A Week in December

by Sebastian Faulks

  ‘I’ve never met anyone like him before. What was he like when ... Before it all happened?’

  ‘Just a normal kid. He had a bit of a temper. He could be quite intense. But he was good at work, good at games. We had fun together.’

  ‘Was it just the two of you?’

  ‘Yes. We grew up in a village in Hampshire. My father had a farm. He was the tenant at any rate. Then he entered into some crazy scheme to buy the farm and breed racehorses. It didn’t work out. But it was all right. There was a good school in the town and a teacher there pushed me on towards university.’

  ‘Were you, like, a geek then?’

  ‘No, Jenni, I was not a geek. I was just naturally brilliant.’

  ‘Oh yeah, tell me about it!’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I grew up in a tower block in Leyton with my mum.’

  ‘Shit. As you would say.’

  ‘Yeah. But it wasn’t that bad. I didn’t know anything else. Mum was nice. It was OK till the lift broke down.’

  ‘What did you do for money?’

  ‘Mum worked at the post office sorting depot. I was left to myself.’

  ‘That’s how you became so independent.’

  ‘I s’pose it is. I never thought of it like that. But with Adam ... I’m just curious. Of course I knew there were people who were like, mad. But not, you know, ordinary people.’

  Gabriel finished the rough Italian wine. ‘That’s the trouble with psychosis. It picks on ordinary people. One in a hundred. No other animal has it, so far as we know. When the horse stands alone in the field he doesn’t hear the neighing of three horses who aren’t there. He doesn’t believe he’s being hunted down by other horses. Actually, it’s stronger than that. It’s not a question of believing. Adam doesn’t “believe” that Axia and the gang are broadcasting his thoughts on Channel 7 at prime time. He knows they are.’

  ‘One in a hundred,’ said Jenni. ‘That’s unbelievable.’

  ‘But true. No one wants to know. It’s shameful, it’s hard to take in. It’s as though one in a hundred eagles was blind from birth. Or one in a hundred kangaroos had no hop. It’s that weird.’

  ‘And why does no one want to know?’ said Jenni. ‘I want to know. I care about Adam. And ... you know, people like him.’

  Gabriel looked at Jenni. Her eyes were shining, with tears or with excitement or with indignation – he didn’t know her well enough to say. There was something about this girl, though ... She had touched a susceptibility very deep in him.

  ‘I think it’s just too shaming for humans to admit that we are basically fucked,’ he said. ‘Sorry, Jenni. Sorry about the language.’

  ‘I drive a train, Gabriel. I work with men. You can swear about it, you’re allowed to be angry. Why are we fucked?’

  ‘Genetically.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Do you understand natural selection?’

  ‘I think I was off school the week we did that one.’

  ‘It’s like this. Species change because, as they breed, minute errors occur in cell duplication which give minor variations to the offspring. Usually the change dies with the individual. But once in a million times this tiny change gives the individual an advantage in his world, so he’s favoured in breeding. The change is passed on and becomes embedded. The species has evolved. To survive better than your competitors, you need only minute advantages. But some freak change happened in human ancestors. It was not microscopic, it was gigantic. We needed only to keep half a step ahead of other primates and carnivorous land mammals with strong incisors. But instead of that, we produced Shakespeare, Mozart, Newton, Einstein. We only needed a slightly more agile gibbon and we ended up with Sophocles. And the flip side of this colossal and totally unnecessary advantage was that the human genome was, to use our favourite technical term, fucked. It’s unstable, it’s flawed, because it’s so ahead of itself. One in a hundred pays the price for everyone else to live their weirdly hyper-advanced lives. They’re the scapegoats. Poor, poor bastards.’

  Jenni said, ‘So it’s passed on, this problem? Schizophrenia. It’s, like, hereditary?’

  ‘Yes. Well, mostly. If one of your parents has it, you’re much more likely to. It runs in families. But it’s not completely hereditary. You have identical twins with identical genomes and one will develop the illness and the other one won’t. So they figure there’s something else too, what they call an “environmental factor”.’

  ‘So it’s part hard-wired and part not? That’s really strange.’

  ‘I know. But this is what Adam’s doctors have told me. Sometimes the wiring’s such that you just get it. When your brain circuits finish growing and the last connection’s made, that’s it. You’re psychotic. Others are delicately balanced. The circuitry’s complete but it still needs a push.’

  ‘And what pushes it?’

  ‘Drugs are the commonest cause. Skunk, acid, amphetamines. LSD was actually synthesised in a lab by chemists asked by psychiatric researchers to come up with a drug that would induce temporary psychosis. So acid can work pretty well. Or alcohol. Or extreme stress, which can release similar chemicals in the brain.’

  ‘And the chemicals cause the electrical circuit to join up?’ said Jenni.

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘I guess it’s like when they throw the switch on the Circle Line.’

  They didn’t talk much on the train. Jenni was puzzling over what Gabriel had told her and was hoping that, however much she sympathised with Adam, the evening wouldn’t make Gabriel forget about her. But he was looking out of the window, seemingly lost in his own thoughts.

  ‘Tell me something from your childhood,’ said Jenni, determined not to let him drift away from her. ‘Tell me the best thing that happened. Maybe before Adam got ill.’

  Gabriel turned his head, rather wearily she thought, towards her. ‘The best thing? Well, I think we were happy most of the time. But I do remember once, a summer evening. A tiny thing, just a moment really. I suppose I wasn’t a child, though, because I could drive a car. Maybe I was eighteen. I’d worked all summer to save up to buy this old deathtrap. It cost £200. I was working on a farm on the other side of the county. And I’d got up at seven on a Sunday to drive miles and play cricket somewhere and I’d persuaded this girl to come with me. She was someone I’d met at a party. She was so pretty, she was really out of my league. Luckily I was out first ball so I could sit and talk to her, so she didn’t get too bored. And when we were fielding I was worried she’d just disappear. But she didn’t. She stuck it out. And we all went to this pub afterwards and drank beer, and I had this thought that I hadn’t been home for a long time, a month or so, because I’d been working, and I telephoned from the pub and my mother said if I could get there within the hour, she’d keep supper. And I knew there’d be all these fresh vegetables from the farm garden. And this girl said she’d like to come and although it was nearly nine it was still light. And I just remember driving down these narrow lanes with the windows open and the overpowering smell of hawthorn and cow parsley coming in and seeing the sun go down and driving a bit too fast and eventually I recognised where we were and told her to put the map away. And we arrived in the village and the headlights picked out all the moths and midges in the air. And nothing had happened. I hadn’t even kissed her. And that was what was so wonderful. Everything was just beginning. Everything was in perfect equilibrium, it was unimprovable. My father was alive. Nothing had gone wrong.’

  Jenni smiled. ‘I can see that.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘When my father came back once and said he’d stay for ever.’

  ‘But he didn’t.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Five.’

  Gabriel sighed. ‘I’m sorry.’

  At Victoria, Jenni said she would take the Circle Line to Paddington for Drayton Green.

  ‘I’ll see you home,’ said Gabriel. ‘It’s late.’

 
‘Don’t be daft. I’m not sixteen.’

  ‘I’d like to.’

  She barely hesitated. ‘All right, then.’

  They reached Cowper Road just before midnight and Gabriel said goodnight at the door.

  ‘We never talked about your case, I’m afraid,’ he said.

  With her key in the lock, Jenni turned back to face him. ‘Better fix another meeting,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe tomorrow evening?’ said Gabriel, forgetting he was due at the Toppings’.

  ‘Whatever,’ said Jenni. Or at least that was what Gabriel thought she said, but it was hard to be certain because her lips were pressed against his as she spoke. He ran his hands down the back of her chain-store coat and pulled her towards him by the hips.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw a man watching from the other side of the road. He put his lips to Jenni’s ear. ‘Will you get Tony to come out here a second?’

  ‘What’s the matter? Is it that man again?’

  ‘Ssh. Just get Tony.’

  While he waited, Gabriel tried not to let the other man see that he knew he was there. He stared at the closed front door, consulted his watch and stamped his feet in the cold, as though waiting for someone. Eventually, Tony put his head out.

  ‘There’s someone watching the house,’ said Gabriel. ‘Watching Jenni. Shall we get him? The man who was here last night.’

  ‘You bet. Let’s go.’

  As they ran across the road, the man emerged from the shadows and took flight. There was enough of the 400-metre runner still left in Tony, however, and he scragged him at the corner of Dryden Avenue. Gabriel arrived a moment later and they shoved him up against a lamp post.

  ‘What do you want?’ said Tony.

  ‘Nothing. I just—’

  ‘What’s your name?’ said Gabriel.

  ‘Jason.’

  ‘I thought so. It’s not a game. Whatever your real name is. This is not a game. Miranda, the girl you want, she doesn’t exist.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘She’s really an old man. She’s not even a girl.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘If you come round again, I’ll knock your fucking head off,’ said Tony.

  ‘Get back to reality,’ said Gabriel. ‘Get a fucking grip.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I promise I won’t come back.’

  ‘You’d better fucking not,’ said Tony.

  ‘Chuck out the game,’ said Gabriel. ‘Just bin it. Miranda’s not real.’

  They let him go, and he ran off towards the station.

  Tony and Gabriel walked back down Cowper Road.

  ‘Why are you coming back?’ said Tony.

  ‘Just ... I ... Don’t know really.’

  ‘You want to kiss my sister again, don’t you?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Gabriel.

  ‘All right, but you’re not coming in, mate.’

  ‘I don’t want to come in,’ said Gabriel. ‘I just want to kiss your sister one more time.’

  ‘Go on, then,’ said Tony, as he let himself into the house. ‘I’ll send her out.’

  Seven

  Saturday, December 22

  I

  During the morning, the cold weather disappeared from the capital. By 2.30, the matinee-goers in the stalls of the Theatre Royal, Haymarket were fanning themselves with their programmes; below them, in the tunnels of the Bakerloo Line, shoppers on their way from Charing Cross were pulling at the collars of their now unnecessary overcoats. Chefs in the Chinese restaurants of Queensway were driving their sleeves across their brows to keep the sweat from falling on the carrots they were dicing for the evening service; the mosaic tiles in the Regent’s Park Mosque glistened with condensation and there was steam in the windows of the last bespoke tailor in Tulse Hill. In the department stores of Oxford Street, the atomised perfume spray hung static in the ground-floor fug, as people carrying folded coats pushed their way through the crowd, leaving piles of woollen scarves and gloves unbought, emblems of Christmas past.

  At ten o’clock, Roger and Amanda Malpasse left their Chilterns house and set off for London and the Toppings’ party. Amanda thought she could probably do all the shopping that remained and still have time to have her hair done before they went out. She had booked lunch at one in an Italian restaurant in Fulham Road; it was near their flat in Roland Gardens and had been run by the same people for twenty years.

  Roger was reluctant to leave the country on a Saturday, as his routine was one to which he’d grown attached. An early dog walk, then an hour’s vigorous gardening and a game of doubles on the all-weather tennis court of a village neighbour gave him a righteous thirst that beer, gin and tonic and a half-bottle of white burgundy, in that order, exactly satisfied. In the afternoon, he liked to listen to the football commentary on the radio in the ‘snug’ with his feet up on the sofa, some of the many dogs snoozing by the fire and the colourful nonsense of the newspapers spread about him. At about four, he closed his eyes; at five Amanda usually came in with tea.

  Amanda, on the other hand, took every opportunity to visit London. In the redbrick mansion blocks off the Brompton and the Gloucester roads, in the boutiques and museums and cafés, she could still just recapture the lightness of her youth; she walked down Brechin Place and Drayton Gardens pretending to be twenty-three again. It wasn’t difficult, because nothing much had changed there, and it wasn’t too depressing because she wouldn’t want all that passion and fatigue again. Not really.

  ‘Just don’t drink too much, Roger,’ she said, cracking a lunchtime breadstick and sipping her aperitif. ‘I don’t want you getting pissed and making a scene at the Toppings’ tonight.’

  ‘Would I ever?’ said Roger.

  At noon, the removal van arrived at Sophie Topping’s house in North Park. They took out all the furniture from the first-floor sitting room, then brought in a series of tables long enough for thirty-four guests and set them up on the ground floor. The normal furniture would be stored overnight and returned the next day; Sophie was fairly sure it stayed in the back of the van, but so long as it came back safely didn’t like to make a fuss.

  It took her two hours to finalise who should sit where. She was always torn between the need to keep two people known to get on badly as far apart as possible and a mischievous desire to put them next to one another; the same applied to men and women known to have what Lance called ‘the hots’ for one another. One way round this dilemma was to move people halfway through the evening, so they had both a hot and cold seat; but which was the better way round? Prudence suggested that the hot seat should come first; then, at half-time, the man would move on, wrathful or aroused, and take his vigour with him ... But Sophie wasn’t feeling prudent: she was feeling proud of Lance, and playful and ambitious; so she did the placings with the cold seat first – to give the evening what she hoped would be a high-temperature finish. The footballer, Borowski, had telephoned only twenty-four hours earlier to say he was bringing his girlfriend, a Russian called Olya, which had caused Sophie a panic as she searched for a last-minute man. She had plumped for someone she’d met at a literary fund-raiser for talking books: Patrick Warrender, a seemingly civilised journalist. Shortly after securing Patrick, she’d had a call from Radley Graves, the schoolmaster, saying he had flu and wouldn’t be able to make it. And this time she decided to let the numbers stay odd.

  In all social matters, Sophie was motivated by a desire to win the competition with the other wives and mothers of North Park. It was an all-female, all-consuming endeavour; the husbands or partners were involved, but were not themselves participants. What the competition actually consisted of was unclear: there were no rules, no definitions of success and no prizes. In Sophie’s mind, however, there was a virtual league table from which people were promoted and relegated. Money, naturally, played a part. Having the clear blue water of £10 million in cash (what the bonus-bankers called their ‘nuts’) squirrelled away was a sound start. Next came good looks, notably appearing younger th
an your age. Having brilliant or – since exam grade inflation had made it hard to discriminate between them – charming children was vital. Their number also counted in your favour: four or more showed confidence, an unruly sexual life and impressive organisational ability. Perhaps the single most valuable factor in Sophie’s mythology was the appearance of your house. Again, it was more than size and value; it was to do with the degree to which visitors were impressed by its decor and atmosphere – by its veneers and surfaces. Sophie was fairly sure that while she and Lance were in no danger of relegation from the premier division, they were not exactly pushing for the top places either; a glance at the football tables on Lance’s back page suggested they were a social Everton.

  The objective success of Lance Topping in becoming the party’s newest MP didn’t count for very much. In North Park, politics was rated below banking, broking, business or even ‘creative’ things, such as advertising. There was also the awkwardness of ostentation, of being too obviously in the spotlight, because this made it look as though you were trying too hard. The first rule of the competition was not to be seen to be competing; the second rule, so far as Sophie had worked it out, was not to be fat. There had been a chubby woman once, but she had moved – had to move, Sophie sometimes thought. As one who enjoyed three meals a day, not eating had been the toughest North Park discipline for Sophie to master. Most of the women she knew suffered low blood pressure, hypoglycaemia, stomach cramps or gastro-enteric disorders from having no lunch, no carbohydrates – but occasional cheesecake orgies. All of them thought it worthwhile, however, as their slimness belied their age, and in their own minds they edged a place or two up the fantasy league, displacing someone who had fallen prey to ‘bar mitzvah’ arms, love handles or cellulite.