naomi is stunned. So is Timothy.
So is the German travel agent.
‘What are you doing in Iquitos?’ he says. ‘I told you not to come here. It is too hot, the hotels are too expensive, the town is dull, and it closes at weekends.’
At first, Naomi and Timothy are too shocked to speak. At last Naomi says, ‘What are you doing in Peru?’
‘I’m on my honeymoon. This is Maggie.’
These words, spoken so innocently, are bullets that fly straight to Naomi’s heart. She is astounded to find that this is so, utterly unprepared for her sudden yearning for Timothy’s body beside her in a sagging bed.
‘You?’ he asks.
‘The same. This is Simon.’
Introductions and explanations follow. Timothy’s eyes are making a desperate appeal to Naomi, and she realises what it is. Don’t mention our three nights together, especially the second one.
‘So, this is a happy coincidence,’ says the German travel agent.
‘Happy, yes,’ lies Naomi. ‘Coincidence? Not entirely. We were both in a play about Peru at school. I think something of its magic touched us.’
The minibus tur
ns off the road onto a wide track that leads down towards the river. It pulls up by a locked gate. The driver hoots several times, then gets out and bangs on the gate.
‘Why are you going to the first jungle lodge?’ asks the travel agent, almost angrily. ‘I told you this was not interesting.’
‘We only have time for one, and we did want to see the Amazon,’ says Naomi lamely.
At last an elderly unshaven man, with a touch of the salt about him, shambles up and unlocks the gate.
The passengers proceed down a flight of steep wooden steps to a small pontoon alongside which lies a long, narrow, thatched boat. It seats about a hundred. They are the only five customers.
‘Tourism has died here this year. It is because of the Falklands War. People are frightened. The Falklands are thousands of miles away. European people are idiots,’ says the German travel agent.
The boat eases slowly out into the stream, and chugs off on its two-and-a-half-hour journey to the jungle lodge. Everybody wants to admire the scenery. Nobody wants to talk. There is going to be plenty of time for talking at the lodge.
Naomi links arms with Simon. She hopes he is unaware that she is doing this for Timothy and Maggie to see.
Outside the town they pass a great confusion of ships, shipbuilders’ yards, half-finished boats, abandoned boats, rubbish dumps, timber yards, and rusty cargo vessels.
Three tankers, the Tupa, the Rio June and the Alamo, are moored at a large petroleum installation. They’re all registered at Manaus.
Naomi gives a little sigh.
‘Something wrong?’ asks Simon.
‘Not at all.’ If only he was better at understanding her thought processes. ‘The registrations on ships excite me. All the way from Manaus. Suddenly the Amazon all makes sense. I mean, wouldn’t you be excited if you saw a ship registered at Valparaiso?’
Simon smiles and oh my God it’s the smile of someone attempting to pacify a child. How will they get through their night in the lodge with Timothy so close? This is devastating. Only a week ago, Simon was Mr Perfection. Julian had told her that he had wandering eyes, that he loved his own body, hence all that keep fit. Always quick to see the worst in anyone, Julian. He’ll have a very successful career as a lawyer.
