Trading Futures

by Jim Powell

  I gave the bastard full marks for the attempt. This was a euphemism that had not occurred to me.

  ‘What will the hourly rate be?’

  ‘Five hundred pounds,’ said Loxley. ‘Very generous, I’m sure you’ll agree.’ He had visibly relaxed. The idiot seemed to think I was about to accept.

  ‘And the number of hours?’

  ‘That will be for you to determine, Matthew. The sky’s the limit. Go out and get whatever you can.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll start with my existing clients.’

  ‘No, no. That’s not really the point of the exercise, is it? Besides, we’ve asked Jason if he wouldn’t mind taking over your portfolio. It would have to be new business.’

  ‘You must think I’m as big a twat as you are,’ I said.

  ‘There’s no need for that attitude. To be honest, we’re making you a very generous offer. Let’s face it, Matthew, things have been slipping a bit lately, haven’t they? Many companies would be showing you the door right now.’

  ‘How do I spot the difference?’

  ‘Senior consultant. Yes or no?’

  ‘You’ve got to be joking,’ I said. ‘Be a man for once and fire me.’

  So he did. Actually, he didn’t: he made me redundant, which was better. I was asked to clear my desk by the end of the morning and was offered a large severance package. Why should I have been surprised?

  Life changes, and has to change. One may be becalmed for a while, but in the long run stasis is not an option. After I had been passed over for chief executive, I became a member of that most endangered of species: an ageing high earner going nowhere. I was permanently becalmed.

  I had learned to read the runes; I’d too often seen them written for others. At the previous board meeting, the youngest director, recently appointed against my advice, urged the need for us to be more scientific in our approach, ridiculed the use of gut instinct in a technological age. His eyes never once met mine, but his sights were trained on me. Decades ago, when I joined the board, I had made more or less the same speech. I too never looked at the port-ridden soak at which it was aimed, whose job I envied and later got. We can fight battles only with the weapons we have. When we are young, we take up arms on the side of science, because art – in this context – requires experience, and we do not have experience. When we are older, we take up arms on the side of art, because experience is our advantage, and because we can no longer be bothered to keep pace with the science. Domestic battlefields are no different. Men bear physical arms; women emotional ones. We always choose the weapon that is most lethal in our own hands.

  In my opinion, buying futures is an art, not a science. When I was the blue-eyed boy, no one questioned my methods. No one then told me not to buy futures by sniffing the air. My record was much the same as it had always been. I made mistakes. We all did. It was impossible not to in this business. All right, maybe I’d recently been making a few more than usual. I’d had an unlucky run. But I was still a match for Jason the boy scientist, the young man who wanted my job.

  Why should I have been surprised? I had expected to be fired, so you’d think the actual event should not have come as a shock. But it did. It felt as much a thunderbolt as if it had fallen from a clear blue sky. I didn’t go home immediately. I collected my thoughts in a bar for the rest of the day, and returned home at the usual hour. On the journey back, it struck me that my thoughts, far from being collected, were strewn all over the train carriage. I thought I would buy myself time by failing to mention to Judy what had happened.

  Money was the least of my problems. I feel bad saying that, when the financial crash is finally happening and there are about to be so many people left to pick up the tab for our greed. But we were all right, and always would be. I had earned a lot of money over the years. Once the mortgage had been paid off and the children had left home, we saved most of it. Any normal person would say we had an extravagant lifestyle. But normal people don’t work in the City or earn City money, and by those standards we were frugal. Then there was the redundancy money. Then there would be the company pension, which was also substantial. Then, at some point, we would decide we didn’t need such a large house, so there would be a cash windfall from downsizing. No: money was the least of my problems.

  When rich people say that money doesn’t matter, everyone else thinks, ‘Well, try living without it.’ So I’m not going to say that it doesn’t matter, but it isn’t a cure-all. Poverty is always shit. If you can escape that, there are times when it’s better to have less rather than more. This was one of them. With less money, I would have been forced to do other work, however badly paid, however different from what I was used to. I expect I would have found something, even now. With less money, I could not have sat around all day drinking and feeling sorry for myself. With less money, I would have felt I had some purpose in life.

  I spent that first weekend of unemployment reviewing my options. If I told Judy the news, there would be consequences. Not tears and tantrums; not harsh recriminations; not even sly reminders of the birthday party. That wasn’t Judy’s way. Instead, there would be love and sympathy and a faint trace of pained disappointment that I had let myself down, which would be another way of saying that I had let her down. Then, on Monday morning, on Tuesday morning, in fact on every bloody morning for eternity, instead of leaving home for the office, I would be sat at home with nothing to do, getting under Judy’s feet and she getting under mine. And drinking. I couldn’t imagine that I wouldn’t be drinking.

  In time, in very little time, Judy would start to ask what I was doing about getting another job. There was no prospect of another job that I might want to do, and the curse of money would prevent me from seeking one I didn’t want. A life spent trading futures fitted me for nothing else. No City firm was hiring expensive men of my age. It was true that one or two people might have taken me on as a consultant. That prospect depressed. ‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach,’ had been an adage of my youth. To which I now silently added, ‘And those who can’t teach, become consultants.’ I could play golf. But you can’t play golf all day every day, or I can’t.

  Judy would know most of this, at least I imagined she would. Everyone knew it. To admit to it, for either of us to admit to it, was to admit to the prospect of years, perhaps decades, cooped up with someone with whom one no longer has much in common, if one ever had. Once, I had faced the prospect of retirement with serenity, the sort of serenity an optimist feels when a problem is distant. I would never actually retire, I told myself. I would wind down, work fewer days in the office, develop other interests. One day it would emerge that I had worked my final day and I would barely notice, so absorbing would those other interests have become. I didn’t trouble to define the other interests. Now, when they were instantly required, I couldn’t think what they might be. Until they materialized, there was no substitute for the working week, for my own particular working week.

  So I decided to go on doing what I’d always done.

  I would rise at the usual hour, shave and shower and have breakfast, put on a suit and tie and leave for work at eight a.m. It was possible that Judy would discover one day; probable that she would not. No member of my firm lived near us, nor did we see any of them socially. If Judy and I needed to communicate during the day, it was by mobile phone, and I still had mine. I ran the family finances, dealt with the bank statements, so she wouldn’t know that a salary was no longer appearing on them. That left the question of how I would fill the hours between leaving and coming home.

  I decided to initiate the practice of standing at the doorway of my former office and saying ‘good morning’ to my former colleagues as they arrived for work. In the evening, I would return and say ‘good night’ to them as they left. In between, I spent the day in Costa’s and resisted the bars. I couldn’t arrive home drunk every night.

  This was satisfying so far as it went. My erstwhile colleagues had no idea how to deal with a
ghost. They started by smiling at me, one or two even returning my greeting. Then they began to hurry past me, looking the other way. I enjoyed their discomfiture, but the routine soon became boring, and it hardly amounted to a long-term career.

  One day, a week or two after Sack Friday, Rupert came out of the building promptly at six p.m. and looked around for me. I was surprised to see him. After the first day, he had taken to using the goods entrance to avoid me.

  ‘Good night, Rupert,’ I said.

  ‘Good evening, Matthew. Let’s go and have a drink.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ll tell you in a minute. Let’s go and have a drink.’

  We installed ourselves in a nearby bar and I thought I would treat myself to a double whisky at the company’s expense. Rupert drank mineral water.

  ‘It’s a long time since we’ve done this,’ he said. I said nothing. ‘In fact, not since I took over the top job.’

  He looked at me challengingly. I still said nothing.

  ‘Before that, we did it quite often. In fact we used to get on pretty well. Didn’t we?’

  I didn’t reply. What he said was true, but I couldn’t admit it.

  ‘Matthew, I’m very sorry I got the job that you wanted. I’m also sorry that it happened when your wife was ill. But I had just as much right to want the job as you did. I didn’t do you down in any way. It was a fair fight and I won it. Why do you find that so hard to accept?’

  ‘I deserved it.’

  ‘And so did I. We both deserved it. Only one of us could get it. At any other time in the previous ten years, it would probably have been you. The moment of decision came at the wrong time for you. I’m sorry, but that wasn’t my fault. Ever since then, you’ve resented me. You’ve let yourself go. You drink too much. Your judgement has slipped. You’ve created a bad atmosphere in the office. You’ve made yourself awkward at board meetings. Other people were asking for months why I hadn’t fired you.’

  ‘What other people?’

  ‘Almost all your senior colleagues, if you want to know. It’s not that they don’t like you. They’re very fond of you, most of them, but they’re fond of the man you were, not of the man you are. As am I, frankly. It couldn’t go on. Someone had to go. Probably several people will have to go in the end. What was I expected to do? Fire someone who was doing a decent job and keep you? I tried to give you a dignified way out, but you were too bloody proud to take it. Now we have to endure your pantomime twice a day.

  ‘Matthew, you can’t go on like this. We can put up with it, if we must. You can’t. It’s dragging you down. It must be dragging you down. People are concerned about you, believe it or not. Now for God’s sake talk to me and let’s see if we can find a way out of this for you.’

  ‘I could always top myself, if that’s what you’d like.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Matthew. That’s not what anyone wants.’

  ‘What do you suggest, then?’

  ‘Well, I do have one idea. We haven’t replaced you and we’re not going to. We need fewer staff, not more. So your office is still empty. If you like, and on certain conditions, I would be prepared to let you use it when you want. I can see what’s happened has been a blow to you. Suddenly stopping work isn’t easy for anyone. I don’t know what you plan to do next, and you plainly don’t either. If it would help to smooth the transition into the future, you can keep your office for a bit.’

  ‘What are the conditions?’

  ‘You have no role within the company. You’re not on the payroll. You will not talk to any of the clients. You will not be drunk in the office, or keep drink there. You will be polite and friendly to your former colleagues. And if there is any lapse, one single lapse, in any of this, you will be out on your arse in two seconds.’

  I couldn’t think what to reply. I couldn’t bring myself to thank Rupert, although he had in fact thrown me a lifeline. I couldn’t imagine how I would stick to the terms of my parole. But I wasn’t much keen on the alternative either.

  Rupert stood up. ‘Think about it, Matthew. I’ll come in by the front door tomorrow, and either you come up with me, or you don’t. That’s it. Final offer, and God knows how I’ve been persuaded to make it at all.’

  I may have given the impression that I do not have a high opinion of Rupert Loxley, and you may have concluded that this is a product of jealousy. It would be fairer to say that it is not only a product of jealousy. Rupert is one of the diminishing breed of upper-class smoothies who once used to run every institution in the City. His upper lip was permed at birth. His type has been replaced mainly by the barrow boys who, after Big Bang, moved half a mile west from Petticoat Lane to the City. They couldn’t be more different but, funnily enough, there’s not much to choose between them. Belonging to neither category, I can be impartial in such judgements.

  The hegemony of Rupert’s breed was secured by their address books. They had long lunches during which they passed confidential information to influential friends. When the barrow boys started doing much the same thing, rather less subtly, for more overt personal gain, Rupert’s breed labelled it ‘insider dealing’ and tried to have it outlawed. It didn’t seem to dawn on them that they’d been doing the same thing themselves for generations. Their version was called having lunch with a friend, which was of course quite different. So they were hoist by their own petard, as regulators attempted to shoehorn the jungle into a municipal garden, and cocked it up completely, as is now apparent to everyone.

  Ruperts are not now much to be found at the cutting edge of City life. They still vegetate in the backwaters, however, and our firm is unfortunately a backwater. The reason Rupert should not have become chief executive is because he’s too soft. This is not a time for softies in the City. The bastards arrived to claim their inheritance a while ago.

  Why did I ever come to work in the City in the first place? Why did they ever let me in? It beats me. I think I’ve been taking the piss ever since. When I talk about buying coffee futures when it’s raining, that’s taking the piss, isn’t it? That is saying this whole system is bollocks, so let’s treat it as bollocks. The other things I’ve done too. Maybe I haven’t really done any of them, because how could I have been so successful if I had? Maybe I tell myself I have, to make me sound less like one of them. Maybe I’ve done it the same way as the rest of them, only better. Perhaps the truth of the matter is that the one thing in life for which I seem to have any aptitude is something for which I have the utmost contempt.

  No decent chief executive would have made that offer. You don’t need to be a genius to see that if everyone who loses their job is allowed to go on sitting in their offices rent free, there will be a problem. I was not the only one likely to lose his job in this company. If the moron Rupert Loxley allowed me to stay, he would be setting a precedent. This would do nothing to bolster his already limited authority. Even without lifting a finger to encourage it, I would become a magnet for any discontent in the company.

  Rupert was soft to offer me the option, and I would be soft if I took it. Did I have no pride left? Strangely enough, no; I didn’t. If the choice was between doing nothing in an office that wasn’t mine, becoming an object of ridicule to people who had once respected me, and sitting at home with Judy getting drunk, the first option seemed preferable. I started to think about other options. And I could think of only one.

  People don’t expect couples to split up in their sixties. They’re meant to have calmed the itches by then. Yet it strikes me as a logical time to split. There’s no need for it earlier, unless you really hate each other, or have fallen in love with someone else. It had never crossed my mind to leave Judy until now. For years, she was busy with the kids and I was busy with my work. When the kids had left home, I was still busy with my work. I might have bemoaned our dreary social life. I might have wished we could have had an interesting conversation sometimes. I may have been irritated by Judy’s small-c conservatism. Her big-C Conservatism too. But this was easy en
ough to put up with. While I was working.

  It was the thought of putting up with it constantly, all day every day, for decades maybe, that was frightening. When I was small and I thought about death, it was the for ever part of it I could not comprehend. Death meant nothingness. For ever. For ever and ever. For ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever. That was how the rest of my life with Judy now felt: nothingness stretching to infinity. It wouldn’t be to infinity, of course, because at some point I’d die. Then it would be back to the other for ever. I found it hard to distinguish between the two.

  But the alternative was no better. A divorce would be expensive. Those sandbags of money stacked against the floodwaters would be halved. Any judge would take a generous view of Judy’s contribution to our assets, and be right to do so. The water would probably still not seep in, but who could say that for certain at the moment? Anyway, that was not the issue. Taking risks with money came as second nature to me. Nor, to be honest, were those future years to be spent with Judy the entire issue. The issue was the future years to be spent with myself. Whether Judy was there to share them was almost beside the point. The point was the nothingness. My nothingness.

  Judy’s preferred course through life, dead and dated though it was, fitted her better for circumstances, for any circumstances, than mine did. She had few expectations, and no illusions. Judy had spent a lifetime adapting, a lifetime keeping house, a lifetime making small talk in local shops, a lifetime transporting plants around the garden, a lifetime seeding and cultivating friendships, a lifetime making herself available for the children. Those skills would never go to waste. They would always be in fashion. How they had managed to satisfy a day, let alone an eternity, was beyond me. But they had. I had no such hinterland to fall back upon.

  I was standing on the pavement outside the office door when Rupert Loxley arrived the next morning, and we went upstairs together.