Days

by James Lovegrove

  During the next game, perhaps spurred on by the memory of their father, Chas evinces an increased enthusiasm for victory. He uses every trick he knows to make Mungo’s life difficult, from high lobs to low backspin grounders. He feints powerful shots that barely trickle over the net and launches volleys across the court masterfully, but somehow Mungo manages to reach every ball, however unreturnable it seems, and snatch it across the net, always recovering in time to respond to the next of Chas’s challenges. Throughout the game he grins and pants like a happy dog.

  Deuce is reached, and continues interminably. Mungo enters a delicious delirium of effort, grunting explosively with each swing of his racquet, and Chas in his own way becomes engrossed in the game too, frowning like a chess grandmaster as if each exchange of shots is a conundrum he has to solve. Neither of them is aware that they have been joined on the rooftop by a spectator who, slumped against the chainlink fence with his face pressed into the diamond-shaped holes, is following the back-and-forth of the game with a glassy, ill-focused interest.

  Mungo finally capitalises on an advantage point and batters the ball home to win the game. Exhausted, he drops his racquet and bends double, bracing his hands on his knees. It is then, looking up from under a red, dripping brow, that he notices the new arrival watching from the sidelines.

  Chas spots the spectator at the same time, and says, drolly, “Ah, the conquering hero returns. Nice outfit, Sonny. I assume you didn’t go out on the shop floor dressed like that.”

  Sonny doesn’t reply. His fingers are clawed into the fence; this appears to be all that is holding him upright. His eyes moon from one brother to the other as though, as far as he is concerned, the game hasn’t come to an end.

  Mungo straightens up warily. “Sonny? Is everything all right? How did it go downstairs?”

  There is a pause. Then, slowly, Sonny turns his face in Mungo’s direction. “Hm?”

  “I said –”

  “What’s the score, Mungo? Who’s winning?”

  “Oh Christ,” whispers Chas.

  Mungo reaches the fence in a few brisk strides. He lowers his face to Sonny’s and inhales once, hard, then leans back, nodding sombrely. Sonny grins sloppily up at him. One of his hands loses its grip and he slips and almost collapses, but manages to secure himself a fresh handhold just in time.

  Mungo’s words begin as a moan but rise steadily to a roar. “Oh, you little bastard, you little fucking bastard, you idiot, you fucking idiot, what have you done, what have you done, what in Christ’s name have you done? Couldn’t even abstain for a couple of hours, could you? A couple of hours, you mindless fuckwit, you stupid little turd! You couldn’t even do that one thing, that one tiny thing you were asked to do, without screwing it up! You useless piece of shit, you useless, traitorous piece of shit! Do you know what I’m going to do to you? Do you? I’m going to kill you! I’m going to rip your heart out of your chest and fucking feed it to you, that’s what I’m going to do!”

  “Mungo, cool it.”

  “No, Chas, I will not ‘cool it’. I will not fucking ‘cool it’! I bend over backwards to help this fly-covered heap of dogshit, I give him another chance, a chance he does not deserve, and what do I get? How does he reward me? By spitting in my fucking face!”

  Regardless of the fence between them, Mungo makes a furious lunge for Sonny. Likewise regardless of the fence between them, Sonny backpedals hurriedly. Stumbling, he falls squarely on his behind, scraping his hands on the gravel.

  “What happened downstairs, Sonny?” says Mungo, shaking the chainlink. “What did you do? What did you say to the heads of Books and Computers? Did you tell them what we told you to tell them? Or did you just manage to make us look ridiculous? What did you do, Sonny? What did you say?”

  For the first time Sonny is fearful. Mungo’s bulging scarlet face looms in his vision like a medieval gargoyle. It would seem to be well within Mungo’s power to tear a hole in the fence and reach through the gap to do the same to Sonny.

  Chas lays a tentative hand on Mungo’s shoulder. “Mungo, listen.”

  Mungo twitches his head, not taking his eyes off Sonny. “What, Chas?”

  “We don’t know what went on down there.”

  “We don’t have to know. Look at him. Pissed out of his skull. And don’t tell me he got that way since coming back upstairs. I know Sonny’s drinking habits, and these are the results of a good hour’s worth we’re seeing here. He must have gone down there drunk and he must have screwed things up.”

  “But we don’t know that for sure, not yet. And until we do, our best course is to get him stowed away safely out of sight. Take him down to his apartment and make sure he stays there.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if the others find out that he went downstairs in this state, there’s no telling what’ll happen. I mean, look how well you reacted, and you’re supposed to be his ally.”

  Mungo peers down at Sonny, who has by this time lost interest in his brothers and is distractedly picking pieces of grit from his palms. “Wouldn’t it be better just to drag him straight to the Boardroom and show them? Show them what a worthless little prick he is?”

  “Possibly, but like I said, I doubt they’ll take it well.”

  “So what? Why do you all of a sudden care what happens to Sonny?”

  Chas hesitates, then says, “Let’s put it this way. I may not completely believe in this Seven business, but that’s no reason to put it in jeopardy.”

  Mungo lets the implication of his brother’s statement sink in. “Yes. I see. So we keep Sonny’s condition hidden from the others, and hope and pray that he did what he was supposed to downstairs.”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “All in the name of preserving the integrity of the Seven.”

  “Correct.”

  Mungo draws in a deep, controlling breath and lets it out again, his shoulders slumping, his anger unbinding. “You’re right, of course. The Seven comes before everything else.” He lets go of the fence and turns in the direction of the tennis court gate. “But I swear to God, Chas,” he growls, “if he’s done any damage down there, any damage at all, I’ll murder him with my bare hands.”

  “If it turns out he did, Mungo, you’ll have to take a number and join the queue.”

  Neither of these statements is an idle boast. Mungo and Chas are the sons of a man who gouged out his own eye with a pen-knife in order to get his own way. That streak of determination, that desire to succeed whatever the cost, is in their genes. Just as Septimus committed violence against himself, so his offspring have the potential to commit violence against themselves. It is, you might say, a sin of the father that is ready to be visited upon the sons.

  27

  7th December, 1941: the day the Japanese launched their surprise air attack on the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, precipitating active U.S. participation in World War II.

  12.35 p.m.

  IN HER OFFICE cubicle Miss Dalloway sits with a Brie-and-cucumber sandwich in one hand and The Art of War open on her knee. The book’s spine is so well broken that she does not have to hold the pages down with her hand.

  She eats the sandwich mechanically and methodically, and when she has finished she licks the tips of her fingers clean one by one. Then she drinks a small bottle of mineral water, and fastidiously disposes of the empty bottle and the sandwich wrapper in the waste-paper basket. Silly, she knows, to be so concerned about tidiness when, if all goes according to plan this afternoon, a litter-free office will be the least of her worries. But old habits, of course, die hard.

  She closes The Art of War and places it on top of the desk. She has read the book so many times by now that she knows it by heart, but she finds the familiar cadences of the sentences reassuring, the logical precision of Sun Tzu’s words comforting and calming.

  Taking a key from her trouser pocket, she unlocks one of the desk’s drawers and takes out another book, this one a more recent addition to h
er personal library.

  It is a cheaply-produced trade paperback printed on thick, coarse paper and published by a small press whose list otherwise consists of conspiracy-theory tracts, UFO-spotting manuals, and how-to guides on the subject of growing and smoking marijuana. The book’s front cover mimics a manila dossier, with the title “rubber-stamped” across it at an angle in blockish, rough-textured characters, as though this is in fact some top-secret goverment file. No author is credited anywhere, not even in the publisher’s indicia.

  The book is called Kitchen-Sink Arsenal, and like The Art of War, it shows the signs of having been well-read and well-used.

  Miss Dalloway sets Kitchen-Sink Arsenal down beside The Art of War on her desktop and smooths it open, ready, at a certain page. Then, stiffly, she stands up, pressing her knuckles into the small of her back, all of a sudden conscious of a dozen skeletal aches and pains that she could have sworn weren’t there before. She feels old. Not just in years. Spiritually. Her soul sick and weary – the legacy of a life of devotion to the ailing and ungenerous master that is literature.

  Picking up the Platinum card belonging to Mrs C A Shukhov, she heads out to the information desk.

  Oscar and Edgar are on duty. The rest of her darlings are either at lunch or busy elsewhere in the department.

  “My boys,” she says.

  The two Bookworms melt with delight at the tenderness with which she has addressed them.

  “My boys, I have need of you.”

  “What can we do for you, Miss Dalloway?” says Oscar. “Anything you want. Name it.”

  Before she can tell them, a customer approaches the desk, wanting to know where he can find books on cassette.

  “We don’t stock books on cassette here, sir,” Miss Dalloway informs the man. “You’ll find those in the Visual Impairment Department on the Indigo Floor. The only kind of books we stock in this department are the kind you read.”

  “Books on cassette!” Oscar exclaims before the customer is quite out of earshot. “What a joke!”

  “Pretty soon you won’t have to bother reading any more,” says Edgar. “All you’ll do is attach an electrode to your head and download a book directly into your brain in a couple of seconds.”

  “Edgar, we don’t use words like ‘download’ in this department.”

  “Sorry, Miss Dalloway.”

  “But the sentiment is a noble one, and appreciated. Thank you. Now, as I was saying. The mission. As you will no doubt recall, last Tuesday afternoon I sent a number of you out into the store to buy me certain items. You, Oscar, I asked to get me a can of fuel oil.”

  “And you asked me to buy you a nine-volt battery,” says Edgar.

  “And didn’t Malcolm have to get you a camera flashbulb?” says Oscar.

  “And it was Colin, I think, you sent for a bag of garden fertiliser.”

  “And Mervyn got you a beer keg.”

  “Quite,” says Miss Dalloway. “And I’m sure you all thought it was an eccentric shopping list, but you went out and brought back every item on it all the same, without question, because you’re good boys, all of you.”

  At the compliment the two Bookworms preen and quiver like stroked cats.

  “And now I need one of you to go and buy two more items in order to complete the list.”

  “Say no more, Miss Dalloway,” says Oscar. “Just tell me what they are, and I’ll go and get them.”

  “Thank you, Oscar,” says Miss Dalloway, “but, as you will see in a moment, this task is going to require someone who is quick on his feet.” She gently pats the roll of fat that bulges between the base of Oscar’s skull and his collar. “No offence, my darling, but you’re hardly built for speed. Not to mention the fact that you have a broken arm...”

  Oscar puts on a not wholly convincing show of dismay.

  “Besides, I have need of you here,” Miss Dalloway adds. “For moral support.”

  “But –”

  “‘They also serve who only stand and wait,’ Oscar.”

  “Which therefore, by a process of elimination, leaves me,” says the habitually gloomy Edgar, managing to look both pleased and put-upon at once. “What is it you want me to buy, Miss Dalloway?”

  “Before I tell you that, Edgar, I feel it is only fair to warn you that there is going to be an element of risk involved. If, once you learn what I want from you, you change your mind, I will understand perfectly, and I won’t think any less of you.”

  Edgar reassures his head of department that nothing can be too much trouble, that she can never ask too much of him, that she is in fact doing him a favour by sending him out on this mission, risky though it may be. And even though Miss Dalloway knew that that was what his response would be, she is still touched.

  “Then listen carefully. I need a roll of insulated copper wire and an alarm clock – the old-fashioned kind, nothing digital, one with a wind-up mechanism and bells on top.”

  “I thought you said the mission was going to be dangerous,” says Edgar with a snort. “I think I can manage to get you some wire and an alarm clock without too much difficulty.”

  “Perhaps. However, unlike last time, this time you won’t be using your own card. You’ll be using this.” And she holds up the purloined Platinum.

  “Isn’t that the one Malcolm handed in the other day?” says Oscar, squinting.

  “That’s correct.”

  “So shouldn’t you have –?” Oscar catches himself before he can finish a question that might be construed as casting aspersions on his beloved head of department’s judgement.

  Miss Dalloway finishes the question for him anyway. “Yes, Oscar, you’re right, I should have passed it on to Accounts, and I didn’t. A breach of regulations, but then posterity will show that, on balance, I have been a woman more sinned against than sinning.”

  “But surely it’ll have been reported lost,” says Edgar. “If I try to use it, Security will come down on me like a tonne of bricks.”

  “Which is what lends the mission its element of risk. Knowing that, are you still willing to go?”

  “May I enquire why you want me to use that particular card, Miss Dalloway?” says Edgar. “You must have a reason. You always have a reason for everything you do.”

  “True, Edgar, and yes, you may enquire. The answer is simple. I want Days to know what I am up to. I want everyone to know.”

  “Um, Miss Dalloway,” says Oscar hesitantly. “Sorry for asking this, but what is it, exactly, that you’re up to?”

  Miss Dalloway shakes her head. It will be better if she doesn’t tell them yet. That way Edgar’s pleas of ignorance, should Security catch up with him, will have the added virtue of authenticity. “When the time comes, all will be revealed. Until then, I must ask you to trust me, and for you, Edgar, to demonstrate that trust by buying the wire and the clock and bringing them safely back here.”

  “Does it have something to do with what you were up yesterday behind the books, at your desk?” says Oscar. “You know, when you told us not to disturb you for a couple of hours?”

  “Oscar!” Miss Dalloway holds up a hand. “‘How poor are they that have not patience.’ All will be revealed soon enough.”

  “Yes, Miss Dalloway. Sorry, Miss Dalloway.”

  “I also have need of a trolley,” she tells Edgar, handing Mrs Shukhov’s Platinum to him. “That should be the first thing you obtain, and I suggest you use your own card to hire it. For the wire and the clock, however, you must use the Platinum.”

  “And then run like hell,” says Edgar.

  “Precisely. Your employee ID badge should give you a certain immunity from suspicion, but still your principle concern is going to be staying ahead of Security. Now that you’re aware of the possible consequences of this mission, are you still prepared to go? Speak now or for ever hold your peace.”

  Edgar swallows hard and says, “I’m prepared to go.”

  “Then bless you.” She strokes his head. “I have every confidence in you to
succeed.”

  “I won’t let you down, Miss Dalloway.”

  “Well? What are you waiting for?”

  “You want me to leave right away?”

  “Stand not upon the order of your going, my darling, but go!”

  28

  The Seven Golden Cities of Cibola: a collection of seven towns, a pueblo of the Zuñi Indians in what is now Zuñi, New Mexico, fabled by Fray Marcos de Niza to be the source of great riches, which prompted Francisco Vásquez de Coronado in 1540 to head an expedition of 1,300 men to conquer them – no riches were found.

  12.45 p.m.

  “FRANK,” SAYS MR Bloom, smiling and gesturing to the chair on the opposite side of the small table. “I took the liberty of ordering wine.”

  “I don’t drink during the daytime,” says Frank, sitting down.

  “Go on, give the cat a goldfish.” Mr Bloom makes to fill Frank’s glass from a wicker-bound bottle of Chianti. “It’s not bad. Not as raw as some of these Italian wines can get.”

  Frank clamps a hand over firmly the rim of the glass. “No. Please.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  The restaurant is a mock trattoria on the Green Floor hoop, white-painted wrought-iron tables and matching chairs clustered beneath a wooden pergola densely interlaced with vine leaves. Mr Bloom’s rank has secured them a table directly next to the parapet. Some twenty metres below their elbows lies the Menagerie, one half of its canopy illuminated by a vast shaft of sunlight that descends almost vertically from the great dome, the rest in smoky shadow. The brightness in the atrium is so intense that several of the diners have resorted to wearing sunglasses.

  The atrium resounds to the sound of six floors’ worth of activity. Around lunchtime, shoppers gravitate toward the hoops. Many of them have come to Days for the sole purpose of meeting for lunch, since the store provides a dining venue of unparalleled social cachet. Indeed, the first thing Mr Bloom does after refreshing his own glass is draw Frank’s attention to the celebrities at neighbouring tables. He indicates the famous model alone at a table, studiously not eating the Caesar salad in front of her; the pair of well-respected actors colluding conspiratorially over some project; and the enfant terrible fashion designer in the company of the movie director and the head of the huge PR company (the smell of a major deal being struck at the latter table is pungent even at a distance). Frank obligingly steals a sidelong glance as Mr Bloom points out each famous person, but he only vaguely recognises their faces and, frankly, doesn’t care who they are. To him they are merely customers.