Paul Murray: The Mark and the Void

Paul Murray is the author of An Evening of Long Goodbyes , which was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award in 2003, and Skippy Dies , which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award in 2010 and (in the United States) the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Mark and the Void is his third novel. He lives in Dublin.

Idea for a novel: we have a banker rob his own bank. He’s working alone; at first, it’ll look like a classic inside job. This man, however, is not what you’d call an insider. He’s French, not Irish, and although initially he might look like a typical Parisian — black suit, expensive shoes, hair neat but worn slightly long — as the story unfolds and his past comes to light, we find out he never quite fitted in over there either. He didn’t grow up in a leafy suburb, didn’t attend a fancy grande école of the kind that bankers tend to come from; instead he spent his childhood in a run-down corner that the city prefers to disown, and his father’s something blue-collar — a welder maybe, a veteran of 1968, a tough nut.

The family doesn’t have much: the father’s job is precarious, they’re constantly resorting to moneylenders, bailiffs come to take the car away, all that. But the father’s ambitious for the boy; the father’s determined that he’ll have a better life. So the son beavers away in his third-rate school and makes it into a second-rate university, and after graduating at the top of his class, he’s offered a position in a prestigious French bank. It’s dull work, mostly filing and admin, but he’s diligent and quick and after a few months his manager takes note of him and recommends him for a start in the Research Department.

As a junior analyst, his official role is to dig up information on companies for the bank and its clients. In practice, he spends his time fixing paper jams, fetching coffees and listening politely while his boss describes his recent sexual adventures. When he gets to do his job, though, he finds that he likes it. More importantly, he’s good at it. He watches money flow through the market, learns the secret influences at work on it, begins to understand how a speech made by an obscure politician in, say, Guangzhou can send stock prices soaring, while a rumour about a change in the interest rate can spark a worldwide panic. He works early mornings, late nights, hour after hour in the cold glow of the screen, developing models, monitoring trades, figuring out the best way to persuade a client that he and all of his competitors have got the value of a stock completely wrong. One morning, he checks his bank balance and sees he’s got his first bonus: three times what his father would make in a year. That’s when he knows he’s made it.

But his father’s not happy. Instead, he looks at the trophies of his son’s success — the car, the suit, the unblemished hands — and despises them. It makes no sense — this is what he wanted for him! — yet the higher the boy climbs, the angrier the old man becomes. Everything the banker does to impress him has the opposite effect. He brings little gifts to the house, the father won’t accept them. He takes them for dinner, the old man won’t eat. They argue incessantly, the father berating the son for things he has nothing to do with — the neighbourhood changing, the rents going up, the President being elected. He calls him a deserter, a traitor. He looks at his son and sees the emissary of a world that no longer needs him.

What can the banker do? Does the old man genuinely want him to give up his job? That would be crazy, right? Besides, he likes it. He likes being wealthy and respected. He likes having a nice apartment in Auteuil and a nice new Mercedes to take him there; he likes nice meals in Le Grand Véfour and nice clothes from the Rue de Sèvres; he likes the beautiful girls who all of a sudden like him, and the micro-romances they squeeze in between the market’s close on Friday evening and the Monday meeting at 7 a.m. And he’s his father’s son: he thrives on opposition. But it gets so bad that they can’t even be in the same room together, and after his mother dies, he decides he’s had enough. A headhunter calls him about a position at Bank of Torabundo, a rising investment bank with a European HQ in Dublin. They want an analyst to advise clients on financial institutions, domestic and Continental. His language skills make him perfect for the job; they’re offering a significant increase on what he’s making in Paris.

He doesn’t think of it as flight, nor, exactly, as punishment. Yes, the old man is on his own now. But if they’re ever to have a functional relationship, he needs to learn something about compromise. So the son takes the job, cutting off all contact with home, beyond monthly payments for the live-in nurse. He plans to return to Paris at Christmas and review the situation, only with the global crash he finds he’s too busy to get away. Next Christmas, he thinks, without fail. But in April the nurse calls to tell him the old man has died in his sleep.

That’s how we find him as our story begins. It’s a couple of months later; he’s back in Dublin, passing his days in the service of money; passing most of his nights that way too. He has no friends, no pastimes, no life outside of the bank. He works so hard he doesn’t have a moment to himself, or, indeed, a self to have a moment. Someone observing might say he is depressed. He would say he wants only to be left alone. Certainly at this point he has no intention of committing a crime.

Here’s the thing, though: someone is observing him. For a number of weeks, someone’s been watching from a distance — a man, dressed all in black. He makes no effort to conceal himself, nor does he make any effort to communicate; he’s simply there , a supernumerary presence imprinted on the scene. He never comes closer, just watches, eyes trained on the banker as if through a gunsight; but any day now, the banker knows he’ll step out of the crowd and call him by his name; and at that moment everything will change.

That’s the set-up. What do you think? Would people buy it?

‘Claude?’

‘Yes?’

‘What are you doing under your desk?’

‘Me?’

‘You’re not hiding, are you?’

‘Why would I be hiding?’ I say. I wait a moment, hoping that this will satisfy her, but her feet remain where they are. ‘I am looking for my stapler,’ I add.

‘Oh,’ Ish says. On one ankle, between her patent-leather pumps and the hem of her skirt, I glimpse a slender chain from which several small animal charms dangle. Now a pair of brown brogues approaches over the fuzzy blue carpet tiles and comes to a halt beside Ish’s pumps.

‘What’s happening?’ I hear Jurgen say.

‘Claude’s looking for his stapler,’ Ish says.

‘Oh,’ says Jurgen, and then, ‘But here is his stapler, directly on the desk.’

‘So it is,’ Ish says. ‘Claude, your stapler’s right here on your desk!’

I clamber to my feet, and look down to where she is pointing. ‘Ah!’ I say, attempting to appear pleased and surprised.

‘Are you coming for lunch?’ Jurgen says. ‘We are going to the hippie place.’

‘I’m rather busy,’ I say.

‘It’s Casual Day!’ Ish exhorts me. ‘You can’t eat at your desk on Casual Day!’