Capital: A Novel

by John Lanchester

  The Polish builder was carrying a battered old brown suitcase. As he usually did, he shook Mary’s hand very formally. ‘I am grateful to you for agreeing to see me with so little warning,’ said Zbigniew.

  ‘Come in,’ said Mary. The roof has fallen in. One of my co-workers has been killed in an accident. I stayed the week at my girlfriend’s house and squatters have taken over your property. I have forged your signature on legal documents and 42 Pepys Road is now mine. The house has burned down in a fire and I wanted to tell you in person. Over the months working at your mother’s old house I have come to know you and love you as a person: please run away with me. But the builder’s manner did not correspond with any of those propositions. He looked preoccupied, but he did not look like the bearer of catastrophic news.

  ‘Tea?’ said Mary, gesturing towards the sitting room.

  ‘Is there a possibility of coffee?’

  ‘Coffee,’ said Mary. She went out and bustled in the kitchen while he waited in the sitting room. When she came back he was still standing by the window, looking at the largely featureless driveway, still holding the suitcase. Mary poured the coffee, sat down, and gestured for him to sit too. Then she waited.

  ‘Mrs Leatherby,’ said Zbigniew. ‘This is not easy to explain. It is better if I simply show you.’ He turned the suitcase to face her and opened it. Zbigniew watched her face.

  ‘Five hundred thousand pounds,’ he said.

  Afterwards, Mary always remembered how quickly she had realised what had happened. It was not a process that took time. She just simply and immediately knew. It helped that she recognised the suitcase. Yes, that was it, it all flowed from the suitcase. Dad, cash, suitcase, hiding place, sudden death, builder finds it, not sure what to do, fesses up. She got it straight away. It was obvious what had happened – he’d found the money and had then had no idea what to do with it. Mary knew what that felt like.

  It had been interesting to hear about the secret compartment. Her father had of course been handy, in his miserish way. He had no enjoyment of DIY but his passion for saving money was so keen he did it anyway. So he had evidently built himself this hideaway. It would have been in character for him to plan a big revelation, almost certainly as a way of winning an argument. No doubt his fantasy went something like this: Petunia would say something about the need for security in old age, some money to supplement the pension which would be not all that generous during his life and would be less so after his death. She would say something about his needing to make more provision, he would goad her by talking about how you couldn’t trust anyone in the financial services industry, how they were all thieves, she would grow upset, he would then produce the suitcase and make his big revelation: see how I have provided for you. I may be cranky, but I’m not stupid. He would show her the money, the savings he had squirrelled away in cash, under the bed or somewhere, over years and years. And Petunia would be tearful and forgiving and apologetic and furious, all at once. That was the effect her father had had. Except that it hadn’t happened like that. It was lucky he hadn’t lived to see what happened after his death. He’d have been furious.

  After the Pole went, Mary just sat there. It was a nice day, getting dark around five, and Alan made full use of it, coming home from the golf course only after nightfall. He had found Mary sitting downstairs with all the lights off, so much in the dark that she’d given him a shock, a hell of a shock, when he saw her.

  ‘Crikey,’ he said. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Good game?’ asked Mary.

  ‘Not bad. Got a bit stuck afterwards, he was droning on about his bloody in-laws again. It’s amazing the way he can repeat himself word for word and not think you’re going to mind. But don’t change the subject. What’s up?’

  ‘Sit down,’ said Mary. Then she opened the suitcase.

  ‘Christ on a bike,’ said Alan.

  ‘Half a million,’ said Mary. ‘My dad. Case in a secret compartment. The Pole found it.’

  ‘But—’ said Alan. Then he stopped. It was funny for Mary to see him at such a complete loss for words.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘They’re old tenners. Worthless. He hoarded it for so long it turned into waste paper.’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Alan, beginning to recover. He went over to the table where they kept the spirits and poured himself a gigantic Scotch, half of which he drank at a swallow. ‘Christ. You gave me a hell of a turn. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much cash in one go. Anyway, you’re half right. You can’t just take them somewhere and spend them. That tenner was withdrawn in the early nineties and it’s not legal tender any more. But the Bank of England still has to honour it.’

  ‘So we take it to the Bank of England. I can really imagine that, can’t you?’ Mary would wear a little hat and maybe a fur coat and would plonk the bag down on the counter and then pop it open to see their expressions change.

  Alan drank the rest of his Scotch and poured a refill.

  ‘What happens is, you can’t use it yourself, but once the Bank’s issued it it’s still valid, always and for ever. The trouble is, a lot of the time, if there’s a fair bit of money, they want to know where it’s come from. So they ask lots of questions, income tax, inheritance tax, all that, and if you can’t show that it’s all legit, they investigate you, and the next thing you know they’re claiming tax plus fines. The fines can be up to a hundred per cent of the full amount. And then there’s lawyers’ and accountants’ fees to pay, and most of the time you end up with hardly any of the money left.’

  ‘So it is waste paper after all, more or less,’ said Mary.

  ‘Give or take maybe a hundred grand.’ Alan finished his second whisky and started to pour himself another. Then he thought better of it and came across to Mary and gave her one of his super-powerful, rib-cracking hugs.

  ‘You all right?’ he said.

  ‘I’m glad my mother never knew,’ said Mary. ‘She’d have killed him.’

  100

  At number 27 Pepys Road, Patrick and Freddy Kamo were both loafing around, killing time, waiting for Mickey Lipton-Miller to call or to visit to report on what was supposed to be the conclusive meeting with the insurance company. This was meant to be It – the final offer. The settlement. The meeting had begun late the previous afternoon and Mickey had said that he would either call before nine in the evening or first thing the next day. Father and son had woken up early, waiting to hear from the agent, and now didn’t quite know what to do with themselves. Freddy had a go at Halo 2, but it didn’t take, and now he had put a CD of Fela Kuti on and was sitting at the table jiggling his legs, not really listening to the music. Patrick had been out to the newsagent and bought a newspaper, but found he couldn’t read it. The combination of fatigue, worry, and the English language made the letters dance on the page, failing to resolve into words whose meaning he could understand. He could ring home – Adede and the girls would certainly be up already – but that would be such an unsettled, anxious-seeming thing to do that it would make Freddy even more uncomfortable. So there was nothing to do except trust Mickey to be in touch as soon as he could.

  It had been two months of misery for both of them – though the misery was of different sorts. For Freddy it was primarily physical. He had had the second, major operation on his knee. It went well, according to the surgeon – the senior and most pessimistic of the three specialists – but convalescence was still drawn-out and painful and boring. Freddy’s exercise regime was much duller and much more repetitive than training for football had ever been. He did not feel in full control of his body, and hated that. The whole process was a physical sinking-in of the reality he was facing: his injury might never get better, he might never be the same again, his life in football was almost certainly over. The thing he lived to do, he wasn’t going to be able to do any more. Freddy was not prone to depression, but even he sometimes felt that what had happened to him was a form of death sentence.

  Patrick’s misery was in his head rath
er than in his body. He was possessed by a sense that, in addition to everything that had already gone wrong, yet more would go wrong: the insurance company would find what they were so clearly looking for, a loophole to avoid paying out, and yet Freddy would also be unable to play football again, so they would lose out in every way: no insurance, no livelihood and no chance for Freddy to do the thing he loved. They had come to London full of hope and would be leaving it stripped bare. The only thing left to them would be going home – but that, to Patrick, was a consolation so large that it too was now becoming a kind of torment. Home, Africa, Senegal, Linguère, their house, their bed, waking up next to Adede, the weight of his daughters when they jumped up on him and demanded a hug, an evening in the police bar with his old colleagues, the food that actually tasted of something, the bite of cold beer on a hot night, the sweat on the bottle rolled over your forehead, the sense of being known in a place you knew; that you were taking up your allotted space on the earth. Speaking your own language, all day. Home. All of it – home.

  Both Kamos twitched at the noise of a key in the lock. Mickey did what he always did, which was to put the key in, turn it and open the door an inch, then ring the doorbell to announce his presence, then come in. Well, it was his house – which was presumably the unconscious point. He came bouncing in, which with another man would have been a good omen, except Mickey on purpose kept his energy levels high when he had bad news, as a way of being hard to read.

  ‘Sorry I couldn’t call last night. We went on a bit after ten and I didn’t want to break our arrangement. And anyway, I wanted to tell you in person. So here I am,’ said Mickey. He knew Patrick wouldn’t think to offer him a cup of tea – he was hospitable, but sweetly, laughably bad at things he was used to thinking of as female work. So Mickey just sat down at the table and dumped his briefcase down on it, looking across at the two Kamo men. They were grey with anticipation.

  ‘Ready?’ said Mickey. They nodded. ‘OK. Here it is. The good news is that the insurers are offering to honour the value of the contract. They were legally obliged to do that, since that’s what’s being insured, but you know what they’re like. So that promises a single payment of five million pounds, tax-free both here and in Senegal.’

  ‘Five million pounds,’ said Patrick. He looked at Freddy, who showed nothing.

  ‘Five million pounds,’ said Mickey. ‘Which is the good news. Bad news, or any rate less good, is that there are certain conditions. Which we knew there would be, but still. The main one they asked for is that Freddy is not allowed to play football again. Ever.’

  ‘Never,’ said Freddy. ‘Not with friends?’

  Smiling a little, Mickey said, ‘No, they can’t stop you having a kick-about with your mates. What they mean is, playing any kind of football for which you get paid. Or representative football for that matter, where you can earn money from image rights or sponsorships or whatever.’

  ‘Never,’ said Freddy.

  ‘Yes. As I say, that’s what they wanted. That’s what we were arguing about. And that’s why the bad news isn’t entirely bad news, pure and simple – because it turns out, I won’t lie to you, to my surprise, they were more imaginative than I thought. They saw the point. The deal we ended up with, finally, is that Freddy can’t play football anywhere in Europe or the Americas or Asia. But he can play in Senegal. He can run out on a football field again. If he gets in the national team or something and there’s sponsorship rights, they might want some of that money. But anyway, that’s the headline news. No football in Europe, but he can play in the league at home.’

  Mickey had fought hard for this: to be able to say to Freddy that his life in football was not over. It was to his complete amazement that he first sensed possible flexibility on the part of the insurers, and then detected actual movement. It hadn’t taken him long to work out why. It was partly that the amounts in question were so small they wouldn’t feel cheated – Freddy would be lucky to earn the equivalent of ten grand a year in Senegal, even fully fit and at the height of his powers. However mean and pissy the insurers were, not even they could worry about defending that to their shareholders. That was one thing. But the more important thing, he gradually realised, was that they thought the whole issue was moot. For all their stalling, they believed the gloomiest medical prognosis. They didn’t think Freddy would ever kick a ball in anger again. Allowing him to play pro football back home was like giving him permission to be the first man on Mars – it just wasn’t going to happen.

  No need to tell Freddy that, though. Mickey watched the news sink in, and Freddy reached for his father’s hand.

  ‘I get to play football again?’ he said.

  ‘And five million pounds. And,’ said Patrick, looking for the first time in months like a man with something to look forward to, ‘we get to go home.’

  101

  At number 42, the garden which had been Petunia Howe’s great joy in life, her hobby and her solace, was being dug up and replaced. Zbigniew stood at the window of the main bedroom on the first floor, the room in which Petunia had died, and watched.

  He had come back to fix some wall sockets in the bedroom. The wiring was a little loose and so the power supply was intermittent. He had promised a year’s guarantee as well as the work he’d done, and he was happy to come back and fix it, even though the house no longer belonged to the Leatherbys. It had been bought by a City banker and his American wife, a childless couple in their early thirties who had paid £1,550,000 for it. The house was as yet unfurnished; the new people were going to get a team of painters in. Zbigniew didn’t mind that, part of doing up a house to sell it included the assumption that the new owners would change stuff. It wasn’t his house anyway. But he did find that he disliked seeing the garden torn out. The new owners wanted a more modern look. The crowded, profuse, overgrown, over-living plant beds of old Mrs Howe were to be replaced by a geometric pattern of decking and gravel and pavings, with a water feature at the end, and four small square formal beds of low shrubs. So now four men from the garden design company were ripping out Petunia’s garden and bodily carrying the debris through to the skip at the front of the house, over the plastic sheeting they’d put in to protect the carpet.

  The Sunday on which Zbigniew had taken the money and given it back to Mrs Leatherby had turned into the best day of his life. The first reason: Mrs Mary Leatherby had rung him up in the early evening and had told him about the money. It had been worthless, or all but worthless, all along. If Zbigniew had tried to spend it, he would have had no explanation of how he had all this out-of-date currency and he would have been caught as a thief. He would have lost his honour, and for nothing. He felt the way a man feels when he’s been about to step out into the road without looking, then caught himself at the last moment and just avoided a speeding car.

  But that wasn’t the main reason it was the best day of his life. The main reason was that when he had got back to the train station and found Matya sitting outside the café, he had said, ‘What shall we do now?’ and she had shrugged and said, ‘Let’s go to bed.’ For a moment he had thought he was undergoing an aural hallucination. But the look she gave him told him he wasn’t. That was the single happiest and best and most surprising moment of his entire life to date. They had spent the trip home kissing, carried on snogging on the Tube, kissed all the way up the stairs to her flat, and then stayed in bed until it was time for both of them to go to work on Monday morning. It would be an exaggeration to say that they had been in bed ever since. But it wouldn’t be all that much of an exaggeration. He simply couldn’t get enough of her, her body and her company – it wasn’t just the sex (though it was, obviously, that too) and the amazing thing was that she seemed to, said she did and acted as if she did, feel the same way about him. She said she liked the way he was truthful and the way he stood in his shoes. Zbigniew wasn’t quite sure what that meant so was happy to take it as a compliment.

  It happens quickly when it happens, and it had happened to Z
bigniew and Matya. Now they were looking for a flat together. They were spending two evenings and one weekend afternoon a week flat-hunting – they had agreed to do it that way, and take as long as they needed to find a place which felt right, rather than blitz it and be worn down and give in to the first plausible thing they saw.

  Zbigniew, who could see that work was beginning to dry up, had once or twice mentioned Poland, how cheap it was, how beautiful the countryside was, how warm and open-hearted his family were; to which Matya would reply by talking about the glories of Hungarian food and culture and landscape. And there was a serious language question over her learning Polish or his learning Hungarian. So it was London, now and for the foreseeable future, and for Zbigniew that was about as unexpected as finding Matya had been. The fact that this had come to be the place where he lived, not just where he was passing through or cashing in, had not formed any part of his plan. Matya had a new job as a translator – one of her employers was a senior executive at a building firm which employed many Hungarians and had just lost its former interpreter to a better offer from someone else. So Matya now spent her day in a yellow hard hat, earning twice what she’d earned before, with the prospect of taking that career forward and/or applying for a desk job. From what she said, they loved her and were desperate to keep her. Zbigniew did not find that at all hard to understand.