Days

by James Lovegrove

  She reads his thoughts. “I can change my mind, too, Gordon.”

  “Yes, but–”

  “Did I look like I was having a good time back there?”

  “Well, no, but–”

  “There you are, then.”

  “But–”

  “Gordon, most people don’t even get one day at Days. We’ve had that. We’ll always have that.”

  “Well,” says Gordon, “if you’re sure.”

  “I just want to visit one last department, and then we can be on our way. I made myself a promise to buy two things today. A tie for you was one. The other is that carriage clock I showed you. In the catalogue. Remember?”

  Gordon does remember. “The reproduction of the one your mother used to have.”

  “Call it a memento, if you like. A souvenir of our day at Days.” She smiles at him, and despite her mussed hair, despite the tear in her sleeve, despite the raw-looking lump at her temple that is beginning to blossom into a large, prune-coloured bruise, or perhaps because of these imperfections, these chinks in the armour of her appearance, Gordon is won over.

  “All right,” he says.

  “My knight in shining spectacles.” Linda raises herself up on her toes to give him a brief but warm peck on the cheek, the ghost of which clings long after she has set off in the direction of the Clocks Department.

  36

  Seven Dials: a conjunction of seven streets in Holborn, London, named after the Doric pillar with (actually) six sundials that used to stand at its centre.

  2.17 p.m.

  IN CLOCKS, TIME is divided into infinitesimally small increments, split into thousands of pieces by thousands of timepieces. In Clocks, time does not pass second by discrete second but cascades in a massed cricket-chorus of busy movements, a great fibrillating fusillade of ticks and tocks delivered by everything from slender ladies’ wristwatches to stately grandfather clocks, from sleek bedside radio-alarms to curlicued, pendulum-driven ormolus. In Clocks, the arrival of each quarter-hour is attended by a carillon of bells, chimes, cuckoos, and digital bleeps, each half-hour by a slightly longer and louder version of the same, and each hour by an even longer and louder outburst. The deafening peals that announce noon and midnight go on for almost a minute.

  In addition to the regulation quota of sales assistants, Clocks employs three people full-time just to keep mainsprings wound, replace batteries and make sure every single face and readout in the department is in agreement, the which task they perform diligently, meeting up at regular intervals to check that their personal chronometers have not deviated one iota from complete accord. Even so, it is impossible for so many thousands of clocks and watches to be synchronised precisely. The edges of minutes overlap, and time becomes so blurred and fragmentary that it returns to its true state: a nebulous, unquantifiable abstract. Every-time and no-time.

  If you wish to buy a device for monitoring or detecting the passage of time, the Clocks Department is the place to go, but while you are there, be prepared for your temporal perception to be thrown off by the staggered succession of thousands of seconds happening almost, but not quite, at once. Be prepared, for an immeasurable period of time, to see time from a number of different angles at once.

  2.17 p.m.

  LINDA FINDS THE cherub carriage clock more easily than she expected, almost as if led to it by an instinct. It is beautiful. Its brass casing has been burnished to a golden shine, and the cherubs that serve as its feet are exquisitely detailed. You can see the strain on their faces as they blow into their trumpets. You can make out every feather in their stubby little wings. It is her mother’s clock, reproduced in every detail, perfect in every part. The past resurrected. A memory made real.

  She motions to Gordon to come over and have a look.

  2.17 p.m.

  GORDON COMES OVER and has a look.

  “Well?” his wife asks him. “What do you think?”

  He wants to say that the cherubs appear ridiculously uncomfortable, as if they are being squashed by the clock, the breath whistling out of them in trumpet-shaped puffs. He wants to say that he doesn’t think it will look good in their house. But he knows how much the clock means to her.

  “If you like it, I like it,” he tells her.

  Linda removes the clock reverently from the shelf.

  2.17 p.m.

  “ALARM CLOCK, ALARM clock,” Edgar mutters as he cruises an aisle specialising in bedside horology, searching for the second and final item on Miss Dalloway’s list. The end of the mission is in sight, and its successful completion seems likely – no, not just likely, inevitable. He is very much looking forward to returning to Books a hero and receiving his head of department’s praise, which, other than the chance to serve her well, is all he could ever ask for from her. Once he has made this purchase, all he has to do is go north through two departments, and it will be over.

  There. A straightforward wind-up alarm clock. Brass bells. Narrow Roman numerals on a white face. That should do the trick.

  Edgar pops the clock into the trolley and sets a course for the sales counter at the end of the aisle.

  There is a soft thudding of rubber-soled footsteps behind him, slowing to a halt. Someone speaks to him.

  2.17 p.m.

  “TACTICAL SECURITY. STOP where you are and turn around.”

  That the perpetrator hesitates suggests to Frank that he is someone who, by nature, abides by the rules. That he then starts to run suggests that he is determined, not to mention desperate.

  “I said stop.”

  But the perpetrator does not stop, and Frank’s Ghost Training takes over.

  In a single fluid motion he draws his gun with one hand while his other hand slips into his wallet, slides out his velvet card sheath and extracts his Iridium. He inserts the card into the slot beneath the barrel and zips it through. The green LED winks alight, and the gun ceases to be an inert configuration of metal parts and becomes a coiled steel trap waiting to be sprung. He can sense the bullets within the clip within the grip within his fist, all thirteen of them impatient to be chambered and released. Suddenly he is holding death in his hand. Suddenly he has power over the perpetrator, the ability to change him at a distance at the touch of a trigger, to transform him from intact human to bleeding, anonymous meat. It is frightening and thrilling. Thrilling because it is frightening, and frightening because it is thrilling.

  He draws back the slide, lets it go – ker-chunk – and extends his arm. Arm and gun must become one. That is what he was taught. The gun must be an extension of himself, another body part. It comes back to him now even after all this time when the gun has just been a weight he has worn, an object that has hung beneath his left armpit and every so often butted against the Sphinx in his pocket as if to remind him it is still there. It comes back to him like a forgotten name to go with a remembered face. This is what he must be prepared to do if he is to retain his Iridium lifestyle. This is the ultimate price of his employment. This, a few kilograms of oiled steel, is duty.

  His left hand rises to cup the bottom of the grip.

  Barrel-tip sight covering target. Legs apart in a shooting stance. Aim to wound. Shoulder or thigh.

  He calls out the statutory warning: “Halt, or I am contractually obliged to shoot.”

  The perpetrator slips around the corner.

  Damn!

  2.18 p.m.

  FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! Fuck! Fuck!

  The word chimes through Edgar’s brain, a tocsin of terror.

  Gun. Security. Security man with gun.

  Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

  2.18 p.m.

  LINDA GIVES GORDON the carriage clock to hold while she delves into her handbag for their card. She hears someone nearby shout something, and a few seconds later sees a man with a trolley hurtling full-tilt towards her and Gordon.

  The trolley whisks past them with millimetres to spare, and Linda, on Gordon’s behalf as much as her own, says very loudly and pointedly, “Well, excuse me.�
��

  2.18 p.m.

  GORDON IS ABOUT to chip in with a wry comment to the effect that someone seems to be in a hurry, but then he catches sight of a second man coming towards them, a man brandishing a gun, and the words die on his lips.

  2.18 p.m.

  FRANK THINKS THE bespectacled customer with the bandaged hand is going to step out of the way. He is running too fast to avoid him if he doesn’t.

  He doesn’t. They collide. Frank’s finger accidentally clenches around the trigger. The world is filled with the roar of the gun.

  2.18 p.m.

  A KNITTING NEEDLE punches a hole in Gordon’s left eardrum. Burning pinpricks sparkle across the left side of his face.

  His first thought is: I’ve been shot in the head.

  His next thought is a logical extrapolation of the first: I’m dead.

  2.18 p.m.

  AT THE SOUND of the gunshot, everyone in the department flinches and ducks, except Edgar, who is too busy running for his life to hear.

  Which is why, when he feels an impact in his back like a punch, just above his pelvis and to the side of his spine, he fails to realise what has hit him.

  2.18 p.m.

  IN SLOW MOTION, as though someone has cranked down the speed of her life, Linda watches her husband sag to the floor. She watches Gordon’s glasses slither down his nose, over his chin, onto his neck. She watches the cherub carriage clock slip from his limp fingers and tumble face first to the carpet.

  He isn’t dead. She knows that. The gun was pointing past him when it went off. He has collapsed, that’s all. Shock. He’s fine.

  But then the man with the gun bends down beside Gordon and places the barrel against the side of his head. At the same time, inside Linda’s handbag, something small, smooth and cylindrical rolls against her fingers.

  She acts without further thought. Her hand closes around the pepper spray, and she levers off the cap with her thumbnail.

  2.18 p.m.

  THE IDIOT! STANDING there like a mannequin!

  Using his gun hand, Frank feels the customer’s neck. A faint but steady pulse. He’ll be OK. His left ear will probably ring for a day or two, and the powder burns on his cheek will be sore but won’t leave any permanent scarring. Bloody fool. But it was his own fault. He should have moved.

  Frank is about to resume his pursuit of the perpetrator when he registers movement at the periphery of his vision. He fleetingly recalls seeing a woman standing next to the man. Now she is lunging at him, her lips twisted in a snarl. He realises, too late, that there is something in her hand. A perfume atomiser? A can of deodorant?

  A fine white mist hisses from the nozzle, and his eyes are bathed in liquid fire.

  He recoils, bringing his knuckles up to wipe away the scalding, viscous stuff, but that only succeeds in pushing it deeper into his eyes. Tears spring, and they feel like acid. His sinuses squirt a choking mucus into the back of his throat. Coughing and retching, he staggers backward into a display of mantel clocks. One of them tumbles off, striking him on the shoulder and rolling off to land on the floor with a crunch of breaking glass and a tinkle of loosened cogs.

  What did she spray him with? His eyelids are swelling, closing, reducing his vision to a narrow slit of swimming opalescence. What was in that can?

  2.18 p.m.

  “WHAT WAS IN that can?” says Mr Bloom. “And who is that woman?”

  “No idea, sir,” says Hunt. “Some customer.”

  “Quick. Zoom in.”

  “But the perpetrator...”

  “Forget the perpetrator! Get a better visual on that woman now.”

  The screen-jockey obediently tweaks his joystick and the woman looms large on the screen. She is readying herself to attack Frank again.

  “Tell him to move!” barks Mr Bloom.

  2.19 p.m.

  THE SCREEN-JOCKEY’S VOICE, inside Frank’s head, in the blinded, burning dark with him, yells out a warning. Mr Hubble! She’s coming at you again!

  “Security!” Frank splutters out. “I’m with Tactical Security!”

  2.19 p.m.

  THE WORDS “TACTICAL Security” mean little to Linda, coming as they do from a man who appeared to be trying to kill her husband. All the same she hesitates, the pepper spray poised, her forefinger on the button. She knows she ought to give him another squirt for good measure. After all, he hasn’t dropped his weapon. Something, though, prevents her. A thought. A suspicion.

  The gun.

  Who in Days carries a gun except...?

  Oh good God.

  Oh good heavens above, what has she done?

  Slowly Linda lowers the canister. She knows she ought to say something, but what do you say to a Security operative you have just erroneously spritzed in the face with an anti-personnel spray? “Sorry” hardly begins to cover it.

  The Ghost is seized by a bout of violent sneezing. When the wet nasal explosions have run their course, Linda takes an oft-darned cotton handkerchief from her handbag and holds it out to him. Realising he can’t see it, she guides his hand to it. He hesitates, then accepts the handkerchief and blows his nose.

  “Better?”

  “Acid?” he says hoarsely, circling a finger around his face, which resembles that of a bawling infant’s – squinched, scarlet, and soaking wet. His puffed-up eyes are like two split plums, glazed with their own juices.

  “Um, no. Extract of jalapeño peppers.”

  “Small mercies.” He sneezes again.

  Gordon, prone on the floor, lets out a groan.

  “That’s my husband.” Linda catches herself pointing at Gordon, realising the gesture is wasted. “I thought you were going to kill him. That’s why I... you know.” She coughs in embarrassment. “Perhaps I should see how he is.”

  “Good idea.”

  Some sort of apology, she feels, is in order. “I can’t begin to–”

  The Ghost isn’t interested. “Stay put. Somebody will be along shortly to arrest you. Obstruction of a Security operative in the course of his duty.”

  Linda takes this information on board with a stoical nod and kneels to attend to her husband.

  2.20 p.m.

  FRANK EXPECTORATES A wad of fiery phlegm into the handkerchief. Clearing his throat to activate his Eye-link feels like gargling with broken glass.

  Eye?

  Mr Hubble, are you OK?

  As well as anyone can be who’s just had a face-full of pepper spray. Frank dabs at his eyes with a dry corner of the handkerchief.

  She was carrying pepper spray on her?

  I don’t think she just found it lying around, Eye.

  Well, don’t you worry. We’ll have another Ghost there in no time. Unless, of course, you feel up to collaring her yourself.

  I’ve other fish to fry. Which way did the perpetrator go?

  Um, afraid to say I lost him. Mr Bloom was more concerned about you.

  Mr Bloom?

  Yeah, he’s right here. Want a word?

  No time. Perhaps later. Right now I’m going after that perpetrator.

  Leave him to us, Mr Hubble. We’ll deal with him.

  I’m not letting him get away. Which way did he go?

  Well, last I saw, he was heading north. I’ll get another Tactical operative onto it.

  No, says Frank, holstering his gun. I can catch him. This fellow has put me to a lot of trouble. It’s only fair that I should be the one who nails him.

  But you can’t see where you’re going. That stuff that woman sprayed you with...

  I know this store like the back of my hand. I could find my way around it blind. But I’m not going to be blind. You’re going to be my eyes, Eye.

  2.20 p.m.

  LINDA PICKS UP Gordon’s glasses, without which he always looks so puzzled and forlorn, so babyish, and gently settles them on the bridge of his nose, looping the arms around his ears. Then she inspects the cherub clock. Its glass cover is cracked in two, and its jolted movement has stopped, leaving its hands frozen at ei
ghteen minutes past two. She heaves a sigh, for the clock and for herself.

  The greatest day of her life.

  Or it would have been, if...

  If what? If Gordon had moved out of the Ghost’s way? She can’t blame him for that.

  If she hadn’t bought the pepper spray from the taxi driver? Possibly. But even without it, she would still have attacked the Ghost. She honestly thought the man was about to put a bullet in her husband’s head. What wife, in those circumstances, wouldn’t leap to her husband’s defence?

  That is what she will tell whoever comes to arrest her, although she doubts it will do much good. The fact remains that she attacked a Days employee, and for that she and Gordon are going to lose their account. They are going to be banned from the premises for life... and yet for some reason Linda doesn’t care. She doesn’t care that she is going to have to explain to Margie and Pat and Bella why she and Gordon are never going to visit Days again (perhaps she will think up a lie to tell them, perhaps not). She doesn’t care that she and Gordon may have to move to another street, another suburb, even another city, to get away from the knowing looks and the sly, insinuating comments of acquaintances and neighbours. None of that matters. All that matters is the man lying on the floor in front of her, the sandy-haired, baby-faced, bespectacled man who came to her rescue in Third World Musical Instruments, who appeared just when she needed him, and who, in turn, needed her protection and was given it.