London and the South-East

by David Szalay

  ‘Memory,’ murmurs Paul.

  ‘Yeah, of course. Our MD’s an accountant. We nicked him from KPMG. He knows what he’s good at and doesn’t get involved on the sales side. Not at all. I deal with all that. And John and Tony run two super-teams. We wanted to cut out as many managers as possible – pare it down. We each get ten per cent of gross sales. The sales force gets ten to fifteen per cent. The rest goes to the company. I made over a million quid last year, Paul. I’m not joking. That’s more than anybody makes off the geegees. Even fucking Henry Rix.’

  ‘Who’s Henry Rix?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Now we’re starting to think about an MBO.’

  ‘What’s that again?’

  ‘Management buyout. The company’s owned by a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a shell company that’s part of some fucking offshore investment vehicle. Fuck knows what else they’re involved with. I don’t really know much about it – Trevor’s my only point of contact with all that. But whoever does own it isn’t really interested in it, or they wouldn’t have let Kirkbride fuck it up for so long, and they wouldn’t leave an old codger like Trevor in charge. The point is, they’ll probably sell if the price is right.’

  ‘Sell to who? To you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Eddy says, with a hint of impatience. ‘A management buyout. We’d buy the company – me, Littleton and Pascoe.’

  ‘With what money?’

  ‘We’re looking into that. A mixture of debt finance and venture capital probably. Mezzanine, maybe. We’re looking to end up with about half the equity. Anyway … But that’s not really relevant.’

  ‘Relevant to what?’

  ‘To what I want to talk to you about.’

  ‘What do you want to talk to me about?’

  ‘Should we get something to eat?’ Eddy says. ‘I’m starving. What about going to the Wine Press? For old times’ sake.’

  After two Ayingerbraus and a Prinz, Paul has no appetite. He feels settled in the warm low-vaulted space. ‘All right,’ he says unenthusiastically. ‘If you want.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  Outside, fine light rain is falling in the alley. The Wine Press, a venerable pizzeria where they sometimes went in the Northwood days, is a little way along Fleet Street, near Fetter Lane. Paul is about to ask Eddy what he wants to talk to him about, but Eddy speaks first. ‘How’s your sex life, Paul?’ he asks as they walk. Paul is evasive. ‘It’s all right.’ He is aware of having described many aspects of his life as ‘all right’. ‘How’s yours?’

  ‘Very good actually. I think it was Henry Kissinger said power is the greatest aphrodisiac.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘You still with Kim?’ Paul asks.

  Eddy laughs. ‘No.’ He holds open the plate-glass door. ‘After you.’

  ‘Cheers,’ Paul mumbles, and steps into the torrent of warmth under the heater inside.

  ‘This place hasn’t changed,’ Eddy says.

  Paul nods and lights a cigarette.

  4

  ON THE WAY to Blackfriars tube, Paul stops for a pint in the King Lud. Eddy had waved down a black cab outside the restaurant, and asked him if he could drop him somewhere, but Paul, to some extent out of pride, more from a wish to be alone, had declined, and walked slowly on up to Ludgate Circus, where – impressed by the floodlit slice of St Paul’s that can be seen from there – he had looked at his watch, held his nose for a moment, and entered the Old King Lud. They occasionally went there in the Northwood days; it is not, however, a pub he knows well. A perfect place, then, for sorting his head out, and settled at a small table with a pint of lager he turns over his talk with Eddy Jaw. He wishes he were able to think more lucidly. Everything seems jumbled up. He is experiencing a kind of flaming excitement, and at the same time – as if it disturbed him – trying to damp it down. It does disturb him. He is not used to anything interesting or unexpected happening; he is not used to opportunities, and he finds himself instinctively shrinking from these things. Tomorrow, he feels – the next few days – will be the time to think about them.

  There is one thing, however, which he is unable to stop himself from thinking about, which troubles his smoky torpor. ‘No passengers.’ Those were Eddy’s words. ‘No fucking passengers.’ Paul had half-heartedly tried to persuade him that Murray would not be a ‘passenger’, but Eddy had shaken his head and said, again, ‘No fucking passengers. Murray is just not good enough for this game.’ And of course, Paul had found the implicit flattery too pleasing to want to jeopardise the mood by making an issue of Murray (of all things) and he did not mention him again. Indeed, the vague, embarrassed sense of loyalty that had led to this short-lived quibble on Murray’s part immediately seemed quaint and foolish under the Nietzschean stare of Eddy’s small blue eyes. Despite which, it continued to trouble him. Eddy’s proposal was that Paul join him at Delmar Morgan, as a manager, with those members of his team ‘who can actually fucking cut it’. It was when Paul had asked what ‘actually fucking cut it’ meant in practical terms, that Eddy had cited Murray as an example of someone who could not. Seeing Paul’s surprise at this, he said, ‘And I’ve always thought that. I have always thought that.’ It was essential, Eddy said, that the whole thing be kept secret. He wanted it to happen in the new year.

  Paul’s initial response, motivated mostly by pride, was a show – and it was only a show – of scepticism. Unfortunately, it set the tone for the rest of the evening. ‘And why would I want to do that?’ he had asked, lighting a B&H. A moment later the pizzas arrived and he had to put it out. ‘Because,’ said Eddy, when the waiter had withdrawn with his pepper grinder, ‘Park Lane’s contracts are shit, they’re tired, they’re fucked. You know they are.’ Looking with undisguised disgust at the Margherita in front of him, Paul had said, ‘It’s a problem with the whole industry.’

  ‘That’s loser talk.’ And Eddy, who had ordered a Capricciosa with extra olives and anchovies, started to cut it up. Paul silently refilled his wine glass. It was loser talk. That was undeniable. ‘It’s not even true,’ Eddy had said, with his mouth full. ‘I told you – things are going fucking well at Delmar. We need new people, at every level. Experienced people. For fuck’s sake, Paul,’ he laughed, ‘I’m trying to help you. It wasn’t by chance I was round last Friday. I heard on the grapevine where you were – I was looking for you.’ Modestly, Paul drank some wine and toyed with his unlit cigarette. ‘What do you mean the grapevine?’ he asked.

  ‘The grapevine. Someone from the old days who’d spoken to someone. I was looking for you. When I heard where you were, I thought, Paul Rainey, there’s a man you want on your side.’ Perhaps feeling that this was flattery overplayed, Eddy had said, quickly, indicating Paul’s untouched pizza, ‘Are you going to eat that or what?’ Paul shook his head. ‘No,’ he murmured. ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘So?’ Eddy said.

  ‘So …?’

  ‘Will you do it?’

  They had only been talking about it for a few minutes, and it seemed premature to press him. Eddy, though, was always a loud, upfront salesman, succeeding through an unquestioning faith in the old tenets – the simple, time-tested precepts enshrined in Glengarry Glen Ross – of which there is no more perfect example than ABC. ‘A, always. B, be. C, closing. Always. Be. Closing. Always be closing.’ Which was what he was doing. ‘I’ll think about it,’ Paul said flirtatiously, fully expecting Eddy to high-pressure him, but Eddy just nodded, and said, ‘Okay,’ and kept eating. It was disappointing – Paul wanted to talk about it more, and, after pouring himself another glass of wine, he said vaguely, ‘So what have you got then? What contracts?’

  Eddy’s pizza was almost gone. ‘You mean what contracts would you be working on?’ he said.

  ‘For instance.’

  For a few moments he said nothing, then: ‘I can’t really say, mate. Not until you’re on board. You understand.’ He dabbed his mouth with his napkin, which he then tossed onto the ta
ble. Feeling rebuffed, Paul relit his B&H, and was relieved when Eddy, without further prompting, went on to say, ‘They’re fucking good contracts. People have seen what we can do.’ He smiled. ‘Nothing succeeds like success, Paul. We’ve got a whole lot of new contracts starting soon, and we’re staffing up for them. That’s why I’m talking to you. I’m talking to other people as well, obviously. We’ve got adverts in the national press.’ Eddy was looking around, perhaps for the waiter. He seemed in a hurry to leave suddenly. It was as if Paul had disappointed him – that, at least, was Paul’s impression – as if he had seen that Paul would be of no use to him. ‘Got the first interviews this week,’ he said. ‘It’s a fucking bore. What you working on these days?’ Paul told him, but he did not seem to be listening. He just said ‘Oh yeah?’ several times, nodding mechanically. When he had the waiter’s eye, he made a self-conscious scribbling motion in the air. ‘I’ll get this,’ he said, taking out his wallet.

  In the tiny toilet, washing his hands in the one-litre sink, Paul inspected his mottled face in the mirror. He was starting to feel like he had fucked something up.

  There was a ridiculous amount of money in Eddy’s wallet, and something about the way he rummaged through it defeated, without him having to say anything, Paul’s half-hearted attempt to stop him paying the whole bill. He simply ignored Paul’s mumbled words, put a big salmon fifty on the saucer and stood up, only then saying, ‘Shall we go?’ Outside on the pavement, he started to look for a taxi, and left it to Paul to mention the offer he had made him. ‘I’ll let you know about that then, Eddy,’ he said, as the cab pulled round in the road.

  ‘Yeah, do,’ Eddy said. ‘But soon, eh?’

  ‘By the end of the week?’

  Eddy smiled, as if amused by something. ‘If that’s what you call soon,’ he said. ‘See you, Paul.’ He was already halfway into the cab when he turned and said, ‘Oh, do you want a lift somewhere?’

  Standing at the bar of the Old King Lud, Paul jingles the heavy mass of shrapnel in his suit pocket. He feels dissatisfied with the whole evening. He wishes – he can hardly admit it even to himself – that he had made a more imposing impression on Eddy, more symmetrical with the impression that Eddy had made on him. ‘Fuck it,’ he thinks, his pride wounded by the very fact of wishing this. ‘He can stick his job up his arse.’ Then, immediately, ‘I’ll call him tomorrow, to show I’m serious about it.’ And thinking this, he is instantly uncomfortable – obscurely aware of his querulous conscience. He wonders how he would feel if Murray did to him what he is proposing to do to Murray. He imagines it – coming into work one morning, perhaps a Monday, to find that Murray and the team are simply not there. It soon becomes obvious, when there is no word from them, and they do not answer their phones, that they have left en masse. How would he feel? Something like that would have to have been planned – mass ‘defections’ (as they are known) do not just happen spontaneously. Probably for weeks they had all known about it – it would explain the knowing looks he had seen some of them exchanging on the sales floor; the embarrassed silence that had fallen that time he walked into the smoking room … And Murray, his friend – who had undoubtedly organised the whole thing – who else would? – had known about it for weeks, known about it every day as they sat together in the Penderel’s Oak, known how totally it would fuck him up, how utterly humiliating it would be … Paul finds himself becoming more and more angry just imagining this scenario, and in the face of the great pulse of righteous indignation and wounded rage welling up inside him, he has to remind himself that it is not actually true. It does, however, suggest Murray’s probable response.

  Whatever his faults, Murray is supposedly his friend. If Paul does this to him, it would suggest – would it not? – that he, Paul, has a sadly hollowed-out sense of the meaning of the word. What, in fact, would its meaning be? He orders a pint of Foster’s. Should he really pass up this opportunity, though? Make such a sacrifice for Murray’s sake? What sacrifices has Murray ever made for him? He is still pondering this when he returns, with his new pint, to the table. The only significant thing he can think of is an occasion, years earlier – they were at Northwood at the time – when he stepped in front of a car, and Murray, instead of going on to the Sports Bar with the others, had accompanied him to A&E, and waited with him there until his head had been X-rayed, and then put him in a taxi home. He may even have paid for the taxi – Paul does not remember – but whether he did or not, his actions that night were surely only what was to be expected. They did not constitute extraordinary kindness, Christlike love, extreme Samaritanism, only a minimum standard of friendship – decency, even – standards by which Murray, it has to be said, quite often fell short. Nevertheless Paul had been touched by what Murray did that night. (Though he has never told him this, has perhaps never even thanked him.) It had, after all, been Murray and not Eddy or the Pig – any of them could have done it – who had travelled with him in the sickly greenish light of the ambulance. Paul does not remember why it was Murray. He only remembers lying on the black, abrasive tarmac, aware of his head having been knocked against it with terrible force, fear leeching through the haze of alcohol, and Murray’s voice telling him not to move, and saying that he was going to be okay.

  The need for secrecy, Paul sees, is the nub of the problem. If he were able to say to Murray, ‘Eddy Jaw has offered me a job working for him. I’m starting next month and taking some of the team with me. I tried to persuade him to take you on as well. Maybe you should give him a call yourself,’ Murray might be jealous, he might be hurt that Jaw had not asked him, but Paul would have done nothing wrong. Unfortunately, the secrecy is necessary – these things need to be done by stealth. And telling Murray in advance of a defection from which he was excluded would have only one outcome – he would go straight to Lawrence and, in the hope of a promotion, tell him everything. Lawrence. Imagining Lawrence’s fury on hearing of the proposed defection, Paul takes surprisingly little pleasure in it. What he does experience, thinking of Lawrence, is an exhilarating sense of freedom – the sense that Lawrence no longer has any power over him. And without this power, he seems pathetic suddenly. How pathetic he seems. Pathetic. Yes, pathetic. In his mind, Paul lards the word ‘pathetic’ onto the word ‘Lawrence’. He even shakes his head sadly – sitting alone in the loud pub – and mutters it.

  ‘Pathetic …’

  And thinking of Lawrence, and of the wider implications, it occurs to him that this defection, were it to happen, might finally bring Park Lane Publications down. For some time it has been struggling. It is failing. Many of its contracts are in imminent danger of being withdrawn. Morale is at an all-time low. Single members of staff are already leaving, steadily, and filling the vacancies with people who ‘can actually fucking cut it’ is proving impossible. If a whole team were to disappear overnight, not only would it make it impossible to meet target on the publication involved – and while that happens every year, this time the sales total would be so derisory, the shortfall so indefensibly huge, that the contract would finally be lost – it might spark a general exodus. Trying to imagine the atmosphere if one of the other teams defected, and he were among those left behind – and for some reason he now finds this an almost unbearably depressing thing to consider – he pictures a scene of apocalyptic panic. People in large numbers pulling on their coats and heading for the lift. Others on the phone, openly looking for new jobs. Or just piling into the pub. The sense that everything was falling apart would have unstoppable momentum. This sense is so vivid to him that it is almost frightening. And he sees that he would take no pleasure in bringing the temple down, as someone in the Bible did. He does not feel fitted for that sort of task, and as well as fear at its enormity, he is already filled, imagining it, with pity for the innocents who would be smashed. Suddenly in a maudlin mood, he pours the warm lees of the pint down his throat, and goes to the bar for another. While he is waiting the barman says something to him. ‘Sorry, mate?’ Paul says.

&n
bsp; ‘No smoking at the bar, please.’

  ‘Sorry, mate.’ Paul stubs out his cigarette, and jingles the coins in his jacket pocket. Turning to happier matters, he wonders who he would take with him, were the defection to happen. Not Andy. That is the first thing that occurs to him. ‘Poor, bloody Andy,’ he thinks. What would happen to him? Left to fend for himself, to face Lawrence alone, he would surely be sacked immediately, the same day. Even if he was not, everything would be different for him – the social aspect would no longer be there. He and Murray obviously hate each other. And what would happen to Murray? Even if the company as a whole somehow stayed standing, he would probably lose his job – he has been on the slide for a long time now. Emptying his throat, waiting for his pint, Paul points his thoughts once more to the question of who he would take with him. Not Andy. Wolé? Yes. Marlon? Yes. Elvezia? Maybe. Nayal? Probably. Dave? Probably not. Claire? He pauses. It is impossible to maintain, even in the privacy of his own head, that on the basis of her ability to sell the answer would be anything other than a brisk no. But.

  But, but, but.

  How happy it makes him to see her arrive every morning. To see her take off her coat. To hear her husky voice. To see her blush. To sit next to her, listening in on her calls, making helpful suggestions. To defend her from Lawrence, and make sure that she continues to receive her stipend of a hundred pounds a week long after it should have been stopped … He has become increasingly aware of some people sitting at a table near his own. There are four or five of them, young, all in dark blue or black office clothes. He has noticed in particular the way that the two of them not facing him occasionally turn, smiling mirthfully. Once, his eyes met the aquamarine eyes of a very blond, white-skinned young man. Once there was muffled laughter. These things are making him unpleasantly self-conscious. And for the last hour and a half he has been sitting there without even a newspaper to hide his solitude. He has even, it occurs to him, been muttering to himself. He starts to work through his pint hurriedly, in big cold gulps, telling himself that he is being paranoid, that their laughter probably has nothing to do with him. He is unpersuaded by this, however, and when the blond boy stands up and starts to walk towards him – it is obvious that the others are watching – he is painfully unsurprised. Stiff-necked, holding his pint, he waits. The blond boy is very tall and thin, probably in his early twenties, with a bony face and pale eyes. He looks Nordic. He has an unlit cigarette in his hand, and is smiling. ‘Sorry, have you got a light?’ he says. The flimsiness of this pretext is underlined by the fact that one of his friends is actually lighting a cigarette at that moment. Nevertheless, Paul says, ‘Yeah, sure,’ and hands him his lighter. When he has lit the cigarette, the young man stays standing there loosely for a second. Then he says, ‘Do you work round here?’ He is still smiling, and there is something insolent about this question, put under the laughing eyes of his friends. ‘Yes, I do,’ Paul says.