David Szalay - London and the South-East

‘There isn’t a job for you here, Paul.’

All he had said then, lamely, was, ‘You’re joking.’

‘No.’

There was an awful silence. Then Paul said, ‘I don’t understand.’

‘What don’t you understand?’

‘What do you mean there isn’t a job for me?’

‘I mean — there isn’t a job for you.’

He had stared at Eddy for some time, simply unable to believe the turn that things had taken. And surprisingly, he found himself thinking of a sexual fantasy which Eddy was said to have often played out with Kim — the Pig had told him about it — in which he would pretend to be ‘a whole rugby team’. How, Paul had always wondered — and, for a few moments, he wondered again — does one man pretend to be ‘a whole rugby team’? And he was thinking of this — involuntarily, it just popped into his mind — as he stared at Eddy with persistent disbelief.

‘I’m sorry,’ Eddy said, eventually.

Though it was the pivotal point of these events, Paul remembers little of what was said in Eddy’s office. The earlier part of the morning, however, he remembers well. It had been his intention to take the seven forty train from Hove, which would have got him to Victoria at eight forty-eight. As it was he had come to consciousness, sunk in the seat cushions of the sofa, on the unfamiliar fabric, at about seven thirty. At first he thought it was still the middle of the night — the wide silence, the darkness (except for the glowing Christmas-tree lights) and the steady, intense, sleep-deprived ache in his own head all told him that it was. Then he heard the radio start, overcheerful as always, but this morning horribly, insanely so — the gabbling DJ actually seemed insane — and lifting his head, he saw through the ajar door that the lights in the kitchen were on. Heather was in there, moving around. It must have been her arrival downstairs that had woken him. Sitting up in numb agony, he listened to the blood singing in his ears.

He missed the eight eleven by a few minutes. The next train was not until eight fifty-five. He might have tried to get the eight forty-four from Brighton, via Haywards Heath, Gatwick Airport, East Croydon and Clapham Junction, getting in to Victoria at nine forty-three, but he did not understand what the well-meaning Network Rail employee was saying to him. In a state that might be described as ‘static hysteria’, he stared at her through the thick plastic of her window, hearing but not comprehending her conscientious, electronically mediated voice. That he had to wait for forty minutes seemed especially vindictive. He had showered, shaved and dressed — hardly able to master his tie — in frantic haste. With wild-eyed emergency, he had commandeered Heather, still in her dressing gown, to drive him to the station. And there he waited, singeing his mouth on an overpriced coffee, sitting on a red metal bench.

At nine twenty-three the train left Gatwick Airport, and while it was somewhere between there and East Croydon — travelling through a landscape that seemed confused about its own identity, the closes and shopping centres plonked down in ploughed fields, the dormitory towns overspilling their valleys — Murray would have arrived at Park Lane Publications. Certainly, by the time the train stopped at the expansive platforms of Clapham Junction, at nine forty-nine, the scene that Paul had spent the weekend imagining would have started to play itself out. He looked at his mute, unpowered phone. There would be missed calls from Murray. From Lawrence enraged howls, tirades of horrid abuse. He would have to listen to them later. He felt slightly sick, as the train stood in Clapham, to think of what was happening in Holborn. The train was moving on, through the roofy chaos of south London, through Battersea, past the late-autumn trees of the park, trundling over the river where it curves by the disused power station with its four cream chimneys. It was exactly ten when it wheezed to a halt alongside the platform at Victoria. The station was so much more pleasant, he thought, in a moment of flat tranquillity as he crossed the spacious concourse under the cast-iron mock-Gothic of its translucent vault, than London Bridge or Blackfriars. Of course, normally he would be there earlier, in the thick of the rush hour. He was very late, and hurried through the streets, agitation and exhaustion wrestling in him to set the overall tone.

He wished he was looking better. In the lift, on the way up, he surveyed himself in the mirror. His hair, short, greying and parted in the middle, was somewhat fluffy. His skin waxy and inhomogeneous. His eyes set in deep empurpled recesses. And a zit or a cold sore was starting to appear at one end of his lipless mouth. He is used to receiving discouraging news from his reflection, but this was very bad — the awful night heavily imprinted in his face. Installed on the cream leather of a Mies van der Rohe chair, screened by the orange-pink expanse of an unfurled FT — he had been appalled by his inability to understand anything of the newspaper’s text, until he realised, after a few moments, that it was in German , an edition of FT Deutschland — he tried to prepare himself for his meeting with Eddy Jaw. When he had announced himself to Gwyn — ‘I’m here to see Mr Feltman. I’m a bit late. Paul Rainey’ — she had looked at him sceptically, and phoned through. She herself was extraordinarily healthy-looking, the skin of her face flawless and rosy, her green eyes shining as if polished, her black hair taut, with a surface like watered silk. She looked, Paul thought, like something out of an advert. ‘Mr Rainey’s here,’ she said quietly. When Eddy had finished speaking she put down the phone. ‘Mr Feltman’s busy just at the moment,’ she said. ‘He’ll be with you as soon as he can. If you’d like to wait here.’

‘Thanks,’ Paul said, though something went wrong with his throat, and almost no sound emerged.

‘That’s okay.’ He did not like the smidgen of pity he thought he saw in her smile. And he sat down, and hid himself behind FT Deutschland in shame. After a few minutes, he lowered it. There was no ashtray on the table in front of him. ‘Um, I’m just nipping out for a smoke,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I’ll be back in a minute. If Mr Feltman …’

Gwyn nodded, but did not speak.

Outside on the pavement there was a little hollow pillar, waisthigh, for cigarette butts, and he stood next to it, in the traffic noise, smoking and trying to pull himself together. Movement, the struggle to get there, had to some extent distracted him from the fact that he was in a truly terrible state, and sitting behind the German newspaper, he had felt himself quite quickly falling apart. He had thought he might have to be sick, but that had passed. He definitely needed to get out of there though. To move, to get some fresh air into his frowzy, hurting head. He looked at his watch — it was ten thirty.

When he stepped from the lift, Gwyn said, ‘Mr Feltman was here a minute ago. I told him you’d just popped out.’

‘Oh. Er. What did he … say?’

‘He said he’ll be back in a few minutes.’

‘Okay then.’

Paul sat down wearily on the leather seat and waited. He was sweating — waves of grimy sweat oozing from his scalp, his forehead, the backs of his hands. His clothes, fresh that morning, seemed stale and smelly. A day that had begun with such intemperate speed had turned into a day of endless, stupefying waiting.

He had just picked up The Times — though he had no interest, none at all, in what it might say — when the door opened and Eddy came in, not wearing a jacket, his torso sheathed in a long waistcoat with stubby lapels, his shirtsleeves full and blouson. His trousers were in the same mild plaid fabric as the waistcoat. He seemed to have had a haircut since Friday, a severe crew cut that emphasised the fleshiness of his face. To Paul’s surprise, he did not seem at all angry. In fact he was smiling. For a moment he looked at Paul, as if sizing him up — there was something odd about this look — then he said, ‘Paul, mate. Step this way.’