A Week in December

by Sebastian Faulks

  ‘Very nice,’ said Tranter.

  There was a faintly sneering edge to his voice that Knocker chose to ignore; some people just had an unfortunate manner. He settled Tranter in an armchair and went to sit behind his desk.

  He smiled broadly. ‘Let’s get down to business, Mr Tranter, if we may. I’ve got a simple proposition to put to you. I need what you might call a crash course. I shall shortly be meeting Her Majesty the Queen and I feel that I’m not well prepared conversationally.’

  ‘Really?’ There was a sceptical note to everything Tranter said, though Knocker found it hard to tell whether Tranter thought he had made up the bit about the Queen or was being modest about his readiness.

  ‘I come from a simple family, you see. My family were farmers and didn’t read books. My education was in a state school that prepared the pupils to be electricians or plumbers. I think I may also have suffered from dyslexia, though it wasn’t a complaint we knew anything about in those days. What I’d like is for you to make me familiar with the great works of English literature of the past and bring me up to date on the writers of today, so that if Her Majesty steers the conversation towards books, I can have something interesting to say.’

  Tranter’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times. ‘Yes, I can do that,’ he said eventually. ‘But do you think it’s likely that she’ll talk books? She’s not famous for reading, is she?’

  Knocker frowned. This had not occurred to him.

  ‘But of course,’ Tranter went on quickly, glancing round the opulent room, ‘you’d better be prepared. And it’ll still be knowledge that’ll stand you in good stead. At other times.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. That’s a good way of looking at it. Now I’ve done some homework on the most respected writers of today, and I sent my assistant Mrs Hine out to the bookshop. Come and tell me what you think of this little collection. Tell me which one to begin with.’

  Knocker pointed to two piles of books, about fifteen in all, that were ready on his desk. Tranter came and stood beside him.

  ‘This author’s very famous, I believe,’ said Knocker, holding up a moody-looking hardback with a belly-band that said it had been listed for the Café Bravo award.

  ‘Famous,’ said Tranter, ‘but hopelessly overrated. It’s what we call OT.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Oirish Twaddle.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Forget him.’

  ‘What about this one?’ said Knocker. ‘It says she’s twice won the Allied Royal prize.’

  ‘No, no. Awful “creative writing” sort of stuff. Terribly illusionist and overwrought. Poor man’s Somerset Maugham, with embarrassing improbabilities at key moments.’

  Knocker looked taken aback. ‘I see. I think perhaps I was misinformed. I took some guidance from the Internet.’

  Tranter gave a short laugh. ‘God, that goons’ rodeo. Nutter central. I mean, if only they could get a green-ink detection device and use it as a filter the Web’d lose ninety per cent of its traffic.’

  Knocker looked at the sharp, foxy face next to his. He couldn’t understand much of what the man said. It struck him as odd that Tranter, who was supposed to be a man of words, wouldn’t alter the way he spoke so that Knocker could follow what he meant.

  ‘This one?’ he said, holding up another novel heavy with praise.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Tranter. ‘The man who put the “anal” into “banality”. Costive little stories that beg to be called significant. His tragedy is that he was not born “European”. Should have worked in advertising.’

  And so they went down through the pile. ‘Overblown and sentimental ... You just wish he’d come out of the closet and stop pretending that his little queens are women for heaven’s sake ...’

  By this time, there were only three of the books that Mrs Hine had bought remaining on the desk, and Knocker was beginning to lose patience.

  He held up a book by an author whose name was familiar even to himself.

  Tranter took it from him, shook his head and tossed it back on the desk. ‘Barely animated TV scripts,’ he said.

  The last two he didn’t even bother to pick up. ‘Barbara Pym and water ... Writing by numbers ...’

  ‘Well, Mr Tranter,’ said Knocker, ‘I seem to have made a pretty bad start to my project.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ said Tranter. ‘These are just the usual suspects favoured by the literary establishment.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Knocker, ‘but are there any living British authors that you do recommend?’

  Tranter scratched his chin, and his fingernails made a slight noise in the stubble. ‘No, not living,’ he said. ‘But quite recent. Modern in their way.’

  Nasim came in with a tray. Normally, she would have asked Lucy, the Brazilian girl, to do it, but she was curious to meet the literary man.

  ‘My dear, this is Mr Tranter. This is my wife, Nasim.’

  Tranter and Nasim had a moment of being uncertain whether to shake hands, though it passed when Knocker put his arm round his wife and escorted her to the desk.

  ‘Mr Tranter says I’m wasting my time with all of these writers,’ he said. ‘He says none of them are any good.’

  ‘But what if Her Majesty likes them?’ said Nasim. ‘You should still have read them so you can talk to her about her favourites.’

  Knocker smiled. ‘A very clever woman, my wife, isn’t she? These writers may all be as bad as you say, Mr Tranter, but I need to have some knowledge of them. Even if they are all a big con trick.’

  ‘Well, I can give you that all right,’ said Tranter. ‘A sort of bluffer’s guide if you like.’

  ‘We also need to find out who her favourite authors are,’ said Nasim.

  Knocker looked at Tranter. He scratched his chin again. ‘I seem to remember she likes Dick Francis.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘He writes racing thrillers. You know, horse racing.’

  ‘I shall ask Mrs Hine to buy some tomorrow. Has he written many?’

  ‘Thousands.’

  ‘Good. But I should also like to read some great literature. I want to learn for my own sake, not just for Her Majesty. I want to start the habit of a lifetime.’

  ‘Then I suppose we should look at the Victorians,’ said Tranter. ‘Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope. George Eliot.’

  ‘You won’t tell me they’re a “busted flush” or “writing by numbers”?’

  ‘No, no. Not Thackeray anyway.’

  ‘I’ve heard of all those people,’ said Nasim.

  ‘My wife is very well read,’ Knocker explained. ‘Tell him who you’ve read.’

  ‘For our exam,’ said Nasim, ‘we could choose between a book by Iris Murdoch—’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Tranter, ‘an excellent example of the higher bogus.’

  ‘Or Howards End ...’

  ‘Mmm ...’ said Tranter. ‘Which Howard? I think we know which end.’

  ‘Or Virginia Woolf.’

  ‘God. Chick-lit meets psychosis. Which one did you end up doing?’

  ‘We did Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.’

  Tranter laughed. ‘Noting like a bit of Irishry if in doubt,’ he said. ‘A bit of OT always goes down well.’

  Nasim looked crestfallen. There was a slight flush under her skin.

  ‘There’s another Victorian novelist I rate very highly,’ said Tranter quickly, as though sensing that he might have gone too far. ‘In fact, I’ve written a biography of him.’

  ‘How exciting,’ said Nasim, recovering her poise. ‘And is it published?’

  ‘That’s the general idea,’ said Tranter. ‘In fact it’s a finalist for the Pizza Palace Book of the Year at Christmas.’

  ‘Congratulations. And who is this author?’

  ‘Alfred Huntley Edgerton,’ said Tranter.

  ‘I’ve never heard of him,’ said Nasim.

  ‘He’s not as well known as the others. But he’s very go
od.’

  ‘I think I should like to try him,’ said Knocker.

  ‘Then you’d be one up on the Queen,’ said Nasim. ‘I mean, thanks to Mr Tranter you’d have a special knowledge of ... What was his name?’

  ‘Edgerton.’

  By the time Tranter left half an hour later, Knocker al-Rashid had his first homework reading list: Shropshire Towers by Alfred Huntley Edgerton and Whip Hand by Dick Francis. The over-praised ‘moderns’, it was agreed, would have to wait for another day, when Tranter would begin the bluffer’s guide.

  In Pfäffikon, Kieran Duffy was moving cautiously forwards. It was none of his business how John Veals intended to introduce some life into the market for ARB shares, but while he was waiting for it to happen, he turned his attention to the foreign-exchange leg of the trade.

  On the grounds that a British bank crisis, even if confined to one bank, would adversely affect the pound when the government had to borrow abroad, Duffy intended to sell forward £10 billion against a mixture of euros, Swiss francs and US dollars. Even twenty years before, such a large trade would have been the talk of every bar in London, New York and Paris, which was still then a financial centre. Now Duffy could complete it in privacy in ten minutes on the FX screen installed on his desk by High Level’s prime broker. It was the one part of the trade that he himself manually instigated.

  Foreign-exchange trades required that the trader put up two per cent collateral, but High Level could automatically borrow the first £400 million of any margin requirement; this was one of a number of facilities offered by the prime broker when they were pitching for High Level’s business. What it meant in practice was that Duffy could place a trade of £20 billion without putting his hand in his pocket, though he preferred to go in at only half that level for the time being.

  He keyed in the last of his strokes, less elegantly than Victoria would have done, with a defiant stab. The desktop system he was using rationalised every bid and offer from every trading system in the world, working all day, six days a week. As he sat back in his chair, he knew that risk and settlement systems around the globe were almost instantaneously digesting his trade.

  It was no fun any more. The typical foreign-exchange trader in London had once learned his business in a fish or meat market where he’d been able to do rapid calculations while withstanding a barrage of shouted information. Duffy was old enough to have seen them in action once, these Leadenhall and Smithfield men, on a visit from New York. He’d been taken out to lunch at a place called the Paris Grill, where the steak and chips was served by waitresses in black negligees. He’d been amazed at how much the Brits could drink at lunch before returning to work, where, in the absence of sufficient foreign-exchange activity, they placed huge bets on how long the Pope or Emperor Hirohito was going to stay alive.

  When it was confirmed that his currency trade had gone through, Duffy turned his attention back to Allied Royal. The share price had begun to rise – not dramatically, and with one or two blips, but with what looked like a steady underlying confidence. By late afternoon there was enough activity for him to be able to start making some more calls to obtain prices for puts and calls in the stock. He didn’t know what part Veals might have played in the rally, and he would never ask, but when the day’s trading was finished he was able to send a message to Veals’s black mobile number: ‘Rheumatism definitely easing. Expect full movement tmw.’

  IV

  Sophie Topping’s taxi drew into Dover Street at seven o’clock. She’d arranged to meet Lance at 6.30 and some women from her book club at 6.45, so her timing, she felt, was just right.

  She had never been to the auctioneers’ headquarters before, though she’d seen it on the television news when a suave man in a double-breasted suit extracted £10 million from an absent buyer for a smudged pot of Impressionist flowers.

  Tonight, however, was a special gala and Sophie found herself giddy with pleasurable excitement. Here were no Van Goghs or Monets, no Old Masters or Cubists or Moderns; tonight, as the catalogue had it, was ‘A unique artistic event’. The forty-two-year-old Liam Hogg had taken over the entire first floor of the auction house. Hogg, with the blessing of the Blank Slate Gallery in Stoke Newington, to whom he had remained brashly faithful through the boom years, had decided to ‘turn art-world convention on its head’.

  Sophie walked through the long downstairs lobby, past the coats, and turned to climb the marble stairs. She spotted Lance halfway up, talking to Vanessa Veals and Amanda Malpasse.

  ‘Glad you could make it, Soph,’ said Lance, looking at his watch.

  Sophie wasn’t listening; she was taking in what clothes the others were wearing. Both had gone to considerable efforts. Vanessa must have spent thousands on her outfit – not that money was of any consequence to the Vealses; but Sophie recognised the couture dress from a page in a fashion magazine and the shoes from a designer whose work she considered too delicate for her own sturdy ankles. The brassy handbag was another three or four thousand pounds’ worth that would appear on Vanessa’s arm perhaps twice in its life.

  A waiter was offering cocktails of a violent blue, and Sophie opted for the safety of champagne. Amanda also had a new dress from the top end of a Knightsbridge rail and her hair had the slightly dry look of the salon about it. Both declined the morsels of food – raw shark, carpaccio of suckling pig or something equally scary-sounding to Sophie – that were offered on a Perspex tray.

  The four of them mounted the stairs and entered the main gallery, which was crammed with people. Sophie’s eye ran over the organdies and devorés, the faux-fur and the fox, the taffeta and cashmere, the demure black cocktail dresses with a confidently simple row of pearls; the carefree pinks and golds with bouclé curls and tailored waists; the knee-length slashed satin and two or three instances of carefully ripped denim. The men wore hand-finished suits – some with ties and some without, but none with the shine of chain-store cloth. The only outfits that had cost more than the Savile Row three-pieces, in Sophie’s rapid tour d’horizon, were the rebel biker outfits with the pre-distressed boots. The guests were packed in so tight that it was hard to see the art. Sophie sighed happily. She felt the investment in her own dress and shoes had been not only justified but had proved essential. Over the lovely, lively throng she could make out a sort of nimbus, where the muted beams from tracked ceiling lights bounced off the gold and diamonds below to form a thin, vapid haze.

  Liam Hogg and his studio had, according to the press release, been ‘working round the clock’ for six months to fill the august space, through which had passed the work of Rembrandt and Turner, Caravaggio and Vermeer. The walls had been stripped of their paper for the occasion and covered with a white distemper. The maroon carpet over which so many Bond Street shoes had slid since the Second World War had been prised up, rolled and stored. The revealed floorboards had been sandblasted by men in masks.

  Smoking, at Liam Hogg’s insistence, was encouraged by the provision of several free-standing wrought iron ashtrays, in the shape of upright male organs, stationed about the room like collateral damage from an explosion on a porn film. It had been rumoured in the gossip columns that the artist had used his own member to make the first cast from which the blacksmith had, mutatis mutandis, manufactured the rest.

  ‘All traces of the gallery’s normal atmosphere have been purged’, according to the catalogue introduction. Certainly, the walls bore no reminder of the last two money-spinning sales – of brightly cleaned sixteenth-century Flemish flower paintings and of flat, shy abstracts by Peter Lanyon and Ben Nicholson.

  Instead, there were the images that had made Liam Hogg the richest English artist of his time. Here was Anagnorisis V, his take on consumerism that was made up of repetitive patterns of bar codes, cut from the back of supermarket goods. Here, too, was his famous pink and turquoise silk-screen print of the Muhammad Ali–Sonny Liston photograph. And at the end of the gallery was the installation Everything I Know About Life I Learned From Not Li
stening, which was a pub table with an empty beer bottle, glasses and a full ashtray.

  ‘I’ve yet to meet a single person not in finance,’ grumbled Lance Topping. ‘Half the bloody hedge-fund industry seems to have pottered over from Mayfair after work.’

  ‘Look,’ said Sophie, ‘there’s Nasim al-Rashid. She’s not in hedge funds. She’s in pickle.’

  ‘I suppose I’d better be nice to her,’ said Lance. ‘Her old man did bung us fifty grand.’

  ‘Go on, then. And don’t forget they’re coming to dinner on Saturday.’

  Nasim had seen the Toppings and crossed the room to speak to them; she didn’t know anyone else there. Knocker had refused to accompany her, so she’d had to come on her own. She wore a sari of an intense indigo that looked more Belgravia than Wembley; she also had a gold necklace of flat, concentric hoops like those in a pharaoh’s tomb. It was lovely, Sophie admitted to herself, though Nasim seemed unaware of the impression she made: probably something to do with her religion.

  ‘What does this mean?’ Nasim was saying. She was pointing to a caption on a large piece behind them. It said ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’.

  ‘It’s German, isn’t it?’ said Sophie.

  There were black and white news photographs of people in a concentration camp, possibly Belsen or Auschwitz, on which Liam Hogg had drawn in some additions. One skeletal man on a bare bunk had been given a needle and thread to make him look like a tailor; another had a pickaxe over his shoulder and a miner’s lamp drawn on to his skull. A third had been given a lawyer’s curly wig, while a naked woman on the ground, who looked as though she might be dead, had a nurse’s cap and a stethoscope over her bony ribcage.

  At the far end of the room, a queue had formed and was waiting, cocktail in hand, to go behind a screen into a room with a low light, like that reserved for the Mona Lisa in the Louvre.