David Szalay - London and the South-East

Her mood suddenly shifts, however, when he says that he does not want another job in sales.

She says, ‘But you always said one of the best things about your work is you can always find another job, just like that. Just walk in somewhere and start working.’

‘Yeah, I know …’

‘So you should just do that then.’

Her tone suggests that this should be the final word. For a few moments, he says nothing. And he might, at this point, have simply nodded, and said, ‘Yeah. Okay.’ It is what she expects, and her implicit scorn for the idea that he should do anything other than sales seemingly having worked, she is about to stand up and ask him if he wants some tea, when he shakes his head.

She stays on the sofa. ‘Why not?’ Her voice is quiet. The tone of the question, though, throws the onus on him entirely to justify himself, makes it more or less impossible for him simply to say, ‘I don’t want to.’ So first he hesitates, and lights a cigarette, and looks at her. Her face is very still. ‘I just don’t want to,’ he says.

‘Paul,’ she says, ‘the January rent is due in about a week.’

‘I know. I’ve got money for that.’

‘You’ve got money for that?’

‘Yes …’

‘What money?’

‘There’s … I’ve got … An old savings account.’

For a moment, she seems flustered by the existence of this deus ex machina , this ‘old savings account’, and she stares at him. ‘How much have you got in it?’ she says. She seems suspicious, displeased.

‘Enough for the January rent.’ Though he is not even sure there is that much.

‘And after that? What’s going to happen after that?’

‘I’ll get another job.’ His voice, however, is limp and uninspiring — low on steely will.

Hers is not. ‘ What other job?’

‘I don’t know …’

‘ Pau-aul! This is ridiculous.’

‘What?’

‘ This .’

‘Heather,’ he says.

‘How can you be so selfish?’ She seems furious suddenly. ‘You can’t just do what you want. Selfish! What about me? What about the children? You’re not on your own. You can’t just do what you want as if other people don’t exist.’

‘What are you talking about? I’m not saying I’m not going to work.’

‘So what are you going to do? And don’t say “I don’t know”!’

‘I don’t know. You’re worried I won’t be able to pay the rent. I know —’

‘Not just the rent! The council tax, the bills …’

‘I’ll pay them.’

‘How?’

‘Well, the January rent’s covered —’

‘I hope so.’

‘Yes.’

‘Because it’s due in about a week.’

‘It’s covered. I told you.’

‘I hope so.’

‘It is,’ he says impatiently. ‘And I’ll start looking for another job straight away.’

‘WHAT job?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.’ He is well aware that this is not a satisfactory answer. ‘Anything, initially.’

‘You haven’t really thought about it ?’ She wails the words. ‘Paul,’ she says, as if imploring him, ‘I don’t understand. Really.’

‘What don’t you understand?’

She does not understand why he would want to leave sales.

He does not fully understand it himself. It is a job that has served him well, more or less, on and off, for over fifteen years. It is all he knows, the only thing on his CV, aside from a lower second in English language and literature from the University of East Anglia. He is a salesman — ‘a man is his job’. And it is his job. Yes, he is tired of it. And yes, there is the hypocrisy of being an advertising salesman whose interior monologue increasingly fulminates against advertising whenever he sees it. And yes, lately he has not been doing well. Lawrence had been losing patience with him. And not without reason. These ups and downs, though, are simply part of what it is. He knows that he could walk into any of the major commission-only outfits — Silverman, for instance, or Oliver Burke Clarke — and, as Heather said, just start working. Sit down at a desk and pick up the phone. The new scenery would probably freshen him up, and the sales would be there. He would make money. So why not? Why is there such an immovable bar of opposition to it in his mind? And there is. He himself is surprised at the strength of it.

It has been there since his afternoon in the Albert, when it occurred to him that he was able to leave sales. He had simply to walk out. And stay out. The immediate sense of freedom had been overwhelming. It was something intensely felt, and utterly unthought-through — something thus not unusual in the throes of drunkenness. What was unusual was his endorsement of the idea when he was next sober. And even now, when it is hopelessly occluded with practical problems, he feels that whatever else he might do, he must not ignore it and professionally pick up a phone. Faced with Heather’s intransigence, however, he might well have done so, were it not for the fact that only that morning, sitting in the lounge, he had seen — or thought he had — that no process of self-improvement he might initiate would have any hope of success, would fail like all its predecessors, unless it involved him leaving sales. His way of life — he had thought, using an overlooked wine glass as an ashtray — was embedded in sales. ‘A man is his job.’ It forms his way of thinking, of living. If he quit sales, it seemed to him, everything else would become unfixed, malleable, able to be re-formed in a more satisfactory way — an idea which seemed to bring moral and intellectual respectability to the beery rapture of the Albert.

He is unable, or unwilling, to explain this to Heather. ‘I just can’t do it any more,’ is all he says, slumped, his head nodded forward, as if he were pushing onto his posture the unwelcome weight of explanation.

‘But I thought you liked it.’

It has been years since they have spoken seriously about his work. He sees that now. ‘I used to,’ he says. ‘I suppose. Not any more.’

‘And do you think I like working at Gumley Rhodes?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you think I like it?’

‘I’m going to get another job. I don’t see what the problem is. Why is that a problem?’

‘ What other job? What job?’

That is the question.

And he does not have an answer for her. He has not thought about it himself. He had been too taken up with maintaining last week’s masquerade. He offers her this — if he has not found another job ‘soon’ … ‘What do you mean “soon”?’

‘I mean, you know, soon.’ This does not seem to satisfy her. ‘A few weeks,’ he says.

‘In a few weeks! In a few weeks it’ll be almost February!’

‘Yes.’

‘And what about the February rent?’

He finds it extremely stressful to think so far ahead. He screws his face up, and puts a dry hand over his eyes. ‘We’re going to have to borrow money for that anyway,’ he says. ‘Whatever I do. Even if I started a new sales job the first week of January I wouldn’t have enough money by then. Unless you can pay it. I’ll pay you back, obviously.’

‘No, I can’t.’ She sounds upset, aghast.

He does not want to open his eyes. He says, ‘We’ll have to mortgage the car.’

Turning, then, to specific jobs he might do — what is there? He looks through the jobs section of a week-old paper, the Argus . Estate agent? No. One of the things that he is sure of is no sales , not in any form. He does not even want to work in a shop, the whole retail sector is out — no sales in any form . He does not want to mingle professionally with the money-spending public. Any non-sales but phone-based work — call centres, principally — he also excludes. It is thus a dispiriting experience to leaf through the jobs pages of the Argus ; his no sales and no phones policies put a line through many of the jobs on offer, and his lack of any non-sales skills does for most of the others. There seems to be a number of openings for chefs, for instance. Not much use to him. Nor the vacancies for prison officers, driving instructors, typists, database analyst developers, dental nurses, roadside patrol mechanics or financial consultants. This last he looks at more closely, but it is not for him. Not only does it turn out to be a straightforward sales job — a ‘target-driven environment’, as the text of the ad delicately puts it — but it requires him to have ‘plenty of drive and a proven track record in selling financial products’, to be ‘a great communicator and relationship-builder’, and to hold ‘qualifications FPC 1–3 or equivalent’.