Free The Destiny of Nathalie X by William Boyd Page B

Lo Borges, Wagner Tiso. All these incredible talents who—”
    “—HELEN! Can you put him down, or something? We can’t hear ourselves think, here.”
    Wesley gulped fizzy beer. Pauline, relieved of Daniel-Ian, was coming over with a slice of christening cake on a plate, his mother in tow.
    “All right, all right,” Pauline said, with an unpleasant leering tone to her voice, Wesley thought. “What are you two plotting? Mmm?”
    “Where did you get that suit, Wesley?” his mother asked, guilelessly. “Is it one of your dad’s?”
    There was merry laughter at this. Wesley kept a smile on his face.
    “No,” Dermot said. “Wes was telling me about this bunch of musicians from—”
    “—Brazil.” Pauline’s shoulders sagged and she turned wearily to Wesley’s mother. “Told you, didn’t I, Isobel? Brazil. Brazil. Told you. Honestly.”
    “You and Brazil,” his mother admonished. “It’s not as if we’ve got any Brazilians in the family.”
    “Not as if you’ve even been there,” Pauline said, a distinct hostility in her voice. “Never even set foot.”
    Wesley silently hummed the melody from a João Gilberto samba to himself. Gilberto had taken the traditional form and distilled it through a good jazz filter. It was João who had stripped away the excess of percussion in Brazilian music and brought bossa nova to the—
    “Yeah, what is it with you and Brazil, Wes?” Dermot asked, a thin line of beer suds on his top lip. “What gives?”
    WHUCHINNNNNNG! WHACHANNNNGGG!! Liceu Lobo put down his guitar, and before selecting the mandolin he tied his dreadlocks back behind his head in a slack bun. Gibson Piaçava played a dull roll on the
zabumba
and Liceu Lobo began slowly to strum the musical phrase that seemed to be dominating “The Waves on the Shore” at this stage in its extemporized composition. Joel Carlos Brandt automatically started to echo the mandolin phrases on his guitar and Bola da Rocha plaintively picked up the melody on his saxophone.
    Behind the glass of the recording studio Albertina swayed her hips to and fro to the sinuous rhythm that was slowly building. Pure
chorinho
, she thought, sensuous yet melancholy, only Liceu is capable of this, of all the great
choros
in Brazil, he was the greatest. At that moment he looked aroundand caught her eye and he smiled at her as he played. She kissed the tip of her forefinger and pressed it against the warm glass of the window that separated them. Once Liceu and his fellow musicians started a session like this it could last for days, weeks even. She would wait patiently for him, though, wait until he was finished and take him home to their wide bed.
    Wesley stepped out into the back garden and flipped open his mobile phone.
    “Café Caravelle, may I help you, please?”
    “Ah. Could I speak to, ah, Margarita?”
    “MARGARITA!
Telefono.”
    In the chilly dusk of a back garden in Hounslow, Wesley Bright listened to the gabble of foreign voices, the erratic percussion of silverware and china and felt he was calling some distant land, far overseas. A warmth located itself in his body, a spreading coin of heat, deep in his bowels.
    “Ghello?” That slight guttural catch on the “h”…
    “Margarita, it’s Wesley.”
    “Ghello?”
    “Wesley. It’s me—Wesley.”
    “Please?”
    “WESLEY!” He stopped himself from shouting louder in time, and repeated his name in a throat-tearing whisper several times, glancing around at the yellow windows of Dermot’s house. He saw someone peering at him, in silhouette.
    “Ah, Wesley,” Margarita said. “Yes?”
    “I’ll pick you up at ten, outside the café.”
    Pauline stood at the kitchen door, frowning out into the thickening dusk of the garden. Wesley advanced into the rectangle of light the open door had thrown on the grass.
    “What’re you up to, Wesley?”
    Wesley slid his thin phone into his hip pocket.
    “Needed a breath of fresh air,” he said. “I’m feeling a bit off, to tell