David Szalay - London and the South-East

In those days all the work was done in the mornings — and work was done. The mornings had a frenetic, wild-eyed quality. Eddy, Paul, Murray, Mundjip — all shouting into their phones.

… calling from International Money Publications …

… is Mr Jadoul there? I need to speak to Mr Jadoul …

… the world’s leading banks and insurance companies …

… that’s very good news, Mr Nicelli …

… so if I could just confirm that …

Some of them standing on their desks, some sitting under their desks, the strong draught from the windows dispersing the cigarette smoke, the numbers on the whiteboard multiplying all the time. They had the togetherness, the loudmouth mutual self-assurance of a winning sports team. Tuesday was payday — when the trophies were handed out. In turn, they would go up to Simon’s office to collect their cheques — written in front of their eyes with his gold fountain pen — for two, three, four thousand pounds. And Simon himself was not a negligible ingredient in the extraordinary savour of that time. He was like a pig in shit — buying champagne, paying for taxis, five-hundred-pound bottles of Pomerol at El Vino, dinner at the Ivy. He was munificent — and no wonder — he was making as much money as all of them put together. He wanted them to love working for him, and they did. For two months.

Then the fateful phone call from Nigel at IM.

Then the Diaspora.

And then …

Yes, that .

Paul sighs (the house is tactfully silent) and, swinging his feet onto the carpet, sits up. He moves through to the kitchen. The house is still listening — mildly, like a mental-health professional. For a while he says nothing, lost in his own numb non-thoughts. He opens the fridge. Shuts it. The green digits of the oven clock say that it is two. That was always the pivotal point of the day, he mentions. Two o’clock. The point at which, in the various pubs of his sales life — in the Duke of Argyll, in the Greyhound, in the Prince Albert, the Windlesham Arms, the Red Lion, the City Darts, the Ten Bells, the Seven Stars, the Gun, the Crown, the Golden Heart, the White Hart, the White Swan, the Perseverance, the Nag’s Head, the Devonshire Arms, the Punch Tavern, the Captain Kidd, the Coach and Horses, the Prospect of Whitby, the Old Bell, the Tipperary, the West Wall, the Printer’s Devil, the King and Keys, the Masons Arms, the Edward VIII, the Cheshire Cheese, the Old Bank of England, the Old King Lud, the Cittie of Yorke, the Finnegans Wake, the Tom Tun, the Shakespeare’s Head, the Fitzroy Tavern, the W. G. Grace, the Castle, the Chequers, the Prince of Wales, the Ellesmere Arms, the Stage Door, the Sherlock Holmes, the Carpenters Arms, the John Keats, the Head of Steam, the Rose and Crown, the Prince Rupert, the Lord Clyde, the Colonies, the Cricketers, the Adam and Eve, the World’s End, the Bag O’ Nails, the White Horse, the Marlborough Arms, the Green Man, the Bunch of Grapes, the George, the Dolphin, the Duke of York, the Saracen, the Blackbird, the Hand and Racquet, the Blue Posts, the Barley Mow, the Belgrave Arms, the Dover Castle, the Golden Lion, the Goose, the Bull, the Eight Bells, the Two Chairmen, the Constitution, the Duke of Wellington, the Northumber land Arms, the Blind Beggar, the Feathers, the Beehive, the Phoenix, the Bear, the Sussex, the Crown and Anchor, the Anglesey Arms, the Oxford, the Windmill, the Fox and Hounds, the Three Compasses, the Cask and Glass, the Crossed Keys, the Lamb and Flag, the Man in the Moon, the Cock, the Stag, the Builders Arms, the Hour Glass, the Wheat Sheaf, the Windsor Castle, the City Tram, the Lord High Admiral, the Morecombe Arms, the Grenadier, the Queen Anne, the Catherine Wheel, the Bell, the Angel, the Rising Sun, the Robin Hood, the New Moon, the King’s Arms, the Star and Garter, the Mitre, the Magpie, the Flag, the Ship, the Plough, the Melton Mowbray and the Penderel’s Oak — two o’clock was the point at which they had to make up their minds what to do. Until then, there was always a sort of tension, a tension which peaked on two o’clock; and when, at two o’clock, Paul imagined leaving the pub — stepping out onto the pavement and walking back to the office — he would usually dismiss the idea as impractical. Pointless. Naive. Imagining, for a moment, stepping into the rain that he saw was starting to fall outside, the hurrying people, the thrusting black taxis with their headlights on for the early gloom, he would inwardly shudder. So they would usually stay, especially in the second half of the week; and the first post-two o’clock pint produced an immediate sweet easing — a sudden luxurious expansion of time, ‘all sense of being in a hurry gone’. (A phrase he remembers from somewhere.) Later, however, it might start to seem that perhaps it would not have been entirely impractical, or pointless, to have put in a few hours’ work — hence the penitential tinge so typical of four forty-five.

On the sofa — his feet on one of its arms, his head propped on the other — smoking a cigarette, he addresses the silent house like a shrink. Yes, the penitential tinge, in the warm, low light of the Penderel’s Oak — the moving light of the fruit machines, the heat lamps of the food servery, and the illuminated front of the cigarette machine — a picture of a rabbit or a hare, he never knew which, squatting vulnerably in American scrubland, and in big blood-red letters, the single word, LUNCH. They never ate lunch, he and Murray.

Lying on the sofa, he finds himself thinking of one particular afternoon — the afternoon of Murray’s salesman’s tiff with Marlon. It was two o’clock. Murray was smiling, and somewhere in his smile he was issuing an imploring plea. Paul was not sure what it was about exactly, Murray’s tiff with Marlon. He knew, however, that Murray wanted to stay away from the office. That was what he was silently pleading for. Paul looked at his watch. With a series of soft impacts he stubbed out his cigarette. Murray, the smile still fixed in the folds of his face, must have thought that Paul’s hesitation was simply a form of sadism. Paul even wonders, supine on the sofa, whether it was. He thinks not, however. That day — he informs the house — the penitential tinge had appeared early, while there was still time to leave the pub and put in a few hours’ work. So it was out of kindness, out of a sort of softness — which, he was sadly aware, must somehow put him at a disadvantage in life — that he had finally said, ‘Well … What you having then?’

And that night — that very night — Murray had spoken to Eddy Jaw.

Why? Was it because he had taunted him about his Merc? Yes, he had taunted Murray about his Merc. When he landed the post-two-o’clock pints on the table, he saw that Murray had taken one of his cigarretes — Murray never had his own cigarettes — and seating himself, he said, his voice full of sympathy, ‘Still having trouble with the car finance people?’

‘The finance people?’

‘Yeah. When’s the next payment?’

‘Um, it’s in, er …’ Murray looked up at the ceiling, which was the colour of pie crust. ‘Two weeks, something like that.’ Paul knew that that was a lie. The next payment was due on Monday. Keen not to talk about it, Murray said, ‘You got anything out there?’

‘Parking’s a bit of a nightmare, though,’ Paul said. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘Not at all.’ Murray shook his head. The word ‘parking’ was unpleasant for him to hear, provoked a stab of pain — his long silver S-Class being at that moment immobilised in Little Russell Street, as he had found when he went there mid-morning to put another twenty quid in the meter. ‘So you got anything out there?’ he said. ‘Or what?’