David Szalay - London and the South-East

Wolé looks thoughtful. ‘In principle, I suppose, yes.’

And violating the hushed, smoky seriousness of the room, the door whoops opens. It is Murray. ‘All right, Murray,’ Paul says immediately in an overloud voice. Sensing something odd — he may even have heard Wolé’s ‘In principle, I suppose, yes’ — Murray hesitates. Then he says, ‘What’s up?’

‘What do you mean, “what’s up”?’

Perplexed at Paul’s intensity, Murray shrugs and simply says again, ‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing’s fucking up. Nothing’s ever fucking up, is it, Wolé?’

Wolé just smiles. Stubbing his cigarette out on the inner surface of the metal bin, he opens the door, and says, ‘I’ll see you gentlemen back up there.’

When he has gone, they sit in silence for a while. Nothing unusual in that; the smoking room is a place of licensed silence. But this silence seems, to Paul, to tremble with tension. Murray himself seems tense and suspicious, as if aware that something hidden is happening. In the Penderel’s Oak at lunchtime, Paul had found himself unable to stop needling him with sarcastic quips and insinuations. For the past two days, in fact, whenever he has spoken to Murray, his words have emerged tinged with sarcasm, sneering. And now, sitting in silence in the smoking room, he wonders what Murray suspects — because he must suspect something . ‘I’ll see you upstairs,’ Paul says, pressing out his cigarette, and not looking Murray in the eye. Murray watches him as he stands up. ‘Have you got a problem or something, Paul?’ he says.

‘A problem?’

‘Yeah.’

Paul assumes a puzzled expression, and shakes his head. ‘What sort of problem?’

‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.’

‘No.’

‘Okay.’

Paul stands there for a moment, and then without knowing why he says, ‘I saw you the other night, Murray.’

‘What night?’ Murray does not seem to understand.

‘Monday.’

‘Monday? What are you talking about?’

‘You know what I’m talking about. You were in the Penderel’s.’

‘Yes. And?’

‘You said you were going home.’

‘So?’

‘You didn’t go home.’

‘No, I didn’t.’ Squinting suspiciously, Murray says, ‘So what?’

‘You went to the Penderel’s,’ Paul says. ‘I saw you.’

‘I know. I saw you .’ Murray sees the surprise on Paul’s face — it is suddenly mottled with surprise — and waits for him to speak. He does not. ‘I saw you walk out the door,’ Murray says. ‘I was sitting up the bar, and Michaela said to me, There’s Paul . And I turned round and saw you walk out the door. And by the way,’ he adds, ‘you said you were going home as well.’

‘I was going home,’ Paul says. ‘I got a call from an old friend. We had a drink.’

‘Who was that?’

‘You don’t know him.’ He says this looking Murray straight in the eye, and then, ‘You and Michaela seemed to be getting on pretty well.’

‘Yes we did seem to be getting on pretty well.’ There is something about the way Murray says this — with leathery squinting defiance — that Paul does not like. ‘Do you often go in there on your own, then?’ he asks.

‘No, I don’t,’ Murray says shortly. ‘What’s this about?’

Paul sees that he is only making things worse. It would be absurd for him to start levelling accusations at Murray, when he himself had said he was going home, and was also in the Penderel’s Oak. And absurd, as well, for him to play the jealous lover over Michaela. He is suddenly depressingly aware of the absurdity of that . ‘Forget it,’ he says quietly. ‘I’ll see you up there.’

On the way back to the sales floor, he tries to put the whole thing out of his mind, and to the surprise of his team, throws himself with unprecedented energy into the hopeless cause of European Procurement Management . For what is left of Wednesday afternoon, and the whole of Thursday morning, he yells and storms, scolds, encourages and exhorts, with a maniacal energy they have never seen in him — an energy which seems to have exhausted itself by the time he gets back from the Penderel’s Oak, drunker than usual, with Murray and Andy, in the middle of Thursday afternoon, and on Friday morning he is deeply morose and untalkative. The previous evening, he met with Eddy Jaw.

Since Paul had insisted that the meeting take place as far as possible from Park Lane Publications, Eddy had suggested that he visit the offices of Delmar Morgan itself. These were in Victoria, and Paul took the tube there after work, standing on the train with his neck folded sideways, his face in an armpit, pressed against the door by the human stuffing of the carriage so firmly that when it sprang open at Tottenham Court Road he was forced out onto the platform, and halfway along it, by the flood of people leaving the train. Unable to fight his way back on in time, he waited for the next one, which was so full that to make space he had to shove some other passengers further in, something which initially seemed physically impossible. ‘What are you doing?’ one of them shrieked. Another told him he was a ‘fucking twat’. ‘You can fuck off,’ Paul murmured, his face smeared against the dirty Perspex of the in-sliding door. At Oxford Circus, where he had to change to the Victoria Line, things were worse. And when he finally emerged into the evening at Victoria station, part of a moving mass of people pressed together, a sullen aggregate pouring out of the Underground, hurrying and pushing, it was of course already dark, and raining.

In the downstairs lobby, he was told to take the lift to the fifth floor, where he stepped out into a quiet cream space, where a young woman, half hidden by a huge vase of white orchids, was sitting behind a walnut desk. She was on the phone. On the wall were the words DELMAR MORGAN, and Eddy’s elephant-head logo. She acknowledged Paul with a quick look and a half-smile, and held up a single finger, presumably to indicate that she would be with him in one minute. He stood there, looking around, pretending not to listen to what she was saying. She was very pretty, with black hair. And he thought, soon I will work here, and she will know me. It was quite exciting to think of himself working there. It occurred to him how important surroundings are, how it would be natural to work properly in a place like this. Working in a place like this, he thought, would give you confidence and self-respect. You would value yourself if you worked in a place like this. Paul has heard about offices with bowls of fresh fruit (peaches and stuff, not apples and bananas), and Gaggia espresso machines, and fridges full of Evian, and he wondered if they had those things here.

He said, ‘I’m here to see Mr Feltman.’

‘And what’s your name, please?’

‘Paul Rainey.’

‘If you’d just like to take a seat, Mr Rainey.’

‘Thanks.’

Clearing his throat — his voice had been rather hoarse — Paul sat down. There was a glass coffee table strewn with newspapers — the Financial Times, The Times , the Telegraph — and some low modern leather chairs. He took the FT , and had started to look at the stories on the front page, when the receptionist said, ‘Mr Feltman will be with you in a minute, Mr Rainey.’

‘Thank you,’ said Paul, and cleared his throat again.

It was in fact ten minutes before Eddy appeared, wearing a complicated raincoat with epaulettes and carrying a tan leather briefcase. ‘All right, Gwyn,’ he said to the receptionist with a smile. ‘See you tomorrow, sweetheart. Paul. Sorry to keep you, mate.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘Let’s get out of here. Fancy a drink?’ His smile widened. ‘Course you do.’