Barry Maitland: Silvermeadow

‘She’s not too bad. Enjoying a bit of hero worship, I think. I’m afraid you’ve lost your status as number one cop.’

‘Kathy has several advantages over me,’ he said. ‘She’s black and blue from head to foot, and she’s not likely to run off with their gran.’

‘Yes. I’m sorry. Their confidence is so fragile. It would take so little to shatter it.’

‘Hmm.’

He wasn’t too sure about that. For all her tears at the thought of him pruning the bonsai’s toes, little Miranda had been quite prepared to murder it when that became necessary. He rather felt they were every bit as tough as yesterday’s duck.

They chatted for a while, then Suzanne said she would have to go and do something in the kitchen, and added, ‘Have you tried the Zola yet?’

‘It’s right here on my lap. I was just about to open it.’

‘I marked some passages for you. Have a look.’

She rung off. He refilled his glass and opened the book. The passages were marked by slips of paper, and he turned these over, reading. Some described the incredible new department store which was the central character of the book, its vast size and glittering interiors, its irresistible attraction to the fashionable consumers of Paris, its devastating effect on the old businesses around it, and the underpaid, desperate humans who worked within it.

Then he came to a page which Suzanne had doubly marked for him, describing the philosophy that had inspired Mouret, the creator of this phenomenon: Mouret… finished explaining the mechanism of modern commerce. And, above all that he had already spoken of, dominating everything else, appeared the exploitation of woman to which everything conduced-the capital incessantly renewed, the system of assembling goods together, the attraction of cheapness, and the tranquillising effect of the marking in plain figures. It was for woman that all the establishments were struggling in wild competition; it was woman whom they were continually catching in the snares of their bargains, after bewildering her with their displays… And if woman reigned in their shops like a queen, cajoled, flattered and overwhelmed with attentions, she was one on whom her subjects traffic, and who pays for each fresh caprice with a drop of her blood… Now the baron understood… His eyes twinkled in a knowing way, and he ended by looking with an air of admiration at the inventor of this machine for devouring the female sex. It was really clever.

Brock put down the book and pushed away the inedible duck sandwich. He got to his feet and went over to the bay window that projected out over the lane. The snow had finally begun, falling in big, lazy flakes through the still, cold air.

He lifted the glass of wine to his mouth and repeated aloud the words he had just read.

‘With a drop of her blood…’