Days

by James Lovegrove

  With a weary sigh, Miss Dalloway switches her computer on and waits for it to boot up. (You don’t have to wait for a book to boot up.) She has achieved the minimum level of computer-literacy necessary to operate the machine, no more, so her fingers are not confident on the keyboard as she calls up the e-memo that arrived half an hour ago from the Boardroom.

  From: the Boardroom

  Time: 10.28

  To: Rebecca Dalloway, Books

  The MANAGEMENT’s attention has been drawn to various uncontractual deeds perpetrated by members of your department, arising as a result of strained relations with an adjacent department.

  The MANAGEMENT is keen to resolve the situation as quickly as possible, and to this end will be sending down a representative to hear the grievances of both department heads and deliver a binding judgement.

  Once MASTER SONNY’s judgement has been delivered, both departments are to abide by his decision. Any further violations of employee behaviour protocols as stipulated in Clause 17 sections a) to f) of the employer/employee contract will result in the immediate dismissal of the staff members involved and their head of department.

  MASTER SONNY will arrive between 11.30 and 11.40 this morning.

  cc. Roland Armitage, Computers

  She studies the e-memo carefully in the hope of finding something new in its wording, some hitherto unnoticed hint of bias that will reassure her that everything is not as dark as it looks. Nothing about it offers a clue to the mood prevailing in the Boardroom, although, given that Security has been advising the brothers about the dispute since it began, the phrase “keen to resolve the situation as quickly as possible” wins a small, mirthless smile from her each time her eyes pass over it. Having shown absolutely no interest in the acts of vandalism and violence going on in their store for so many months, for the brothers suddenly to send down one of their number at such short notice smacks of irritation. It is as though they have been hoping the problem would go away of its own accord but, as it hasn’t, have finally decided that enough is enough. That, again, does not bode well. Exasperation and clear-eyed impartiality seldom go hand in hand.

  The fact that it is Master Sonny and not Master Chas who is coming down gives Miss Dalloway further cause to frown. A visit from Master Chas to the shop floor is a rarity, from Master Sonny unheard of. Everyone knows about Master Sonny’s drinking habit, his dissolute lifestyle. Is this a mark of how seriously the brothers are taking the dispute, that they are sending down the youngest, least experienced, and least reliable of them? But then why should that be a surprise? It has often occurred to Miss Dalloway that the sons of Septimus Day don’t have the faintest idea what they are doing, and that it is in spite of them, and not thanks to them, that the store continues to turn over a profit at all.

  Things were not like this in Mr Septimus’s day, an era Miss Dalloway is not alone in recalling with fondness. The founder of Days might have been a hard, fearful man, but at least you knew where you were with him. He was not prone to issuing decrees wilfully. He did not go around allocating portions of one department to another for no worthwhile reason. He was a man whose very ruthlessness meant he could be trusted.

  Miss Dalloway well recalls how every day Mr Septimus would tour the premises, striding through departments with perhaps a valued customer or a cherished supplier in tow but more often than not on his own, unafraid, wearing his aura of authority like an invisible suit of armour, pausing now and then to chide a sales assistant for sloppy dressing, or listen to a query from a head of department, or receive the compliments of a passing (and patently awestruck) shopper.

  Was that when things began to go wrong for Days, when Mr Septimus, in the wake of his wife’s death, gave up his public appearances in the store, withdrew to his mansion, and handed over the reins of management to his sons? Was that when the rot set in, when the proprietor no longer appeared accessible, and therefore accountable, to staff or customers? Or is it simply that Mr Septimus’s seven sons cannot hope to maintain the high standard he set? It would seem inevitable that the clarity of one man’s unique vision should be diffused when his sons try to take his place, as when a single beam of white light, refracted, breaks up into a blurred spectrum of colours, losing its sharpness and its power to illuminate.

  Miss Dalloway switches off the computer and reaches for the well-thumbed paperback edition of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War which is lying on the desktop. The book has become her Bible since the dispute began. Opening it, she extracts a Days card she has been both concealing inside it and using as a bookmark.

  The card is a Platinum, and the name on it reads MRS C A SHUKHOV.

  Malcolm – like all her darlings, a good, honest boy – handed the card in to her on Tuesday afternoon, saying it had been left behind on the counter accidentally by its owner, a rather distracted-looking woman who had used it to buy a Russian phrasebook. Miss Dalloway’s first instinct was that of any honourable employee: she would contact Accounts and inform them about the lost card.

  Then it occurred to her that a God-given opportunity had just fallen into her lap.

  She glances over her shoulder. The haphazard stack of books which seems to have accumulated arbitrarily over the past few weeks around her desk is tall enough to hide her from the security camera that is positioned to include her desk in its viewing sweep. It is unlikely that her department is scanned very thoroughly anyway, since shrinkage has never been much of a problem in Books. Nevertheless, the privacy afforded by this screen of hardbacks (which her Bookworms built to her specifications, carefully and conscientiously adding to it day after day over the course of a couple of months) has been useful in masking from the Eye some industrious activity of the kind that the Day brothers, were they to learn of it, would doubtless consider extremely “uncontractual”.

  Within the books, in a small, hollowed-out cavity specially created for its concealment, lies the fruit of her industry.

  Waiting.

  Almost complete.

  Whatever happens this morning, whether Master Sonny decides in favour of her department or Computers, Miss Dalloway has an appropriate response. Should things go her way, she will organise a celebration for herself and her Bookworms, and for that the purloined card will not be necessary, since she will use her own card to buy wine and paper hats. Should things not go her way, however, then she will put her primary plan into effect, and for that plan to succeed Mrs Shukhov’s Platinum account is going to be vital.

  Flexibility, adaptability, readiness. As Sun Tzu says:

  As water varies its flow according to the fall of the land, so an army varies its method of gaining victory according to the enemy.

  Thus an army does not have fixed strategic advantages or an invariable position.

  Miss Dalloway is prepared for every contingency, and while she prays that she will not have to resort to her primary plan, she knows that if it comes to it, she will not hesitate, not for an instant.

  If justice does not prevail, there will come a reckoning.

  Oh, such a reckoning.

  21

  Seven Senses: according to Ecclesiasticus there are two further senses in addition to the standard five: understanding and speech.

  11.25 a.m.

  A FUNGUS HAS formed over his senses, furring his vision and hearing and touch, a fog of fine penicillin strands spun between him and reality. His brain twirls like a coracle loose of its moorings. Trying to stand, he sits back heavily.

  The sofa beneath him is a cloud. The world spins erratically, stopping and starting, a broken centrifuge. The weight of gravity shifts and shifts: one moment he feels light as anything, the next a bowling ball rolls down the alley of his spine and rams into his pelvis. Trying to stand, he sits back heavily.

  There is dampness in his lap as though he has pissed himself. His glass is empty, the crotch of his jeans cold and clinging. How did that happen? Ah yes. He recalls. A momentary lapse of concentration. His fingers fumbled. A waste, such a waste of good alcohol. But
it doesn’t matter, there is plenty more where that came from. Over there at the bar, a plethora of bottles. Over there. If only he could stand up, he could go and fetch himself a refill. If only he could stand up...

  He tries, and sits back heavily.

  He giggles, loud and hard. If his brothers could see him now, how they would despise him, how high-and-mightily disapproving they would be.

  “Well, fuck ’em,” Sonny snarls, his eyebrows knotting. Then he giggles, louder and harder.

  Raising his head, he peers around his apartment, dislocated, not belonging. The planet’s spin is still juddering and irregular. He has to steady himself with his hands on the sofa cushions in order to stay sitting upright. The building is at sea, a gigantic oceangoing galleon tossed on a mountainous swell, with Sonny in its crow’s nest, grogged to the gills, the ship’s sway even worse for him than for those down below. Pitch and yaw, pitch and yaw.

  He really ought to be standing up. Isn’t there something he has to be doing?

  There is something, although what precisely it is has escaped him for the moment. He is sure it will come back if he doesn’t rack his brains for it. A thought on the cusp of memory should not be chased down. Like a sheep on a clifftop, it will panic and run over the edge if you try. Leave it alone and it’ll come home.

  Chirrup-chirrup.

  What was that? He must be hallucinating. He could have sworn he heard a cricket.

  Chirrup-chirrup.

  The sound is coming from beneath his right buttock. He’s sitting on the little bugger! Not that the cricket seems to mind, chirruping away merrily like that.

  Chirrup-chirrup.

  Sonny lolls over to his left, raising his backside like a rugby player about to unleash a fart. He peers underneath. Nothing there.

  Chirrup-chirrup.

  It’s coming from his back pocket of his jeans.

  Where he keeps his portable intercom.

  Ah, of course. He knew what was really making the noise all along. A cricket? Just his little joke with himself. Ha ha ha.

  He attempts to insert his fingers into the pocket in order to extract the slim intercom unit, but his fingers exhibit all the dexterity of uncooked sausages. Prodding rubberily, torso half twisted over, he grunts in frustration and gives up. Trying another tactic, he presses down on the base of the pocket and succeeds in squirting the intercom out of its denim pouch like some hard fruit from its skin.

  Chirrup-chirrup.

  He unfolds the mouthpiece, and after a few misses manages to hit the Receive button.

  “Sonny?”

  Thurston.

  Instinctively Sonny knows he has to sound sober. It’s important.

  His tongue feels as though it is swathed in peanut butter, but he manages to curl it around a single word: “Yes?”

  Was that the right answer?

  “Sonny, is everything all right?” Suspicious.

  “Of course. Why shouldn’t it be?”

  “It’s just that you took so long picking up.”

  A ripple of panic. He remembers now why he has to appear sober. Because he is meant to be sober. Because he has to go down to the shop floor soon. Because he promised his brothers he wouldn’t drink beforehand. Oh shit. Shit shit shit. What if Thurston guesses? If Thurston guesses he has been drinking, that’ll be it, his chance blown.

  It is an effort to force out one innocent little lie.

  “My intercom was in my other trousers.”

  And then there is a long whisper of white noise, static fluttering in the connection, the aural equivalent of a piece of lint caught in the lens of a movie projector.

  And then Thurston says, “No. Never mind. Not even you would be that stupid.”

  Relief flows out through, it seems, Sonny’s every orifice, his every pore, lightening him by evaporation.

  “The security guards are waiting for you down on the Yellow. You’re ready, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Sonny replies, glancing down at his shirt and damp-crotched jeans. “Absolutely.”

  “Now, if there are any problems, if you run into any difficulties at all, for God’s sake call me. Remember, all you’re down there to do is deliver a message.”

  “Deliver a message, yes.”

  “Chas wants to say something. Hold on.”

  “Sonny? Listen. If the heads of department start to get shirty, back out and leave. Don’t stand there arguing with them. It’s unseemly. I doubt they’re going to give you any grief, you being who you are, but you never know. When feelings are running high, people sometimes forget their place. Just don’t let them rattle you. Be calm, unflappable. You’re right, they’re wrong. Got that?”

  “I’m right, they’re wrong.”

  “OK, I’m handing you back to Thurston. Oh no, hang on. Mungo wants a word.”

  “Sonny?” Mungo’s deep, resonant voice, the bass pipes of a church organ. “We’re counting on you. I have faith in you. You’re going to do fine.”

  Sonny is filled with so much love for his eldest brother that he almost bursts into tears.

  “I’ll do my best, Mungo.”

  “That’s all we ask.”

  Distantly, from across the Boardroom table, Fred can be heard. “Give ’em hell, Sonny-boy!”

  “Off you go then. The guards are waiting.”

  “’Bye, Mungo. ’Bye.”

  Sonny clasps the intercom shut and presses it to his chest. He must get moving. Urgency injects adrenalin into his bloodstream, bringing a surge of clear-headedness, brief but sufficient to enable him to resist the plush seducing suck of the sofa and the wobble of the world’s wild whirling. He clambers triumphantly to his feet.

  Upright, he staggers, his brain flushing empty of blood. The apartment rises to a tremendous peak then swoops down, down, down into a trough. For an instant Sonny thinks he is about to faint. Then everything calms, settles, evens, levels out.

  Half walking, half lurching, Sonny sets off for his bedroom.

  11.28 a.m.

  “I HATE TO say this,” says Thurston, taking his intercom from Mungo and laying it in front of him on the table, “but I can’t help feeling we’ve made a terrible mistake.”

  “You worry too much,” says Fred.

  “Why don’t we follow him with the Eye?” says Sato. “At least that way we’ll have some idea what he gets up to.”

  “I’ll get them to patch the feed through,” says Thurston. “Good idea, Sato.”

  If the portrait of Old Man Day on the wall could speak, it would probably say that nothing that has happened in the Boardroom today has been a good idea.

  11.29 a.m.

  SUITS HURTLE OUT of the walk-in wardrobe one after another like canaries from a cage.

  Inside, Sonny is frantically rifling through his extensive collection of formal wear, hauling each outfit off the racks in turn and giving it a cursory once-over before flinging it over his shoulder to join the other rejects in a lavish, polychromatic jumble on the floor.

  What to wear? What to wear?

  Earlier, when it seemed he had all the time in the world, he couldn’t make up his mind which of his suits was suitable. Now that he is in a hurry, not to mention drunk, it’s as hard, if not harder, to decide. He knows he ought just to grab a suit, any suit, it doesn’t matter which one, and throw it on, but this is his one-time-only chance to make an impression and he wants to look absolutely right. If only there wasn’t such a wide range, if only so many of the damned things weren’t so garish and unwearable...

  The tangled heap in the wardrobe doorway continues to grow layer by layer, discard by discard, and then, abruptly, is no longer added to.

  Sonny has made his choice.

  11.41 a.m.

  BETWEEN THEM, JORGENSON, Kofi, Goring, and Wallace, the four security guards waiting in the Yellow Floor hoop outside the doors to the brothers’ private lift, have a combined previous work experience of fifteen years in the armed services, six years in the police force, and eight and a half years i
n a variety of correctional centres, either as warders or inmates. They are four stone giants, weathered but not worn, seemingly impervious to pain and emotion, and so it is impossible to tell if they are at all excited to have been detailed as escorts to one of the seven human beings in whose hands rests control of the world’s first and (oh, what the hell, give it the benefit of the doubt) foremost gigastore. In fact, to look at them, you might think that accompanying a Day brother around the store was an everyday occurrence on a par with picking a shred of meat from between two back teeth.

  Prepared for anything, the guards stand with their arms wrapped across their chests, their legs spread slightly apart, and their heads cocked to one side, the classic pose of paid thugs the world over. Not a word is exchanged between Jorgenson and Kofi and Goring and Wallace as they wait for Master Sonny to descend. His lateness is not commented on, not even by a covert glance at wristwatch or wall clock. The guards merely stand and wait as they have been told to do, just as mountains were told to stand and wait by God.

  Shoppers mill past, some wondering why these four guards are stationed before a set of lift doors marked “PRIVATE – NOT FOR CUSTOMER USE,” but none so bold as to approach and ask. Even the most geographically bewildered customer in the store would take one look at these four and go and find someone else to ask for directions.

  When they hear the lift finally begin to descend from the Violet Floor, the four, as one, unfold their arms and unbutton their hip-belt holsters. Ready for anything.