Days

by James Lovegrove

  “Sir, there’s a principle at stake here. If you let her get her way, you’ll be sending a message to every head of department, every member of staff, that they can do however they feel, and to hell with discipline or the corporate structure.”

  “Sir, the principle at stake here is the right of every department to manage itself as best it can, according to its needs.”

  “Sir, that’s of no benefit to the store.”

  “Sir, on the contrary, it is.”

  “Sir? Hello?”

  “Sir?”

  “Sir?”

  11.56 a.m.

  THROUGHOUT THE FOREGOING exchange, Sonny’s head has been bobbing to and fro, now to listen to Mr Armitage, now Miss Dalloway. The alternating currents of their dialogue have switched him this way and that until he is no longer sure what has been said by whom. Here and there a random phrase has snagged in his brain, but for the most part it has all been so much gibberish, a melange of words thrown together for no obvious reason except perhaps to confuse him, somehow made all the more incomprehensible by the occasional flashes of sense. He feels like a radio tuned between two stations, receiving intermittent bursts of signal from one or the other amid a surf of white noise.

  The faces of the two people talking are no help. The man looks honest enough, the kind of chap you can trust, but the woman – all those forward jabs of her sharp nose – has the air of someone who has never been wrong about anything in her life. Is it possible they can both be right? Is this a problem without a solution, like one of those Zen thingies about trees falling in forests and one hand clapping?

  Thurston’s words flit into his head: “All you’re down there to do is deliver a message.” The trouble is, Sonny has only the dimmest recollection now of what that message is. But unless he wants to stand here all day listening to these two yammer at him, he is going to have to say something to keep them happy.

  They’re saying, “Sir?” to him. “Sir? Sir?” They want him to speak.

  Very well.

  11.57 a.m.

  “ONE OF YOU’S right, one of you’s wrong.”

  “True.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, at least both of you agree on that. I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’ll agree on anything else, is there?”

  Miss Dalloway and Mr Armitage exchange glances.

  “No, sir,” they say in unison.

  “Thought not. Well...” Sonny delves into a pocket of his blackcurrant-purple jacket. “What we used to do at university when we’d lost track of whose round it was...” The pocket is empty. He tries another. “Is we’d flip a card.” That pocket, too, is empty, as is the next he tries. “Usually it was my card we’d flip.” He digs into both trouser pockets. “Everyone liked it when I brought out my card.” Finally he tries his breast pocket. “It gave them a thrill. Ah, here it is.”

  He produces his Osmium. Tar-black and gleaming, it is an object so rarely glimpsed on the shop floor, so mythical, that even those lucky enough to have seen one before cannot take their eyes off it and follow its every movement mesmerically as Sonny waves it for emphasis.

  “So I’m going to do the same now. I’m going to flip this, and if it lands with the logo side facing up then you” – he points the card at Mr Armitage – “get to keep the floorspace, and if it lands with the side with the magnetic strip and my signature on it facing up then you” – now he aims the card at Miss Dalloway – “get to keep the floorspace. OK? Got that? Logo, you. Magnetic strip, you. Couldn’t be simpler, could it? Or fairer. All right. Ready, everyone? Here goes.”

  Sonny makes a fist of his right hand, cocks the thumb, and balances the Osmium carefully across the middle joint. Mr Armitage calmly folds his arms, letting it be known that he isn’t too much bothered which way the card falls or, for that matter, that the dispute is being resolved by the flip of a card. Clearly, if this method of arbitration is good enough for a Day brother, it’s good enough for him.

  Miss Dalloway, on the other hand, can scarcely believe what she is seeing. She would like to think that Master Sonny is simply teasing them, and that in a moment he is going to wink and put the card away and say, “Just kidding,” and then deliver a reasoned and well-considered assessment of the situation... but no, it seems that he means it, he is really going to go through with this, her fate really does rest on the spiralling trajectory of a piece of plastic.

  And what can she do about it? Can she snatch the card off him and tell him not to be so ridiculous? Can she grab him by the scruff of the neck and shake him until he sobers up and starts behaving like an intelligent adult and not like an inebriate lout in a college bar? Of course she can’t. All she can do is reach behind and grope for the hands of her darling boys, and from the three sweaty palms that grip her thin dry fingers draw strength and succour.

  The Osmium topples from Sonny’s none-too-steady fist and tumbles to the floor.

  It lands with its logo downwards, the brown magnetic strip and the white oblong containing Sonny’s scrawled signature facing up, plain as day.

  Miss Dalloway’s heart gives a little leap. She has won!

  “That doesn’t count.” Sonny stoops and retrieves the card from the carpet. “That was an accident. Doesn’t count.”

  Hope crouches down again in Miss Dalloway’s breast, swaying back and forth on its hunkers.

  “All right.” Sonny perches the card on the two knuckles of his thumb once more. It seems that not only has the Computers Department gone quiet but that a hush has descended over the entire store. It is as if the outcome of more than a mere dispute over a strip of floorspace depends on which way up Sonny Day’s Osmium lands, as if the very future of Days revolves around this moment, this cocked thumb, this poised wafer of black plastic.

  Everyone is concentrating on the card: Miss Dalloway, Mr Armitage, the Bookworms, the Technoids, the small crowd of intrigued customers that has gathered over the past few minutes. Even the guards – who are meant to be looking elsewhere, scanning for potential threats to their employer – are squinting sidelong at the Osmium and at the man holding the Osmium.

  And Miss Dalloway, no great believer in God, nonetheless prays. She prays that, though the rest of the world seems to have lost its head, there still exists a pocket of sanity wherein things turn out as they are meant to. She prays that, though justice has been reduced to a fifty/fifty lottery, there is still some hope that right will prevail. She prays that Samuel Butler was not mistaken when he wrote that “Justice, though she’s painted blind,/Is to the weaker side inclin’d.” But above all she prays that, when Master Sonny flicks the Osmium into the air, it will exactly reproduce the pirouette it performed just now, executing the exact same number of turns, and landing the same way up.

  Sonny locks his thumbnail beneath the pad at the tip of his forefinger. Flexing tendons dimple the heel of his thumb.

  Nothing happens, and for one awful instant Miss Dalloway believes that time has ground to a halt. Master Sonny will never flip the card. She will remain trapped in this ecstasy of fear and trepidation for ever.

  Then the sprung thumb is released and the card is launched, an oblong black projectile spinning upwards from Sonny’s fist on the rising curve of a parabola, end over end over end over end, light planing across its two rectangular faces in turn, end over end, reaching its zenith in front of Sonny’s nose, then beginning its descent, describing an arc that mirrors the curve of its ascent, still gracefully whirling around its own axis like a drum majorette’s baton, with Miss Dalloway willing it to fall logo side down, willing the very air molecules through which it is passing to strike it leniently as it begins the long drop to the logo-patterned carpet of the Computers Department, willing it to land favourably on enemy ground. And down it goes, this thin, fragile thing that, were the wealth it represents realised as a block of precious metal, would need a dozen strong men to lift it – down it goes, turning and turning, down and down and down, until one rounded corner strikes the carpet’s green
furze and it bounces, comes down on another corner, twirls like a ballerina, slumps onto one edge, then flops flat.

  Miss Dalloway can’t bring herself to look.

  “Oscar? Which way up is it, Oscar?”

  Oscar’s silence is all the answer she needs.

  She lowers her gaze to the Osmium, and there they are – the grainy and smooth semicircles of the card’s Days logo, the right half sanded to a pale grey sheen, the left as shiny as fresh creosote on a roadway.

  11.58 a.m.

  “WHAT’S HE DOING?” says Wensley. “I can’t make out what he’s doing.”

  “It’s clearer on the other camera,” says Mungo. “Slightly.” He points across the table to the second four-by-four bank of monitors, which shows the same scene at a different angle: Sonny addressing the heads of Books and Computers, flashing his Osmium at them. Both images, expanded to fit sixteen screens, are blurry and ill-defined. The card is a vaguely rectangular black blob, Sonny’s suit a man-shaped mass of dark grey, and the employees’ faces ovals of white, their features dark smudges.

  “What’s he got his card out for?” Fred asks.

  “A badge of authority,” Thurston suggests.

  “You can’t argue with an Osmium,” says Chas, nodding.

  “Especially one which has the surname Day on it,” Sato adds.

  “Whoops! Dropped it!” says Fred, chuckling. “You’re going to have to learn to keep a tighter grip on your money, Sonny. There, pick it up, that’s a good boy. No! Fumbled again!”

  “Was that a fumble?” says Thurston with a frown. “Looked to me more like he flipped it.”

  “It was a fumble,” says Mungo with a confidence he does not entirely feel. “See, he’s picking it up again and putting it away. He just wanted them to see that he means business.”

  “I wish the angle were better,” says Sato. Sonny has his back to both cameras.

  “These are the best feeds the Eye could give us,” says Thurston. “We’d have a better view if he wasn’t so close to the entrance. The deeper you go into a department, the more cameras there are.”

  “This is good enough,” says Mungo. “We can tell he isn’t doing anything stupid. He’s listened to the heads of department, and now he’s telling them what we think.”

  The dark side of the great dome now occupies fully half of the Boardroom’s triptych of windows. Septimus Day continues to glower impotently down from his portrait. The brothers begin to relax. It seems that Sonny has pulled it off, that their fears were unfounded. Perhaps, after all, they can work together, all seven of them, as their father wanted them to.

  Mungo reminds Chas that they are due for their daily tennis game, and as the two of them leave the Boardroom to go down to their apartments to get changed, Mungo feels that the respect his brothers hold him in has been immeasurably enhanced by the bravery of his decisions this morning.

  It is a good feeling.

  11.59 a.m.

  “WELL,” SAYS SONNY, stowing away his Osmium, “I have to go now. I’m sure my brothers must have other work for me to do. Congratulations to the winners, commiserations to the losers. Goodbye to you all.”

  The guards fall in place around Sonny, and off they go, a phalanx of five.

  “Wisely made?” splutters Miss Dalloway, finally finding her voice after a full minute of stunned inarticulacy. “It wasn’t even a decision. It was the absolute antithesis of a decision. It was a travesty. ‘Judgement drunk, and brib’d to lose his way,/Winks hard, and talks of darkness at noon-day.’ Sir? Master Sonny, sir?”

  She makes to pursue her employer, but Mr Armitage restrains her with a firm hand.

  “Miss Dalloway,” he says, “accept it, you’ve lost. Deal with it.”

  The Head of Books has never been so tempted to punch someone. Instead, she growls and brushes Mr Armitage’s hand away as though it is a tarantula that has dropped onto her shoulder.

  “This isn’t over,” she tells him. “This is far from over.” And with an imperious toss of her head, she strides off into the connecting passageway.

  Her darlings cluster around her as she storms back into Books.

  “What now, Miss Dalloway?” asks Kurt.

  “We have to let them have the floorspace, don’t we?” says Oscar.

  “We don’t have a choice,” says Salman. “Master Sonny –”

  “Damn Master Sonny!” Miss Dalloway snaps. “Damn him, damn his brothers, damn the whole sorry lot of them! If they think they can get away with treating a loyal employee like this, they’ve got another think coming.”

  “But we’ve lost.”

  “Lost, Oscar? Lost? On the contrary. In the words of John Paul Jones” – Miss Dalloway is incandescent with righteous rage; her fury is awesome in its purity – “‘I have not yet begun to fight.’”

  It is midday.

  23

  Seventh Avenue: a street in New York City, part of which is nicknamed “Fashion Avenue” – also known as the “garment centre.”

  12.00 p.m.

  MIDDAY FINDS LINDA Trivett in Ties on the Blue Floor, rummaging through her handbag for her shopping list. She needs to find the catalogue serial number of the tie she wants to buy for Gordon, because the department has turned out to be too full of merchandise for her to track it down unaided. There are ties everywhere. Ties dangling like jungle lianas from wires suspended across the ceiling. Ties hanging on rotating stands. Ties knotted around the necks of torso mannequins. Ties snugly rolled in presentation boxes. Ties interleaved on the walls head to tail, like long, thin segments of a huge silky quilt. Ties snaking around pillars in candystripe swirls. A wilderness of ties, in which Linda has about as much chance of locating the one she wants as she does of locating a specific grain of sand in a desert.

  Still, it is fun to look, and she has been looking for over quarter of an hour, roaming the aisles, running her fingers over the merchandise, admiring. Yes, letting Gordon go off on his own is the best thing she could have done. She would never have had this luxury to browse (and, of course, the tie would not be a surprise) were he still tagging along behind her. Without him she can wander where she wants and linger as long as she likes over any items that happen to catch her eye, free from the insistent, nagging pressure of his impatience. She misses him, really she does. She would love to be able to spend the entire day with him, because the taste of triumph is that much sweeter when shared with another, but she acknowledges that the temporary separation is for the best, and she suspects that, in the future, marital harmony will be best maintained if she and Gordon visit Days apart rather than together.

  Wherever he is, she hopes he is safe and enjoying himself.

  At last she unearths the slip of paper containing the serial numbers of the tie, the cherub carriage clock, and the other items on her shopping list. She approaches a nearby sales assistant.

  “Excuse me, please. I’m looking for a particular –” She stops mid-sentence.

  “A particular what, Madam?

  Linda smiles. “Never mind. I’ve just found it.”

  “Isn’t that always the way, madam?” says the sales assistant. “The moment the plumber arrives, the tap stops dripping.”

  Linda laughs, thanks him, and goes over to the rack she spotted where, among others, hangs the coin-motif tie.

  “Attention, customers.”

  She glances up. How exciting. Another lightning sale. There was one only half an hour ago in Farm Machinery, and although a swift examination of the leaflet map showed Linda that she was four floors up and on the opposite side of the building from that department, she was tempted to make a dash for it all the same. Seeing other shoppers spin on their heels and head off, she felt a tug, an instinctive pull. I could go too, she thought. I am part of the pack, I could run with them. Fortunately she retained sufficient presence of mind to realise that her small, well-tended plot of garden at home was unlikely to be improved by the deployment of heavyweight agricultural equipment. Had the sale been in another depar
tment – any other department – she might well have gone.

  She listens attentively.

  “For the next five minutes there will be a twenty per cent reduction on all items in Ties. I repeat, for the next five minutes only, all items in Ties will be marked down by twenty per cent. Ties is located in the south-eastern quadrant of the Blue Floor and may be reached using the banks of lifts designated G, H and I. This offer will be extended to you for five minutes only. Any purchases made after that period will retail at full price. Thank you for your attention.”

  Linda looks around to see which way other shoppers are going to move. She will join them this time. Race with them, hunt down that bargain. Yes.

  The faces she sees are taut and anxious.

  Then she hears the sales assistant she just talked to whisper under his breath, “Oh shit.”

  Then it dawns on her.

  The announcement said Ties.

  Here. The sale is here.

  The emotion that wells up in Linda Trivett then is too pure and blinding to sully with a name. It surges through her in a great white wave, clarifying her thoughts, sharpening her senses, purging her of uncertainty. She knows what she has to do, but more than that, she knows that this is what she was born to do. Never has she felt such an undiluted sense of purpose before. It races through her veins, as cold and clear as a subterranean stream. Deep in her being she is suddenly connected with all that is and all that was and all that is meant to be.

  Trembling in the throes of epiphany, she snatches the coin-motif tie from the track and casts about for the nearest sales counter. The announcement said twenty per cent off. A whole fifth. Other shoppers are grabbing merchandise, seizing ties by the handful. She can hear a faint rumbling from afar. Twenty per cent. Quickly, thoughtlessly, she turns and plucks another three ties from the rack. One has a squadron of blue pigs with wings embroidered on it, another is printed with close-typed rows of random binary-code sequences that form a sort of variegated polka-dot pattern, while the third is a duplicate of the tie with the coin motif already in her hands. Well, after all, Gordon always wears a tie to work. He can never have too many. She looks around again for a sales counter, and in doing so catches sight of the first bargain-hunters as they come stampeding in through the nearest connecting passageway.