by Will Wiles
‘Didn’t we?’ I said.
‘No. And I’d like to hear more about how it went.’
‘I’ve been prioritising Pierce,’ I said.
‘Well, don’t forget about Alexander,’ Eddie said. ‘I want to see some of that, too.’
‘I thought we were postponing it,’ I said, clinging to hope.
Eddie fixed me with a stern, patient look. He had finished his hands; I had not yet rinsed mine. ‘On Monday,’ he said slowly, ‘we agreed that you would do both.’
‘A lot has changed since then,’ I said.
‘Nothing has changed. What’s changed?’
Well, I was dramatically more fucked up, but that wasn’t worth mentioning.
‘I don’t see the problem,’ Eddie said. ‘You did both, right? So tidy up some quotes, write an intro, and bring it into the meeting.’
‘Pierce is such a big story—’ I began.
‘So big,’ Eddie interrupted, ‘that we might need to hold it. If there are legal issues. We have to be careful. So you have work to do, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re a senior team member, I shouldn’t have to explain this.’
‘No. I understand.’
‘Good.’ And he stalked away.
With his departure, my last supporting wire was snipped. My fingers slipped and jarred as I turned off the tap, and I slumped against the sink. My hands had probably never been cleaner.
Losing my job was one thing. I doubted my ability to get another, certainly in the brief window before financial disaster. The Need would thicken to fill every crack of every day, to fill every part of life, and that would be the end. But that was just a technicality. Losing the respect and friendship of Eddie, who was friends with everyone and supported everyone, Eddie who would do anything for his staff: that was so much worse. It was that that marked me as impossible to save – as unfit for saving.
Back at my desk, I checked emails for some kind of signal from Pierce, from Quin, from De Chauncey or his PR, from anyone. But there was nothing. What would they say, anyway? What was I expecting, or hoping for? What was the best case, now?
I looked at Tamesis. There were notifications, which I had assumed were the long tail of Wednesday morning’s surge. And mostly they were, but for two: an event invitation, and confirmation of my RSVP.
I hadn’t RSVPed to anything. But there it was, Tamesis had marked me as definitely attending an event this afternoon.
The Directors of Harbinger Homes and Wolfe / De Chauncey cordially invite you to celebrate the final phase of …
TEN
I bought a can-crusher. I think that was an important step.
Elise was unhappy about the cans. The empty cans, specifically. I did not keep large supplies of lager in the fridge, I bought the cans in fours, always trying to camouflage them with other, necessary purchases. I became very conscientious about doing the household shop. I went to the little Tesco three or four times a week. But although I would meet immediate needs, I would never pre-empt future shortages. I might remember that we were on the last dregs of Fairy Liquid just as I stepped out of the front door, and yet choose not to buy any, so as to have another reason to go out in a day or two. Lots of little trips, that was the trick. I don’t know how much I thought of it as a ‘trick’, or thought about how the run of my life was beginning to bend around the cans in the fridge. Not thinking ahead was my way of thinking ahead.
Every time I went out, I bought four cans. Not too many – nothing to suggest that I had a problem. When I couldn’t reasonably go to Tesco, I’d go to the little convenience store on the corner and get a couple of cans. Maybe a stick of gum or a Lion bar as well.
Elise became worried about the amount I drank. She saw the can before dinner, the wine during dinner, the wine and cans after dinner. She didn’t confront me about it, that wasn’t her way. She was forever fearful of nagging, of being shrewish. That wasn’t her, she said; it didn’t seem like a very grown-up way to handle a relationship, she said. I appreciated that, and the generations of male manipulation that have put these fears into the minds of thoughtful, caring women. She told me that she was worried that she was drinking too much in the evenings, and perhaps we could limit ourselves. Yes, of course, it was easy to agree. I didn’t want her to worry, so I started being more subtle. If we were watching TV after dinner, I’d wait until she went to the loo before opening a new can. It wouldn’t be obvious, as long as I kept a couple of empties on the table beside me. I discovered that it was possible to open a couple of new cans at once, and have both beside me. That way I wouldn’t get the sideways glance, directed at the can as I carried it from the fridge. I knew that glance was connected to an unspoken tally. That it was connected to the presence, the growing presence, the unacknowledged and unspeakable presence, in the flat, in the relationship, in our lives. I didn’t want her to worry, that was why I started to conceal.
The empties were difficult, though. A source of contention. A source of worry. I could replenish the cans every day, but the recycling only went once a week, and the empties would pile up, filling the small green kitchen bin. If the recycling truck didn’t come, or we missed it, a real storage crisis would develop, and the silent presence in the flat would inch into visibility. It was the empties that caused the first real argument – the first time we stopped talking about the symptoms of the presence, and touched on the presence itself. Elise did not say that I drank too much, or that I had a problem; no doubt that was what she wanted to say, but she did not. It was presented simply as a household problem: too many cans.
So I bought a can-crusher. That was my solution. No more reproachful sentinels on the countertop. I knew what she meant when she complained about the cans, what she really meant. But I aimed squarely at the symptom, and my thought when I found the crusher in the hardware shop was: this will make it much harder to keep track. Not: there is a problem here that must be addressed. Not even: I must make an effort to keep the kitchen tidy. My only thought, when I brought it home and installed it, was concealment.
The cocktail wasn’t very appealing once I got it back to my desk, but I drank it anyway, and without too much hesitation. Who was I trying to fool?
Quin had delivered, it couldn’t be denied. He had inserted me into the guest list for an event that afternoon, and De Chauncey would be present. But I couldn’t simply show up and start interviewing. I might not even be able to get close to the man. And leaving the office was a problem in itself. I was being watched. It would be very hard to explain to my jailers why I had to go to this event: as far as Eddie and Polly knew, the interview with De Chauncey was done already. That was the fiction that we were all role-playing, anyway: Eddie possibly knew the truth, or had suspicions, and was giving me the space to humiliate myself, to heap up lies until the whole edifice of deception collapsed with no way for me to escape from the wreckage. Tomorrow morning, it would come crashing down.
I sat at my desk, drinking from my bottle, planning my exit. The event began at 4 p.m., an afternoon tea, and it was close to the office, at Zebedee, a boutique hotel off Great Eastern Street. I could Mary Celeste it: hurry out wearing only my jacket, leaving my computer switched on with my pad and pen prominent nearby, my bag under my desk and my winter coat on the back of my chair. I might have gone to the toilet, or to make a sensitive phone call in the stairwell, which people did all the time. The chair was important: it mustn’t be tucked under the desk, but left sticking out, turned to one side, as if I might return at any moment. By the time my absence was noted and it became clear I wasn’t coming back, it would be the end of the working day. Easy.
Rain was falling in freezing sheets, and I wished I had my winter coat on, but it helped the illusion to leave it. Who would go out in this downpour without their coat? I pulled up my lapels, kept my head down and hurried along Old Street, sticking close to buildings. As I reached the steps down to the underpasses around the Tube station, I almost ran into a skulking object, and it respo
nded with a burst of frenzied white wings. A cockatoo, taking flight! But no, a man rushing into the station, trying to shelter himself with a collapsing copy of the Evening Standard. I gave some thought to buying a cheap umbrella, but the damage was already done, and I feared the cumulative effect of the bruises on my face and my bedraggled, creased clothes.
‘Always look the part’ was another piece of advice my father had given me. Thinking about this guidance, I realised it had kinship with what he had said about deterring muggings by looking threatening. The world didn’t check ID too closely – wear the right clothes and you’d get given the according role. Therefore we had a surprising amount of latitude to define ourselves; to say ‘this is me’ and be accepted.
This advice was deeply rooted in background, of course: white, male, middle-class, educated. Change any one of those characteristics and Dad’s look-the-part ideology might not have carried him so far. And he had a further advantage in that he only aspired to a kind of provincial, professional stoutness, and nature had happily shaped him to that purpose. The suits he wore were not fancy or flashy or even tailored, but they looked like extensions of his very essence, so they fitted, in all ways they fitted. One time, in the buccaneering early days of home internet, he had found a site that would send you a hand-made suit from Hong Kong if you entered an extremely detailed set of measurements. Dad was extremely excited about this service, and its astoundingly low price tag, and after he and Mum had spent an hour with the tape measure, the suit was ordered. Seven weeks later it arrived, and my father tried it on. The cut was flawless, the material exquisite. But it was all wrong. It was too obsequious to the form beneath. It was too personal. What suited my father about suits was their anonymising, smoothing effect: wool blankness.
Both my parents saw the problem with the work of art that came back from the Far East. ‘It’s very smart,’ said my mother, with a tilt to the words that made them utterly damning. He never wore it again.
By the time I arrived at Zebedee, I did not like to imagine the impression I made. The icy rain had given me a headache and my hands looked shockingly pale, like creatures dredged up from an ocean trench. The receptionist’s smile was a technicality, and he directed me to the function room with a blend of relief and scorn: I was not a guest, but also not his problem, and I would linger only a while. He would not have to eject me, I was not one of the invisible people made shockingly visible.
The clipboard-wielding women in tight red skirts at the double door of the function room were more difficult to pass. They viewed my approach with open disbelief and dismay, and they checked their lists with obvious doubt. Order was restored to their universe when my name could not be found. No Jack Bick.
A flaw in Quin’s mastery, a missing connection, an unfilled field? It was always possible – if the lists had been printed before he had worked his magic, for instance – but it struck me as unlikely. Another explanation seemed more probable.
I closed my eyes, terribly weary, head pounding. ‘I might be down as James Bickerton.’
The ballpoints traced through the Bs again. Rubbery little smiles. ‘Mr Bickerton. Welcome.’
It was only sensible to account for Quin’s casual arrogance, his urge to flaunt what he knew, what he could find out. He would have his justifications, of course – discretion, perhaps, believing that I might wish to conceal my presence here. But the real purpose would always be to send a little message: hey, James. I found your real name.
How much of my life had been spent crafting myself for those moments – the moment the smartly dressed young people on the door stepped aside with a smile. But the day was coming when I would no longer pass. When no name of mine would be on the list and I no longer looked the part. It was close, now.
For now I was through, again. Into the discordant grandeur of Zebedee’s main function room: plain breezeblock walls accented with touches of gold leaf, exposed metal ducts on the high ceiling, some of which appeared to have come free and were hanging by unsteady threads, their interiors blazing with white LED light. Postmodern chandeliers. Big screens and a stage at one end of the room, a bar and buffet table at the other. I was handed a glass of champagne and drained it – but it was not champagne, it was smoky and bitter, like cold fizzy tea.
‘What is this?’ I asked, spluttering.
‘Assampagne,’ the surgeon-suited waiter said. ‘A sparkling tea blend, non-alcoholic, low calorie and high in antioxidants.’
‘Delightful,’ I lied. ‘May I have another?’ The awful possibility that the event might be dry had, thank heavens, occurred to me before I left the office, and I had taken precautions, picking up another couple of miniatures that I could use to Long Island this tea. Fortunately, I could see phalanxes of wine glasses being filled beside the food. The food was eccentric interpretations of the ‘afternoon tea’: a ‘deconstructed egg and cress sandwich’ that comprised a peeled quail’s egg, an egg-shaped ball of white dough and a single stem of cress in an egg-shaped bubble of aspic. Pass. In the far corner of the room was a display that resembled a Gordon Matta Clark artwork: the disembodied corners of four rooms, providing the sample ‘spec’ of the apartments being launched, the materials used for floor and wall coverings, the look of the power sockets, taps and lights. In this small maze of room-shards I quietly slipped a vodka miniature from my pocket and added it to the Assampagne, taking care to do it over a sink – half a sink, anyway, sliced through the middle. The spirit didn’t do much to improve the taste of the cold, bubbly tea but at least I knew it was doing me some good.
Thus fortified, I surveyed the room, looking for De Chauncey. Although I had seen pictures of him online and in the Standard, that didn’t help. The expensive suit, the winter tan, the overall sheen of private education and attentive skincare. The glow of Ownership. There were four dozen people here who fitted that description, and a similar number of their female analogues. This wasn’t an event for hopefuls looking for first homes, but rather the representatives of more significant interests, bulk-buyers, the agents of agents, varnished marionettes whose strings connected to immense bergs of capital. And people in the industry, wheel-oilers, for whom this was a social occasion, the chance to enjoy the beginning or the end of something, and to show off. And lifestyle journalists, industry journalists, people who did not naturally have the glow but who were good at faking it as part of their work. Just as I used to be. Journalism – this kind of journalism – offered unbeatable opportunities for aspirational role-play, the brief chance to pretend to be rich, to be inside the high-ceilinged room behind the clipboards, drinking the absurd drink, enjoying a premium experience. It was a life full of those tiny tastes, used to promote this or that, the five-minute helicopter rides, and it attracted (or failed to repel) the chameleon type. I used to be able to fake the glow too: I did have the one good suit and the two good shirts, and contrary to what my parents believed I could look the part; but there were other parts I wanted to look: the young writer, the edgy journalist, which was why James Bickerton had become Jack Bick, a name I thought was more Vice. That was what had made me such a fan of Oliver Pierce: he was doing what I wanted to do.
A short man with prematurely grey hair, not De Chauncey, took the stage and addressed the room with the assured nonchalance of the very rich. ‘If you could all find a seat …’ He recognised someone in the crowd and gave them a wave and a wink. ‘We’ll kick off in a minute or two.’
I dumped my empty glass at the bar and took a couple of glasses of wine – ‘this is for someone’, perfectly true, they were both for someone, I was someone – before finding a seat near the back of the room, but not so near the back that the bar staff would be able to see me drink both glasses. I was at the side, by the windows looking onto the street. It was dark already and the rain was hammering down. A filthy night, my mother would have said.
Once the company was seated, the short man again took the stage. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for coming out in this beautiful London weathe
r’ – a public relations laugh from the room – ‘to join me to celebrate as the final phase of YOLO Shoreditch comes to market. We’re incredibly proud of these last 171 units, completing a development that is already one of London’s must-have addresses. You’ll be pleased to hear I won’t speak long, I’m sure a lot of you are keen to get back to the bar’ – a laugh – ‘and maybe try some of those eggy things, that is if Charlie hasn’t enjoyed them all’ – a bigger, less polite laugh from a smaller number of people. ‘We’ve got a short video for you in a moment, to give you a taste of this beautiful project, and then I’ll be handing over to Alexander De Chauncey of Wolfe / De Chauncey, who is handling sales on YOLO just as he did so ably on Bling Battersea, Tribeca Catford and N.W. Wow …’
My phone was vibrating. It was silent, but not switched off. Eddie or Polly, wise to my escape and calling me back for a bollocking, that was my guess. It was bad. I couldn’t answer, not in the middle of a presentation, and I didn’t want to draw attention to myself by leaving the room. I had come here to see Alexander De Chauncey. I would listen to him talk and then maybe try to ambush him afterwards. He was here to network, to sell, I was sure he would work the room – it wasn’t much, but it was something, and I was staying.
I slipped the phone from my pocket. It wasn’t the office – it was Pierce. Calling, rather than emailing or messaging, struck me as being very Pierce: unpredictable, eccentric. But I had to thumb him over to voicemail. It would be about our plans for the evening – scrapping them, I hoped, in light of the rain. The wetter it got, and the drunker I got, the more appealing I found the idea of staying in, even if it meant no confession, no cooperation, no nothing. I could just try to busk past that tomorrow. Pierce’s idea was scarcely workable even in fine weather, so he could hardly insist.
I had other notifications. Tamesis knew that I was at this event – it wanted me to post about it and tag in others. It suggested other T-plus contacts in the area: Alexander De Chauncey, Francis Quin, Eddie, Polly. Meet up, make connections. Build social capital, make the city smarter.