Water Theatre (33 page)

Martin arrived back late one evening at the Brigshaws' bungalow, having stayed too long in a dockside bar, celebrating the success of the expedition with Joe Lartey-Quah and his team. Already looking forward to the forthcoming days when he would begin to learn editorial skills in the cutting room, he was eager to share tales of his travels with Adam, but he found Hal and Grace embroiled in heated discussion about their son.

“What good do you think shouting at him will do?” Grace was saying. “Do you want him to have another breakdown?”

“Of course I don't,” Hal snapped back. “But you can see he's not thinking straight. Goddammit, she's probably the first woman the boy's ever had!”

As Grace turned away, she saw Martin standing by the sitting-room door.

“I'm sorry,” he said, embarrassed, “I didn't mean to disturb you. Just thought I ought to let you know I'm back.”

“Right,” said Grace. “Thank you.”

“Is Adam here?”

“No, I'm rather afraid he's not.”

“Oh, right.” Martin's fingers tapped the door jamb. “I'll be off to bed then.”

“Hang on a minute,” Hal ordered, and glanced back at his wife. “He's going to know soon enough, and he might just be able to help.”

When Grace merely shrugged, Hal turned to Martin again. “The thing is, my damn fool of a son has decided he wants to give up Cambridge and stay here and get married. What do you think of that?”

Martin was so astonished by the news that he could think of nothing to say.

“And it's not as if I don't have quite enough on my mind as it is,” Hal muttered, after a pause.

“Who to?” Martin asked. “I mean, who does he want to marry?”

“Efwa Nkansa,” Grace said, “that primary school teacher from Adouada. The one who talks too much. Have you met her?”

“Only briefly, but…”

“But what?” Hal demanded.

“I quite liked her.”

“Of course you did,” Hal exclaimed. “We all like her. That's not the point.”

“Oh for goodness' sake, Hal, this is hardly Martin's fault. He wasn't even here.”

“No, but the lad needs to understand the situation. The point, Martin, is that Adam's got himself infatuated. He's lost his head. The girl's all over him, you see, and…” He faltered there, grunted, fumbled with a button of his shirt. “Well, you've seen her. I'm not saying she's not attractive. She is. But that's just the trouble.” He glanced back at Martin, man to man. “You know what I mean.”

Martin did indeed know what Hal meant, but at that moment he was doing some quick calculations. He had been away upcountry for only three weeks. Surely not enough time for Efwa to get pregnant and have it confirmed?

“As you can see,” said Grace, who had now lit a cigarette, “we're worried that he's about to make a mess of both their lives.”

“And he won't listen to you?”

“Worse than that,” said Hal, “he even accused me of being a closet racist. Me, damn it, after everything I've bloody done for these people!”

“But that's absurd.”

“Of course it's absurd. But I'll be damned if I can get a sensible word out of him.”

Exhaling a smoky sigh, Grace said, “Hal made the mistake of suggesting that Efwa is the kind of girl it's okay to go to bed with, but not the sort you marry. Which wasn't the cleverest thing to say in the circumstances, even if it were true.”

“Of course it's true,” Hal insisted. “That's exactly the kind of girl she is. I just wanted to make him see sense.”

“Instead of which you drove him out of the house.”

Hal turned impatiently away from her. Grace drew cigarette smoke about her like a veil.

After a long oppressive silence, Martin said, “Do you think it might help if I talked to him?”

“Would you try?” Hal turned to him and beamed. “I think he trusts you. He might listen to you. And you know what? It couldn't hurt to have a private word with Efwa too.”

From the moment they sat down in the neon-lit bar of the Adouada Beach Hotel, Martin knew that this conversation with Adam was unlikely to go well.

“It's obvious that Hal and Grace have set you up for this,” Adam said, gazing out of the window, where breakers crashed onto the wide curve of the sand. “You're going to have to choose sides, that's all.”

“I'm on your side, Adam,”

“Good. Then you're happy to be my best man?”

“If that's what you want. I'd be proud to. But…”

“But what?”

“I think your mum and dad are on your side too.”

“Ah,” said Adam with a sour smile, “here it comes. Do you really think I can't anticipate every weasel word you're about to utter?”

Martin ran his fingertip down the condensation on the green beer bottle in front of him. “I'm sure there's nothing I can say that you haven't already thought of.”

Adam exhaled a long, frustrated breath. “Look, I'm sorry,” he said. “I know I wasn't straight with you – before you left I mean. But you can see why now. None of this has been easy for me. Nothing except being with Efwa, that is. That's brilliant. That's perfect. But the rest… Well, I don't have to tell you what Hal and Grace can be like…”

“They're only concerned for you, Adam.”

“I know that. Of course I do. But they don't know me. Neither of them. They've no idea what it's like to…”

“To what?”

But Adam turned away again in frustration. “Oh forget about it. I'm not looking for sympathy.”

“I'm not offering you sympathy.”

“What then? Just what are you up to?”

“In case you've forgotten,” Martin said, “I'm your friend.”

Adam made a self-reproachful grimace. “Oh shit!” he winced, “I'm sorry. Look, let's not talk about this. Why don't you tell me about your trip instead? Was it good? Did you have fun?”

“It was great,” Martin said. “But listen, I'm worried about you. I'm worried you might be making a big mistake.” He saw Adam open his mouth to speak, but pressed on. “Just listen to me a second, all right? Efwa's a lovely girl, Adam. I can see that. But what's the hurry? I don't understand why you have to give everything up to marry her next week. She seems to be crazy about you, so I'm sure she'll be happy to wait till you've got your degree. In fact, I bet she'd prefer it. At least there's a chance you could provide for her that way.”

“You don't get it, do you?” Adam scowled. “This isn't a sudden thing. I've been sick and tired of Cambridge for quite a while now. As soon as I got back here, I realized that I was less than half alive there. Just a brain twitching among other brains, a mouth mouthing like all those other mouths. The only thing I enjoyed was the acting. At least there was something honest about that. It wasn't pretending to be anything other than acting. And don't look at me as if you don't know what I mean.”

“There are phonies everywhere, Adam.”

“Of course there are. But take a good look at the people here. It doesn't matter whether they're crooks or rogues or heroes, they're fully alive. Alive in a way that nobody I know in England is alive. Watch them dancing and making music. Listen to them laughing. Hear them howling when they grieve. That's what it means to be alive. Alive inside your skin. You must have seen it and felt it every day when you were upcountry. Well, that's what Efwa's given me. Not just a reason to be alive, but a whole new way of
being
alive.” Shaking his head, Adam uttered a little, dismissive sniff. “You remember all those dark ideas that used to haunt my mind back home? Well, they're gone. They can't thrive in this light. They were just the kind of bad dreams that a brain's bound to have when it gets cut off from the body and the pulses and the real living heart stuff that throbs out of these people all the time. That's why I'm staying here. That's why I'm marrying Efwa. We belong together and we belong here. So if you've got any other ideas, you might just as well save your breath.”

For a while Martin listened to the palm fronds tapping in the breeze, then he said, “So what are you going to do with yourself? For the rest of your life, I mean.”

Adam shrugged the question away. “I don't know yet. I haven't made up my mind. This is a new country. There's plenty to do here.”

“You think your dad will find you something?”

“I don't need him. Emmanuel will always help me out.”

“You don't think he has larger demands on his time?”

“He helped you, didn't he? Anyway, if necessary I'll find something for myself. In fact, I think I'd rather.”

Martin took the last sip of his beer. “And what about Efwa?” he asked a moment later. “What does she want?”

“She wants what I want, of course.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Of course I'm sure. That's why we're together. We want the same things.”

“How long have you known her, Adam?”

“Since we were kids.” Adam said confidently. “We were already very close back then.”

Uneasily Martin said, “But she's not a kid any more.”

“No she's not,” Adam snapped back. “And neither am I, so stop treating me like one. Now do you want another beer or not?”

The Fiat was winding uphill through a steep stretch of forest a couple of miles outside Fontanalba when I rounded a bend and saw two women resting beside the road. Both wore khaki shorts and hiking boots, one was seated on a rock, the other looking down in concern at her companion. Two backpacks lay on the verge beside them. The car shot past them at speed, and it was only when I checked the rear-view mirror that I saw the standing figure waving both arms in the air to attract my attention. I braked and reversed back down the road. When I opened the door to speak to them, I heard the older, seated woman saying, “Dammit, Meredith, we're almost there! I can make it on my own two feet.”

“I've been watching you limp for the last hour, Dottie,” answered the other one. “We're hitching a ride while we've got the chance.” Then she came across to the open door of the car. “
Mi scusi
,” she began. “
Questa signora
…” – she indicated her friend, who was shaking her head, and then raised the foot of her own right leg, miming pain as she rubbed the heel. “
Noi può dare un
…”

“Where do you want to go?” I interrupted, already knowing the answer.

“You speak English!”

“I am English.”

“Great! We're headed for Fontanalba. It's not far, but…”

“Okay.” I got out of the car, picked up one of the backpacks by its frame and shoved it into the boot beside my grip, saying, “Can one of you take the other pack in the back seat?”

“Sure, no problem. Let me.” The woman was in her early fifties and wore owlish glasses. Unaware that I already knew
other things about her, she tipped the passenger seat forward, lifted her backpack in before I could offer to help, and then climbed in after it. I pushed back the seat for her older friend, who lowered herself in saying, “This is very civil of you and kind of unnecessary, but thanks anyway.” She would not see seventy again, and her face was flushed after a long day's hiking through the heat, but her voice was that of an unfazeable New Yorker who might have smoked a pack a day for thirty years before the Surgeon General started worrying in public. One of the shrinks, I guessed, who had been at the villa with the astrologers and poets on the night Adam had described.

“Dorothy Ziegler,” she offered. “Glad to meet you.”

I nodded and smiled, concentrating on the road, while the trimmer figure in the back seat leant forward at my shoulder and said, “Hi, I'm Meredith Page. I hope you were going to Fontanalba anyway?”

“I was.”

“Well, it was just great of you to stop,” she said. “Thanks.”

“You want some candy?” Dorothy Ziegler offered me a chunk of the Kendal mint cake she had unzipped from her green leather bumbag. “It's English. Try it, you'll like it.” I took a piece and put it in my mouth – an excuse not to speak. Meredith Page declined the offer and filled the silence. “We have friends expecting us there. They said we were crazy to hike from the railroad station. Guess they were right, huh?” I smiled at the face she made behind her glasses as she pushed back a strand of brown hair.

“You staying in Fontanalba?” asked Dorothy Ziegler.

“Yes. Maybe. Tonight anyway.”

“We'll be around Fontanalba for the next few days,” Meredith said. “We're here for an event that doesn't start till tomorrow night, but we wanted to arrive in time to freshen up after the hike.”

“An event?”

“It's a kind of celebration.”

“Sounds like fun.”

Dorothy Ziegler looked back over her shoulder. “Meredith honey, did you think to pack some bug spray? I plain forgot mine.”

“I don't use it, sweetie. There's sure to be some at the villa, if you can hold out till then.”

Dorothy Ziegler grunted. “Won't get too much sleep tonight then. Not with these bugs gnawing at my cellulite. My own damn fault though.” She shook her grizzled head at me. “Used to have a mind that worked pretty good.”

“She still does,” Meredith put in dryly. “Dottie's last book won a National Poetry Award.”

“You're a poet?”

“Don't sound so surprised, Mister,” the older woman answered. “We come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. And some of us have blisters.”

I glanced into the rear-view mirror, where I saw Meredith Page shaking her head and smiling. “You're not a poet,” I said.

“Nothing so special!”

“Let me guess,” I said, “you're an academic,” and watched her blink behind her glasses. “Classical studies, I'd say. Or archaeology perhaps? But then you sound west coast, not east like your friend here, so you might just be into something a touch far out.”