In a Land of Plenty

by Tim Pears

  It didn’t occur to Charles (which was just as well, Simon thought) that Harry was addressing him in particular. Charles was accustomed to giving advice rather than taking it. In September of 1987 he ordered his investment brokers to switch 50 per cent of his equities into gilts and safe government bonds.

  ‘Why?’ they asked, bewildered at the gambler’s change of heart. ‘Safe, Charles?’

  ‘Don’t question my authority!’ he barked. ‘Just do it!’

  Into October they watched unhappily the lost Profits of their client’s usual high-rolling investments; until on the nineteenth there came the sudden Stock Market crash of Black Monday, and as all around him lost millions Charles Freeman greeted the news with a hearty laugh.

  ‘How did he know?’ his brokers wondered. ‘He’s a magician.’

  So that now Charles thought his phlegmatic son-in-law was merely offering an opinion, tossing it into the air. ‘The thing is not to play the markets, but to create them,’ Harry explained. ‘Not to be at their mercy, but in command of them.’

  ‘Poppycock!’ Charles declared with relish. ‘Boom, recession, boom, recession,’ he said. ‘This is the law of capitalism. Simple. As long as you remember’, he added, ‘that there are ways to make money in a boom, and ways to make money in a crisis.’

  Harry frowned, shrugged and let it go.

  ‘From what I hear,’ said Simon absently, ‘poor James only knows how to lose money, whether it’s a recession or a boom-time.’

  ‘James?’ asked Charles. ‘Your brother made his choice a long time ago. If he ever needs my help he can come and ask for it. With his ruddy tail between his legs.’

  After much persuasion from Alice, Harry took his wife and their by now five children (Amy, Sam, Tom, Susan and Mollie) on a month’s holiday to India, along with both their latest au pair and Natalie, who didn’t earn enough for such a holiday herself. It turned out to be a chaotic trip without serious mishap: Natalie was the only one who got mildly ill, Alice renewed acquaintance with relatives impressed by her procreative regularity, the children unwound, and Harry spent most of the time asleep, replenishing the store of energy used up in suppressed anxiety in recent years.

  Harry returned to the fray as a property developer. He began to buy empty plots of land in unlikely spots around the town; if the land did have buildings on it – bought at rock-bottom prices off bankrupts and debtors – he knocked them down. While some of the sites lay empty, others Harry now developed, and what these had in common could be summed up in one word: tradition.

  Employing architects who’d turned their backs on the Sixties, Harry Singh told council planners, business executives and chainstore owners that the age of concrete brutality was over.

  ‘It’s time we rediscovered the humanity of architecture,’ he explained, ‘time we created a human environment.’ He saw a future in the past, recognizing a language that was a ready-made marketing ploy. But then, Harry being Harry, he quickly came to believe his own rhetoric; he was such an honest salesman that the first person he convinced was himself.

  ‘We’ve lost touch with our roots,’ he said (‘You have, mate,’ Anil told him) as his first superstore went up outside the ring road.

  ‘It has the dimensions of a Roman villa, you see, and uses local materials.’

  ‘This is local plastic?’ someone asked.

  ‘And we’ve landscaped the surrounding slopes and planted trees in the manner of an eighteenth-century country house.’

  ‘Very nice.’

  Next, Harry developed an old shopping centre: along the Factory Road, at the edge of the large housing estate, was a zigzag-shaped arcade of supermarkets and smaller stores, which turned in the slightest breeze into a wind-tunnel. Pensioners pulled their shopping trolleys leaning into the wind at a forty-five degree angle and young mothers had to keep hold of small children for fear of seeing them blown away. Dark corners stank of urine and stale booze, and in the evenings gangs of youths took over the precinct for glue-sniffing and skate-boarding to music from enormous ghetto-blasters.

  ‘The Regency period had more than style,’ Harry proclaimed to his associates – who were now for real. ‘There was an understanding of people in relation to buildings, a mix of function and aesthetic.’

  A new tiled floor was laid in the arcade, a perspex roof erected, and the entrances were covered with vast walls of glass, including heavy doors that were locked at night by security guards. Plants were potted and façades were added to shop doorways. The wind disappeared, and so did the smells, the dogs and the teenage gangs.

  * * *

  ‘We’ve neglected our ancestral traditions,’ Harry explained, invoking the spirit of Wren, Hawksmoor and Capability Brown, as well as more recent, royal, opinion.

  For some years the bus station and the weekly open market had jostled for space in a run-down area at the edge of the town centre, behind the Old Fire Station. It became the most prominent of Harry’s developments: a great double crescent, in the shape of the letter E; the bus station in one space, the market in the other, which became on non-market days a large pedestrian precinct with continental cafés, tables and chairs. The four-storeyed buildings had shops on the ground floor, offices on the first storey and flats above; using different coloured bricks, it resembled a fairy-tale castle, with turrets and towers, tiny windows in odd places, parapets and crenellations. The whole family attended the opening.

  ‘It’s a transformation,’ Charles declared.

  ‘Better than those concrete monstrosities,’ Laura agreed.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind living in one of these flats myself,’ Simon suggested.

  ‘They’re horrible,’ said Natalie.

  ‘At least they’re on a human scale, darling,’ said Simon.

  ‘They’re on a doll’s scale,’ Natalie told him.

  ‘You see, architecture to me,’ Harry told the local Member of Parliament, who’d cut the ribbon, ‘is, well, frozen music, if you like.’

  ‘That’s very fine, Mr Singh,’ the politician remarked.

  Harry appeared, following this success, in a discussion programme on local television, but he made such a poor impression that everyone advised him (they didn’t wait to be asked) not to repeat it: with his monotonous tone of voice and his weary expression Harry came across as even more pompous and humourless than in real life; the camera didn’t pick up the silent, subterranean force of his personality that came across to those who met him. Nor indeed the smell of cardamom.

  Not that Harry regretted so brief a media profile. He preferred to keep it low. When he gave a sizeable donation to Natalie for the women’s refuge, he made sure only enough people knew about it for word to get around discreetly.

  ‘I’m proud of you, Harry,’ Alice told him. ‘I’m glad I married a philanthropist.’

  ‘It’s not philanthropy,’ Harry confided. ‘It might be nepotism.’

  ‘But that’s bad,’ Alice rebuked him.

  ‘Not at all,’ he told her. ‘Natalie’s one of the family.’

  Harry recommended Laura’s dinner-party catering to the wives of his business associates; it would be some time before Laura realized it was more than coincidence how many of her clients happened to know that fine man Mr Singh, who was doing so much in his quiet way for our town.

  Harry made clandestine deals with Robert, in the corridors of the house, which appeared to concern the discreet removal of tardy or recalcitrant tenants from his rented properties. And then he paid a call on James.

  ‘Is Alice all right?’ James wondered.

  ‘My beloved is as radiant as ever,’ Harry told him.

  ‘Your children?’ James asked.

  ‘Your nephews and nieces are all thriving,’ Harry assured him. ‘James,’ he said, coming quickly to the point, ‘I’m not much good at small talk. I’ve reached a position where I now require, I feel, a full-time photographer on my staff. It amazes me how many photographic images we seem to need; I suspect it’s a combination of the tim
es we live in – when presentation is all – and of our own success as a company. Anyhow, I want to offer you the post before advertising it. Simon tells me you’ve been reduced to hawking postcards and suchlike.’

  ‘Harry,’ James said, ‘thank you for your offer. I couldn’t possibly work for you.’

  ‘There’s no need to make a decision on the spot,’ Harry counselled. ‘Take your time. Think it over. Salary negotiable, but generous, that sort of thing.’

  James grinned. ‘Harry, we were classmates together when we were snivelling kids. You’re married to my sister. How could I possibly work for you?’

  Harry frowned. ‘I’m doing my best,’ he said mysteriously. ‘If you have second thoughts, call me.’

  ‘I will, Harry,’ James nodded. ‘I will.’

  It was around that time that Harry began to invite guests to the east wing of the house. Once again, and for the first time since Mary’s death twenty years earlier, cocktail parties took place in the house on the hill. These were more subdued occasions, since the host sets the tone, but at least the drinks were better: cocktails had swung back into fashion and Harry hired two barmen to mix and shake White Russians, Bloody Marys and Gin Slings for the new rich of the town.

  In fact Harry derived little pleasure from his drinks parties. He felt uncomfortable in groups of people: he gave the impression that he’d rather be somewhere else, and tended to wander around his own parties with the look of someone lost; more than once people unaware he was their host kindly told him where the lavatory could be found.

  The person who enjoyed them more than anyone was Charles, even if he was somewhat confused to have been invited to a party in his own house. Occasionally Charles forgot that he had been invited, and when it came time for guests to leave Charles saw them out, thanking them for coming and wishing them safe journey home. And then the guests were confused, saying thank you, lovely party, good evening, while peering around the bulk of the man-in-charge to at least wave goodbye to their real host and hostess, only to glimpse Harry standing on his own in a far corner and Alice rounding up her children. It was a confusing time, for everybody, in the house on the hill, and would only become clearer with the benefit of hindsight.

  Charles, though he may have caused confusion, felt none himself, possibly because he was enjoying being able to see his views literally in black and white. He spent more time in his office on the top floor of the newspaper than at the factory, and moved Judith Peach in too. Despite, on arrival, promising editorial independence, Charles hadn’t been there long before those who knew him recognized his imprint in the leader columns: every now and then one would appear more forthright and more contradictory than usual, like one of Charles’ inter-departmental memos (and, just like them, the editorials’ spelling, punctuation and grammar had had to be tidied up by Miss Peach).

  In the autumn of 1990 the Prime Minister, unassailable at the head of her party for fifteen years, was dramatically ousted from office. The man chiefly responsible looked certain to succeed her but at the last minute another contender came modestly to the fore, the Chancellor of the Exchequer: although regarded as a protégé of the Prime Minister, he appeared, in stark contrast, to be a nice man with no views of his own. In an editorial that was unmistakably one of Charles’, the Chancellor’s claims were advanced because it was time for a rest from personality politics and he was the right man for the job; the economy was too important to be left to politicians, so it was appropriate for a Chancellor to be at the helm.

  ‘Can a man be Prime Minister, Mummy?’ Adamina asked Laura.

  The modest Chancellor duly won the leadership contest to become the youngest Prime Minister of the century.

  ‘What a nice man,’ said Alice.

  ‘He’s a wimp,’ said Robert.

  ‘He’s tougher than he looks,’ said Harry.

  ‘Dreadful dress sense,’ said Simon.

  ‘Let’s see what he does about Clause 28,’ said Natalie.

  ‘They’re all the same,’ said Laura. ‘You can’t trust any of them.’

  The Echo had been losing money for some time before Charles took it over, and to Charles, loss was anathema. He hadn’t bought the paper primarily to make money, but to lose it could not be countenanced. The first change he made was converting the format from broadsheet to tabloid and using a clearer typescript: the steady drop in sales halted. Then he halved the cost of second-hand car adverts and incorporated tiny photographs of the vehicles on offer, and sales began to increase.

  That became Derek’s full-time job: going around taking pictures of the cars for sale. He met James on Factory Road one day and told him that it would see him through to retirement.

  ‘I’m not saying it’s not challenging work,’ he told James bitterly. ‘You’ve got to make sure the number plate’s in focus. That’s what the editor told me. “It’s got to be clear,” she said, like she was taking the piss out of Mr Baker. Can you imagine, Jim boy, I take a bottle of water and a rag round with me, to wipe the bloody number plates.’

  As well as commandeering the paper’s editorials, Charles also took an interest in the news. Meeting a journalist in the corridor, he asked where he was going.

  ‘To see the County Education Officer about them shelving those plans for the new primary school in East Side, Mr Freeman.’

  ‘Not interesting,’ Charles decided. ‘Come with me. I’m hosting a businesssmen’s lunch at the Golf Club. You can report that.’

  ‘But Mr Freeman, Eva told me—’

  ‘Who pays your wages?’ Charles thundered.

  ‘Well, you—’

  ‘Who’s the boss around here?’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘Come.’

  Charles decreed that from now on the assistant editor had to OK all expenses directly with him. One day the man explained that it was time for the two senior subeditors to have their company cars updated.

  Charles studied the request. ‘They won’t need them,’ he decided.

  ‘They won’t, sir?’

  ‘No. They’re fired,’ Charles said.

  His love of gadgets now combined with the need to communicate with his minions at all times, and Charles had installed in his office a telex, a fax, answering machines, a satellite link-up, a conference-call telecommunication system, and a bank of telephones as well as three mobiles that he carried around with him and which crumpled the pockets of his Savile Row suits. Owing to his utter inability to master any form of technology himself Charles was constantly picking up the wrong receiver, photocopying a document instead of transmitting it to London or hurling a computer keyboard at the wall.

  In the months that followed Charles gradually divided the paper into sections on different days, for leisure, property and home and garden improvement; incorporated colour photographs; cut out the weekly books page and replaced arts reviews with comprehensive listings; and added a weekly glossy magazine, free with the Echo every Friday. With each change sales figures shifted upwards.

  ‘It’s a ruddy doddle, this newspaper business,’ Charles told Simon one evening at home. ‘I like it. And I’m going to expand.’

  At the second annual meeting after his takeover Charles announced that the newspaper company was being renamed the Freeman Communications Corporation, and was to be transformed into a multi-media, technology-based conglomerate. His report unveiled plans to buy a local cable television company that had laid cables in three towns in the Midlands a few years earlier and then stopped, with the advent of satellite; to buy a minority stake in the independent regional television company, and a majority one in the new local commercial radio station. When the sceptical wondered where the money for such expansion was to come from they had only to check the accounts: pre-tax profit growth had risen by 80 per cent; Charles Freeman’s buoyant optimism was justified.

  What no excited shareholder or dazzled analyst looked harder for was the unpublished fact behind the figures, which was that Charles was subsidizing the expansion of the publ
ic company, FCC, through the purchase of its shares by his private Freeman Company. As share prices rose, it was a tactic that could only benefit both sides of Charles’ burgeoning local empire.

  The new Chancellor of the Exchequer, meanwhile, was busily denying that the country was in the grip of a recession; before long, however, he changed tack and began claiming that owing to his policies recovery was just around the corner. He and his colleagues urged people to become active patriotic consumers and help the country to spend its way out of the crisis: New Year sales lasted all winter and summer ones carried on through the autumn, until they linked up, with red SALE stickers on permanent display. It provoked one of Charles’ more coherent editorials. ‘The manufacturing industry is the basis of every developed nation’s wealth,’ it read. ‘We also need strong competitors, who can afford to trade with us.’

  Charles had become so involved with the paper that he was neglecting his own manufacturing base – the basis of his wealth.

  * * *

  Harry invited Simon to his study for a drink. Harry had his own ambitions, but he didn’t want to achieve them by default.

  ‘There are very few things of intrinsic value,’ he told Simon. ‘Land is one. Property another. Not absolute value, but I mean as lasting as we can imagine, or predict. Gold too, of course. Alcohol, I would venture, is another.’

  ‘Couldn’t agree more,’ Simon replied. ‘Speaking of which—’

  ‘Everything else is just a commodity. They fluctuate in value.’

  ‘Very true,’ Simon agreed. ‘Of course they do. By the way, have you noticed the posters for the Chinese circus? It’s coming to the park next week. Why don’t I take Amy and Sam?’

  ‘Please, Simon,’ Harry beseeched him, ‘I’m trying to tell you something. The point is, between you and me, I fear that Charles may have lost sight of certain things. That, for example, what the factory produces is no longer of intrinsic value; that he therefore needs greater flexibility than before.’