Free The Destiny of Nathalie X by William Boyd Page A

off the bed, amazed that there was a shimmer of tears in his eyes.
    “God. Jesus!” he said mockingly to himself, out loud. “Poor little chap.”
    He dressed himself brusquely.
    Downstairs, he poured himself a large rum and coke and put Milton Nascimento on the CD player and hummed along to the great man’s ethereal falsetto. Never failed to cheer him up. Never failed. He took a great gulp of the chilled drink and felt the alcohol surge. He swayed over to the drinks cabinet and added another slug. It was only four-thirty in the afternoon. Fuck it, he thought. Fuck it.
    He should have parked somewhere else, he realized crossly, as unexpected sun warmed the Rover while he waited outside Pauline’s bank. He didn’t have a headache but his palate was dry and stretched and his sinuses were responding unhappily to the rum. He flared his nostrils and exhaled into his cupped hand. His breath felt unnaturally hot on his palm. He sneezed, three times, violently. Come on, Pauline. Jesus.
    She emerged from the stout teak doors of the bank, waved and skittered over toward the car. High heels, he saw. She
has
got nice legs. Definitely, he thought. Thin ankles. They mustbe three-inch heels, he reckoned, she’ll be taller than me. Was it his imagination or was that the sun flashing off the small diamond cluster of her engagement ring?
    He leaned across the seat and flung the door open for her.
    “Wesley! You going to a funeral or something? Gaw!”
    “It’s just a suit. Jesus.”
    “It’s a black suit. Black. Really.”
    “Charcoal gray.”
    “Where’s your Prince of Wales check? I love that one.”
    “Cleaners.”
    “You don’t wear a black suit to a christening, Wesley. Honestly.”
    Professor Liceu Lobo kissed the top of his mother’s head and sat down at her feet.
    “Hey, little Mama, how are you today?”
    “Oh, I’m fine. A little closer to God.”
    “Nah, little Mama, He needs you here, to look after me.”
    She laughed softly and smoothed the hair back from his forehead in gentle combing motions.
    “Are you going to the university today?”
    “Tomorrow. Today is for you, little Mama.”
    He felt her small rough hands on his skin at the hairline and closed his eyes. His mother had been doing this to him ever since he could remember. Soothing, like waves on the shore. “Like waves on the shore your hands on my hair”… The line came to him and with it, elusively, a hint of something more. Don’t force it, he told himself, it will come. The rhythm was fixed already. Like waves on the shore. The mother figure, mother earth … Maybe there was an idea to investigate. He would work on it in the study, after dinner. Perhaps a poem? Or maybe the title of a novel?
As ondas em la praia
. It had a serene yet epic ring to it.
    He heard a sound and looked up, opening his eyes to seeMarialva carrying a tray. The muffled belling of ice in a glass jug filled with a clear fruit punch. Seven glasses. The children must be back from school.
    Wesley looked across the room at Pauline trying vainly to calm the puce, wailing baby. Daniel-Ian Young, his nephew. It was a better name than Wesley Bright, he thought—just—though he had never come across the two Christian names thus conjoined before. Bit of a mouthful. He wondered if he dared point out to his brother-in-law the good decade-odd remorseless bullying that lay ahead for the youngster once his peers discovered what his initials spelled. He decided to store it away in his grudge-bunker as potential retaliation. Sometimes Dermot really got on his wick.
    He watched his brother-in-law, Dermot Young, approach, two pint-tankards in hand. Wesley accepted his gladly. He had a terrible thirst.
    “Fine pair of lungs on him, any road,” Dermot said. “You were saying, Wesley.”
    “—No, it’s a state called Minas Gerais, quite remote, but with this amazing musical tradition. I mean, you’ve got Beto Guedes, Toninho Horta, the one and only Milton Nascimento, of course,