‘Because they’re death factories,’ I said.
‘Lighten up,’ he said.
That was his advice – Lighten up.*
* Against his advice I found myself darkening down day by day.
TERMS & CONDITIONS OF DOUG
Effort kills.
I rarely saw Doug.
Few did. He was in his office before everyone and left after everyone. But one night I stepped into the lift and waited for the doors to close – so that I could have a good look at myself in the mirror – but between the closing doors a hand wedged in, the doors breathed open, and there was Doug.
He asked how I was. I said I was fine and was about to enquire how he was, but he looked so radiant that it seemed like a superfluous thing to ask, and Doug was one of those men you didn’t want to irritate with obvious questions. Something about his stature – maybe it was just his reputation, the myths – something about him prevented you talking naturally to him. You wanted only to say deep and meaningful things to Doug.
Which made it all the funnier when Doug said, ‘Bet you were angry I barged in, Frank. Bet you were just about to give yourself a nice vanity shot with the mirror. In the lift, by yourself, no man or woman can resist it. Am I right?’
‘You got me,’ I laughed.
‘Go ahead – look. We all spend our lives pretending we’re not looking at things. Not looking at ourselves, not looking at beautiful women. Such an effort. And effort kills.’
As I always did with Doug, I wondered if this statement was coded advice. A suggestion by a man who all day quantifies death and therefore understood a little more about life. A man who’d conquered fundamental things I’d yet to grasp.
Effort kills.*
* Make your life effortless and live for ever.
Doug said, ‘When lifts were first invented they made people feel sick, you know.’
Doug hadn’t pushed the button yet. The lift wasn’t moving. He said, ‘So Otis Lifts got engineers to make the ride smoother, faster. Didn’t work. People still felt sick. So they hired a philosopher to crack the problem. Some Frenchman, lateral thinker. And he said: we love ourselves. Put mirrors in the lifts, we’ll be distracted, and no one will feel sick.’
‘Is that true?’
‘Sounds true, doesn’t it,’ said Doug. ‘So go ahead, look at yourself.’
‘I’m good. I’ll give myself a look in the rear-view mirror in the car.’
‘Not while you’re driving, though,’ warned Doug. ‘Three per cent of car accidents involving men are due to them looking at themselves in the mirror while driving. I estimate it’s around 10 per cent for women. This is counterbalanced, however, when you consider that 30 per cent of men crash leering at women on the street. There’s a whole formula I made in the sixties for miniskirts. The Minideath Formula. They killed a lot of men, miniskirts. Even a glance can kill. What can you do? We’re all killing ourselves spying on one another.’
‘We’re a bunch of vain perverts.’
Doug laughed and I made a note to laugh more. Maybe another secret to long life.*
* Laugh at life and live for ever.
When Doug realised we weren’t moving, he hit the basement button.
‘Basement, right?’ said Doug, and I nodded.
Then we stood, lost in that odd hush which lifts breed – suspended silence – as if the time is too slight to allow for a worthwhile conversation, so you wait it out, waste the moment, mutually agree to experience terse quiet rather than risk dull small talk. But in this instance I’m glad we didn’t let the silence stretch unbearably all the way down to the basement.
‘How are things in the world of law, Frank?’ Doug asked, snapping me out of my trance.
‘Not bad,’ I said, watching the numbers fall – 31, 30, 29 . . .
‘Oscar still running the show?’
‘Yup. He’s taking us in an interesting direction.’
‘I hear disapproval.’
‘It’s a direction Dad would never have gone.’
28, 27, 26 . . .
I suddenly wanted to blurt out all my worries to Doug.
I wanted to tell him everything, to cry on his shoulder; he was a channel, a sort of conduit to happier times when my dad was alive and I’d come and play at the offices, and Doug would smile and ruffle my hair. Doug was as close to a friend as my father ever got.*
* Maybe as close to a friend as I ever got.
‘You’re talking about the weapons contract,’ said Doug.
‘You know?’
25, 24, 23 . . .
‘A dark decision,’ said Doug. ‘I advised Oscar against it, but you can’t tell your brother. There’s statistical karma and what your brother’s contemplating is statistically incalculable. I don’t like incalculable things. Oscar’s about to place a big minus sign next to his soul and he’ll pay for it, somehow, somewhere down the line, it’s unavoidable. You can’t play with negative statistics and walk away unharmed. Mathematically impossible.’
It was the most meaningful thing anyone had said to me. I wanted the lift never to stop, to keep descending, to allow us to talk into the night as we dropped through the earth.
11, 10, 9 . . .
‘I completely agree, Doug. I mean, I really hate the idea of it but no one else seems to think it’s a problem. It’s like no one cares.’ I stopped myself, as I could hear that I was close to crying.
Doug didn’t say anything; he turned slowly and looked at me. I noticed the elevator music, a panpipe version of ‘The Girl from Ipanema’.
‘You need to make a choice, Frank. You’re a nice guy but you need to decide. It’s not up to anyone else.’
The hum of the lift, the panpipes, the dull beep of passing floors formed a hypnotic space: 8, 7, 6 . . .
‘It’s so good to talk to you, Doug.’
He looked at me again, not a nice look but hard, as if calculating something.
5, 4, 3 . . .
He said, ‘Do you remember when you came to me when you were all of sixteen?’
The memory made me blush. I’d had an argument with Dad. Our first and only real fight.
Over dinner with Oscar, Malcolm, Mum and Dad, I declared that I was going to take biology, chemistry and maths for my A levels. It was my way of telling my father that I wasn’t going to do law; that I was going to pursue medicine instead. The table went quiet. Oscar, who was already at law school, let out a dismissive snort.
We all waited as Dad mulled this over, before saying, ‘Frank, you’re not going to do this. Medicine is a myth perpetuated by the middle classes; it’s a horrible job with terrible hours, disgusting sick people and endless training. It doesn’t even work. When GPs went on strike the death rate plummeted. You don’t want to get involved in all that. Medicine’s messy.’
Dad hated messy things, like organs or emotions or hysterical teenage sons. My mother, God bless her, tried to intervene. ‘Maybe you should listen to Frank, dear, maybe he would prefer to do medicine.’
Dad patted Mum’s hand in a way that made me want to run him through with the carving knife, and he continued, ‘You want to be on the legal side of life, Frank, trust me. Your life begins with a birth certificate and ends with a death certificate, and in between all of that are a million documents, insurance policies, employment contracts, mortgages, prenups. Medicine tries and fails to tidy up life’s mess after the fact; law ties it all tightly in place before the fact. And it’s the men who write these documents that run the world.’
It was an old speech. I pretended to listen, then said, ‘I disagree, Dad.’
Everyone at the table held their breath. This was not how we spoke; nobody, not even Mum, could say ‘I disagree’ to my dad.
‘Listen here, young man,’ said Dad, but I made my fork clash against the plate and shouted, ‘Don’t you dare call me young man, and stop telling me what to do!’
‘I don’t want to argue with you,’ said Dad.
‘Well, I want to fucking argue with you,’
I shouted back.
Everyone stopped and, for a second, no one knew how to start again.
Then I heard Mum say, ‘Come on now, please, Frank, sit down, don’t get upset, we can discuss this, your father is just . . .’ As I stood up I heard Oscar sneer, ‘Prick,’ as Malcolm muttered, ‘Fuck yeah, Frank!’
I stormed out. I found myself on the street with nowhere to go. For reasons I cannot really understand – even today – I went to Doug’s house. Possibly because it was nearby, possibly because Doug was always honest with me. When I got to his door I was crying.
He poured me a whisky, which made me feel like a man, a person being taken seriously, and we spoke. I assumed Doug was on my side but, as the conversation wore on, it occurred to me that he too was telling me that law was my best option.
Doug said, ‘Your father is a highly respected man. You’re a boy with an incredible intellect. You’re brilliant. And law will allow your brilliance to be both tested and to shine.’
It was the start of people telling me I was brilliant. In my defence, it’s hard not to agree with people who are telling you incredibly flattering things. I caved in, Doug drove me home, and eventually I took economics, history, English and, of course, I went to law school. I was ashamed. For a while after, whenever I saw Doug, I was embarrassed that he’d seen me upset, crying like a child. In the descending lift I looked down at the carpeted floor and said, ‘I made a fool of myself, sorry, I was young and stupid.’
‘Not at all,’ said Doug. ‘In fact, I made a fool of myself. What you don’t know is that before you arrived your father called me and told me to support him. I always felt bad about it. I should have supported you more. You never wanted to do law. You were sixteen, yes, but you knew what you wanted, and we all talked you out of a dream. And talking a young man out of a dream – that’s intolerable and for that I’m truly sorry.’
I heard the numbers in the lift running down, slowing, we were near the basement, and I was too flustered to answer properly, so I mumbled, ‘Don’t be silly, Doug. I mean, I was a boy, I needed guidance, I’m sure you did the right thing.’
‘I hope you’re right. I hope you mean that. I felt bad. Still do. So let me be honest with you now, Frank. You seem unhappy.’
‘No, not at all, I’m great.’ Why did I say that? It was the first time anyone had noticed how miserable I was but I batted him away.
‘Well, OK then, but you look exhausted. Exhaustion will eventually get to you.’*
* Exhaustion kills.
2, 1, Basement!
Bing!
I was just about to say something, admit to my misery, tell him how lost I was, but the lift whooshed open and the moment seemed to seep out the doors.
‘Well, see you soon,’ said Doug and walked off on his bouncy trainers.
I stood in the lift so long the doors closed on me. Standing in a box going nowhere, I wondered why I hadn’t told Doug how sad I was. How worried I really was about the #### contracts. About the IPO. How messed up my personal, professional and ethical life was.
Why didn’t I reach back to him when he was reaching out to me?
Then I realised what it was. It was the dreariness: life’s dull days heaped upon me, each day no heavier than dust, yet piled high the weight became hopelessly heavy, and so, when someone said, ‘Hey, are you all right, Frank?’ all I could do was wave it away with impulsive politeness, saying, ‘Oh, yeah sure, I’m fine.’*
* Then lie back quietly below the density of it all.
TERMS & CONDITIONS OF FEAR
It’s hereditary.
Having retracted the bed, we were now both sitting on the couch sipping tea and Doug asked, ‘Do you remember Malcolm?’
‘I’ve read his emails. He seems different to the rest of the family, like a wild card.’
‘He is different. He wasn’t even born in England.’
‘Really?’ I said.
Doug winced as soon as he said, ‘Don’t you remember?’ Then quickly added, ‘Sorry. You must be bored of people asking you that. But, yes, Malcolm was born in Istanbul. Your family went on holiday when your mother was pregnant. Your dad was nervous but your mum wasn’t due for two months and so she told him to relax. Then, the way your mum tells it, she said that after the Blue Mosque and a spicy kebab, Malcolm grew restless with the womb and wanted out.’
I laughed at this image of Malcolm in utero: his squashed face grumpy with boredom and his tiny lips mouthing the words, Fuck this, I’m outta here.
‘It was a complicated birth and your mum and Malcolm nearly died. Your dad told me you were all in this god-awful hospital, he was convinced Malcolm and your mother would die, you and Oscar were wrapped around your dad’s ankles crying because you knew something was up, and all your dad could do was accept how powerless he was. Your dad promised himself he’d never put himself in such a position again. Never. After that your dad really tried to batten down all the random hatches of life. Which is probably why your family never went further than Brighton for your holidays.’
Remembering the pitiable and indecisive way I responded to Oscar’s news about the arms manufacturer, I confessed quietly to Doug, ‘I think that I’m very like Dad was. It seems neurosis is like cancer and baldness – it’s hereditary.’
‘Rubbish,’ Doug said firmly.
TERMS & CONDITIONS OF TESTS
1. If your boss said your new client was an arms manufacturer, would you:
a. Say, No problem.
b. Say, Absolutely not, it’s against my ethics.
c. Dither so much that you did neither until the problem ate you up.
2. If you spotted a man being mugged, would you:
a. Whip out your mobile phone and call the cops.
b. Help, risk your life, and have at least some chance of feeling like a member of the human race.
c. Run away and regret the decision for the rest of your life.
TERMS & CONDITIONS OF DOING SOMETHING
You only regret things you never did.
I remembered that the day Oscar told me about the #### client was one of those days that quickly went from bad to worse. On the way home I was stewing in misery, thinking about Oscar and his hideous new client, when something caught my eye. As I waited at a red light I watched a middle-aged man being surrounded by three younger men who wrapped themselves around him and pushed him into an alley. A young man pulled out a knife and forced the man to hand over his wallet. It was like watching something horrific on television and not being able to change the channel – the rounded window of my car, the brief violent moment suspended in the alleyway, all seemed unreal, and I thought, What am I doing? I should be helping that man.
I could have got out of the car, run into the alley and done something, but I didn’t. In fact, I slowly pushed down the lock and wound up my window. To make matters worse, once they had the wallet they didn’t stop, they punched him and I realised if I ran to help, they’d punch me or kill me. The light changed and I drove off .
I called the police and told them what was happening and where they needed to go, but it would’ve taken them so long to get there that the man could’ve been murdered many times over. They say time cures all. They’re wrong. Time’s a toxin, not a tonic. Every day since then I think a little less of myself. I drive past that alley sometimes, and like a fool, I hope there’ll be a re-run of the incident: same man, same muggers, but this time, look – it’s me, I’m out of my car, crowbar in hand, jogging towards them, I’m terrified but I don’t care, I don’t care how it’ll end, I don’t care if I’m hurt or maimed or killed, I’m just running, sprinting now, laughing like a maniac because I don’t feel dead any more, I’m here, I’m doing something, taking part, screaming for dear life as I finally hurtle towards it.
TERMS & CONDITIONS OF TRYING TO GET YOUR WIFE TO LISTEN TO YOU WHEN YOU’RE FALLING APART
You never get a second chance (which is what makes imagination such a cruel gift).
When I got home that night I
was desperate to talk to Alice about the mugging and the weapons client but she was fussing with some presentation. I had to set the table for dinner around her, moving her papers out of the way in order to put placemats down.
Finally, after I poured her some wine, I said, ‘I had a bad day, Alice.’
It had been so long since I had said it that her name felt funny in my mouth.
‘Really,’ she said, still looking at her mobile phone.
‘Oscar won a new client.’
‘That’s great, Frank, make sure you get involved.’
‘No, the business is with ####’ I said.
‘Oh, really, well listen . . .’ said Alice.*
* And, for a moment, I heard her say what she would have said years ago: as the old Alice she would have said, ‘You just walk away from that, love, that’s terrible, resign and go and open a bookshop or something. No job or money is worth working for those types of companies.’
What she actually said was, ‘They do much more than just make weapons.’
‘That’s exactly what Oscar said. Don’t you think it’s wrong?’
‘Well, it’s a bit of an ethical conundrum, sure,’ she said, and that was it, like it was some abstract question on one of her tests.
‘And, also, I saw a man being beaten up today,’ I added.
She tapped something into her phone, and muttered, ‘That’s terrible.’ ‘Look at me when I talk to you,’ I said.
‘What the hell’s got into you, Frank?’ she said, finally looking at me.
‘I’m trying to tell you something and you’re not listening.’
‘All right, sorry, I’m all ears, what happened?’ she said, pushing her phone slightly aside so it rested near the salt and pepper, but still in reach.
‘I saw a man get mugged.’
‘That’s terrible,’ she said again, and added like a punchline, ‘But that’s just the city.’
‘Worse than that, I did nothing.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘If you had, they could’ve killed you, people are desperate this time of year. I’ve written a paper on it. My paper was about executive stress but I’m sure homeless people get stressed too.’
Terms & Conditions Page 11