David Szalay - London and the South-East

‘Maybe you’ll go back to it one day.’

‘Maybe,’ he says.

‘Are they good employers, Sainsbury’s?’

‘Dunno. Yeah. I’d say so.’

‘And have you always worked for them?’

‘No, not always. Since, um. Since ninety … ninety-five. I was on the, um, the management training scheme.’ He is himself slightly shocked at what is happening. Slowly, he is spinning a whole past for this other Paul Rainey — this Paul Rainey who is a manager at Sainsbury’s, and has been since ninety-five. Underlying the first part of the story, of course, the night-shift part, was a sort of metaphorical truth; an emotional or psychological truth in the story of a man — ‘Paul Rainey’ — who slides into a sadness, and sick of this marauding insatiable world, signs on to work nights. As it spreads further into the past, though, he starts to wonder just how much material he is going to have to make up. He is telling her about the management training scheme — how it took place in White City, how it involved a mock-up of a supermarket floor. How, as part of the scheme, the trainees were sent out to work in various jobs in supermarkets all over the country. (He has heard that this happens.)

‘Where were you sent?’ she asks.

‘Where was I sent? A few different places.’

‘Like where?’

‘Um. Darlington.’ He has never been there, does not even know where it is. ‘It’s quite nice actually,’ he says. ‘Quite a nice little place, market town. Do you know it?’ She shakes her head. ‘All I know,’ she says, ‘is that it’s in Yorkshire.’

‘Yeah, that’s right. Typical Yorkshire town. Really friendly people. People are so friendly up north, aren’t they?’

‘And where else were you?’

‘Where else?’

‘You said you were in a few different places.’

‘Oh. Yeah.’

In Swansea, he says, he packed people’s shopping. In Gillingham he was in the warehouse. Then he starts to tell her about his first proper posting, in London …

‘Where was that exactly?’

‘Oh, you won’t know it …’

‘I’m sure I will.’ She smiles. ‘Try me.’

Suddenly, though, he is unable to think of a single Sainsbury’s in London. It is extraordinary. There must be two hundred of them. ‘The one in Hammersmith?’

‘Hammersmith?’

‘Yeah.’

‘No,’ she says, ‘I don’t know Hammersmith. Is there one in Hammersmith?’

‘Of course.’

‘So how did you end up here?’

‘Here? In Hove?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well. I was offered a promotion. It was too good an opportunity to turn down really.’ She nods. ‘And my wife was — is — from round here.’ On the mention of his wife, her eyes droop for a moment. ‘And I wanted to get out of London anyway …’

Finally, somewhere in the early nineties, he manages to fuse this fictitious existence with his own, saying, ‘And before that, I was a salesman for a few years.’

‘A salesman ?’ she says. ‘Well, it’s good you got out of that racket! Anyway.’

‘Yeah.’

‘What sort of salesman?’

‘Well …’

‘Not the sort who phones people up at home?’

‘Well, no — it was business-to-business.’

‘That must have been awful,’ she says. ‘Didn’t you have to lie all the time?’

‘Sort of …’

‘I think that’s awful. Isn’t it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘People seem to think it’s just normal now.’

‘Well. I don’t do it any more.’

He has needed a piss for a long time. And he is on the point of excusing himself when she starts to tell him how she ended up in ‘London-on-Sea’. It is a long story — involving several further forays into the politics of education. It takes in a stint in India, and somewhere, some schools — the ferocious pressure in his lower abdomen is preventing him from following what she is saying — and finally ‘London-on-Sea’, a term she insists on using, though it sounds sour in her mouth since it was, she says, precisely to escape ‘the smoke’ of London-on-Thames that she fled there. (On the subject of smoke, she has spent the evening squinting in it, and swatting the fug, and staring sadly at the filling ashtray.)

When she has finished, Paul says, ‘Do you want another one?’

‘Um … A little one?’ she says, indicating an inch with her thumb and forefinger.

‘Okay.’

He stands up. First, urgently, he slips to the toilets. The evening, he feels — in the peace and quiet of the tiled space — has so far been a qualified success. When she listened to him, with her solid head on one side while he spoke of himself, putting her sensitive questions, he had started to quite like her. Had even started to fancy her. What troubles him is that what he told her was mostly lies. He thinks of the unfortunate Frenchman who posed as a surgeon, and sees that something similar is possible here; and he has not even opted for the kudos and sexiness of surgery. His lie is that he is the night-shift manager in a provincial supermarket. Which does not seem worth quadruple murder and suicide, if that is how this is to end. He turns to the sink. And the lie is wearying. Now, after only an hour or two, it seems like a load of luggage. Washing his hands, inspecting his face in the mirror — he is looking okay — he finds himself hoping — it is precipitous — to spend the rest of his life with this woman, this Jane, this teacher with her small teeth and weary solid face and overpowering feelings on the politics of education. (He hopes, too, that something of her youthfulness persists under her clothes.) So he should start with the truth. He waves his hands under the hand dryer. Start with the truth. The truth.

‘I’m afraid I’ve been lying to you,’ he says, once more installed in his seat, two fresh bières blanches on the table, hers a half. She looks startled. ‘What do you mean?’ He is lighting a B&H. (He thought his pouch of smuggled Drum tobacco would make a poor impression.) ‘I’ve been lying,’ he says. ‘Not telling the truth.’

Smiling unsurely, wondering whether this is some sort of joke, she says, ‘What do you mean?’

‘About myself.’

‘What about yourself?’ She is starting to sound slightly distraught.

‘I’m not really a manager at Sainsbury’s,’ he says.

This takes a second to sink in. And of course it overturns not just some small talk, but an intense section of the evening during which she listened with intent sympathy while he spoke — it seemed — in solemn, thorny earnest; and it was perhaps his willingness to do this that had persuaded her to do the same; to speak so openly — she had surprised herself — of her unhappy life in London, her years off work, the stalker, the flood, the insurance nightmare, the endless legal hell …

‘Then why did you …?’

‘Say I was? I’m not sure.’

They sit in silence for a few moments. Her voice, when she speaks, is offended and thin. ‘What are you then?’

‘A warehouse operative. That’s what they call it. I mean, I do work nights,’ he says. Pink-faced, she stares at him. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘What do you mean “warehouse operative”?’

‘You know …’ He flicks ash into the tray, shamefaced.

‘A shelf-stacker?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I wish you’d stop smoking,’ she whispers, sweeping some from her face with a small, tense movement.

‘Sorry. You should’ve said …’ He stubs out his unspent cigarette.

‘I don’t … I don’t feel … I’m sorry.’ She shakes her head, looking elsewhere.

‘What? What don’t you feel?’

‘I think I should go.’

‘ Go? Why?’