Obstacles to Young Love. David Nobbs
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into the Plaza de Armas, to be burnt at the stake. He accepted baptism, and the sentence was commuted to strangulation.’
Naomi winces and mutters, ‘Fear. Always fear,’ through a mouthful of recalcitrant maize.
‘I took an American economist to the Ransom Chamber a few years ago,’ continues Father Paul. ‘He looked at it in deep awe, and said, in tones of wonderment, “I’ve always been telling my students that inflation began in this room in Cajamarca, and now I’m here.” I really think he was almost on the point of having an orgasm about inflation.’
‘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