David Szalay - London and the South-East

‘That was never a deal.’

‘Yes of course it fucking was.’

The tension, to some extent, had fallen away — some people, bored by the routine spectacle of two salesmen arguing over leads and blowouts and commission, had gone back to what they were doing — and Murray had said, more emphatically, ‘That was never a deal.’ And for an infinitesimal moment, unnerved by something in Marlon’s eyes, he had feared the worst. Marlon, however, had not punched him. He had said, in a voice that everyone was able to hear, ‘You’re a wanker, Murray.’ Then he went back to his desk, and after standing in the doorway for a while, with what was technically a smile on his square-jawed face, Murray had slipped away …

‘Yes!’ shouts a voice in Paul’s ear.

‘Yes, hello,’ Paul says. ‘I’d like to speak to Abhijit Bannerjee, please.’ There is an offputting echo on the line.

‘Yes, that’s me. And who is this please?’

‘My name’s Charles Barclay, Mr Bannerjee. I’m calling from London …’

Half an hour later, Paul hangs up. He has been trying to get rid of Mr Bannerjee for most of that time, but Mr Bannerjee’s persistence, his intense will to sell, was unstoppable. He agreed — ‘Yes, yes, very good, of course’ — to take a full-page, full-colour ad within the first few minutes of the call, and then he started to sell. What he was selling, Paul was not sure, but he knew the tone. There were references to ‘tea gardens’ and ‘boutique hotels’, ‘software’ and ‘airport taxis’, ‘databases’ and ‘cheap labour one pound a day’. And he kept explaining how he had people, many people, who would be ‘the hands’ of some protean enterprise, which would make ‘a billion’ and involve ‘boutique hotels’. He said he had developed machines with true artificial intelligence, and that he had also developed property in London in the seventies. Whenever Paul tried to steer the conversation back to the full-page colour, Mr Bannerjee would say, ‘Of course, yes of course, we are going to do that,’ and then start talking, with torrential enthusiasm, about something else, some other business he was proposing to start — software or construction or tea or boutique hotels. The boutique hotels seemed to be the only fixed point in this maelstrom of entrepreneurial zest — they featured every few minutes, and always as a spin-off from something else, from the tea gardens, the airport taxis, the thousands of toilers entering data for a pound a day — though how this last would work was not entirely clear. After about ten minutes and several attempts to talk Mr Bannerjee through the agreement form, Paul began to give up on the full-page colour. Mr Bannerjee asked him when he was going to be in Mumbai. Paul said, ‘Probably not till next summer.’ Mr Bannerjee then said that he would be in London in a few weeks, and suggested they have a meeting. Paul was evasive, spoke of being extremely busy. Mr Bannerjee said he would be staying at the Hotel Henry VIII in Bayswater — did Paul know it? Paul fibbed, and said he did. Mr Bannerjee suggested the bar of the Henry VIII as a possible meeting place — ‘or maybe they have conference rooms, I don’t know’. The call ends with Paul saying that he really has to go, and that he will send the agreement form through, and Mr Bannerjee saying that ‘of course’ he will send it back straight away.

By this time, it is almost twelve. ‘Coming to the Penderel’s?’ Paul says to Murray, standing and pulling on his jacket. Surprisingly, Murray responds as if this suggestion were something unexpected. After a moment of strange puzzlement, he says, ‘Aye.’ But with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

The pub is deserted when they arrive. Paul’s phone had started to ring as he was leaving the sales floor, and though he had hesitated, and half turned, he had not answered it. He is still wondering who it might have been. He wonders if it might have been Mr Bannerjee, whose long, supercharged spiel has left him exhausted and muddled, and oddly inspired. He is even starting to wonder whether perhaps he should have agreed to meet him at the Hotel Henry VIII, whether perhaps something might have come of such a meeting. ‘Like what?’ he asks himself, derisively, as he stands at the bar. And in answer summons the examples of Angus MacMilne, who so impressed one of his prospects that they offered him a job in the City, and of Pax ‘the Fax’ Murdoch, another former fellow salesman, who went out to Bangkok to set up a telesales business there — which turned out, extraordinarily, to be an international scam run by the North Korean intelligence service, though Pax did not realise who he was working for, or why, until it was too late.

‘Morning, Paul,’ Michaela says.

‘Morning? I think you mean afternoon. Never in the morning, Michaela.’ It is two past twelve. She laughs, and without waiting, starts to pour three pints. She likes Paul. He is ‘nice’. ‘Nice’ in a way that Murray — who makes her uneasy — is not. Setting his cigarette in the glass ashtray on the bar, Paul reaches into his pocket and fishes out the exact amount of money for the pints — he knows it well. He finds he is irritatingly shy with Michaela today, after what happened on Friday — the more so when, standing there, he suddenly remembers telling her that he and Heather were on the point of separation, which just isn’t true. ‘Good weekend?’ he says, smiling softly. Michaela shrugs her small shoulders. Andy is at the fruit machine, and they hear the metal of his winnings yocker into the trough. Scooping out the coins, he looks at Michaela, a cigarette stuck sexily — so he thinks — to his lower lip. And from the table, Murray stares, his face set in a virile scowl that he hopes she will see. All three of them find the unspoken hopes of the other two — of which they are all more aware than any of them think — contemptibly ridiculous, evidence of a comical degree of self-delusion. Paul puts the pints on the table, and he and Murray watch suspiciously as Andy wanders to the bar and says something to Michaela which makes her laugh. Murray mutters a few poisonous-sounding words, and Paul wonders if his unusually taciturn and preoccupied mood has something to do with his car, his Mercedes S-Class. It seems impossible that it will not be repossessed at some point this winter. The next payment, Paul knows, is due on Wednesday, and for the second consecutive month Murray will be unable to meet it.

Murray has always thought of himself as a Mercedes driver, the S-Class in particular — a serious, manly car for serious, manly men. (Sir Alex Ferguson, for example, drives such a car, and Murray sees many similarities between himself and Sir Alex — both working-class Glaswegians who have made their way in the world; both hard men, generous and just, with a gritty inborn nobility.) But as fifty approached and he was still driving the second-hand Sierra, Murray had started to worry. He had started to lose sleep over the thought that he might never drive an S-Class — might never be an S-Class driver. Why it happened exactly when it did, he is not sure, but one ordinary day in July, on his way home, he stopped at Tony Purslow Ltd, the Mercedes-Benz dealer in Epsom. He was determined not to think about what he was doing — not until it was done — and everything was therefore slightly dreamlike. The salesman’s smart suit and friendly, serious welcome. The shiny Mercs. The heated seats and leather-covered steering wheels and illuminated vanity mirrors. Forms were filled out, credit checks run, hands shaken. If the salesman was surprised at the impatient urgency of his client, he was too experienced a professional to let it show. And less than an hour after entering the showroom, Murray was motoring home in a long, wide S-Class — smiling down the A24 towards Leatherhead in its fragrant, insulated hush. The following week was one of the happiest of his life. At work, he was dreamy and absent-minded. He spent a lot of time staring out the window, or sitting on his own in the smoking room. At night, unable to sleep, he would get out of bed, and twitch the drapes, and look down at the car’s silver bodywork in the steady greenish illumination of the street light. He would spend evenings sitting alone in the stationary car, occasionally going for a short drive. One night, he slept in the car, waking on the anthracite leather in the bright silence of the very early morning, surprisingly cold, a terrible pain in his immobilised neck, the windows frosted with condensation. He opened the heavy door — startling some crows who were strutting on the tarmac — and stiffly swung his legs out. The steering wheel seemed to have bruised his knees during the night …