John Lanchester - Mr. Phillips

There is a loud pause. People seem embarrassed but interested. There is also, suddenly, the risk of a scene, and that is one of Mr Phillips’s least favourite things. That dislike does seem to be genetic, a horror of raised voices and raised blood pressure that he without question inherited from his father and mother. ‘A man who loses his temper is a ridiculous man,’ his father would say, and indeed he never publicly lost his temper, merely turning quiet and pale and clenching his teeth and being unable to prevent a reedy, shaky edge coming into his voice, when he was angry — which he often was, especially at public slights on the part of people who were supposed to be helping or serving or looking after him, car park attendants and cinema ushers and, when he was in hospital for a prostate operation a year before he died, the nurses and caterers, although not the doctors, since their status was superior to his and so the transaction worked in a different way. His anxieties were to do with status and the respect he felt should be accorded to him but wasn’t. All these people should be giving it to him, in the form of prompt, respectful, attentive help, and if they didn’t he would become angry, would turn in on himself, and would sit silently and furiously brooding while more vociferous complainers would speak and get attention or amends. This in turn would make his mute sulking rage, his silent, passive temper tantrum, all the worse.

Mr Phillips’s mother, on the other hand, seemed not to have a temper at all, although she would sometimes go quiet and depressed, often in response to her husband’s sulk — it was as if she caught the feeling from him, though in a milder form. They shared a horror of altercations, public displays of crossness, all forms of ruction, and so did their son, who is beginning to wish that he wasn’t where he is, as the earnest man tries to gather himself and counter-attack.

‘Well,’ the talk-giver says. This gets the other man going again.

‘What about an ant? Or a praying mantis? Or a piranha? Or a virus? What’s a well-behaved flu virus do so that it can be reborn as an amoeba or a protozoon? How does a wasp improve its karma?’

‘Well,’ says the other man again. A youngish woman who had not spoken up before suddenly says in a loud, posh, mad voice:

‘Jesus died for your sins. Do you understand that? He died for your sins.’

‘But St Francis would never —’

‘I mean, if you’re just going around stinging people, and that’s your actual job —’

‘The sacrifice that He made for you —’

‘… we’re getting a bit away from the —’

‘… simple question —’

‘… in between a thief and a murderer —’

‘… more a sort of metaphor thingy —’

‘… crocodile-skin handbags —’

‘… Our Saviour, mine and yours —’

‘… difference of emphasis.’

Four or five people are now talking at once. From being shy or cowed they are now being voluble and, to varying extents, cross.

‘Vicarious suffering! Vicarious suffering!’ shouts the posh, loud, mad one in an even louder, madder voice.

Mr Phillips realizes that at least some of these people know each other and have had this argument, or at least a version of it, before. He decides to seize the opportunity to make a bid for freedom. Without moving too quickly, he starts walking towards the exit. As he gets to the heavy door and pulls it towards him, the man with the flat voice sees him and calls out:

‘Oi! Where do you think you’re going?’

At least half the group burst into approving, jeering, raucous laughter, and that is the last sound Mr Phillips hears as he slips out into the porch. In the churchyard the tramp does not seem to have moved at all, but the can of lager that was balanced on his stomach is no longer there.

What do you call a man with a seagull on his head? Cliff. What do you call a man with a spade in his head? Doug. What do you call a man with no arms and no legs in the ocean? Bob. What do you call a man with ten rabbits up his bum? Warren.

Mr Phillips is lying face down on the floor of Barclays Bank. His arms are spread above and on either side of his head, and his jacket has ridden up and bunched so that it feels as if his circulation is being cut off around his shoulders. Also it is very hot. But Mr Phillips does not want to adjust his position and make himself more comfortable, because four men with shotguns have taken over the bank and it is on their orders that he is lying on the floor looking at the Barclays carpet and trying to keep calm. When the men communicate they do so by shouting and their threats are easy to believe. They have said that they will blow the fucking head off any fucker who moves.

Funnily enough, Mr Phillips saw the men come into the bank just as he noticed a sign saying ‘No Crash Helmets Please’. About two seconds later four men wearing jeans, windcheaters and crash helmets walked into the bank, and there was a split second in which Mr Phillips was noticing and remarking on the coincidence — oh look, there are men in crash helmets, who I don’t suppose will know they’re not meant to come in here dressed like that — before the men started shouting commands and making everyone lie on the floor. One of the crash helmets then picked a middle aged woman in a perm up off the floor and held what appeared to be a sawn-off shotgun, an object about a foot and a half long with a double barrel, at her head. He told the cashiers that if they did not buzz him through to their part of the bank, behind the glass partition, he would blow her face off. So the cashiers buzzed him and one of his companions through while the other two robbers stayed outside and patrolled the banking hall.

How many hairdressers does it take to change a light bulb? Five — one to change the bulb, four to stand around saying ‘Super, Gary.’ How many yuppies does it take to change a light bulb? Two — one to change the bulb, one to organize a skip. How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? None — the light bulb can change itself, but only if it wants to. How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb? One — and it’s not funny. How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb? Two — one to change the bulb, the other to suck your cock.

That was one of Martin’s.

It is all Mr Phillips’s fault that he was caught in here. He had not really needed to come into the bank at all. In fact, all day, on and off, he has been deliberately not-thinking about going to the bank and asking for an up-to-date statement of his financial position, checking his balance, which is about £500, and his savings account, which is about £3000, before he gets his three months’ tax free redundancy, which would come to about £8000. But this was something he simply could not face doing, so he had not-thought about it until what seemed at first to be a happy accident had happened.

Mr Phillips had come out of the church and wandered down to Shaftesbury Avenue. As the day went on London seemed to be getting busier and busier — more people, more rushing about, more cars, more tourists, more cycle couriers and motorcycle messengers, more red buses and black taxis and angry white vans, more coaches and coach parties and more girls and more men carrying things and in a hurry. It was ever so slightly less warm than it had been, at least on the side of the road that wasn’t in the direct sun. Mr Phillips could feel the cold patches on his back where the shirt had soaked up sweat. He knew that his feet would by now be humming up a storm.

A man came up Shaftesbury Avenue leading a group of Asian tourists who had clearly just come out of a matinée of Les Misérables. They were clutching programmes. The guide was holding up a bright orange umbrella and kept pivoting to check that his flock was still there behind him. Then a cyclist shot past Mr Phillips where he stood, swerved between a pair of European-looking tourists and a young man carrying a Tower Records bag, hopped in the air as his bike went over the kerb, cut up a taxi and hurtled over a pedestrian crossing before mounting the pavement and setting off towards Piccadilly Circus.