Days

by James Lovegrove

  With a quiet, mournful dignity, Linda’s mother set to picking up the pieces of the clock, and Linda, tears in her eyes, padded back to her room, and there, in bed, cried herself to sleep.

  In the event, her father never made good on his threat. In fact, not once during the course of their marriage did he actually land a blow on his wife, though this was perhaps as much due to her quick reactions as to his reluctance. Nevertheless, the possibility was always there that one day his rage would grow too great to be vented in insults or placated by carefully chosen words, and this meant that Linda’s mother had to tread cautiously around the house at all times, a habit Linda herself learned to emulate, even though it was her mother who always took the brunt of her father’s temper. He was the sullen, angry planet around which they, two moons, a larger and a lesser, silently circled, and when he finally walked out on them and went to live in another city with another, younger woman, it was as though they had been freed from his gravitational pull. They felt lighter for his absence.

  Understandably, Linda grew up fearing men, believing that they were all like her father, liable to turn on you at the slightest excuse. This led to a series of awkward, superficial, unconsummated affairs which earned her a reputation in her social circle as a frigid man-hater. It wasn’t until she met Gordon that she at last understood that not all men were made the way her father had been; that some of them could be meek and mild and – yes, no harm in admitting it – malleable.

  The memory of the destruction of the cherub clock gives Linda the boost she needs. In the man with the zither’s distended, filth-spewing face she sees an echo of her father’s, and resentment and revulsion well up inside her, lending her strength. With a grunting shriek, she thrusts him away. He totters back, arms windmilling, and his zither strikes a nearby customer in the neck. This other customer wheels around. He has a balalaika in his hands. He swings it like a club. It smashes the man with the zither square in the face, strings first. A spiky open chord sings out, and parallel slashes across the man with the zither’s nose and cheekbones bead crimson and start to run.

  Linda starts to run, too.

  Her sense of direction has been thrown and she has no clear idea which way the connecting passageway to Ethnic Arts & Crafts lies. She can see nothing except people, but she can detect a current to their movement, a flow. Bargain-hunters are still pouring into the department; therefore, if she heads the opposite way, counter to them, like a salmon swimming upstream, she will get to where she wants to go.

  A fine plan in theory, but the inrush of shoppers is an almost solid wall of bodies, pushing her back. She has to force her way through them, wedging a shoulder or a leg into every gap she sees. Several times her feet are swept out from under her and she nearly goes down, saving herself by clinging onto someone’s arm or clothing, desperately recovering her footing before the owner of the arm or clothing shakes her off. She knows that if she falls she will most likely be trampled.

  At some point during her struggle to reach the exit she hears, dimly, the end of the sale being called out over the PA system, and she entertains the vain, vague hope that, as it did in Ties, the announcement will bring a halt to the proceedings. But no one else seems to hear or, more to the point, to care. The fighting continues unabated, the bargain-hunters keep on coming, and Linda has to carry on pushing against the tide, enduring the knocks and thumps that come her way, gritting her teeth and not retaliating because her goal is getting out in one piece. Everything else is secondary to that.

  It begins to seem hopeless. Wave upon wave of bargain-hunters crashes against her. The undertow of their single-mindedness tugs at her. The effort it takes to resist is draining. Linda feels as though she has jumped off the rail of a foundering ocean liner and is trying to swim away against the pull of the vortex created by the sinking ship. For all her striving she doesn’t appear to be making any progress. Her reserves of energy are ebbing. It would be easier, her tiring limbs tell her, just to give in and let herself be sucked back into the maelstrom. She has failed to obtain her bargain, whatever it was. Someone who deliberately passes up an opportunity like that (a quarter off!) doesn’t deserve to get anything else she wants.

  She decides to abandon the attempt to escape from the department and let the flood of bargain-hunters take her where it will.

  And in that moment of letting go she thinks of Gordon, who all his life has allowed events to happen to him, who has never once tried to improve his circumstances of his own accord but has invariably adapted, complied and compromised. And for the first time in their marriage she understands why. To choose the path of least resistance has always seemed to her a sign of weakness. The root of her strength has been her willingness to stand firm no matter how overwhelming the odds. But sometimes there is a strength in admitting defeat. Rigid defiance is admirable but not necessarily, in every situation, wise.

  She thinks of Gordon, and there in front of her, as if somehow conjured into being by the power of her imagination, is Gordon. Gordon extending a hand to her. Gordon shouting, “Grab a hold, Linda!”

  She takes his hand, and he hauls her toward him, and together they form a small island around which the torrent of bodies breaks and diverges. Standing, embracing, husband and wife ride out the onslaught.

  34

  Fortitude: one of the Seven Cardinal Virtues.

  2.05 p.m.

  MISS DALLOWAY CONSULTS her watch. By her estimate Edgar should have secured the insulated wire by now and be on his way to getting the clock – assuming he hasn’t run into difficulties.

  Events are for the moment out of her control, and that is an uncomfortable feeling, but Edgar, she reminds herself, is a bright boy. Devoted, diligent. She couldn’t have chosen better. Still, the possibility that he might fail is a real one, and she would be a fool not to acknowledge it.

  Oscar, standing a few wary yards away from the incomplete bomb, has been busy thinking.

  “Miss Dalloway? Forgive me if this sounds impertinent, but you’ve obviously had this planned for a while, so why leave getting the timer to the last minute?”

  “I told you earlier, Oscar,” Miss Dalloway replies. “I want the store to know what I am up to. I want the powers-that-be watching when I get my own back for the shabby, shameful way in which I and my department have been treated.”

  “You mean the brothers.”

  “The brothers, Security, the Eye. I want everyone to be looking on when it happens.”

  “You want them to see that you’re not just some ordinary terrorist.”

  “Precisely, my love.”

  Yes, that is right. She is not some terrorist. Certainly she has a cause she feels passionately about, as most terrorists claims they do, but her goal today is not to force people into seeing things her way through the indiscriminate use of suffering and fear. Her goal today is to teach the management of Days a lesson it will never forget. She is going to show the Day brothers that they cannot treat their employees like ants; they cannot push them around and step on them with impunity. She is going to demonstrate to them, in spectacular fashion, that running the world’s first and (in their father’s day) foremost gigastore is a serious responsibility and not, as they seem to think, a boardgame with human beings – human lives – for counters.

  That and the prospect of getting her own back on the Computers Department for eighteen months of persecution furnish Miss Dalloway with all the armour of resolve she needs.

  Edgar will succeed.

  He has to.

  2.07 p.m.

  THE LIFT ARRIVES at the Yellow Floor and Edgar manouevres the trolley out. He hasn’t gone more than a couple of metres when he spots a guard lumbering towards him. He halts, seized by panic, unable to think about anything but the size of the man. The guard is one of those human beings who seem to have been designed for no other purpose than inflicting physical injury on other human beings. His fists are like hammers, his eyes close-set and compassionless.

  Edgar resolves then and
there to come quietly. Meek as a lamb. He no longer cares about losing his job; getting through the next few moments with the minimum amount of suffering is all that matters. It isn’t that he is a coward. It’s just that pain hurts.

  He stands there as the guard homes in...

  ...and rushes past without so much as a second glance.

  It is then that Edgar hears the faint, far-off thundering – a sound he has no difficulty recognising. But according to his watch it is seven minutes past two. An on-the-hour lightning sale should be over by now.

  Which means that this one must have developed into a maul.

  Another guard comes his way, hurrying after the first, and this one Edgar watches go by with considerably less anxiety. There is a perceptible lightening of his habitually gloomy expression as he resumes pushing the trolley in the direction of the Clocks Department, comforted by the knowledge that for as long as the maul lasts Security is going to have more important things to think about than a Bookworm using a stolen card.

  2.08 p.m.

  THE SCREEN-JOCKEY LETS out a hiss of triumph and slaps the arm of his chair. He brings his mic round to his mouth.

  Mr Hubble?

  Hubble here.

  I got ’im.

  Where?

  Down on Yellow. Man with a trolley. Big fucking forehead. Got to be him. Lift-bank K. Moving west now.

  Good work, Eye. Keep him in sight. Hubble out.

  “All right, all right, my big-browed friend,” the screen-jockey murmurs as he calls up a map of the departments around lift-bank K on Yellow. The position of each security camera is marked by a red dot which is tagged with a reference number and surrounded by a circle denoting the camera’s arc of coverage. “I have you locked and loaded and I’m not going to lose you.” A quick glance shows the screen-jockey the location of the next camera that will be able to pick up a visual of the man with the trolley. A few taps of the keys, a toggle of the joystick, and he has the perpetrator in view again, from a new angle.

  God, he loves this job! Never mind that the average length of a screen-jockey’s career, from training to burnout, is ten years. And never mind that there is a higher-than-average of incidence of cancer and heart disease among Eye retirees. All that is for the future. What matters is moments like this. Pursuit. Hopping from camera to camera. Quick, nervy decisions. Fingers flying over the keyboard. Like a computer game but with real people. All the thrill of the chase but conducted at a safe remove. It makes him feel alive.

  “Oh, I’m good at this,” the screen-jockey tells himself. “I’m so fucking good at this. I’m the best...”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” says a voice at his right shoulder.

  The screen-jockey looks sharply round.

  Mr Bloom is standing behind him, one hand resting on the back of his chair.

  “S-sir,” stammers the screen-jockey. “I didn’t, um, didn’t realise you were...”

  “Did I just hear you mention the name Hubble?”

  “That’s right, sir, yes. We’re following a perpetrator using a stolen card. Mr Hubble says he thinks he’s a pro using a fake employee ID.”

  “Mind if I watch?”

  “Not at all, sir. But what about the maul?”

  “The department entrances have been sealed off. It’ll burn itself out soon enough.” Mr Bloom draws up an unoccupied chair. “Forgive me, I don’t know your name.”

  “Hunt, sir.”

  “All right, Hunt,” says Mr Bloom. “Where is Mr Hubble right now?”

  2.09 p.m.

  FRANK IS ON an escalator descending from Green to Yellow. In front of him stands a customer with several bulky carrier bags in each hand, blocking the way. Twice Frank has said, “Excuse me.” Twice he has been ignored. Aggravating though this hindrance is, he can’t quite bring himself to tap the customer on the shoulder, so instead he agitatedly drums his fingers on the rubber handrail and stares daggers at the customer’s back.

  Mr Hubble?

  Go ahead.

  The perpetrator’s reached Jokes & Novelties. Looks like he’s going south now into Boardgames.

  OK, fine. If I cut through Fishing and Photography, I can intercept him in Clocks.

  That’s the good news. The bad news is, there’s a maul over in Third World Musical Instruments, so we’re going to be a bit short on guards at the moment.

  That shouldn’t be a problem, says Frank.

  The escalator flattens out, the bag-toting customer steps off, and Frank skirts around him and sets off at a lope in the direction of Clocks.

  35

  The Seven Benedictions of the Jewish Marriage Ceremony: the traditional recital of seven blessings which align the state of matrimony with the history and hopes of the state of Israel.

  2.09 p.m.

  SENSING AN EASING in the flow of bargain-hunters, the Trivetts start to move towards the exit. Their progress is slow, awkward, and shuffling. Neither is willing to relinquish their grip on the other, not just yet.

  The fighting rages on behind them as they reach the connecting passageway to Ethnic Arts & Crafts, where they discover that the flood of shoppers coming into Third World Musical Instruments has been pinched off by a dam of human flesh and dollar-green uniforms which plugs the passageway from wall to wall: guards, standing shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip, three deep, impenetrable.

  “And where do you think you’re going?” asks one of the guards in the front row, as Gordon attempts to steer Linda through.

  “Out,” Gordon replies simply, but the guard shakes his head and says, “No, you’re not.”

  Gordon has to ask, “Why not?” several times before he is granted the privilege of an answer.

  Until the fighting dies down, the guard explains, no one is allowed to leave the department. “We have to take names when it’s over, see.”

  “Names?”

  “Everyone involved in a shopping maul has to pay for their share of the damage,” the guard says, spelling it out in terms so simple even an idiot can understand. “It’s in the disclaimer form, under ‘Reparations for Damaged Merchandise.’ Just stay where you are. You’ll be all right.”

  “Here, don’t I know you?”

  This from a guard in the second rank of the blockade. Gordon fails to recognise the man at first, but after a few seconds of scrutiny the penny drops with an awful, chilling clunk.

  “No, I don’t think so,” he says, unconvincingly.

  “Yeah. In Mirrors.”

  “No, I really don’t think so,” Gordon insists, even less convincingly.

  “Yeah, you’re the one who was being hassled by a couple of Burlingtons.”

  Gordon darts a glance at Linda, but she is busy inspecting the rip in her sleeve and doesn’t appear to be paying attention.

  “Go on, take their card details and let them go,” this other guard says to his colleague in the front row. “The poor bastard’s not been having a good day.”

  Gordon asks Linda for their Silver, and passes it over resentfully for the guard to scan with his Sphinx. The blockade then parts to allow them through.

  Emerging on the other side, the Trivetts find a milling congregation of frustrated bargain-hunters, who throw them envious looks, then resume craning their necks to catch a glimpse of the action over the guards’ shoulders.

  Gordon and Linda keep walking, still holding on to one another, through the masks, totems, and clay statuettes of Ethnic Arts & Crafts. Soon they have left the Peripheries behind and are retracing their steps towards Candles, returning to the spot where Linda told Gordon to wait for her because neither is able to think of anywhere else to go.

  Gordon decides it would be best to make a clean breast of his encounter with the Burlingtons now, while Linda is in a subdued mood, and he begins to recount what really happened to him in Mirrors, but Linda silences him with a raised hand. “It’s all right,” she says. “You can tell me about it another time.”

  “I only lied a little bit.”

  “It doesn�
��t matter. I’d prefer it if you explained something else to me.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t sound so anxious. I simply want to know what you were doing at the sale back there.”

  “Oh, that. Well, I changed my mind.”

  “Why?”

  “I hated being... separate from you, is the only word I can think of for it.”

  “Separate?”

  “Because of what you’d gone through at that previous sale. It was like you knew a secret I didn’t. So I said to myself, ‘I’ll just go and have a peek in through the entrance and see what goes on,’ and when I got there, there was all that fighting, and then I spotted you trying to make your way out, and...” The words trail off into a shrug.

  “And in you went to rescue me.”

  “And in I went to rescue you. Your knight in shining spectacles.”

  Linda disengages from him so that she can take a step back and appraise him fully, from head to toe.

  “So how are you?” he asks, self-conscious under her scrutiny.

  “Oh, bruised, battered, annoyed that my best blouse has been torn... but happy.”

  “Happy?”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.” But she says it in such a way that Gordon thinks he does understand.

  “Ah,” he says, with a slow smile.

  They walk on a few metres in companionable silence, and then Gordon hazards the suggestion that they go home.

  Linda surprises him by agreeing, and surprises him even more by adding, “And when we get there, we’ll discuss whether we’re going to keep our account or just pay it off and close it.”

  A knock on the head, Gordon thinks. By the time we get home, she’ll have forgotten what she just said.