‘My car’s waiting downstairs.’
‘I was going to tell you that I will be leaving too—’
‘Going back to New York? Yes. It figures.’ And I can picture her already tripping along Wall Street in her early morning sneakers, expertly outmanoeuvring the flooding suits.
She nods, twisting her lips to the side. ‘In the spring. It’s been decided.’
‘That’s nice,’ I say. ‘So you can both be together.’
She opens her mouth but reconsiders. The taste of humble pie hard to take.
‘So what about Rex?’
‘Dogs are like kids, you know, they need a stable home.’ I touch the glass iceberg, press down hard on the jagged edges and when I turn my palm over there are little pink pressure spots.
‘Anything you need a hand with just ask,’ her voice almost a whisper.
‘There is just one thing.’
‘Go ahead.’ She steels herself for the payback she deserves. Moves round the desk to face me and I realise for the first time that I am actually a good couple of inches taller than her, which is something I never noticed in all these years.
‘Anything,’ she says for she is ready. And this is the Zanna I know, who is always closing or seizing the moment, who never stands in a queue. There is a defiant tilt to her chin as she waits for my axe to fall, and the petty curiosity drains from me and is replaced by a surge of memory: the first time I saw her, the first time she strode onto the trading floor swinging that bob; I can see her fixing my mascara in the ladies at the Ritz, look up, Geri, and for Chrissake don’t blink; I can feel her hand on my back as she looks over my shoulder in the mirror and I know that she is exactly who she purports to be. She is Rosanna P. Vermont and history may have separated us from a future but the past doesn’t have to be revised. There is something about good faith in the air. She is not un-brave. She doesn’t scurry off to hide in a cave. She will live and die by the sword and she will always face the music.
‘What?’ she says now, for Zanna is ready to count the cost.
‘Repeat after me.’
She cocks her head.
‘Repeat after me,’ I say again and her puzzled face breaks into a smile.
‘Repeat after me,’ she whispers shakily and I see her eyes tear up. She twitches her nose against this unfamiliar sensation and I reach out to pat her shoulder but my hand flounders in the space between us and just brushes the side of her arm. Zanna bites her lip hard and I walk through the open door and out into the corridor with that last picture of her. The bitten lip, the useless tears, my flailing hand.
I will try to remember her this way just because I can. And I will try to remember us intact. It is a beginning.
I dump my suit carrier and slam the door. The driver says how it’s not such a great time to be travelling and then we head off through the City streets. He keeps up a monologue about the war and how he wishes he had CNN and I’m thinking how these days never get fully light. We inch through the West End in a receding drizzle and every single thing I see looks like it’s melting away.
I imagine Pie Man hunched over a café table in Liverpool Street chewing over some algorithms; he has scoped out what Bankers Trust are up to and he is electrified by possibility. He reaches for the second Eccles cake and his hand freezes, paralysed over the plate. He kicks back the chair, gathers his papers together and strides out. Hurries purposefully forwards and breaks into a run along Bishopsgate, he is chasing the shadow of a big fat boy and in a moment he will outrun him and take flight for the very first time.
I picture the Grope opening his display cabinet and fingering the mementos, releasing the ghosts, all sorts of past tense rushing up to greet him. They have talked it over and Lauren says maybe it’s time. He hears the thunk of a chip shot on the green in Fort Lauderdale: Lauren reminds him of the grandchild they will be able to see. He flicks a speck of dust from the Stars ’n’ Stripes. Better not to wait for the call, better to call time yourself. Better to throw in your own towel than have it ripped from your body. He turns away and picks up the phone to New York.
And down the road, in a high-speed lift on London Wall, Stephen adjusts his cufflinks. Accepts the approving nod from his reflection in the mirrored panelling. A bell chimes, the doors glide apart and a burst of executive sunlight blinds his eyes as he walks forward into the heavenly glow of the Chairman’s office, his hand already outstretched.
All these endings streaming out behind me like a kite tail.
As we hit the M4 the driver makes a dash for the inside lane and silence invades the car like an extra passenger. My suit carrier flops against my feet and I notice it’s light for a one-way trip. But the things I need for a life are things I do not yet own. And there is plenty of time.
‘You never said where you were going, love,’ says the driver, pulling up at Departures. I put my bag on the ground and lean into the open window to hand him the fare.
‘A long way.’
‘Nice day for it,’ he says and smiles at a sudden January sunshine.
Terminal 4 glitters coolly inside. I stand still in the middle of the concourse and look up at the blinking lights on the board. DELHI – NEW YORK – HONG KONG – CHICAGO – SINGAPORE – HARARE – SAN FRANCISCO.
On the other side of the world I picture Felix at his desk with the harbour lights winking behind him, his face illuminated by the green glow of the screens, a faint smile playing about his lips as he calculates the odds. It is time for you to grow up and take charge, Geraldine. To decide, to make a choice. Become your own master.
I close my eyes and concentrate on my breathing and for the first time it actually works. I can feel an unencumbered rise and fall of the lung, waves breaking on a cooling sand, a caressing homesickness for a place I have never been. I am shedding the crinkled years like a stale skin.
At the ticket desk it is just as I expected – what with the war and everything there is plenty of long-haul availability, tickets for anywhere you want to go. I look up at the board again and the salesgirl waits patiently for me to say something and then smiles and taps everything into her screen. Swipes my credit card and slots the ticket into a wallet. Says, ‘Have a nice flight.’
I walk back outside and light a cigarette, standing on the edge of the pavement breathing kerosene fumes in through my mouth, the muffled scream of planes and a chatter of arriving stewardesses trailing their overnights and clutching their hats against a sharp wind.
I open my bag, take out the two ticket wallets and hold them level in front of me. Read the itineraries printed on the flaps:
16:15 LHR – HONG KONG
16:30 LHR – SAN FRANCISCO
I think of the Big Fucking Ticket all those years ago that was the beginning of all this. And I have to look up and smile at the open skies, for this is the moment where I write the ending. So I let one life drop to the ground with a smack and walk quickly inside.
I am ready to take the wheel.
I am already there.
acknowledgements
THE STORY THAT FELIX TELLS GERI about Vulkan Valve was inspired by the history of Plessey, the British electronics and defence company which was the subject of a hostile takeover by GEC-Siemens in September 1989.
I am very grateful to the Yaddo Foundation, New York where I twice lost and found this book. Thanks to Mac and Michael for critical early support and to all at Serpent’s Tail and Profile whom I omitted to mention on two previous occasions.
Very special thanks to Chris Seery for expert input on all things financial, encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of the markets in the ’80s and ’90s, forensic reading of the entire manuscript but, most of all, for years of friendship on and off the floor.
The poem is ‘The Fall’ by Anthony Cronin, New Island Press, 2010, which I first heard during his reading at Listowel Writers Week. All the good advice from Kant is from the Critique of Pure Reason, transl. Werner Pluhar, Hachette, 1987. The mathematical test Felix gives to Geri was found in Genuis, R
ichard Feynman and Modern Physics, James Gleick, Abacus, 1994. The ‘scattered children of Eire’ is taken from de Valera’s St Patrick’s Day address which I first heard in the British Library’s sound archives. Full text available on YouTube. The quote about the Charge of the Light Brigade is from General Pierre Bosquet. The version of Descartes’ letter to Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia in 1646 is from James Petrik’s Descartes’ Theory of the Till, Hollowbrook Publishing, 1992. Geri quotes from The South Sea Bubble by Jonathan Swift, The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot and also blends lines from Keats, Pádraic Pearse and the Gospel according to Matthew. Bertrand Russell’s quotation is from Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers, Routledge, 1999.
An extract from what would eventually become this novel was published in Contains Small Parts, UEA anthology, Pen & Inc Press, 2003.
On the Floor Page 26
