That’s a nerve. What the hell is the point of nerve endings in teeth? “Aaarrgghh,” she yells.
What a week! Mr Gulliver had actually called her this morning to find out what the fuck was going on. He said for him a deadline was a deadline and he was extremely uncomfortable about requests for extensions. Did she know how much money was resting on this? Course she fucking knew! There was a cool six hundred grand for her alone if she could get the papers through by the end of the week. Obviously she didn’t say that: Seagull Industries, for which Mr Gulliver was the elusive CEO, were about the most ruthless property development outfit in the world. The company’s main talent was winning major building contracts – most frequently from corruptible government officials who were more concerned about lining their own pockets than they were about provisioning the people they were meant to serve with safe living environments that were built to last. Once a contract had been bribed into Seagull’s control, they were frequently then subcontracted out to the lowest bidder or highest briber in the locale and Seagull would then step aside, ensuring that construction would be carried out to the lowest standards for the highest possible premium. There were tenement buildings the world over waiting like steel-sprung teeth for the next minor quake or major breeze to trigger their fall.
For circumstances where bribery wasn’t effective, Seagull had a well-stocked reservoir of personnel that were able to employ other methods for winning contracts for the company. These specialists were able to apply a considerable amount of leverage to remove the obstacles that inherently litter the path of the unscrupulous property developer.
It is Grace’s job as a resolution manager to navigate a project around or sometimes through these obstacles, and these obstacles often tend to be people – obstinate people. Some people are more obstinate than others, which is precisely why she’d been required to call on the services of James Kent – one of Seagull’s specialist staff from somewhere near the bottom of the reservoir. Most people will do pretty much anything you want them to if you threaten to show their partner photos of them screwing high-class prostitutes or post them photos of their loved ones through the crosshairs of a sniper rifle, however there is a small minority of people who don’t have loved ones and, unlike the rest, these people can sometimes be galvanised by pressure. It’s these people that just won’t give in while they’re still breathing.
Gary is one of these people.
In order for Seagull Industries to secure the multi-million pound contract to redevelop New Covent Garden Flower Market into luxury accommodation, they require the approval of local government officials, but they also need agreement to relocate from the current tenants. Few would disagree that Gary is the glue that binds the flower market community together: he chairs the stall holder committee, sits on an array of steering groups within the wider community and works tirelessly to ensure the flower market is strongly represented as part of the local authority agenda. His endorsement of the redevelopment plans carries the weight of the disparate majority and unfortunately he is not keen to see his beloved market turned into ‘condominiums for posh cunts’.
James sent in the heavies on Monday and they were under strict instructions to not take no for an answer. Bernard, to be fair, is just brawn, but Ig’s a professional; he’s got real skills. They worked him for over two hours and came away with nothing. Nothing! Well, they took one of his ribs: disgusting. The guy must be indestructible – they should make teeth out of him! “He’s just a market stall holder,” she’d told James. Admittedly the background check included time spent in the armed forces over in Northern Ireland when he was younger, but that’s going to be the best part of two hours at a Wong Baker ten. Imagine that, watching someone cutting into your torso and breaking off one of your ribs! Apparently Ig was fetching the blender when a police patrol had started circling a little too close to the lock up for comfort and they had been obliged to beat a hasty retreat. They say that it’s not enough to just cut pieces off a person; to really take away a person’s hope, you need to make them watch the bits of them that you’ve trimmed off get liquidised, so they don’t start thinking about getting a John Bobbitt. It really is awful work.
Still, six hundred grand is a lot.
Ow, ow, ow! That drill is going right into the nerve. There’s really nothing like a drill penetrating the bone in your head to remind you of what you’re made of.
“Please, Miss Evans, you must try to keep still – I really strongly recommend that you let us give you the anaesthetic; the temporary facial palsy will last for no more than two hours.” The dentist and his assistant have taken their hands and instruments out of her mouth.
“Under absolutely no circumstances will you be putting your needle in my mouth this morning,” she says as she sits up and spits into the little sink by the chair. “No way, Jose. When I was thirteen, there was this lad called Joe in my school who once tried to give a speech in front of the whole year after a visit to the dentist and he made a right pig’s ear of it – couldn’t get the words out properly – and people were pissing themselves at the spectacle. He was ridiculed for days afterwards and picked up something of a nickname – can you guess?” She takes the opportunity to rinse her mouth as the dentist and assistant look at her in bemusement. “Strokin’ Joe Frazier – you know, like the boxer? He picked up a speech impediment after that, started to stutter and – last I heard – he was committed to a mental institute after he tried to hang himself with his little sister’s skipping rope. D’you see the point? You cannot open the door for one second and let those fuckers get under your armour, because once they’re in, they’ll eat you alive. Look at this shirt and tie – this is my armour. I used to go to board meetings with a blouse and skirt and heels, but I quickly realised that men don’t give a shit what you say if they see you as a woman. You have to look the part, you have to blend in, because in conformity is strength. If you look different, the enemy will see you as being the weak link in the chain and try to exploit you. Hang on.” She takes her phone out of her trouser pocket and answers it, raising her hand as she does so in response to the dentist looking like he might want to say something. “What? Oh shit! Give the sharks some coffee and tell him I’ll be there in twenty minutes and tell James that if he doesn’t have a signature from Gary by close of play today, I’m going to make sure that Mr Gulliver understands that it was him who has blown the deal. And Jessie, tell James that Pluto doesn’t like loose ends. I don’t know, just tell him.”
She hangs up, gets out of the dentist’s chair and takes her coat from the hanger in the corner.
“Miss Evans?” says the dentist.
She raises her hand again and says, “I’ll be back.”
“But, Miss Evans –”
“Don’t worry, my assistant will make another appointment.” She slams the door behind her and strides off down the corridor.
She’d heard some bits and pieces about Pluto – enough to know that she didn’t want him on her case. He was Mr Gulliver’s bodyguard and personal enforcer and by all accounts he’d make Kent and his team look like the cast of Rainbow. The resolution management section were all aware that Pluto had enabled Seagull Industries to branch out into some quite lucrative sidelines, such as narcotics and people trafficking. This had been facilitated by displacing the leadership of the competition – a task that had been accomplished single-handedly. These were some large, seriously influential well-protected organisations with big budgets and fingers in lots of pies. In most instances, Pluto was instructed to leave the fingers – particularly if they were felt to be malleable and of some use – but the head and vital organs could always be replaced with a Seagull-approved transplant.
James Kent, with his family connections in government, was thought to be one of these fingers, but at the end of the day, if he couldn’t be trusted to complete the most basic of tasks, the finger would need to be removed from the pie. If finger and pie were too closely intertwined to be separated, then Pluto would eat the blood
y lot.
She arrives back at the office. As she rides up in the lift to the fifteenth floor, where she is due to meet the planning board and update them on the final agreements of local councillors and market sellers on moving the vegetable and flower market to a site somewhere beyond Leytonstone, she receives a call from the man of the moment.
“Hello James,” she says warmly.
“Alright Grace? Listen, the lads have been on the sniff for the greengrocer all morning – he’s called in sick at work and he’s not at his house either.”
“Oh James, perhaps that’s because your boys pulled one of his ribs off – he must be feeling under the weather.” James Kent is not stupid enough to say anything. “What I suggest you do is employ some of your local knowledge and expertise to find that man and get him to sign the necessary paperwork and get it to me by 5pm today, or I will be losing out on a considerable amount of money and you will be needing to find an army to protect yourself from a man called Pluto.”
“Grace, he’s gone to ground – we’re never going to find him.”
“Well, all I can say is I hope your lovely wife Chloe and your son Karl aren’t about when Pluto finds time to slot you into his busy schedule, because he doesn’t like to leave loose ends lying around.” She holds her hand up to Jessie who is coming round her desk to intercept her as she heads towards the boardroom. “So James, please, for both our sakes, put some thought into it. He’s an average cockney bloke and if he’s not in the hospital getting his broken rib looked at, he’ll be in the pub, or watching football or down the bookies. Call me when you find him.” She hangs up, says “Not now” to Jessie over her shoulder and strides into the boardroom.
“Gentlemen, thank you all so much for getting here early. Everything is moving ahead according to schedule: a majority of members have now approved the move of the market to the new location in Leytonstone and the contract for subsequent redevelopment of the site going to Seagull Industries is now a mere formality. We have held three resident consultation events across the borough and, though attendance was quite low, the leader has agreed that we have satisfied the necessary consultation criteria in order to proceed. Apart from a small number of stall holders, who we will be completing final negotiations with today, all businesses have signed over agreements to relinquish their right to trade at the market, so we should be ready to move to stage three next week.”
Silence. She is being watched very carefully. She imagines twelve sets of gills, pulsing, drawing the water across highly tuned sensory organs evolved to identify any trace of panic in every show of confidence. They taste the water for prey.
“I believe that we had agreed to make the handover at close of play today. However, I’d like to ensure that we have no loose ends so that a smooth transition can be made between the consultation team and the implementation team. In consideration of the probability that these final negotiations can be rather long, drawn-out tedious affairs, and in light of the fact that we will not be able to begin implementation until Monday of next week, I wondered if it might make sense to make the handover first thing Monday morning, if that is acceptable to the board?”
Silence again, as they taste the water once more. She looks out at the huge panoramic vista of London sprawling before her and imagines that standing in this room in this silence, surrounded by these sharks, is the most normal thing in the world. She will bear this.
Finally, Bell speaks:
“Miss Evans,” he says slowly, indulgently, “you appear to have something on your shirt.”
She looks down and sees a thin trickle of globular dental blood running parallel to her tie.
Six hundred grand is a lot.
Slanket
When she wakes up, Mark has gone. She still has a tingling sensation in her ears from the gig last night. She considers the possibility that she is getting too old for punk gigs, but then she decides that if that is the case, she might as well quit now, move to Castle Greysulk and pull up the drawbridge.
Mr Buttons jumps up onto her bed and begins purring in earnest as he pushes his head into her face. The cat is fiercely cross-eyed and has a very small head in relation to its body. Mark calls him Mr Muttons.
“Hello Buttons, at least somebody loves me, eh?” She pushes the cat away, as she is getting quite a bit of cat hair in her mouth, and climbs out of bed. She goes to the bathroom, brushes her teeth and then walks to the window by her bed and looks out over Borough Market. Rain is falling heavily once again, but the market is still a bustle of intermingling multi-coloured umbrellas. She can smell Goan fish curry dominating various other delicious aromas drifting up from the huge steel pans of food bubbling away below.
“Hmmm, yes Buttons, we’re hungry aren’t we?” she says to the feline coiling round her legs and looking up beseechingly at her (and out of the window at the same time). She goes into the tiny kitchen section of her studio flat and looks in the cupboards. There is one dainty-looking pouch of gourmet cat food, an array of sticky-topped condiment bottles, a jar of instant coffee and one onion covered in tiny blue polka dots.
“OK, here’s the plan Buttons,” she says, taking the cat food pouch from the cupboard and putting it in the pink cat bowl, “today we’re going to have a slanket day – you’re going to eat this and I’m going to have some coffee, yes that’s right, hmmm, coffee, who knows – I might lose some weight. Then I’m going to get the slanket and we’re going to curl up on the couch in front of the TV and look for something worthy to watch, then give up and watch Downton Abbey instead, until 6pm, when Grace is going to take me out for dinner, somewhere expensive, and I will fill a doggy bag full of enough goodies to see us through Sunday. Then on Monday, with any luck, one of my clients will decide to pay me and then we’ll be able to pay the rent and the bank won’t repossess the flat and….” The cat has finished wolfing down its deluxe breakfast and no sooner has the last morsel disappeared than it bolts out of the cat flap. “Where are you going? This concerns you too! Muttons, you little shit!”
She sighs and puts the kettle on.
Her mind skims over the details of her life, like a skater on thin ice: the issues of her debt; her inability to sustain a meaningful, long term relationship; her steadily ticking biological clock; her work as a psychotherapist that seems to drain her emotionally, whilst giving very little in financial return; her deep sense of isolation and loneliness; her awareness that she has gained a considerable amount of weight in the last couple of years. All these things are boiling away like angry welts on the bottom of her frozen river, weakening the ice and drawing her ever nearer to the moment when she will fall through into that sullen, gloomy darkness and join the growing ranks of those that her local PCT describes as ‘languishing with long-term mental health problems’.
She sometimes wonders whether she is like one of the latter-day saints who went to live in leper colonies and eventually succumbed to the disease that they had originally gone to cure. If she spends the entirety of her time with depressed, anxious, angry, paranoid, insecure people, surely it is only natural that their discontent will rub off onto her in time.
Maybe she should drop out completely like her younger sister Elsa and go and live in a hippy commune, before it’s too late. Elsa seems happier there than she has at any time since Scott’s death. She had never been particularly close to her sister, as there was quite an age gap between them, but they had seen a little more of each other since the tragedy; how could she not empathise? Contrary to what she had expected, the hippy commune has turned out to be the best thing that could’ve happened to Elsa and she’s made some really close friends – funny coincidence to see Tanya last night at the gig, and her boyfriend, who was playing bass in the band, seemed nice too, though a bit moody.
She makes the coffee, gets into her slanket and goes straight to the recorded episodes of Downton Abbey, pulling the warm covers around her grumbling belly.
*
Grace finally picks her up at 7.30pm in her green vintage
Jaguar, though she doesn’t actually speak to her in the car as Grace is having a conversation with a Mr Bell’s secretary and expressing her gratitude for the extended deadline. When she hangs up, she immediately raises her hand to indicate she wishes for silence from her friend and then makes another call to a man called James, who Grace informs of the deadline extension and then tells him in no uncertain terms that they have to acquire the final deeds by first thing Monday morning or they will both be up shit creek and he will be without a paddle. She knew Grace’s work was tough and demanding, but even she is surprised to hear how aggressive Grace sounds, particularly since she can hear a considerable amount of restraint in her voice.
They pull up outside Nemo’s and Grace hands the keys to a valet. She immediately feels underdressed as they walk up the steps and into the lobby; Grace’s suit clearly cost considerably more than she has earned this quarter. Grace is welcomed by name and they are smoothly guided to her ‘usual’ table. The restaurant is fitted out like the inside of an old submarine, with huge riveted bolts around every seam and corner. Each of the doors leading to the kitchen and rest rooms is a rounded hatch with brass wheels like those that submarines have to make the pressure seals. At each end of the restaurant is a very large, circular window looking into what appear to be two enormous tanks, one of which houses a formidable-looking Great White Shark and the other a very large squid. Their table is the epitomy of Victorian nautical opulence, with a subtly lit teak wood table and green leather armchairs. Hanging above their heads is a periscope which glides weightlessly down and displays a menu when she places her eye to the lens.
The Laundry Basket Page 5