David Szalay - London and the South-East

‘Sorry I’m late, Eddy,’ Paul started gruffly, getting to his feet.

‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘I am sorry.’

They went through the door — Eddy, the perfect gentleman, letting Paul precede him with a tight smile. The sales floor on the other side was very large, very open, very light, the walls on two sides being floor-to-ceiling glass; nevertheless it was a sales floor like all the others that Paul had worked on. Eddy led him through the hubbub of pitches. The atmosphere was perhaps more serious, more focused than at PLP, the suits perhaps, on average, slightly smarter, but essentially it was the same. The same scrawled-on whiteboards, the same messy work surfaces, the same dog-eared directories of leads. And Paul experienced a sinking of his spirit, a sort of tired sigh, seeing it all.

Eddy held open the pale oak door of his office. ‘Come in,’ he said. His manner had altered markedly. He seemed tense. One of the walls of his office, the one opposite the door, was glass, but the room was not particularly light because it faced, at close quarters, the blind side of another building. It was huge, though, with a dark, corporate three-piece suite in one corner, a massive desk, a smaller desk with two computers on it, one of them switched on, a screen saver frantically scribbling. There was a widescreen TV. Photos of Eddy’s children in silver frames. An old-fashioned hatstand on which his raincoat and jacket hung. On the desk was a little sign which Paul, waiting to be invited to sit, leaned in to read. It said: If you don’t smoke I won’t fart . He smiled. Eddy moved round the desk to his black leather throne. ‘Have a seat,’ he said tersely. He was obviously nervous about something.

‘So …?’ Paul tried to sound upbeat.

Eddy looked at him. The look seemed furious, and Paul did not understand why. He shook his head. ‘What is it?’

What happened next, exactly, he does not remember. Eddy may have said, ‘I’ve got bad news for you, Paul.’ He does remember that among the objects on Eddy’s desk was a miniature bronze cannon — chosen for its resemblance to the one on Michael Corleone’s desk in The Godfather Part II — and that Eddy was holding it, as if trying to draw strength from the cold brown metal. He put it down. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Really. I’m sorry, Paul.’

‘You’re sorry?’

‘I am.’ Eddy had picked up the cannon again.

‘Why? What are you talking about?’

Petulantly, as if irritated with him for not having heard what he seemed unable to say, Eddy said, ‘For fuck’s sake, Paul, why would we want you here?’

Paul only restated the question, as if he had not understood it. ‘Why would you want me here?’ he said.

‘ Yes .’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

Eddy laughed, horribly. ‘No, I don’t know either. Look, Paul …’ he said, but then stopped, leaning forward, and laughed again — or was it a sigh? — in the same quiet way, as if helpless, shaking his head and lowering his eyes.

‘What’s funny?’

‘Nothing.’ Eddy’s face was suddenly serious, but a persistent smile still seemed to be trying to force its way in, through his lips. ‘Nothing’s funny,’ he said. ‘It’s really not funny at all.’

‘What isn’t?’

‘This. This situation.’

‘What situation?’

‘ This situation. This situation in which we find ourselves.’

‘What is that?’

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

‘You’re joking.’

‘No.’

And Paul remembers asking, ‘Why isn’t there a job for me?’ His voice was quiet, level, slightly hoarse.

‘Look at you!’ Eddy was saying. ‘You look terrible. Probably up all night drinking.’ With a pained sense of injustice, Paul silently objected to this, shook his head — he had specifically not been drinking the night before. ‘You show up an hour and a half late! I’m trying to run a serious business. You’re a mess. All over the place. A fucking alcoholic. I don’t need that here. You’ve got to try and sort yourself out. I mean it.’

‘Look, I’m sorry I was late,’ Paul said. His face was suffused with embarrassed, submissive heat. The situation was hellish, bewildering — far worse than any envisaged worst-case scenario. ‘Are you sacking me because I was late?’ he asked — the question straightforward, humble and seemingly without anger. It was Eddy who seemed angry. ‘No I’m not sacking you because you were late!’ he shouted. ‘I’m not sacking you. You never had a job here.’

Seeming slow and stupid in his shock, Paul said, ‘I don’t understand.’

Eddy had not wanted Paul to come to the office. He had left a message on his phone soon after eight o’clock telling him so — an awkward, peremptory message (he had intended to leave it on Sunday but had procrastinated) telling him that the job had ‘fallen through’. He understood that Paul must be in shock, and even found himself feeling sorry for him. ‘Look, Paul,’ he said, after a long pause, his tone suddenly softer, ‘this wasn’t really my idea.’

‘Whose idea was it?’

Eddy waited, as if wondering whether to say. Then he said, ‘It was Dundee’s.’

‘Murray’s?’

‘Yes.’

‘What do you mean?’ Paul seemed puzzled.

‘Murray’s going to come and work here. He’ll be looking after the people you recruited.’

‘Murray’s going to work here?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And the people I recruited?’

‘Yes, if they’re good enough.’

Paul does not remember what he felt on hearing this. Probably nothing. The situation had already numbed him.

He remembers Eddy saying, in answer to some question he had asked, ‘He said he couldn’t. He thinks they don’t like him. He said they liked you. If you recruited them, there’d be a better chance they’d come. That’s what he said. And he said if he approached them, they’d probably talk to you.’

‘Murray approached you ?’

‘Not really. I just bumped into him …’

‘That night in the Penderel’s?’

‘In that pub, yeah.’

When he asked why it had been necessary to exclude Murray, Eddy said that it was because Murray had wanted to know whether Paul would exclude him. If he wouldn’t, Eddy said, the whole thing would not have happened. Murray would only do it, so he said, if he first saw that Paul would be willing to do the same to him.

‘Murray’s very upset, actually,’ Eddy said. ‘He feels like you’ve stabbed him in the back.’

‘ I’ve stabbed him in the back?’

‘That’s what he feels.’

The conversation ended with Paul saying, matter-of-factly, ‘I need a fag.’ Eddy just nodded, grim but sympathetic, as if he, an ex-smoker, understood. As he got up to leave, it was not clear in Paul’s mind that this was it, that he would not be coming back to Eddy’s office after his cigarette to continue their chat. But as soon as he was on the noisy sales floor — Eddy did not follow him out — it was obvious that there would be no reason to return. Eddy would certainly not expect him to — there was nothing more to be said, and that solemn nod, it was now clear, had been his way of saying goodbye.

Only on the pavement did things seem lifelike again. He was shaking, and unable to remember much of what had been said in Eddy’s office. Without thinking where he was going, he started to walk. It had all been done to secure PLP’s contracts, Eddy had said. He said that he had been negotiating with the various contractors for a while — if PLP did not make target on them they were going to withdraw them. ‘And they’re not going to make target now, are they?’ he had said, unable to hide his exultation. ‘Half the fucking company’s just walked out.’