Obstacles to Young Love. David Nobbs
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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 that 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